Mourning In Miniature (29 page)

I opened the door.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late, Mrs. Porter,” Barry said. “But remember you said you wanted to meet with me.”

So I had.

“Come in, Barry,” I said, ushering him into the atrium. As he passed by me in my foyer, I’d detected no smell of alcohol, which brought me great relief.

“I know this isn’t what you had in mind, but I need to talk to you,” he said.

I tried to hide my excitement at having a chance to interview Barry in a better environment than Miller’s Mortuary. I recalled his nasty mood at that time and took his presence in my home so late at night as a sign that he was ready to cooperate.

I wasn’t completely devoid of fear, however. What if he was a killer? Killing twice wouldn’t be a great leap. I wondered if I should slip my cell phone into my pocket and surreptitiously keep my index finger on the speed dial button for Skip. I also thought of saying something like, “I’m not alone, you know. My very tall, husky son is in the next room.” Or, to protect Maddie, I might say, “I’m utterly alone in the house.”

This was no way to start an interview.

“Can I get you a glass of tea? Or something else to drink?” I asked him.

Barry shook his head, running his hand across his forehead at the same time. When the light from the small lamp in the atrium hit just right, I could see beads of perspiration. “I’m good, thanks. I shouldn’t have been so rude to you today.”

Barry’s manner put me at ease. He seemed as dejected as Rosie when David let her down. “It wasn’t the right time to approach you, Barry. I’m really sorry for the loss of your good friend. But I have so many questions about his death and I need to have them answered.”

“I’m aware of that. And that Rosie is being accused of killing David. I know you became friends after graduation and I’m sure you want to clear her.”

“I want to discover the truth.” Wasn’t that always what prosecutors said in their opening trial remarks?

“Everyone in the gang is talking about how you’re going around investigating and I decided to come here myself and set everything straight. You know, you still have a lot of power over your students, Mrs. Porter. I guess we still need your approval.” Not everyone, I thought, calling Cheryl’s “you’re not my teacher anymore” outburst to mind. “I swear to you, I could never have killed David. He and I have been friends since we were kids.”

Barry broke down and I had a moment of feeling sorry for him, but I couldn’t let him get away without answering a few questions. He sat hunched on a chair across from me. We might have been in English 1A at the Abraham Lincoln High School thirty years ago. But then all Barry would have had to explain was why his Steinbeck paper would be late.

“Maybe you didn’t kill your friend, Barry, but you do have some explaining to do.”

Barry nodded. “I don’t know where to start, Mrs. Porter.”

“Maybe you can begin by telling me why you sent Rosie presents using David’s name.”

Barry folded his hands, as if in prayer. I could tell he wanted to ask me how I knew about the misrepresented gifts, but thought better of it. He lumbered up from the chair.

“I shouldn’t have come. I’ve said all I wanted to say, and that’s it.”

“Barry Cannon,” I said, in a classroom voice, mindless of Maddie sleeping not far away.

It worked. My roughly forty-eight-year-old former student, whose brown hair was now sprinkled with gray, responded like the well-behaved young man he used to be and sat down again, letting out a long breath. “I’m not proud of this.”

I put the best spin I could on the situation. “Barry, someone else’s life is at stake here. If you were too shy to ask Rosie out for yourself—”

Barry’s loud, rueful laugh interrupted me. I was afraid Maddie would wake. But remembering the drama she’d snoozed through at the Duns Scotus, I relaxed.

“No, no, no,” Barry said. I was glad Rosie wasn’t around to hear his vehement denial of his wanting to spend time with her. In her fragile state, she would have taken it as yet one more rejection by her classmates. “I’m not courting Rosie. If anyone, I was courting her father.”

“Oh?” I hoped for a quick explanation and Barry came through.

“What I mean is, I was trying to get inside information from Callahan and Savage. Her father, Larry Esterman, consults for them now. We wanted David to do it himself—to buddy up to Rosie so we could get to her father. We knew Rosie was still vulnerable as far as David was concerned. She never held him accountable for an incident that happened when we were seniors.”

High schoolers and their incidents that “happened.” I didn’t look forward to the days when Maddie would be in the thick of it. I consoled myself with the fact that Richard seemed to get through those years without trauma of the magnitude Rosie had experienced. But, unlike his daughter, Richard had a steady, nearly unflappable temperament, and took virtually no risks. Good qualities in an orthopedic surgeon, I supposed.

I remembered Rosie’s mention of an unexpected visit Barry made to her shop. “You actually did a little research about how Rosie felt about David, didn’t you? You went to her shop and tested the waters.” If I were standing, my hands would have been on my hips in a how-could-you stance.

“I said I wasn’t proud of this. But David refused to try to manipulate Rosie. He said once was enough.”

Big of him, I thought. “How did you happen to have David’s trophy when you bought the candy in the hotel gift shop?”

Barry looked at me with surprise. I was sure I appeared smarter to him now than I ever had while teaching him the intricacies of literary criticism. “I was responsible for taking it from the cocktail party. You can’t imagine how valuable something like that is. I can’t believe it’s in police custody now, like any other weapon.”

“Did you take the trophy to David in his suite?”

“Yeah, he wanted it for the night on Friday. Then I was supposed to pick it up before the banquet on Saturday night.”

I gave Barry a few moments to mourn his friend again. I had the idea that in his mind they were seventeen or even ten years old and that he was reliving many of their good times together.

Not by a long shot did I have what I needed from Barry, however, and I started in on a different track. “Why didn’t you approach Larry Esterman directly?”

“We thought about it, but he was pretty angry back then at what we pulled on Rosie. We doubted he’d take to our scheme.”

“You keep saying ‘we,’ Barry. I assume you’re referring to Mellace Construction?”

Barry jolted his head up. “Are we on the record here, Mrs. Porter? Because—”

“I’m not LPPD, Barry.”

“Close enough. I knew this was a bad idea, but, believe it or not, I want to see David’s killer caught. Very badly.”

“Without owning up to your part in fraudulent business practices.”

Barry took a deep breath. “That about sums it up.”

I needed a recap. “Let me see if I have this straight. Mellace Construction, with you as its CFO, goes around finding out what other companies are going to bid for jobs and then bids lower to get the contract. That’s why you needed help from a Callahan and Savage insider like Larry Esterman.” Barry nodded and I continued. “And when that doesn’t work, you simply work a deal with people like David Bridges who are willing to cheat and give you the contract anyway. For a cut, I assume.” Another slow nod from Barry. “Is that how Mellace got the contract for the new athletic field? Because our city managers are as unscrupulous as you and your company are?”

“That’s harsh, Mrs. Porter.”

“So are your practices.” I had a brainstorm. “Was it you who stole my purse?”

Barry’s head couldn’t go any lower. “I never, never would have hurt you, Mrs. Porter. Walter told me he saw you sneaking into David’s room after the murder. He figured you were with C and S and found something damaging.”

I was probably more shocked than I should have been, given the events of the weekend. “You knocked me over and stole my purse, Barry.”

“Can I get some tea?”

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

I hurried the tea preparation because I didn’t want to
lose Barry. We’d been sitting in a spot past the middle of the atrium, toward the front door, just out of range of sight from the kitchen. I hoped his attack of conscience or whatever had sent him to me wasn’t waning.

I carried in a tray of tea and cookies (since Barry had been so cooperative thus far) and asked as I was walking, “What happened with David, Barry? Did he start to get nervous about breaking the law, so someone in your company had to get him out of the way?” The someone I had in mind was Walter Mellace, the hallway hulk, who had accosted me. My theory was taking shape—Walter thought I was from Callahan and Savage, looking for the evidence David had claimed to have to expose Mellace Construction. Why else would anyone be breaking into David’s suite?

Barry shot down that theory almost before I’d mounted it. “No way. David was on board. There’s a big remodel of the Duns Scotus coming up. He was totally ready to do whatever it took to give us that huge contract.”

Barry said this with pride in his voice. It was a depressing thought, that two boyhood friends who had probably shared innocent games were now proud partners in a fraudulent business scheme. Maybe that first not-so-innocent game they played with Rosie’s and Mathis’s self-confidence was the beginning of their partnership in crime.

I shared none of that musing with Barry.

I thought of Ben Dobson, my recent passenger. “Could someone else have had proof of the fraud and tried to get a cut of the money? Or, possibly blackmail David?”

“I thought of that, but then why kill the person who might be cutting you in or paying you big bucks to keep quiet?”

“Good point.”

The way Barry gobbled up my ginger cookies, he would have given Skip a run for his money in a cookie-eating contest. “These are awesome, Mrs. Porter,” he said.

In spite of the flattery, I intended to pursue one more avenue. “Tell me about Cheryl Mellace, Barry.”

“There’s a piece of work, huh? I don’t know. I guess it was never really over between those two.”

“Do you think David was calling it off and she retaliated? Or she wanted to end the relationship and they struggled, and—”

He shook his head. “I’ve talked to her. We had breakfast this morning.” I thought of scolding Barry for his bad taste in restaurants, but I’d impressed him enough with my extrasensory abilities. “She’s devastated over this. And you probably didn’t see the side of her this weekend that everyone sees all year. Cheryl’s the one behind all the charity giving the Mellaces do.”

“That’s not an unusual division of labor for a wealthy couple.” I wasn’t ready to give Cheryl the benefit of the doubt.

“Well, all I know is that Cheryl loved David. I think she was planning to leave Walter in fact. But that’s one thing David and I didn’t share—our love lives.”

I had to be sure Barry wasn’t holding out on me. “I thought men friends shared that kind of thing.”

Barry swallowed hard. Tears escaped and ran down his cheeks. “That’s the kind of guy David was. We made a kind of game of hinting at what was going on with women in both our lives, as if my life were as full as his. But really David knew I didn’t have much along those lines, and he did, and he didn’t want to lord it over me.”

Another dead end. According to Barry, David and Cheryl were both candidates for sainthood.

“I think I’m out of questions,” I said.

“I’m not.” Barry’s frown and abrupt turnaround unnerved me. “What are you going to do with what I told you, Mrs. Porter? About the business.”

“I don’t have to do anything, Barry. The police are already working on David’s financial records, and if everything we’ve discussed has crossed my mind before tonight, it has probably crossed theirs.”

“Believe me, David knew how to cover his tracks.” He said this again as a matter of pride in his deceased friend.

“It’s only a matter of time, Barry. Your best bet is to go to the police and tell them what you told me. Make it easy for them so they’ll be more inclined to go easy on you.”

Not that he deserved it.

Barry stood and walked with me to the door. “You may be right, but I’m not ready now, if ever, to go to the police. And anything we’ve said tonight . . . well, if anyone asks me, we just chatted about old times at ALHS.”

I opened the door, and at the same moment the doors opened on a sedan parked outside my house. Three men got out. The street was quiet at this time of night, all residents’ cars safely tucked into garages. There could be only one reason for the unmarked car and its occupants.

“You may not have to go to the police, Barry. I think they’ve come to you.”

 

 

I was grateful that the LPPD didn’t pull out all the stops
with sirens and spinning red-and-blue lights.