Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 06 - Behind the Walls (16 page)

7.
Dead

Clive Dorner

1.
Spent time with his uncle here

2.
Lived in Philadelphia

3.
Grew up in Ocean Grove

4.
Real estate investor

5.
Took advantage of people

6.
Called me instead of a realtor. Why?

7.
Dead

I was alternating items, adding one to Mr. Fitzgerald’s list and one to Dorner’s. I was about to write that Mr. Fitzgerald did things for charities when there was a light knock at the door.

“Nuts.
I should have locked it.” I peered out. George Winters gave me the peace sign.

“Don’t tell me Scoobie called you.”

He grinned. “Okay, I won’t.” He came in and looked around.

“Scoobie said you painted flamingos on one wall.”

“And you believed him?” I gestured that he should sit at the small dinette table and sat across from him, my notebook closed in front of me.

“Since I didn’t think you could draw, I figured it was at best fifty-fifty.”
He looked at me directly. “What is it you want to do?”

“Maybe nothing.”

He snorted.

“But I like to make lists of what I know and don’t know.
I think better that way.”

“Can we eat first?” he asked, sniffing the air.

I went to the kitchen and he stood in the doorway as I silently took two plates from the cupboard and cut two pieces of the lasagna and put one on each plate.
So, now he eats with me again?

He carried the two plates to the table and I got ice water.
After he took his first bite, he said, “This is a high-visibility deal. You think the cops won’t do everything?” He did a gimme gesture and I opened the notebook and handed it to him.

“I expect they will.
I just want to be sure they connect all the dots. I don’t want to find anybody else on my porch swing, and I want to know who used to own that jewelry so I can return it and no one else comes looking for more.”

He glanced up from the list as he pulled out his narrow reporter’s notebook and took the pencil from the spiral binding.
“And those dots would be?”

“First, the drawer vanished from the chest of drawers I bought at the auction…”

“And you got it back.”

“From Fitzgerald, who says he doesn’t know who put it on his van seat, but maybe he did know.”

“And…?”

“The jewelry.”
I raised my hand and closed two fingers. “Three,” I said, closing another, “is the obvious one. Mr. Fitzgerald on my porch. Four, he’s Clive Dorner’s uncle and now Dorner’s dead.”

“Luckily not on your porch,” George said, looking at me steadily.

“Five. At some point Fitzgerald’s mother’s cousin lived in this house. Maybe she put the jewelry behind the wall.”

“Be a pretty big hole,” he said, bemused.

“It was newer wall board. What if she was remodeling? Or maybe she didn’t know that Fitzgerald put it there, if he was helping her, or something.”

When George said nothing, I continued.
“Dorner was looking for bargain property here. I’m going to look and see if he bought anything before. What number was that?”

“You’re on six.
You need another hand.”

I stuck out my tongue at him and he touched the small camera he always carries in the breast pocket of his Hawaiian-style collared shirt.

“Any pictures and I throw
that
in a swimming pool.” I was alluding to treating his camera similarly to his mobile phone, which got damaged that way. It was not my fault. At least, not intentionally.

“Ha!
You admit you drowned it!”

I ignored him.
“If Dorner told other people he was looking for hurricane bargains, they could have been as annoyed with him as I was. People hate those vultures.”

“But not enough to kill them.
Especially Lester.”

“Because he would lose a commission?”
I usually don’t like dark humor, but this struck me funny. “Lester would have made sure the contract was signed and there was an estate to manage the deal before he killed him.”

George grunted and looked at his notes.
“I checked at the courthouse. Dorner didn’t own any other property here and I couldn’t find old records. Unless he bought it under a business name or something. So, the question is not just why here, but why now?”

I nodded slowly. “Because there are more inexpensive properties further south.”
I had forgotten that George and I thought a lot alike.
I miss that.

He caught my expression and looked away for a moment.
“Right. He did live up the road in Ocean Grove a lot of his life, but I talked to some real estate people in Philadelphia and…”

“When did you do that?” I asked.

“As soon as I found out he died. Kind of tricky, because I figured I’d be telling the people at the firm he worked with about his death. And I was.”

“What did they say?”

“When I first said I was calling about him, I got a kind of snotty tone from the guy who talked to me. Said Dorner did not work there regularly and he had no immediate way to contact him. When I said why I was calling he was shocked and wanted more info. When I tell them something they tell me something.”

I nodded.
“Like what?”

“Like Dorner never mentioned to anyone that he was looking for property up here, though the guy hadn’t talked to him in a few weeks.
He said Dorner was a wheeler dealer, but he didn’t know that he’d ever out and out cheated anyone. Said Dorner sometimes followed leads that maybe should have gone to someone else.”

I was in commercial real estate in
Lakewood for years. It’s a cutthroat business, especially after the housing bubble burst awhile back. “Hmmm. People who work together regularly don’t usually do that.”

“Yeah.
Reporters at competing papers’ll do it, but if you work at the same outlet the bosses want you to work together.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay what?”

“What part do you want to do?”

“It’s probably easier for me to get background stuff. People expect a reporter to ask a lot of questions. Especially after two murders.” He tapped his finger on his notebook and then looked at me. “The jewelry was here. It’s the most concrete thing we have.”

I nodded, thinking.
“And Morehouse asked me if I thought Fitzgerald brought Pebbles here.”

“He did?
You didn’t say that.” He eyed me with something akin to suspicion.

“I didn’t think of it.”
I pointed to my list. “That makes me I wonder if Mr. Fitzgerald knew Moira Peebles well.”

“Okay, why don’t you start there, and we can talk tomorrow afternoon.
But Jolie, we have to…”

“Share,” we said together.

He grunted and stood.

“George…”
I wasn’t sure what to say.

“I know, I know.
Look, if we’re going to work on this together, we can’t be hemming and hawing all the time. Just pretend you’re as pissed at me as you used to get before we dated.”

I grinned.
“At least I’ll know how to act.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IT WAS THREE WEEKS since I’d found the jewelry.
I had a feeling that if word got out someone would come forward to claim it. Whether it was theirs or not, it could tell me something. Ramona was probably my best bet to get the word out.

So, Friday morning I was at the Purple Cow almost as soon as it opened.
The white board was inside the door, probably because it was so cool. It said, “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” This was attributed to Buddha, and I took Ramona’s choice of quote as a hopeful sign.

I looked around.
Ramona was probably in the back room. Roland finished bagging something for a customer and turned to me. “What are the odds that you’re buying?” he asked, mostly good naturedly.

“I wish that’s all that was on my mind.”
I told him about being at the fire where Clive Dorner’s body was found. The paper had just said that several people noted the fire at about the same time. It did mention that the house had been for sale.

“Good Lord,” he said.
“I didn’t know him. I’m glad you weren’t hurt.” He gave me an odd look and walked to the back room to get Ramona for me.

I looked out the store’s front window for a couple moments, not letting myself think of anything related to murders.
It was all just too much.

Ramona walked out with Roland, and I looked at her.
Her expression was cool, but the way to Ramona’s heart is through news she can pass on, so she wanted to know what I knew.

Roland repeated what I’d told him, and neither Ramona or I let on that she already knew I’d been at the fire.

Ramona finally spoke. “Do they…know how it started?” She had a lightweight shawl draped around her shoulders and knotted in the front, and she drew it closer.

“I don’t know.
My guess is it wasn’t from careless smoking. The house was supposed to be empty.”

Roland’s mobile phone rang and he walked away from us.

“I’m sorry I was a jerk,” I said to Ramona.

Her lips twitched slightly.
“I know you weren’t trying. I just have a hard time with all this.”

“Me, too.”

“But I’m not helping you,” she said, very firmly.

This was too bad, but I wasn’t going to urge her.
It wouldn’t be worth losing her as a friend just to get her to give me ideas. Plus, she’d probably still pass on what she heard.

“I promise I won’t ask,” I said.

She rolled her eyes and walked to a nearby shelf to straighten a couple of items that a customer had probably recently moved.

“I’m thinking even more of telling some people about the jewelry.
Someone might be able to identify it and…”

“And come to relieve you of it?” she asked.
“Are you sure you didn’t bump your head when you fell off that stoop at the fire?”

“I landed on my tailbone and rolled.
I’d find a way to make sure that people knew I didn’t have it in the house. If we know who the original owner was we may know about when Fitzgerald took it.”

“So?”
She turned her back on me and walked toward the front window.

She’s still really annoyed with me.

My eyes followed her back, but I stayed near the cash register. “If it was as long ago as I think it was, then it could mean he stole a lot more over the years, and a lot of people were really mad at him. Plus, I bet Father Teehan’s remarks at the funeral combined with Elmira’s mouth have people wondering if he paid them all he should have after an auction.”

“So what?”
She didn’t look at me as she straightened something in the front display window.

“If there is a broader suspect pool the police have more to investigate, they might catch the killer, and I can stop looking over my shoulder.”

Ramona faced me, face flushing. “Suspect pool? It’s not TV. You live
alone.”

I registered her emphasis on my single status.

She literally shook a finger at me. “Any more publicity means someone who got rooked knows to come to your house and look for more, or finds you in a vacant house when you’re working and makes you take them to the jewelry.”

“A lot of the houses I appraise have people in them.”
I waited until she looked at me directly. “You could mention what I found to a few customers and…”

Roland’s voice was calm, but firm. “Enough, Jolie.”

“Oh, uh, hi, Roland,” I said.

“What you and Ramona decide to do on your own time is up to you.
But when Ramona is at work I don’t want her talking about possible jewelry thefts or saying anything that would disparage someone like the late Mr. Fitzgerald.”

My mouth was dry.
“Sometimes I get carried away.”

Roland gave me a kind of knowing smile and turned to walk back to his office in the stock room.
“You can say that again.”

Ramona and I watched his back until Roland was out of the sales area, and then Ramona took a spray bottle of glass cleaner from under the counter.
She used a paper towel to wipe at fingerprints on the display case next to the cash register.

“I’m sorry.
It was dumb to ask.”

She stopped cleaning and looked at me “There aren’t too many rowdy women in my yoga class.
I’ll wear the bracelets there.”

I grinned.
“You said you weren’t going to help.”

SINCE MY PART OF the duties George and I were dividing started with my house, I went to the library to look at Moira Peebles’ obituary. Then I was going to visit Virginia Mulligan to ask if she’d had Pebbles over the winter.

The first line of Mrs. Peebles’ obituary told me a lot. Moira (Bridler) Peebles’ late husband was Horace Peebles, and her parents were John Bridler and Annie Fitzgerald.
The name Bridler sounded familiar, but I couldn’t think why.

I had no idea how Annie Fitzgerald was related to my auctioneer Fitzgerald and I was already confused by names and generations.
I pulled a notebook from my purse and started tracing families, working backwards from current obituaries to the parents mentioned in them.

I already knew Norman Fitzgerald’s parents were Mary Donnelly and Lawrence Fitzgerald, and his sister was Norma and he had two brothers, Michael and Paul.
They all died before Norman.

Lawrence Fitzgerald’s father was Peter, but Moira’s mother Annie had a different father, a man named Hugh Fitzgerald. I finally figured out that Moira Peebles and Norman Fitzgerald shared a great grandfather, which I thought made them third cousins.

A lot of people wouldn’t know their third cousins if they met them on the street, but in a town the size of Ocean Alley, Norman and Moira probably knew they were related somehow, even if they weren’t sure what kind of cousins they were.

Did their relationship matter?
Maybe yes, maybe no. It could just be a coincidence that Norman’s mother’s cousin lived there years ago and Moira owned it later, but I doubted it. However, it didn’t mean there was anything sinister about selling a house to someone who’s a distant cousin. I didn’t even bother trying to figure out how Moira and Norman’s mother’s cousin were related.

“Wait a minute.”
I glanced around the library. It’s never good for people to see you talking to yourself.

Bridler, I thought.
Norman Fitzgerald’s mother’s cousin was Naomi Bridler, and that was Moira’s maiden name. So, Moira might have been a first cousin to the woman she bought the house from.

The precise relationship didn’t really matter, but it was a further indication that Norman Fitzgerald knew he would have access to my house for many years.
He could get at things he hid there. Until I bought it.

I couldn’t figure out why he waited until after it was in my possession to look for what he had hidden.
The only thing that made sense was the timing. Everyone’s lives were crazy for the months after Sandy. Fitzgerald probably didn’t even know Moira’s house was going to be in the tax auction. I would probably have to be content with not knowing why he hadn’t tried to get the jewelry before I bought the house. I didn’t like that at all.

I called Sergeant Morehouse.
“You asked me if Norman Fitzgerald had brought Pebbles to my house. Why did you think he would?”

There were a couple of seconds of silence.
“I thought I told you to stay outta this, Jolie.”

“I am.”
I crossed my fingers. “I was just buying some food for Pebbles and it reminded me that you asked me that.”

“Him and Moira were some kind of shirttail cousins.
They knew each other a little, I don’t think much.”

“Well enough that you thought
Norman had her skunk.”

“I didn’t think he had her skunk!
That’s why I asked you.” When I didn’t say anything, Morehouse said, “Everybody knew Moira Peebles hated to leave that skunk, but her daughter wasn’t having anything to do with it. I thought there was maybe an off chance that Norman took it.”

“Oh.”

“That’s all you got to say is
oh?
You think I don’t know how to do my job?”

He’s definitely grouchy today
. “I’m sure you do, I just…”

“Good-bye, Jolie.”

I looked at my now quiet mobile phone. “Huh. He said good-bye.”

VIRGINIA MULLIGAN did not look too pleased to see me, but she did ask me to come in. I suppose she was afraid I would trade fart jokes with her grandson, whom I gathered was playing a video game in a back bedroom.

As we sat in her cheerfully decorated living room, I said, “I hear I might have you to thank for Pebbles.”

“Oh dear. Who told you?” she asked, looking apprehensive.

“A couple of people commented that skunks don’t have much of a homing instinct, and then your grandson said he fed her when Mrs. Peebles was in the hospital.”
I had decided not to give away Mrs. Murphy as the person who suggested Mrs. Mulligan as the Pebbles-keeper. “I guessed.”

“When the hurricane was coming, I got so worried about her.
I knew she wouldn’t survive it. I took some of that smelly Skunkie Delight out to the wildlife area, and it didn’t take her ten minutes to smell it and find me.”

“Where do you get that stuff, anyway?
Harry Steele gave me some and I keep meaning to ask him where he got it.”

“Moira got it by mail order, I’m not sure from where.
I helped her pack, and I can’t tell you why I kept what she had left.” She looked at me as if she was a kid who’d been caught with a spitball. “I suppose you want me to take her back. I let her out hoping you’d like her because my grandson was coming for spring break. I knew I could never give her away once he saw her here.”

I smiled.
“You’re in luck. My cat likes her, and she was really lonely without Aunt Madge’s dogs.”

She smiled broadly.
“Thank goodness. She uses more litter than three cats.”

“I noticed,” I said, dryly.

She sighed. “Moira was such a good friend. I miss her a lot. We’d wave at each other from our windows when it was raining. I still look over there expecting to see her.”

“You can visit Pebbles anytime.”
I was about to go when I thought of something. “Did you know Norman Fitzgerald very well?”

“Not especially.
He and Moira were some kind of distant cousin, and sometimes she’d see him at bingo at St. Anthony’s.”

“So, uh, you can’t think of any reason why he’d have been on my porch that night, can you?”

She looked surprised. “I just assumed you knew him well. Didn’t he help you move in?”

“No.
Why would you think that?”

“I saw him over there the day you moved in.
I thought,” she looked confused, “that he had a key to your back door. Or maybe it was open.”

“My back door?” I asked. “You mean he went in the house?”

“Why yes, he did. He came back out after a couple of minutes. You don’t know him well?” Virginia looked uneasy.

“No, but I did buy some furniture from his auction just before that.”
I was thinking fast. I didn’t want to give Virginia any reason to talk a lot about this. “In fact, afterwards he brought over a drawer to the chest of drawers I bought. Maybe he was just making sure it fit okay.”

Her worried expression changed.
“That would be like him.”

After a quick hello to Nicholas, who was absorbed in his game, I left.
Norman Fitzgerald had a key to the back door. Did he go in the night he died, or did he give the key to someone else?

I paused next to my car.
“Who has that damn key now?”