52 Steps to Murder (17 page)

23

Stunned, but not totally surprised, we hurried toward the body of a woman who rested against the back of her wheelchair.

“Any idea who she is?” George asked.

“I have a pretty good idea,” I answered. “A woman by the name of Mabel Jarvis lived here,” I said as I pointed to the steps beside us. “Neighbors told us that she was confined to a wheelchair. When she repeatedly didn’t answer the door, we forced our way into her house. When we got inside, we searched her place. In the basement, we found tracks in the dust that looked like they had been made by a wheelchair. We found footprints that looked like they belonged to the person who pushed the chair, but we couldn’t find Mrs. Jarvis. We discovered a secret passageway in Mrs. Jarvis’s house much like the one in Mrs. Nelson’s house, but it ended in a dead-end. Obviously, she’s dead. Let’s go up and call Frank and the lab boys and see what we can find out about her death. Just to be on the safe side, we’d better go up through Mrs. Nelson’s house. We don’t want to disturb any evidence, even though I doubt there’s any to find.”

+++

I sat, wondering what would happen next. Was the man we found the person who pushed Mrs. Jarvis’s wheelchair? If so, was he the one who murdered her, and did he murder Mrs. Nelson, too?

My stomach growled. I took a look at my watch. It looked like Lou and I would have to settle for a late lunch.

I reached in my pocket, glad that my candy bars were not part of the evidence. I attacked my Hershey bar like it was a porterhouse steak. My action inspired Lou, who pulled out a new package of M&Ms, ripped it open, and guzzled the whole pack.

I sat in a chair in Mrs. Nelson’s house and licked the chocolate from my fingers. I wondered what would happen next. Lou and George appeared to have the same look. Lt. Michaelson had dismissed the other officers, knowing that Frank would handle things when he arrived.

“Any reason I need to hang around, Cy?”

“I don’t see any reason, George. Frank and SOC team will be here in a few minutes. Anyway, I can call you if I need you.”

“Well, good luck. I think I’ll go home and get cleaned up. You’d better do the same the first chance you get.”

“You may merely be cleaning up, but I think Lou and I need to get over our aches and pains. Thanks, George. See you later.”

George walked out the door and down the steps. Halfway down he met Frank Harris on his way up. Frank noticed his friend’s dirty, rumpled clothes and his hair full of dirt.

George looked at the medical examiner and answered his friend’s unasked question.

“Hi, Frank. Cy will fill you in. He’s in the living room.”

Frank Harris continued up the steps, smiling and shaking his head. He walked into the house, saw Lou and me.

“What’s with you guys, anyway? Does the department have you handling domestic violence cases now, or did you have to evict someone who didn’t want to go? And what’s with George? He looks like he’s been mud wrestling, only someone forgot to fill the pit with water. I’m glad I come in after the killing’s over. Your side of things looks too dangerous to suit me.”

I motioned for Frank to take a seat and filled in my friend on the latest of the day’s events.

“How many bodies are you going to have for me, Cy? I do have other work, you know.”

“No one hopes this is the last one any more than I do, Frank.”

“I understand this one’s another elderly woman. Someone have something against little old ladies collecting social security for a few years?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“Well, let’s take a look.”

Lou and I groaned as we got up out of our chairs and lumbered toward the stairs once again. While we eased down through the Nelson place, another team checked out Mabel Jarvis’s house. The only new information gained from going through the Jarvis house was that the secret passageway that led to the underground cavern went through a side wall in the basement instead of through the pantry and down, as in Mrs. Nelson’s house. They discovered no new prints.

+++

After a thorough examination of the body, Frank had the deceased removed. Before Frank left, he told me he would let me know what they found out. I saw no reason to hang around the Nelson house any longer. Lou and I locked up and left.

+++

We made ourselves as presentable as possible and drove to get something to eat.

After we ordered, I went to the pay phone and called in to see if the department had any information on the man we apprehended. Investigators were trying to match fingerprints or see if they could identity him through dental records. When I asked if they had been able to pry any information out of our attacker, I was told that most of what came out of the man’s mouth were guttural sounds and occasional screams, but that he kept uttering one phrase repeatedly, only no one had any idea what it meant. The man kept hollering something about a raincoat.

+++

To ease my pain, I asked Lou for another book report. It was fitting that he enlightened me about his attempt to read
The Catcher in the Rye
on the same night our pains were so severe. Because he was a Christian who tried to follow the Bible’s examples on how to live, Lou didn’t care for Holden Caulfield’s use of profanity. The profanity didn’t go away after a few chapters, and Lou found nothing likable about Holden Caulfield, so he tossed the book aside and contemplated his next selection. The sergeant did not condemn Caulfield because he used profanity. The sergeant figured that if he himself had to live part of the time in New York City and spend the rest of the time in a boarding school for boys, he might have grown up swearing, too. It made Lou wonder which was worse, New York or boarding school.

+++

I dropped Lou at his apartment, then headed home. All the way home I tried to make sense of the information we’d gained. Did the same person murder both women, and if so, was there a single murderer or were two people working together?

I thought back to Saturday. On Saturday, we knew of only one murder and no underground labyrinth. On Saturday, Mrs. Wilkens seemed to have an alibi for everyone. At least she kept her eyes on Angela Nelson from the time she arrived until the time Officer Davis arrived, and she cast her eyes upon Mr. Silverman and Mrs. Reynolds and Jimmy most of the time. If Mrs. Wilkens was a credible witness, and other witnesses collaborated most of her story and didn’t contradict any of it, the murderer or murderers must either be Miss Penrod or someone who entered the Nelson house from below. But who could it have been? Was it possible that there was someone I had not yet learned about?

I headed for the kitchen table, picked up a legal pad, and tried to make sense of  the situation. I listed evidence and suspects: Angela Nelson, the granddaughter; Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Nelson’s and Mrs. Jarvis’s maid; Irene Penrod, the next-door neighbor; Stanley Silverman, the observant neighbor across the street; Mrs. Reynolds and her son Jimmy, neighbors two doors down the street; Bobby, the grocery boy; Harry Hornwell, Mrs. Nelson’s attorney; Mr. Hartley, the mailman; and the mysterious man found in the cavern-like area under the house. Of course, there were Mrs. Wilkens, Mrs. Overstreet, and other neighbors across the street, but for some reason I had never considered any of them. Did one of these people murder one or both women? Or was it a stranger or someone we were overlooking? I couldn’t see any of these people as a murderer. Unlikable, yes. Lonely, most definitely. But a murderer, no. And yet, surely one of them killed Mrs. Nelson, and probably Mrs. Jarvis. Because he or she used poison, the murder was probably premeditated. Did the fact that Harry Hornwell bought a couple of houses on the street have anything to do with the murders? What about the Reynolds’s tempers? I thought of Stanley Silverman inheriting all of his mother’s money, and saw how that might have caused him to murder his own mother, but not two neighbor ladies. Unless they had found out that he arranged his mother’s demise. 

After seemingly getting nowhere, I tossed the pad in disgust, headed for the TV. I was about to consult one of the greatest minds in finding solutions for the seemingly unsolvable, Jethro Bodine, otherwise known as Jed Clampett’s nephew. In addition to being the world’s number one expert on ciphering, that boy can eat, and he eats my kind of stuff. But I don’t eat all of his. The easiest way to describe someone that eats my kind of stuff is to ask the question, “Does the boy know the meaning of the word ‘culinary?’” If he does, I doubt if he eats my kind of stuff.

Lou had given me two DVDs, each with five episodes of
The Beverly Hillbillies.
I watched the first two episodes on one DVD, then fast forwarded to the last one, which turned out to be my favorite. The Clampetts had recently moved to Beverly Hills, and it was time for Jethro to enroll in school. Jed sets out with Jethro in tow, eager to enter his nephew in the fifth grade.

+++

Lou told me he had decided to put the case aside until the next day. He planned to do some solving, but his plans were to pick up where he had left off in his crossword puzzle book. It had been a few days since he’d worked on it, and he was anxious to get back to it. He told me that he had gone through the across clues once before going to bed the other night, but had left off before tackling the down column. He was in the middle of a three-star puzzle, which meant the puzzle wasn’t particularly easy or difficult. I’d seen Lou work many a puzzle on one of our slow days, so I knew he was seasoned enough that he could usually fill in each box on a medium puzzle by at least the third trip through the clues. Because of the unpredictable nature of our schedules, Lou had no idea when he’d get another chance to work a crossword puzzle. He told me he planned to spend at least a couple of hours working his way through the book.

I took a break from watching
The Beverly Hillbillies.
I called Lou just as he’d tossed his crossword book aside and contemplated fixing himself something to eat. Neither of us had eaten since late afternoon. Lou answered the phone as he stuck his head in the refrigerator. I laughed when he told me what he was doing. Lou said he didn’t want a full meal, but he did need a substantial snack before going to bed. I was anxious to find out what he decided to eat, so we continued to talk as he searched the refrigerator and freezer. All he saw that interested him were some meatballs left over from a few days before and a carton of rocky road ice cream. Lou’s words made my  mouth water. He told me that he’d frozen the meatballs, so all he had to do was heat them until they were just right. Then, he’d place them on a hoagie bun he had stored in the bread drawer, drench them in spaghetti sauce, cover them with mozzarella cheese, slice and sauté some green peppers and onions, add them to the sandwich, and devour it. After he finished the sandwich, he’d take out the half-empty carton of ice cream, add some syrup, whipped cream, and a cherry, consume everything but the carton, and head for bed. My mistake was that I talked to Lou until his food was ready. He was ready to eat, and I hadn’t even begun to look for a snack. I just knew that Lou had rung my bell and my mouth was watering.

I hung up the phone, checked out my refrigerator. I knew that I didn’t have any leftover meatballs. When I opened the refrigerator door, and heard corned beef on rye, topped with sauerkraut and Thousand Island dressing calling me. I put up a TV tray and set the plate containing my sandwich on it, while I returned to the kitchen to pick up my root beer float. Sufficiently armed, and having had my fill of the negative aspects of underground life, I needed a few laughs from a different type of underground lifestyle. It was time to watch
Hogan’s Heroes.
Who knows? Maybe I would find a clue that would help me solve the case. 

Four episodes later, I had mixed emotions. I still had no idea who committed the murders on Hilltop Place, but I laughed repeatedly as Col. Hogan bested Col. Klink and Sgt. Schultz. As I watched the first episode of
Hogan’s Heroes
first season, I noted that the underground beneath Hilltop Place is much larger than the one under Stalag 13, but that the Stalag 13 underground included more of the comforts of home. I had no idea how I felt about this, but I felt inferior as it took Col. Hogan only one episode to discover the identity of his nemesis, and I hadn’t solved my murders, even though I had been at my task for almost a week.

I suspected the next day would be another busy day, so I called it a night.  When I got up from the chair, it seemed like my clothes fit a little more snugly than they had a few weeks before. My clothes must have shrunk. I wished I had bought pants with an elastic waistband. While even elastic will stretch only so far, at least it will stretch. I changed into my pajamas, took one more trip to the kitchen table to see where I’d tossed the legal pad, looked it over again, and hoped that I’d solve the murders in my sleep.

24

I woke up Wednesday morning and made a mental note to check on the prices of hot tubs, just in case my aches and pains continued. I turned over gingerly and looked at the clock. It was late enough, so I called Frank Harris to see what he could tell me about Mrs. Jarvis’s murder.

“Good morning, Frank. Do you have any information for me yet?”

“Oh, did you finally get up, Cy? I’ve already put in half a day’s work.”

“It’s only eight thirty, Frank. So, Mr. Time-And-A-Half, what do you have for me?”

“Mabel Jarvis was poisoned, codeine, just like Mrs. Nelson.”

“Anything different from Mrs. Nelson?”

“Well no one gave her a sedative first. But, as you know, we didn’t find her until a few days after she died, so the best I can pinpoint the time of her death is to say that is was probably sometime Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. My best guess is Saturday, but it could have been Friday or Sunday.”

“I think someone’s trying to play games with us, Frank. They leave enough clues to keep us interested, but manage to stay a step ahead of us.”