5 Murder at the High School Reunion Read online

  “That’s why I needed to unwind. I had another busy day today. I’m hoping we can put an end to this soon.”

  “Well, I’ll let you go get ready for tomorrow. I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice.”

  “That’s not good enough for me. I’d rather see your smile.”

  “Well you can always go to Facebook. Since the charade is over, I changed the picture back to my real one. As a matter of fact, I have several pictures of me on there.”

  “Any bikini shots?”

  “One. I was two at the time.”

  This time it was my turn to laugh. We said goodbye, and I went to bed with a smile on my face.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Like the week before, that week seemed to be speeding by, speeding by with no conclusion. I didn’t want to have to go through another weekend on the same case. After breakfast, I took my frustrations out on the Wii Fit board without breaking it. Even inside an air-conditioned house, the July morning heat is enough to make me sweat when I exercise. Actually, July had gone and August had replaced it, without my realizing it.

  I don’t like for my body to smell, so after sitting for five minutes, relaxing, I hurried to the shower, just in case Jennifer paid me a surprise visit. My workout and shower hadn’t eliminated all my frustrations, so I dressed and sat down to spend time alone with God. I read my devotionals and I prayed. Once again I prayed for the wisdom, strength, courage, and desire of God’s will. When I’d finished, I still had no idea what course of action we were to take that day, but I felt calmer about the whole ordeal. I called Lou and told him that I was on my way to pick him up. He answered by telling me that if that was the case he was glad he’d lost a lot of weight. At least he still had his sense of humor.

  +++

  Lou opened the car door, smiled, and sat down.

  “Cy, a friend is closer than a brother.”

  “Why thank you, Lou. I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “I don’t. Well, maybe I do. But I was letting you know what God thinks.”

  “So, you think God thinks of me as His brother?”

  “Somehow, I don’t think so, Cy. More like a son. An imperfect son.”

  “Lou, let’s refrain from throwing in all the adjectives.”

  “I was just giving you our message of the day.”

  “So this friend-brother thing doesn’t have to do with me or you. It’s one of our suspects.”

  “From the way the thing is worded, I’d say two of our suspects, Cy.”

  “Any idea which two, Lou?”

  He gave me the look he always gives me when I asked him to interpret the clue of the day.

  “Well, let’s see who we can eliminate. Well, I think Rose Ellen Calvert is out. I don’t see her having any friends. At least not any friends that we’ve met, and I think we should limit this to the people we’ve met. I tell you what, Lou. Let’s mull.”

  He nodded, and we began our period of silence. I didn’t care how many people strolled by walking their dogs, and how stupid we looked sitting there in front of God and everybody with pensive looks on our faces. Actually, it didn’t take long. A couple of minutes later, a light bulb went off in my head. Yes, it was possible. It wasn’t anyone I’d considered before, but it was possible. I hoped I was wrong, but I did want to solve the case, and solve it as soon as I could.

  “Lou, I’ve got an idea. I think it’s time to bluff. I’m going to see someone who definitely doesn’t fit the role of a murderer, but is still someone who might allow us to put an end to the festivities.”

  “I’m all for that, Cy.”

  +++

  I smiled at the little old lady who had stopped to look at us, and then started the car, and took off. We were on our way back to the country.

  A few minutes later, I pulled into the school parking lot. Walter Gillis’ truck was there, as were a few cars.

  I jumped out of the car, and headed for the school. I looked inside Gillis’s office, but he wasn’t there. I needed to use the facilities, so I opted to do so before I hunted for Gillis. No woman hurried around the corner to see if she could help us, and I encountered no one on the way to the men’s restroom.

  As I came out, I glanced across the hall to the right. It was the first time I noticed that if you moved a couple of steps to the right, you could see into the kitchen from the restroom. I made a note of that. I was sure that Gillis had heard and seen someone in that kitchen, on his way to the restroom that night.

  We walked down the hall until the same woman we’d seen the other day stuck her head out of a doorway.

  “Here to see Walter again?”

  “That’s right.”

  “He’s on break. I think he stepped out back.”

  Lou and I retraced our footsteps, walked out the front door and around the school until we arrived at the back, not far from the riverbank, and the tree root Lou fell over on the day I was kidnapped by that rowboat. There, several feet away, seated on the grass in the shade, we found Walter Gillis.

  “Back agin so soon, Lieutenant. I can’t thinka any way I can hep you.”

  “Oh, I think you’re being modest, Mr. Gillis. I think you could have helped us from the beginning. Tell us about the night of the reunion. I believe you said you went to the restroom that night and that was where you first saw your good friend Earl Spickard.”

  “That’s right. Earl come in while I was in there. We left at the same time.”

  “And you were seen together by several members of the search party. That’s not the part I want to cover. I want to know about before you went to the restroom.”

  “I was in my office afore I went to the restroom. I was there pretty much the whole time.”

  “I don’t dispute that either, Mr. Gillis. But I want to know about just before you went into the restroom. You heard a noise, didn’t you? Tell me, who did you see in the kitchen?”

  For the first time, the man seemed unnerved.

  “Why, uh, no one.”

  “Let’s digress for a moment, Mr. Gillis. Tell me about what you know about Sarah Jane Spickard.”

  “Sarah Jane Spickard. Was that Earl’s mother?”

  “Come on, Mr. Gillis. You can do better than that. I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell the story. You can just tell me if I get anything wrong. You and Earl Spickard got to be good friends the year you worked together. How good? Good enough that you were one of the few people, and maybe the only person, that Earl Spickard told about having a daughter. Not only did he tell you he had a daughter, but he told you all the gory details about how he came to lose that daughter. He talked about her from time to time, and evidently he talked enough about her that not only did you remember her name, but you remembered the name of the man who took her life. It must have been hard on you that night when you were sitting in your office and you overheard someone mention the name Jimmy Conkwright, and that Conkwright, the man who took your friend’s daughter’s life, was there that night, in the school.

  “Later, you realized that everyone there hated Conkwright almost as much as your friend Earl hated him. And by listening, you realized that the drunk who took one young woman’s life was drunk again and running around with another man’s wife. Maybe you’d decided to stay out of it, but when you headed to the restroom and heard a noise coming from the kitchen, the kitchen where no one was supposed to be, you were curious as to who was in there. I’m sure you only planned to run that someone off, but then either you saw Conkwright go into the freezer, or you saw the freezer door open and was curious as to who was inside. When you saw Conkwright, you shut and locked the door. Maybe you saw the woman with him. Maybe you didn’t. Maybe at first you planned to let them out after a while. Why don’t you take up from here? Tell me if I missed anything.”

  “That’s quite a story you got there, Lieutenant. How long’d it take you to make it up?”

  “Actually it took up until now to realize how two people came to be locked in the freezer.”

 
“Lieutenant, I didn’t even know them people.”

  “Oh, from all the conversations you and Earl Spickard had, it must have seemed like you knew one of them. And knew him well enough to hate him for what he did to Earl’s daughter, and to Earl. Maybe I should talk to Earl, see what he can tell me about it?”

  “He don’t know nothin’ ’bout this. I mean, if it happened like you say.”

  “So, you didn’t tell him the favor you did for him?”

  “Lieutenant, you go tellin’ this tale and I’ll deny it.”

  “Mr. Gillis, Walter, I understand how you felt. Who knows? I might have done the same thing myself, if I were in your shoes. You like Earl Spickard a lot, don’t you?”

  “Best friend I ever had.”

  “I’m sorry, Walter, but I have to let my superiors know about this.”

  “Like I said, accuse me of it and I’ll deny it ever happened.”

  “Walter, I don’t know what’s going to come of this. Under the circumstances, you might get off with a lesser sentence, but I have to report it. What you did was wrong.”

  He looked at me with tears in his eyes.

  “I’m not sayin’ who did it or didn’t do it, but I’m not so shore that it was wrong. That varmint deserved what he got, and from what I heered, that woman with him wuddent no saint, neither.”

  “That doesn’t matter. There are laws against taking someone’s life.”

  “I’d say that whoever done it jist saw a door open and shut and locked it. I don’t think nobody tried to murder nobody.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “So, Cy, what’re you going to do?”

  “Just what I told him. I can’t be judge and jury here. I’m going to tell the chief just what we know and let him and the DA get their heads together and decide where we go from here.”

  “But you got a confession, sort of. I mean he did slip up enough that we know he’s our man.”

  “And I don’t think that will mean a lot in a court of law, but then I’m not the lawyer, the DA is. We’ll just tell them what we know and let them decide.”

  “You know, Cy, in a way I feel sorry for the guy. He didn’t even know these people.”

  “You know, Lou, sometimes right and wrong suck.”

  +++

  We headed back to town, to the place that we rarely go, and have no desire to go to any more than we do. Police headquarters.

  While Hilldale is larger than many towns in our state, it’s not a large city, and our police department isn’t a large one. But unlike some small towns, we are large enough that we have two full-time homicide detectives. Well, at least we used to, even though there were lots of times when we had no murders to investigate.

  We parked in the lot and headed inside and back to the Chief’s office.

  “Is he in?”

  “He is. Just a second and let me see if he has a minute.”

  “Tell him it’s important.”

  “I figured that, Cy. We all know that you don’t come here to have a good time.”

  A few seconds later, the Chief’s secretary returned and motioned for us to go on in.

  “Cy, Lou. Good to see you. I assume this has to do with the case you’ve been working on.”

  “That’s right.”

  I spent the next ten minutes filling the Chief in on what had transpired over the last couple of weeks, and as best I could, a verbatim account of what had happened that morning. He whistled at the end.

  “I guess the best thing to do at this point is to call the DA in. I’ll try to get him in here this afternoon. Call me back around 1:00. If he’s free, if he’s not in court, I want you to tell him exactly what you told me.”

  It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but it was exactly what I expected. I could tell that, once again, Lou was glad I was the spokesman for our duo.

  +++

  There was no reason to linger there. The Chief excused us and we beat a hasty retreat to Lightning.

  “So, what do we do now, Cy?”

  “Well, it’s just a little after 11:00. What say we hang out at my house? Remember, we have half of a pizza there with our names on it.”

  “Yeah, and the best thing is that after eating it last night, when I weighed this morning I hadn’t gained any weight.”

  “Me, either, Lou. It’s okay to cheat every now and then. What’s not okay is to revert back to the way we were.”

  Lou smiled.

  “What’s so funny, Lou?”

  “I never thought I’d hear you say that, Cy?”

  “Me, either, Lou. Me, either.”

  +++

  Having leftover pizza was new to me. Because of the places Lou and I hung out, we seldom ate pizza, although we like it. But wherever we hung out, we seldom had leftover anything.

  “You know, Cy, there’s not a lot of drop off from the way this thing tasted last night and the way it tastes today.”

  “That’s the way I feel, Lou. However, I wonder how much of that is how it tastes and how much of it is that we’re eating something that most people would consider taboo on a diet.”

  “We’re not really on a diet, Cy. This is a lifestyle change. Whether we change what we’re eating or not, we’re definitely changing how much we eat of whatever it is we’re eating.”

  +++

  Right at 1:00 the phone rang. I looked at my watch, figured it was someone from downtown. It was. We were to meet the DA in the Chief’s office at 2:00.

  It would take us only a few minutes to get downtown from my place, so we sat around for a few more minutes, then looked in the mirror to make sure we looked presentable. Considering who we were, I thought we looked pretty good.

  +++

  “Cy, Lou, I think you know the DA. I want you to tell him everything you told me this morning.”

  I tried to repeat everything just as I told it to the Chief. Since the Chief didn’t interrupt, I figured I must have done a good job.

  “So, Lt. Dekker, tell me. What’s your gut feeling? Do you think we have a chance of cracking this guy?”

  “My gut feeling is no, and I don’t think we’re going to pick up any witnesses against him. One of the two deceased was hated by everyone who knew him. The other one was merely tolerated by most, but I haven’t found anyone who would say that she had impeccable character. Maybe the dead woman’s husband mourns her a little, but he’s not so broken up about this that he’d be willing to testify about anyone, if he did know the facts. At least that’s my opinion.”

  “I’ll tell you what. Give me the weekend to think about this. By the first of the week, I’ll have a feel for whether or not I think we should proceed.”

  Lou and I were dismissed, and the Chief and the DA waited until Lou had closed the door to continue their conversation.

  Once we were outside, Lou popped the question.

  “So, what are we going to do now, Cy?”

  “Well, you heard the DA. It doesn’t look like we have anything else to do before Monday, if then. I don’t know about you, but I have a book at my house that’s calling me.”

  “I think I know the one you mean. I think its twin will be calling me, as soon as I unlock my door.”

  “Just in case, it will probably be good to hang out at home until we know any more.”

  “I’ve got no problem with that.”

  Little did I know, but it was a good thing that I hadn’t planned on going anywhere the next day. The case might be nearing completion in some form or another, but that didn’t mean our work was over.

  +++

  I unlocked my door, stepped inside the house, and looked at my watch. It was not quite 3:00. I had grown fond of the retired aspect of semi-retirement, and I missed getting to be lazy everyday. Between working out and working outside, in the real world, I was a little more tired that usual, so I opted to take a nap before picking up my book.

  +++

  While I wasn’t sure about the final outcome of the case, I felt that I’d done all I could, and that o
ne way or another, my work on the case was at or was almost at an end. Because of that, I felt relief, and I sat down to read with a smile on my face.

  For years, I never read. It had been only a couple of years or so since Lou and I opted to take up a hobby of reading. When we retired, semi-retired, or whatever you want to call it, we wanted something fun to occupy our time without exerting much energy to have this fun. One of us came up with the idea of reading about fictional characters who did what we did each day, or at least each time someone committed a murder in or around Hilldale. While solving the murder before getting to the end of the book is the most fun thing about reading murder mysteries, another fun thing is reading different authors, who have various types of sleuths with many different personalities. When the murderers of Hilldale are chilling, which means they aren’t causing problems for the two of us, Lou and I can read four or five mysteries over a two week period. While both Lou and I have shelled out a lot of money on books in the last couple of years, both of us think that buying books is one of the best values for our entertainment dollar.

  +++

  I had no problem finishing my book that night. If things worked out right, I figured before the weekend was over I could read another book or two. I was pretty sure that Lou would finish reading the book, too, so sometime the next day I planned to call him to see what he thought of the book. In the meantime, I would excel at something I’d mastered over the years, being lazy.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I awoke the next morning, realized that I had nothing I had to do that day, and contemplated staying in bed, but the new me wouldn’t let me. I sprang from the bed in a manner I wouldn’t have attempted three weeks before, and greeted the world. I fixed and ate breakfast, Wiied with a newfound vigor, and relished the time I spent with God.

  I planned my day. My only pressing engagement was that I needed to change my calendar from July to August. With my busy schedule, I’d forgotten to do so. I dreaded doing that each month. I was always afraid I’d tear the place where the hole was, and it had been years since I’d seen any of those sticky reinforcements I used in my notebook in high school. I completed that task in record time and stood and looked at the new calendar picture for a couple of minutes. I’d always wondered why calendar companies didn’t put snowy scenes on their summer month pictures and bright sunshiny pictures when we had to endure six months of winter. But then I realized that they’d never gone along with my suggestion of having winter start on December 1, when it should begin.