5 Murder at the High School Reunion Page 13

  I invited Lou to stay for lunch, Then, I ended up going shopping with him, even though I wanted to rest, read, and Google. That saved Lou from driving and allowed me to learn a little more about computers. I ended up buying a thumb drive, just in case I wanted to store something somewhere other than the hard drive. So far, I’ve saved very little to the hard drive. I’ve spent most of my computer time on the Internet. One day I overheard someone say something about a Facebook and a Farmville. I might check those out some day, but for the time being I was giving myself to Google.

  We had no problem finding the computer Mark recommended to Lou, and he turned down all the other things the salesman said he needed. Lightning offered her back seat for Lou’s purchases, and we headed back to his place. I helped him carry his things in and had an opportunity to meet Mrs. Eversole. Lou asked her what she thought of Jennifer Aniston and she invited Lou over that night to watch Friends together. I assumed that was either a movie or a TV show that Aniston was in. When Lou found out it was a TV show, he agreed to come over, but he could watch only one episode because he wanted to play with his new computer. Mrs. Eversole said that was fine with her.

  I left Lou with his computer and his date and headed for home. I too planned to spend some time with Jennifer Aniston, and Jennifer Garner. I could handle ogling and Googling two babes. I wanted to read too, but I didn’t want to get too far ahead of Lou, and I didn’t figure that Lou would be doing too much reading that night. When a boy gets a new toy, the boy has to take time to play with that toy. I shook my head at what was happening. A year before, I would never have figured that Lou and I would own computers and Wiis. What next? Surely we weren’t going to succumb to the cell phone craze.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I awoke the next morning, lay there until the cobwebs had flown from my brain and I remembered what was on our agenda. Lou was coming over for breakfast. We were going to mull over the case, see if we could make any sense out of what we’d learned so far. Lou wasn’t coming until I called him, so I had plenty of time to do whatever I wanted prior to that. I began by spending a few minutes in prayer and devotional reading. Since Lou and I would be eating together, I peeled a banana, ate it as I drank a glass of water, and prepared to Wii. I’d Wii, then shower, then call Lou.

  I continued to set new record highs in Advanced Step, while I struggled along with the same low scores in many of the other exercises. So that I wouldn’t get too full of myself, I clicked on Yoga and tried the Tree exercise. I’d remembered to put a chair within lunging distance, so I didn’t hit the floor when my leg gave out before my cartoon drill sergeant called time. I was feeling particularly good, so I tried a couple of new Balance Games. I continued to be unbalanced.

  I showered, dressed, and then gave Lou a call. He picked up on the first ring, as if he had nothing to do except wait for my call. I hung up, unlocked the front door, and opened it a little so Lou would know to come on in. Then, I went to retrieve the notes I’d made on the case, which I’d placed on the dresser in my bedroom.

  I picked them up and had just about gotten to the bedroom door when I started to suspect that all wasn’t right. Two more steps showed me that something was very wrong. I looked down to discover a ball of white fluff trotting down the hall in my direction. I’d lived next door to that ball of fluff long enough that I knew it was incapable of opening any of my doors by itself.

  “Miss Humphert, you had better not be in my house. I’m coming out shooting. And if that mutt of yours so much as touches my pant leg, it will be the first to go.”

  “So, you’re taking off your pants, Cyrus.”

  “No, I’m taking off your head.”

  I made it to the living room and saw that I would have to fumigate. I might even have to burn the couch. But first, I would throw out what was slithering on it.

  “Oh, Cyrus, it was so nice of you to leave your door open for me. Twinkle Toes noticed first.”

  “Miss Humphert, if you don’t get up right this minute, I’m going to call the police.”

  “Oh, Cyrus, don’t you remember, you are the police, and believe me, you won’t need any help. You’re man enough for me. You can even handcuff me if you wish.”

  I leaned over, and shouted at her.

  “Up! This minute!”

  I did this at the exact time Lou opened the front door.

  “If I’m interrupting anything, I can come back later.”

  “Oh, Cyrus, I didn’t know it was going to be a foursome. I’ll call my sister Hortense right now.”

  “No, you’ll leave right now.”

  She didn’t make a move, so I called downtown and had them send someone out.

  “Oh, Cyrus, will there be more people coming? I didn’t know this was going to be a party. I thought it would be just you, me, and Twinkle Toes.”

  “This is your last chance to leave.”

  Heloise Humphert turned to Lou and said, “I think he’s talking to you.”

  What seemed like well over an hour was only five minutes. A black-and-white pulled up and an officer I didn’t know except by face came to the door. Lou motioned him in, and I let him know that my next-door neighbor had entered my house without my permission. My neighbor peppered him with some of her gobbledegook from the fantasy world in that mind of hers, but the young officer held up well.

  It didn’t take my neighbor long to find out we were serious. She pleaded with me, but I needed to teach her a lesson. When she fought off the officer and resisted arrest, he had no choice but to take her to the floor and cuff her hands behind her back. When the officer led her to the car, she kept crying and hollering, “My baby! My poor baby! I want my baby!”

  That poor baby, the one who tried to bite the officer who was handcuffing its owner and anyone else who tried to restrain it, yipped and yapped and jumped around the room. When Lou saw where things were headed, he called the humane society to come and pick up the mutt. They got there in time for Heloise Humphert to see that her baby was being taken away, too.

  Lou and I stood on the front porch until the black-and-white disappeared out of sight. I called downtown, talked to my good friend Lt. George Michaelson, and asked him to make sure she received the third degree, which included questioning Miss Humphert with a bright light shining in her face, and her spending time in the same holding cell as the drunks who had come in the night before and had not yet been released. Then, I told him to hold her until she stated that she would never set foot in my house again.

  +++

  I sat down, physically and emotionally spent. It was a couple of minutes before I realized that I’d sat down on the same couch that woman had slouched on. I expected to break out in a rash any second. Lou, on the other hand, was in a different state of mind. He couldn’t stop laughing, now that he was sure that I was out of danger.

  “Just keep it up. Your day is coming.”

  “No, Cy, I don’t want her. She’s all yours. Can’t you see how much she loves you?”

  “That woman needs to donate her brain to science.”

  I sat there, exhausted.

  “Cy, I can see what this has done to you. Do you want me to fix breakfast?”

  I hoped I could eat. I knew I couldn’t fix anything. I needed to get this incident out of my mind so Lou and I could concentrate on the case. I sat frozen to that couch until Lou hollered and told me breakfast was ready. I summoned whatever strength I had and stumbled to the kitchen to find a plate containing an omelet with peppers and onions, and two slices of bacon. My hand shook as I poured myself a glass of water and sat down to eat.

  Since we were alone, there was no problem discussing the case, but I needed a few more minutes, so we discussed more mundane things while we ate. At least Lou had quit spewing out his jokes about me and Heloise Humphert.

  In order to function better, I changed the subject from myself to Lou.

  “So, Lou, how did your date with Mrs. Eversole go?”

  “Just one episode, Cy. And Cy, I could go f
or Jennifer Aniston, too. She’s hot.”

  “Watch yourself, Lou. I don’t want you to get burned.”

  “Oh, by the way, I had to go back to my place and Wii.”

  “Jennifer Aniston did that to you?”

  “No, Mrs. Eversole did.”

  “Lou, from what I’ve heard of Jennifer Aniston, she doesn’t look anything like Mrs. Eversole.”

  “No, I mean Mrs. Eversole baked some homemade cookies, and I couldn’t refuse her. She’s so nice. But just to make sure I’m not packing the pounds on again, I went back to my place and Wiied for fifteen minutes.”

  “What kind of cookies were they?”

  “Macadamia nut.”

  “Oh, Lou, you should’ve Wiied for twenty minutes.”

  “Nope, I weighed this morning and I’ve lost another two tenths of a pound.”

  “Yeah, but I lost four tenths.”

  “But you’re a lot bigger than I am.”

  “You’d better watch out. I’m gaining on you.”

  “Don’t you mean you’re losing on me?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lou and I talked a few minutes about the Wii, and the two Jennifers. After we allowed the food and the mood to settle, we turned our talk to the case at hand.

  “So, Lou, what do you think?”

  “Well, I checked out Jennifer Garner pretty good last night, and the more I think about it, the more I think our clue has to do with her show Alias. It’s what she’s best known for.”

  “Yeah, but God knows everything she’s ever done.”

  “But He knows we don’t.”

  “But He also knows that now we’re armed with Google.”

  It seemed like both of us were taking both sides of the argument, even though we weren’t arguing.

  “Okay, Lou, let’s say you’re right. What do you think ‘Alias’ means?”

  “The only thing I can come up with is what we talked about before. Someone in this case has an alias. The only way that can have anything to do with anyone other than the custodian is that one of our suspects is leading a double life.”

  “Let’s travel down that road for a minute. Which one would you say is most likely?”

  “Well, I would hope it’s the librarian. The life we know about must be very boring.”

  “Well, maybe not to her, and that’s what matters.”

  “Do you think maybe that one of the others might be involved in something illegal, and maybe that Spencer woman caught him or her?”

  “Maybe she found out something about someone when she was bar hopping and started blackmailing that someone.”

  “That doesn’t seem likely, either. Let’s move on to something else. My guess is if the janitor is the one who’s actually someone else, Sam will be able to find out for us. Is it possible that there’s someone who’s a suspect that we haven’t thought of?”

  “I thought about that last night, too, and I couldn’t come up with anyone. How about you?”

  “No, it’s not me. I really am Lou Murdock. And I’m not leading a second life, except in the world of Google.”

  “Let’s try something else. Let’s say that it’s not Alias, but the one that has to do with lying.”

  “I don’t think that’s it, because I think that most of our suspects have lied to us. They can’t even agree as to who was with whom when they went out looking for Spencer’s wife.”

  “Why would someone lie if he or she wasn’t guilty?”

  “Maybe to protect a friend.”

  “Could be.”

  “Maybe we should take each person one at a time, in the order we talked to them.”

  “Okay, first was Walter Gillis, the new janitor. He seemed to be telling the truth. And as far as we know, he didn’t know either of the victims. Of course, I reserve judgment until we hear from Sam.”

  “What about Rose Ellen Calvert?”

  “Well, I can’t see why she’d do it, other than the reason that she definitely is the kind of person who didn’t like anything about Conkwright, and she wouldn’t approve of a woman going out without her husband, or a woman bar hopping.”

  “Judge and jury kind of motive.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, at least that’s something. And some of the guys did say she left the cafeteria. We’ll have to follow up on that.”

  “What about Duck Spencer?”

  “Was he mad enough at his wife to kill her? It’s obvious that he hated Conkwright, but then everyone hated Conkwright.”

  “What about the old janitor?”

  “Earl Spickard. Well, he definitely knew both of the victims. The problem with him is that he’s the one guy who seems to have an alibi the whole time he was at the school.”

  “Maybe we should check with some of the others, see if they can tell us anything about Spickard’s movements.”

  “That leaves us the two married couples.”

  “And that’s the way I think of them, the two married couples. I don’t see either of the wives doing anything like this, even though it only involved shutting a door and locking it, but still they had to think that those two would die in time if left in the freezer.”

  “Well, there is the possibility that one or both of them did it, told their husbands what they did, and asked their husbands to let those two out after they’d had time to cool off and sober up, and then the husbands didn’t let them out.”

  “Or maybe the husbands locked them in, planning on letting them out after Spencer arrived, but then Spencer talked them into letting them stay in there, or else he promised to let them out, but he didn’t.”

  “You know, I’ve got a feeling this one might be tougher to prove than any case we’ve ever tackled.”

  “You could be right.”

  We sat there, not sure what to do next. If only Sam would solve the case for us. We were quiet for a few minutes, until Lou broke the silence.

  “Oh, Cy, I almost forgot. I haven’t told you today’s clue. Try Googling.”

  ‘“Try Googling’ is today’s clue.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did He by any chance tell you what to Google?”

  “No, that’s it. Maybe we should try Googling all of our suspects, see if we find out anything more about any of them.”

  I approved of Lou’s idea, and Lou drew a second chair up to the computer. I started with the janitor. Nothing. Maybe he isn’t who he says he is. I moved on from there to Rose Ellen Calvert, the librarian.

  “Aha! We have something.”

  A few minutes later, it turned into a double aha, as we delved into the private life of the librarian. It turned out that the woman spent time on Facebook, and the photo she used there wasn’t a picture of her, but of someone younger and better looking. I clicked and went to Facebook. The woman had friends. Lots of friends. Most of them male. All of them from somewhere else. And some of what she’d written to them was a little flirtatious. It gave me a whole new opinion of Rose Ellen Calvert, but it didn’t increase her likelihood of being a murderer, just a liar.

  A few minutes later, we’d Googled all the people we’d talked to. None of the men showed up on Google. All of the women did. Most of them on Facebook, but none of the others were flirting with men on there. Actually, we did find some of those men’s names on there, but in every case it was someone by that name who lived somewhere else. None of them were our suspects.

  We still had nothing. We decided to see if we could find anything on the victims. There was nothing on Betty Gail Spencer, but a lot on Jimmy Conkwright. We studied what we found for over an hour, but found nothing that could tell us a thing about who might have murdered him.

  “Cy, I’ve got an idea. We Googled Jennifer Garner, but we never checked on 9-30-55. Why don’t you key that in and see if anything comes up? Maybe it’s like Jennifer Garner. Maybe it has nothing to do with any of our suspects, but it could take us a step closer to solving the case.”

  I couldn’t believe that I’d forgotten to Goo
gle the second clue. Maybe that’s what God was telling us to do.

  I keyed in the numbers, looked at what came up, and smacked myself in the head for taking so long to get there. September 30, 1955 was the day that film icon James Dean died. While Dean has no more to do with our case than Jennifer Garner, we were meant to read the clue. Dean, like Miriam Van Meter, died in a car wreck. In both cases, the car was a sports car, although the make and models were different.

  I turned to Lou.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Maybe it means we’re supposed to look for someone who might hold a grudge because Conkwright’s drunken carelessness killed Miriam Van Meter.”

  “You mean that Conkwright might have been killed because of something he did a long time ago, not that night?”

  “It’s possible. At least it gives us something else to look at.”

  I grabbed the phone book and looked for any Van Meters who might be listed. There were only two. I dialed the first of the two numbers. It rang a few times and then went to voice mail. I tried the second number. Another voice mail. Well, it was the middle of the day, almost lunch time.

  “What do you think, Lou? Think a lunch break might increase our brain cells?”

  “I doubt that, but we probably should eat soon. You realize we forgot our midmorning snack again?”

  I must be turning over a new leaf. I’d completely forgotten about eating. My mind was totally on the case.

  I went to the kitchen, opened the cupboard and lifted out two tins of sardines.

  “Sardines okay with you, Lou?”

  “I haven’t had any in a while, but I love them.”

  I tossed some spinach in a sauce pan with water and let it heat while I opened the refrigerator door and plucked two shiny red tomatoes (actually orange ones) to have with the sardines and spinach.

  We ate lunch and sat back and let it digest. Each time one of us came up with another idea, we rushed to the computer to Google it. None of them led to anything. Maybe Google only knew about the clues God gave us.