The Probability of Murder (14 page)

Virgil didn’t need two women on the edge. He looked at Ariana. “Can you give us a minute? I’m going to talk to Sophie in the kitchen.”

“I guess. Sure.”

Ariana let go of me, but not without a final squeeze. “I’ll be in the den,” she said.

For some reason, I was as reluctant as she was to part ways.

“Are you okay to talk for a few more minutes?” Virgil asked from a step or two in front of me. Walking abreast was out of the question, since he took up nearly the entire width of the narrow hallway. “I’d like to hang around a little while anyway.”

As far as I was concerned, Virgil never had to leave.

Virgil and I stepped into my country-blue kitchen, which now looked like the intruders had come back while we were at the other end of my house, upsetting things even more.

A new trick of my mind.

Virgil held a chair for me, indicating that I sit at the table opposite him. Three police interviews in one day. A new record. I sat on the very edge of the seat and kept my hands on my lap, as if I’d been taken unwillingly to a restaurant with too many code violations that had been condemned by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

“Is there any reason for anyone to think you keep a lot of cash in your house?” Virgil asked.

I shook my head. “I never keep cash around.” Except for Charlotte’s, I amended mentally. “There are ATMs on every corner. There are even a couple on campus. And if these guys were following me, wouldn’t it have been clear that I took Charlotte’s duffel bag down to the station?”

“It doesn’t mean you turned in all of it.”

I started. “What?”

Virgil had no qualms about leaning his arms on my kitchen table, which, in my mind, was disgustingly sticky, worse than a Bailey’s Landing Shop at Ease.

“I’m a crook,” he said. “I’m somehow involved with the money in that bag, and I know you now have possession of what I think belongs to me. I follow you for a while. I watch you take it to the cops.”

I was with him so far, though the part about a crook watching me wasn’t sitting well with my turkey and Swiss.

“That’s my point,” I said. “You, the crooks, saw me take the money to the cops. Why wouldn’t you hijack my car then, for example?”

“Were you alone when you drove to the station?”

“No, Ariana stayed with me overnight, and we drove off together in the morning. But I don’t see how Ariana was a threatening presence.”

“Doesn’t have to be a bodyguard with you. Any other person in the scene doubles the risk.” He paused. “They’re asking themselves, did she really turn in every dollar?”

“They thought I kept some of the money?”

Virgil shrugged. “It’s what they would do in your circumstances. For all they know, you appropriated a chunk for yourself.”

I blew out a breath. “Unbelievable.”

“Did you?”

This time, I forgot about the contaminated table in front of me. I pushed myself up. “You’re not serious.”

“I have to ask, Sophie. Maybe Charlotte owed you some money and you figured, why not—”

“You really do think like a criminal,” I said. “No, I did not keep one single dollar of that money. And if there had been coins in that bag, I wouldn’t have kept one penny.”

I almost asked Virgil if he’d grabbed a fistful of cash for himself when he took possession of the bag, but I caught myself. I knew him to have the highest standards of integrity. Apparently, the feeling was not mutual.

But he was the guy who was my best hope of safety and living for another day.

“Thank you for that
no
so I can put it down like that,” he said. “It will look a lot better on my report than, ‘Since Dr. Knowles is my good buddy’s girlfriend, I didn’t follow protocol.’”

I sat down. “Okay, I get it. I’m sorry. I’m a little frustrated. I’d feel a whole lot safer if you’d just tell me what you know. What you already knew before Charlotte was murdered.”

“Let’s go back to the money. Other than the possibility you may have held some back—in their minds, not mine—can you think of another reason they came looking for money? Did you tell anyone, or talk about it where someone could have overheard or misunderstood where it was?”

I thought of the people who’d contacted me in the last twenty-four hours: Daryl, Chelsea, and other students, all of them good and hard-working. Fran, my colleague and friend. Paula, annoying, but solicitous. It was an awful feeling, imagining the worst of people I trusted. I was angry anew at Charlotte, whom I held responsible for all that had gone wrong this weekend.

I had to consider Virgil’s question. Had the word gotten out to my students and colleagues that I was in possession of a large bag of money? I couldn’t imagine how. There was still the matter of what Daryl and the other students were doing at my own home crime scene when I arrived, but I hesitated to mention them to Virgil. I didn’t want the police on their backs if they were genuinely trying to be helpful. Maybe they’d stayed around long enough for the officers on the scene to get their names, and the issue would be officially resolved without my input.

I reviewed my history with Charlotte’s bag for Virgil, how she’d brought it to my office on Wednesday, how I’d let it sit in the corner where she dropped it, how Bruce had picked it up.

There it was. Bruce had picked it up, along with my overnight bag. “It’s about my own duffel bag,” I said.

“Okay, what about it?”

“When we left campus that day—”

“Yesterday?”

I blew out a breath, as if I’d lived ten years in one day. “Yesterday. Bruce carried out my duffel bag as well as Charlotte’s. I was using it as an overnight bag for our trip to Boston. Maybe they thought that one was full of money, too?”

A shiver ran up my spine as I pictured Bruce and me, walking toward his SUV, all the while being watched by Charlotte’s killer, now out to get us.

It would have been better if he, or they, had simply rushed us then and there, grabbed both duffels, and run. In my hindsight version of events, I wouldn’t even have filed a stolen property report.

Virgil tapped his fingers on the table, where I imagined the intruder’s greasy hands had been. I squeezed my palms shut on my lap.

“A definite possibility,” he said, unaware of the more preferable scenario I’d created. “Where’s that duffel now?”

“In my garage. Empty, except for travel items. I’ll get it for you.”

“No need.”

But I had to. I couldn’t stand even the tiniest loose end about whether I’d withheld money from Charlotte’s duffel. It was silly to think that showing Virgil my duffel would remove me from suspicion, but I was on my way.

Virgil followed me to the garage.

To the corner where my red-and-gray duffel should have been.

I gasped. “It’s gone.”

“Well, what do you know,” Virgil said.

“They stole my duffel?”

“They didn’t know it was empty.”

“Actually, they’re now the proud owners of a host of, uh, travel-size feminine products.”

“Serves them right,” Virgil said.

“Good one.”

Virgil’s eyes landed on Bruce’s wall of equipment. “Lot
of expensive stuff there. And I see some empty hooks. I don’t suppose you’d know if anything’s missing from here?”

I nodded. “I can tell. What’s missing is just what Bruce took with him. He has a list of things according to what kind of terrain he expects.” I pointed to an ice ax with a three-foot handle. “Such as, this is what he uses like a walking stick for easy snow and ice. On this trip he took the short-handled axes, and that’s why those hooks are empty. That means the ice is steep and hard. Or soft. Or medium. I forget.”

Virgil laughed. “Who even knows what that means, right?”

I shrugged. I thought I’d take advantage of his good mood. “I take it you’re not going to give me any more information about Charlotte’s case, though I’ve been nothing but cooperative and honest with you.”

“Really?”

I thought of my trip to Bailey’s Landing and the sliver of information I had on a guy named Garrett, no last name, no physical description. I told myself that if I had anything useful I’d have shared it. I had to admit, also, that I was still trying to maintain some measure of control.

I prodded Virgil again. “It’s obvious she was involved in lottery scams,” I said. “What else? I read about others on those sheets you left me, but there aren’t really details to speak of. What other kinds of scams did she pull? So I won’t fall victim.” That sounded lame even to my ears.

“The less you know the better, Sophie.”

“So you say.”

“I will tell you this, because it’s kind of funny. You know that…uh…bunch of papers I left with you?”

For some reason, Virgil didn’t want to admit to giving me an official “rap sheet.” I let him off the hook.

“Uh-huh.”

“You know the famous story of how Al Capone got away with murder and a few hundred other violent crimes,
but what put him away was he got caught cheating on his taxes?”

“Uh-huh” again, though I couldn’t imagine the connection.

“Your friend got a speeding ticket in a small town in Vermont.”

“I remember that time. She was very upset.”

“Yeah, well, she had reason to be. Some guys up there must have had nothing better to do, because someone recognized her license picture from a poster and checked her out. That’s when we found out she’d moved here and changed her name. Never underestimate the power of a small-town sheriff’s department.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Why was she on that poster in the first place? Was she on the run?”

At last, a chance to find out Charlotte’s official status when she came to Henley.

But Virgil had divulged all he was willing to.

“I’m going to leave this form with you. Even if it’s just trivial stuff in that duffel, write it down and report it. Same with anything else you realize has been taken. You never know if it will turn up somewhere and give us a lead.”

I looked at the form, dreading the chore. I couldn’t be sure whether I’d left conditioner as well as shampoo in the bag. Was there a small packet of shoe polish also, for Bruce, the fastidious shoe person? It was going to be tedious, and I couldn’t imagine any return, but I did want to cooperate.

“I see a URL here. Can I do it online?”

“Sure, it’ll get in the system even faster, if you know how.”

I gave him a “You’ve got to be kidding” look.

He grinned in a “gotcha” way.

A very satisfying nonverbal communication.

“Now, let’s find Ariana,” Virgil said. “I’m going to put a car out here with a couple of guys, but you’ll probably still want some company tonight.”

Indeed I did.

*     *     *

It was tough to convince Ariana that I didn’t want to leave my house.

“You haven’t slept over at my place for ages,” she said, implying that her invitation had nothing to do with my home invasion.

“I need to stay here or I’ll feel like I’ve been driven out of my home and I’ll never recover. Also, I need to clean up this mess.”

“Clean? Why didn’t you say so?” She pushed up the sleeves of her tie-dye jersey and marched to my broom closet, which had everything necessary for a deep cleaning, except a broom.

I should have remembered my friend’s love of housework. She had some theory of the parallel cleansing of the soul. I thought of it as simply “Out, damned spot! out, I say!”

Together we pulled out every form of cleaner from the broom closet and from under all the sinks. We found carpet cleaner, bleach, foams, and sprays. We dug out soaps in the form of powders, liquids, and tablets. We lined up mops, sponges, dust cloths, rags, and wet wipes.

Two hours passed as, hardly talking, we scrubbed places that probably hadn’t been touched by the intruders, and certainly not by me in years, but I was taking no chances. Ariana, taller by several inches, went high, dusting and neatening items before returning them to the now-spotless top shelves of my closet. I went low and took care of every corner of every floor, dust mopping the hardwood, washing and waxing the linoleum, vacuuming the carpets. In the middle, we shared the furniture polish and wiped down every chair and table.

We washed all the bedding and any table linens and towels that had been exposed. We stopped short of washing everything in my closets. Ariana indulged me in checking each piece to determine if there was extra grime or lint, but convinced me it was unlikely the guy had gone through my
pockets if he was looking for wads of cash, and it was impractical to run absolutely everything through the washer.

Exhausted, I was finally able to lean my elbows on my kitchen table and sip tea without feeling muck.

“Takeout?” Ariana asked, her head barely lifted from the tabletop.

“Pizza with the works,” I said.

“Sushi,” she said.

Two calls later, we retreated to the den to wait for two deliveries: California sushi rolls, which I thought was funny in itself, for Ariana, and pizza with everything except anchovies for me.

“Tell me a paradox,” Ariana said.

For years this was our version of “Tell me a story.” Tonight it was a thinly disguised way to distract me, now that my entire inventory of cleaning solutions had been depleted.