The Probability of Murder (12 page)

In return for my stellar sleuthing, Virgil would fill me in on the whole picture, how long he’d been investigating Charlotte, whether there were any mitigating circumstances that led her to a life of crime, whether at heart she was a good person. It was still possible that Charlotte had served her time, turned law-abiding citizen right before my eyes, and was simply running from people who wanted her legitimate earnings.

I was desperate not to think that I was so inept at reading people. That I was so naïve as to see qualities that weren’t there.

I might also beat on him for not telling me what was now clear, that he’d been letting me hang out with her, knowing she was a felon with at least one murderous associate.

Shouldn’t there be some perks in having a cop friend? If he needed help with math, I’d be the first one at his side with tables of logarithms and t-scores.

With very little traffic, I approached the Bailey’s Landing
city limit in a little over an hour. Kwang Ho’s gesture toward giving me an address—“on the edge of town”—wasn’t sufficient, so I’d have to check all four of the Shop at Ease sites, one at each edge: north, south, east, and west.

I approached from the southwest and saw the first neon green Shop at Ease sign right off the highway. The way my weekend was going, I shouldn’t have been surprised that it was the wrong one. No Kwang Ho and no Garrett ever worked there, and the gum-chewing teen behind the counter wasn’t exactly working there either. I met with similar results at the next two stops, where I interacted with friendlier but equally clueless clerks in dingy stores. I was glad I wasn’t hungry.

Each store in the chain advertised the availability of lottery tickets, both inside and out. The sign on one store window read, “You Have to Play!” In another, a large, grotesque, animated finger pointed to what looked like a slot machine and announced, “Your Dreams Come True Here!” Ads for the lottery were embedded in neon outlines of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and in simulated scoreboards for Boston’s football, hockey, baseball, and basketball teams. Brightly lit dollar signs flowed freely around ticket-buying displays.

How come I’d never noticed all this hype before today?

The final Shop at Ease site was on the northern edge of town, near Quincy. I had a sinking feeling that Kwang Ho had given me the wrong shop name entirely. He might have been talking to me from a liquor store or a strip mall for all I knew.

Nevertheless, I had to finish my rounds and check out this last store. I repeated the pattern I’d used in the first three locations. To show goodwill, I took a bottle of water to the high counter near the door and paid for it. In this shop as in the others, I wanted to use my antibacterial lotion on the bottle and on the rest of the merchandise. I was used to the convenience shops at rest stops along the turnpikes of New England and New York, which were neat and orderly, inspiring confidence in the snacks I bought.
The shelves in the Bailey’s Landing Shop at Ease stores were dusty and crowded, with a container of bleach sitting next to the beef jerky and the hairbrushes side by side with green apples.

The only signs prominently displayed in their own corner, with the ease of access the store’s name implied, were those for the lottery.

My working theory was that Kwang Ho, who sounded like he was past his youth, was the boss of whichever store I’d called, and everyone who worked in his shop would know him, whereas a clerk like this kid could be so new or work such odd hours that he’d never heard of Garrett.

“Is Kwang Ho in today?” I asked the pimply guy whose car-magazine reading I’d interrupted. We’d all have been better off if he’d used slow times to mop the grimy floor and wipe down the sticky shelves.

“Okay, yeah, Monsieur Ho. He’s not here right now. He’s on lunch break.” He rolled his eyes. “Like I get one.” His gaze returned to his magazine. “He’ll be back whenever.”

“You don’t get a lunch break”—I looked at the name on his shirt—“Warren? Isn’t that illegal?” Establishing rapport, sympathizing, both highly recommended when attempting to extract information from an unsuspecting young person. Years of teaching had helped me polish this technique.

“Yeah, well, who cares, right?”

“Someone should,” I said.

Warren removed his cap and repositioned it on his thick brown hair, which, like the cap, could have done with a wash and rinse. “You got that right.”

“How about Garrett? Is he here?”

Warren grinned, showing perfect teeth. Someone had cared enough for Warren in his early years. “Garrett is not here.”

“He gets a lunch break, too?”

“No, he’s not here, like, ever again.”

I managed a shocked look, as if Garrett and I went way back. “He was fired?”

“No, no. You didn’t hear? Oh my God. I. Am. So. Jealous.” Warren leaned over the tacky counter and whispered, though there wasn’t another soul in the store. “He won the lottery.”

I gasped, only half-faking. “Oh. My. God. When?”

“Like, a week ago, but he couldn’t get his money right away. He had to go to some college down in Henley to pick it up. That’s, like, an hour away.”

I cleared my throat as an image of convergence theory came to mind, all roads leading to my campus. “Wow.”

I wished I knew for certain if I’d actually beat the Henley PD here. They had quicker ways of finding people. They could have traced Garrett’s number directly instead of relying on the likes of Warren and Kwang Ho to tell them which store he was in.

Still, it had been only a few hours since I’d given Virgil the stack of notes that included Garrett’s name and number and, unlike me, the cops had a lot to do.

I decided to take a chance, and worked out the phrasing of my next question accordingly.

I met Warren’s gaze. “You know, I heard something kind of weird from mutual friends.” I lowered my voice. “That some cops were trying to contact Garrett. I can’t imagine why, since Garrett is so by-the-book, you know? But maybe the police get involved when you win big in the lottery?”

Warren chewed on his lips, thinking. “Okay, well, they didn’t come while I was here, but it wouldn’t be that weird. Garrett can be extreme.”

Extreme what? I pictured the extremes of a calculus problem and bemoaned my poor slang vocabulary. I needed to hang around Henley’s dorms more.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the cops are looking for him. But not for the lottery.” Warren laughed in a way that said he wished he were the one living Garrett’s exciting life, sought after by men in uniforms.

“But, as far as you know, no cop came by today?”

Warren shook his head. “Unless they came when the old
man was here. If so, I feel sorry for them. Monsieur Ho is not the most cooperative guy, you know, whether it’s cops or Mother Teresa.”

Good to know. It wasn’t just me he didn’t like. “Well, I guess that’s it, then. I’ll just have to wait for Garrett to contact me. I lost the last number he gave me and I’ll just have to deal with it.”

I had no idea what I was talking about, but my words had the desired effect. Warren gave me the once-over, screwed up his nose, and scanned my innocent-looking face.

“I probably shouldn’t do this, but you look like good people,” he said.

I gave him a demure smile that said,
Gee, thanks.

Warren reached in the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a slip of paper. He copied numbers from the paper to the corner of a page in his car magazine, which I hoped he owned, then tore off the scrap and handed it to me.

“Garrett goes, ‘I’ll be at this number if something comes up.’ I go, ‘What can come up when you’re rich.’ Am I right?” Warren asked.

“You are right,” I declared.

I wanted to know how rich Garrett was or would be, but didn’t want to push my luck. I took the paper and checked out the number. A 508 area code, followed by a number that looked familiar.

I stared down at Martin Melrose’s phone number, which I’d dialed this morning. Garrett was staying with Martin? I’d had no idea the reach the Henley College treasurer had.

Was Garrett another victim, lured to Henley to collect on a bogus win? I doubted it. If I were a scam artist—say, Charlotte or Marty—I’d never want my victims to see my face or where I lived. But if Garrett was on the other end of the con, a rich scammer himself, what had he been doing working in a low-end Shop at Ease with Warren and Kwang Ho?

I hoped I’d soon find out.

I waved the tiny scrap of paper at Warren. “Thanks for this. Garrett will be glad you helped me out,” I lied.

I’d reached the door when I heard, “Lady?” from Warren.

There being no other lady in the store, I turned. “Yes?”

Warren held out my purchase. “You forgot your water.”

“Thanks.”

I carried the bottle—was that syrup along the side?—to my car and threw it on the back floor with the three others I’d purchased from the Bailey’s Landing Shop at Ease franchises.

I looked around for an ice cream shop. It was going to take more than water to get me through a conversation with Martin Melrose.

I sat in my car in the Shop at Ease parking lot. Three o’clock in the afternoon and I had a long drive home ahead of me. I should have been relaxing in a Swan Boat on the lagoon in Boston’s Public Garden, except that their season ended two months ago. I’d have settled for a wooden bench in the Faneuil Hall shopping plaza. Anything would have been better than the weekend so far.

I dialed Martin’s office. I suspected it would prove fruitless, as it had this morning, but this time I waited until the “You have reached” message played through.

“Martin, this is Sophie Knowles,” I said to the tiny speaker in my phone. “I was wondering if we could meet sometime. If you get this over the weekend, call my cell. Otherwise I’ll see you on Monday.” I repeated my cell number in case he didn’t have caller ID.

A wishy-washy message, but I didn’t want to scare him off with the alternative: “Hey, I found your name in a duffel bag full of cash. I hear you’re in deep in this lottery scam
business. Maybe scamming innocent people in other ways, too? Does it have anything to do with Charlotte’s murder? How’s Garrett, by the way?”

My ice cream search had come up empty. I was now hungry and lonesome. I needed to talk to someone about what I’d found out. Or even about a shoe sale in downtown Henley. I wanted to call Bruce, but we had an agreement that he’d call at the base of his climb, which he had done, and then again if he could get a connection when he could afford to have both hands free and his attention on something other than staying alive, that last phrase being my version of his situation.

Sometimes he and his climbing partners stayed in a nearby hotel, depending on whether camping was allowed at the site. Unfortunately for me, this was a luxury-free trip for the guys.

Maybe Ariana was free to talk. More like
listen
. She had weekend help at the shop and I hadn’t heard of any plans she’d made with Luke.

Beep beep. Beep beep. Beep beep.

Uh-oh, the sound of the charge leaking from my phone. I checked its screen and saw a black outline where an image of a solid green battery should be. I fished around the console, but the only car charger I had with me was for the Bluetooth device on my visor. I remembered now that I’d moved my smartphone charger to my overnight bag to use in Bruce’s SUV. I pictured the spare charger, which I’d bought for just such occasions, resting comfortably in the middle drawer of the desk in my home office.

It seemed ages ago that I’d anticipated a Saturday better than this one had turned out to be.

I couldn’t believe I’d used the last bit of cell phone charge on a voice mail message to Martin Melrose aka Marty.

I pulled out of the lot. Without the security of a phone, I was anxious to get home before dark. It didn’t make sense—I’d been driving a car for decades without a phone, but in the last couple of years, I’d come to depend on
having one available at all times. If I found myself away from home without a phone, even to run a quick errand, I felt vulnerable, worse than if I’d left my purse behind. With a phone and a credit card, I could take care of anything.

Bruce called me a nomophobe, and I had to agree. I had a new, twenty-first-century phobia, the fear of being out of contact. I tried to come up with a parallel word for Bruce, at the opposite end of the spectrum, choosing a hobby that left him so far out of contact that no one could reach him for days or weeks at a time, except the guys with whom he shared a rope and a package of granola bars.

I turned up the music and caught Bon Jovi. I, too, felt far away from everything. Very insightful, those singers from New Jersey.

I was on my way, phone or no phone.

The drive was easy enough that I could accomplish a few hands-free things on my to-do list. I started with mulling over an example for Friday’s advanced calculus class. I pictured two intersecting curves on a simple two-dimensional plot. I’d start with an easy problem, both curves in the first quadrant, and show how to find the area between them.

My pedagogical stand-by technique was to do the calculation step-by-step on the blackboard—actually
white
board these days—then call for a show of hands. Who thought that was too easy? Who thought it too hard? I’d adjust my next example accordingly and ask for a volunteer to work it out. It was an old-school strategy, but it worked for me.