Dead Man Talking

5

My restoration plan (such as it was) called for us to spend the rest of that week documenting who was buried where in our section. Yes, I know that sounds easy, but believe me, this was one plan that looked better on paper than it did in real life.

For one thing, there were massive problems with Monroe Street itself. (I mean, in addition to the fact that it was a cemetery and that in the best of all possible worlds, I wouldn’t have been anywhere near there in the first place.) Headstones were toppled, names were misspelled in the cemetery records, and while the old, hand-drawn maps we’d been given showed graves where none existed, they didn’t show a bunch of the gravesites we found.

And then there was the garbage.

Through it all, I did my best to rally my troops. It didn’t work, and by the time Friday rolled around, all the weeds that had been pulled, chopped, and hacked down had been pulled and chopped and hacked down by little ol’ me. By that time, I was sunburned, and that meant the freckles on my nose and cheeks were more visible than ever. Three of my fingernails were broken, and I hadn’t had the time-much less the energy-to file them. I had blisters on my hands and a couple dozen scratches on my arms and legs. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, thanks to a wallop of summer heat and the humidity that descended like a wet blanket over Cleveland, my hair was frizzy.

Good thing we were done filming for the week. Even public television viewers shouldn’t have to see me like that. It was even better that Quinn had been assigned to a new high-profile case. (A city councilman, a dead stripper… need I say more?) He was going to be plenty busy for a while, and that meant we wouldn’t be seeing each other any time soon. I was too exhausted for seduction.

Which didn’t mean I was going to sit back and do nothing. I promised myself a deep conditioning when I got home, and on Saturday afternoon, I headed out to talk to Helen Lamar.

Within twenty minutes of leaving my apartment, I was in the city’s Tremont neighborhood. It was the area I’d mentioned to Sammi earlier that week, and as I cruised around looking for the address listed in the phone book, I saw some of the boutiques I’d talked about and she’d ignored. Not that I was taking that personally or anything. If the girl wanted to turn her back on a career in fashion and be a batterer on house arrest for the rest of her life, that was her business.

Mine was getting to the bottom of Jefferson Lamar’s mystery, and with that in mind, I concentrated on my driving. Tremont is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, and every once in a while, somebody gets it into their head to revitalize it. This was one of those times. Great boutiques stood side by side with trendy restaurants and bars, abandoned buildings, brand-spanking-new condos, and hundred-year-old homes that ranged from Victorian mansions to workers’ cottages.

Helen Lamar lived not far from Lincoln Park, the couple blocks’ worth of greenery that is the center of the neighborhood. Her house was one of those blue-collar cottages, small and neat, with steps that led up to a porch that ran along the side of the house. The yard was tiny and immaculate. It was surrounded by a cyclone fence that had been recently painted. The shiny silver made my eyes hurt. Squinting, I pushed open the gate and stepped onto a slate walk bordered by red roses and white petunias.

I’d already decided what I was going to say to Helen, so when a tiny woman with cropped gray hair and wearing white shorts, an orange T-shirt, and yellow flip flops opened the door, I was ready for her. I’d brought along one of the five hundred business cards Ella had made for me when I started my job at Garden View. Since I didn’t usually want anyone to know where I worked, I had plenty, so I didn’t mind giving one away. Besides, I was hoping the card made me look official. I handed one to Helen. Her eyes were a soft blue, and she looked from the card to me a little uncertainly. “I’m not interested in a burial plot, if that’s what you’re selling. I’ve already got my plot. At-”

“Monroe Street. Yes, I know.”

The uncertainty in her eyes shifted to wariness. As if she thought I’d brought along an army of thugs and was planning a home invasion, she looked beyond me.

“I work at Garden View. As a tour guide.” I brought her attention back to the matter at hand by tapping one broken fingernail to the words printed on my card. “This summer, we’re participating in a restoration project at Monroe Street. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I’m doing research, see, and the section I’m working in-”

“Is where Jeff is buried.” She might be elderly, but Helen was obviously as sharp as a tack. She followed my long-winded explanation to its logical conclusion, weighing the card in one hand while she gave me another once-over. “If you’re looking for information so you can sensationalize the whole thing-” “It’s nothing like that.”

She thought about it for a moment before she gestured toward the white wicker couch and rocker on the porch. “Then have a seat. I’ll get iced tea.”

While she was gone, I settled myself and got out the legal pad I’d brought along for notes. By the time she was back, I was ready for her. She, it seemed, was ready for me, too.

“If you want someone to tell you the police knew what they were doing and that they did the right thing, you’ve come to the wrong place,” she said. She poured iced tea, her voice as old-lady pleasant as ever. But hey, I’m no dummy. I didn’t fail to catch the iron undertone in her words. “Jeff was innocent.”

“That’s what he-” I drowned my impulsive comment with a gulp of iced tea. It was made from powered mix and too sweet, and I choked, gagged, and swallowed. “I thought if I talked to you, I’d get the other side of the story,” I said. “I thought-”

“Why?”

There was the whole thing about the competition, of course, so I could have started my explanation there. I would have, if Helen hadn’t put down the iced tea pitcher and leaned forward in the rocker, her elbows on her thighs, her fingers steepled beneath her chin. Those blue eyes of hers just about flashed a challenge at me.

In real life, I am not a dishonest person. But more often than not when it comes to ghosts, I find myself not just stretching the truth, but ignoring it altogether. I mean, can anyone blame me? That doesn’t explain why, this time, I opted for honesty. Mostly.

“There’s a note in the cemetery records. I don’t know who left it. It says there was some doubt about Mr. Lamar’s guilt.” “Really?” Her laugh was cynical in a way that made me realize that if I wasn’t careful, she’d see right through me. “No one ever asked me to make a note in Jeff’s cemetery file. And I can’t imagine anyone else took the time. As far as I remember-and just so you know, young lady, my memory is very good-I was the only one in Cleveland who believed Jeff was innocent.”

“You still do.”

She hadn’t touched her iced tea. Now, she picked up her glass and held it between the palms of her hands. The glass was sweaty but she didn’t seem to mind, not even when a drop of condensation trickled through her fingers.

She stared at her hands. “It won’t bring him back.”

“But if we could clear his name-”

She stopped me cold with a look. “Why do you care?”

I set my glass down on top of a copy of the morning’s newspaper that was on a table next to the couch. “There’s a competition involved with the restoration. We’re going to be on TV. The show premiers tomorrow night.”

She was not as impressed as I hoped. In fact, she wasn’t impressed at all.

Like I could blame her? My smile felt as feeble as my explanation. “I’m the captain of one of the teams. The more we find out about the people buried in our section of the cemetery, the better we’ll look. If we could clear Mr. Lamar’s name-”

“So you don’t care. Not really.”

“I care because I want to win. Because it’s going to be on TV, and a few people might actually see it. The other team is made up of garden club ladies, see, and I’ve got these prisoners on parole. Or probation. Or whatever. And-”

“But you don’t really care. Not about Jeff.”

Did I? I didn’t want to. Believe me when I say this: I did so not want to care. But I did. I do. Partly because like all the ghosts I’d met, Lamar had sucked me into what was left of his life, and I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone until I did what I had to do. But mostly…

Well, mostly because it just wasn’t fair the way the ghosts I’d met had been murdered. I mean, let’s face it, that’s just lousy luck, and an awful way to die. In Lamar’s case, things weren’t any better. In fact, I suspected they were worse. Jefferson Lamar struck me as the kind of guy who didn’t like the world to think of him as a killer, and these days (except for Helen, of course), that was pretty much the only thing anyone remembered about him.

None of this was anything I could reveal to Helen, so instead, I asked her, “How can I care about your late husband? He died when I was just a little kid. I never knew him. I’ve never met you before. I don’t know the person who was killed and-”

“Vera. Vera Blaine.” Thinking back, Helen’s gaze traveled somewhere above my head, her eyes misty. “She was a pretty girl. Not very bright.” She shifted her gaze back to me. “Jeff never slept with her.”

Honestly, I’d never considered the sex angle, I guess because Lamar was middle-aged, Vera was younger than me, and the thought of them gettin’ it on was too icky for words. But if they had a relationship, it was a not-so-important fact that Lamar had never bothered to mention. I caught a whiff of scandal and glommed onto it. It was more than I had to go on before. “Is that what they said?” I asked Helen. “Was that what they claimed as motive? That he and Vera-”

“Were lovers? Well, not in so many words, not in the newspapers, anyway. Even in the eighties, the media wasn’t as aboveboard about things like that. The newspapers mentioned that Jeff and Vera were friends. That’s all people needed to hear to make their own assumptions. There were plenty of hints, but the ‘A’ word- affair-wasn’t trotted out until we got to court. A couple people testified that they thought it was possible. They never had any proof, mind you. There were also people who said Jeff was the jealous type. Where they got that from, I don’t know. They said they’d heard that Vera broke off the affair with Jeff to go back to her boyfriend. Nobody had a speck of proof. There was no proof to have. In truth, Jeff and Vera weren’t even friends. She worked for him, as his secretary at Central State. She’d only taken the job three or four months earlier. He barely knew her.”

“Then why-”

She answered with a shrug. It wasn’t that she didn’t know. It was that she didn’t understand. “Ugly rumors can take on a life of their own. Maybe you’re too young to have learned that yet. Once someone mentioned that there was something… romantic…”-she gave the word a funny twist-“between Jeff and that girl, everyone just assumed it was true. They claimed that’s how she ended up in that motel here in town, that she and Jeff used to meet there from time to time, and that one of those times, things got out of hand. They said he shot her.”

“They found his gun at the scene.”

Her head came up. “You know that, do you? You’ve been reading the old newspaper articles.” “Something like that. They said his gun was there and-”

“He always kept it in his desk at our home near the prison. The drawer was locked. He hadn’t checked it for a while. I mean, why would he? Then when the police came around and asked to see it, well, of course, he went right for it. That was the first he realized it had been stolen.”

“And the cops weren’t buying that.”

It wasn’t a question so she shouldn’t have felt obligated to answer. She did, anyway. “That was the chief evidence they had against him. Jeff’s fingerprints were on the gun. Of course they were; it was his.”

“And his blood was on Vera’s blouse.”

“Jeff had cut his hand at work earlier that day. Vera helped him bandage the wound.” “And left for a date two hours away in Cleveland without bothering to change her clothes?” This was curious, because changing into something that didn’t have my boss’s blood on it was the first thing I would have done before meeting a guy in a motel. Before Helen could think I was accusing anybody of anything, I added, “That’s just weird. I wonder why she was in such a hot hurry to get to Cleveland.”

“I asked the police the same thing when I heard about the blood. I told them Jeff had told me about the way he’d cut his hand. Of course, the police weren’t very forthcoming. They didn’t have an adequate theory about why, if Jeff and Vera were having an affair, they needed to come to Cleveland to do it, either. You’d think if you were sleeping with your boss, you wouldn’t want to drive so far to do it.”

“Or you would because then it would be less likely that you’d get caught.” I was thinking out loud. I should have known better, so I offered Helen a smile of apology. “Just trying to think the way they were thinking,” I said. “If Mr. Lamar supposedly killed Vera because he was jealous-”

“Those rumors were all part of the frame-up.”

Honestly, had I been talking to anybody else, I would have told her to get real, come to grips with the fact that her husband was a cheating creep and a murderer, and get on with her life.

If I hadn’t heard the frame-up theory from the dead guy in question.

“But who-”

Her laugh was anything but funny. “Some people have overactive imaginations. That’s why they believed that nonsense about Jeff and Vera. Others might have been paid to say what they said on the stand. It’s possible, don’t you think? I told the police that, but honestly, I don’t think they believed me. Still others… There’s a lot of pettiness and jealousy in the world. You’ll learn that, too.” She heaved a sigh at the same time she hauled herself out of the chair, and without another word, she disappeared into the house.

I wondered if our interview was over, and I was about to chalk the whole thing up to bad timing when she came back to the porch carrying a framed eight-by-ten photograph of the man I’d been talking to at the cemetery. In the picture, Jefferson Lamar was wearing the same pin-striped suit I’d seen him in. His tie was plain and dark. His glasses were high up on the bridge of his nose. The thick black frames weighed heavy on his face and made it look as if he didn’t have any eyebrows.

Helen put the photo in my hands. “Does that look like the kind of a man who would kill somebody?”

I didn’t need to look at the picture, but I did, just so she wouldn’t get suspicious. “People kill people every day,” I said. “I can’t say for sure, but I bet they don’t all look like killers.”

“Not Jeff.” She took the photo, and before she sat back down, she set it on the table next to me so that Lamar was staring right at me. “He was a good man. He was honest and ethical. He-” Helen’s voice caught on a lump of emotion and she took a drink of her tea. “He believed in justice. He believed in the system. He thought criminals could be reformed, that he could help change their lives. He wasn’t the kind of man who would take another life.”

“You had him buried in Cleveland, not near Central State.” It was something I’d planned to mention later in our conversation, but this seemed as good a time as any. “I would have thought-”

“We were both born in Cleveland, and there was nothing keeping us near Central State. Nothing but Jeff’s job. Once he was arrested…” Helen didn’t fill in the blanks. She didn’t need to. “My parents lived right here in this house, and they were elderly. It made sense for me to stay with them. I helped out around here, and I was close enough to downtown so I could visit Jeff during the trial. Once he was convicted…” A wave of pain crossed her face, and suddenly, not even her cheery T-shirt or her flip-flops could keep her from looking old and frail. “He didn’t think it was possible,” she said. “All the time the police questioned him, he understood they were just doing their jobs. He was cooperative and tolerant. He said they were only eliminating him so they could concentrate on finding a truly viable suspect. Then when he was arrested… And all through the trial…” Her shoulders rose and fell.

“I knew he didn’t do it, and he kept telling me my faith in him was all that mattered. But I could see that the publicity and the stain on his reputation was eating him up inside. He never once stopped believing in the integrity of the criminal justice system, you see. He knew he was innocent, so he never imagined the system would let him down and that he’d be found guilty. But then when he was-”

“He went to prison. Not to-”

“Central State? Oh, no. They’d never send a warden back to his own prison. Not as one of the inmates. Not that it mattered in the end.” Again, her shoulders rose, but this time when they dropped, she shuddered. “He had such a strong belief in the right way of things, such a firm notion that the system was good and that it was just. It broke his heart seeing that it failed him. He was embarrassed, and he was demoralized. He died of a heart attack in his sleep his first night in prison.”

This was another bit of the story Lamar had failed to mention, and as much as it annoyed me not to have all the details a detective needs to solve a case, I guess I understood why. A warden had to be tough, and tough guys didn’t die of broken hearts.

Rather than think about it and get all mushy, I concentrated on my case. “Do you know who could have done this?” I asked Helen. “Who would have wanted to frame your husband?”

“A warden makes a lot of enemies.” It was the same thing I’d heard from Lamar. “It’s hard to even know where to begin thinking about it. Believe me, I’ve tried. For more than twenty years.”

“And so what do you think?”

She gave me a half smile. “I wish I knew what to tell you. I’ve been over it in my head a couple million times.”

“Your husband never mentioned names? I mean, prisoners who might have had it in for him? Or employees with grudges?”

“Oh, he’d come home and say there had been problems. He would say some of the inmates were more trouble than others. Or he’d mention that he had some personnel crisis to deal with. But he never mentioned names. He didn’t want to bring that much of the job home with him. You know, so that I wouldn’t worry.”

Wondering where to take my questions next, I drummed my fingers against my legal pad. That’s when I remembered the missing silver dollar.

“He collected coins.”

As if she’d touched an electric line, Helen shot up in her chair. “My goodness! I’d almost forgotten. How on earth-”

“It must have been mentioned in one of those newspaper articles I read,” I told her.

“Well, they were right. Though it wasn’t a lifelong interest or anything. That was the thing about Jeff.” Her expression softened and a smile touched her lips. “He’d get it in his head to get a new hobby every once in a while. It was coins for a couple years, then model trains. I think he tried stamp collecting when he was a boy, too. I bet I still have some of the coins packed away in the attic. Not that they’re valuable or anything. At least not that I know of. A couple wheat pennies, a few quarters from when quarters were all silver and didn’t contain any copper. Things like that.” She looked my way. “It’s funny that you found that mentioned in the newspaper. It’s such an insignificant fact about Jeff. Do you think it’s important?”

I didn’t, and even if I did, I didn’t want to explain about the coin at the grave. For all I knew, my team was guilty of something for not only digging up the coin, but for not turning it over to whoever we should have turned it over to before it got stolen.

“Just trying to get a sense of what kind of person he was,” I said. “You didn’t ever do things like… oh, I don’t know… like leave coins at his grave or anything, did you?” Helen laughed. “Good heavens, no! Jeff wouldn’t have liked that. He wasn’t cheap, but he was careful with our money. He would have called that a waste. And he wouldn’t have been happy about me visiting his grave, either. Not in that area of town. I did for a while, but…”

I knew what she was imagining: the beat-up neighborhood, the trash, the crime.

“I’m glad to hear you’re fixing the place up.” Helen rose, and I figured our interview was over, so I got up, too. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help. If there’s anything else I can do…”

It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. If only I knew how to take her up on it. As I gathered my things, a thought occurred and I pounced on it.

“You said there were people who were jealous of your husband. Do you think-”

“That they’d arrange anything as elaborate as framing him for murder?” She cocked her head, thinking. “That would take a special kind of evil, wouldn’t it?”

“But you don’t think it’s totally impossible.”

She shook away whatever she was thinking and led me to the steps. “Sometimes my imagination runs away with me. But believe me, if I thought Lenny Fitzpatrick was capable of that sort of thing-”

It was the first she’d mentioned a name, and I wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass. “Lenny Fitzpatrick? He was-”

“The assistant warden at Central State when Jeff was in charge. Lenny was efficient and competent, but he didn’t have Jeff’s zeal for rehabilitation. Or Jeff’s brains. We never thought he’d rise above his job as assistant, but you know how it goes. People are often promoted above the level of their competence. Lenny got the warden’s job after Jeff was arrested.”

This was interesting, and though it wasn’t likely I’d forget, I made a note of it on my legal pad. “I can’t say it would do any good, but I don’t think it would hurt to go talk to this Lenny guy. I don’t suppose you have any idea where he is these days, do you?” “Oh, certainly! He’s still the warden at Central State.”

The news hit me like a punch to the stomach. “You mean, if I wanted to see him, I’d have to visit the prison to do it?”

Helen laughed. Maybe she wasn’t used to seeing anyone go instantly green at the mention of prison. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Not to worry,” she said. “I heard that Lenny was recently injured in a motorcycle accident. He’s recovering nicely, but the hospitals are far better here in Cleveland than they are out in the sticks where the prison is located. He’s doing his rehab at the Cleveland Clinic.”

As I walked away and got back in my car, I breathed a sigh of relief. Sure I’d ended up with more questions than I did answers from my little talk with Helen Lamar, but was that such a bad thing? I had one more person to talk to, plus I’d dodged the prison bullet.

To my way of thinking, that made it a successful afternoon.

Helen laughed. “Good heavens, no! Jeff wouldn’t have liked that. He wasn’t cheap, but he was careful with our money. He would have called that a waste. And he wouldn’t have been happy about me visiting his grave, either. Not in that area of town. I did for a while, but…”

I knew what she was imagining: the beat-up neighborhood, the trash, the crime.

“I’m glad to hear you’re fixing the place up.” Helen rose, and I figured our interview was over, so I got up, too. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help. If there’s anything else I can do…”

It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. If only I knew how to take her up on it. As I gathered my things, a thought occurred and I pounced on it.

“You said there were people who were jealous of your husband. Do you think-”

“That they’d arrange anything as elaborate as framing him for murder?” She cocked her head, thinking. “That would take a special kind of evil, wouldn’t it?”

“But you don’t think it’s totally impossible.”

She shook away whatever she was thinking and led me to the steps. “Sometimes my imagination runs away with me. But believe me, if I thought Lenny Fitzpatrick was capable of that sort of thing-”

It was the first she’d mentioned a name, and I wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass. “Lenny Fitzpatrick? He was-”

“The assistant warden at Central State when Jeff was in charge. Lenny was efficient and competent, but he didn’t have Jeff’s zeal for rehabilitation. Or Jeff’s brains. We never thought he’d rise above his job as assistant, but you know how it goes. People are often promoted above the level of their competence. Lenny got the warden’s job after Jeff was arrested.”

This was interesting, and though it wasn’t likely I’d forget, I made a note of it on my legal pad. “I can’t say it would do any good, but I don’t think it would hurt to go talk to this Lenny guy. I don’t suppose you have any idea where he is these days, do you?”

“Oh, certainly! He’s still the warden at Central State.”

The news hit me like a punch to the stomach. “You mean, if I wanted to see him, I’d have to visit the prison to do it?”

Helen laughed. Maybe she wasn’t used to seeing anyone go instantly green at the mention of prison. She put a hand on my shoulder. “Not to worry,” she said. “I heard that Lenny was recently injured in a motorcycle accident. He’s recovering nicely, but the hospitals are far better here in Cleveland than they are out in the sticks where the prison is located. He’s doing his rehab at the Cleveland Clinic.”

As I walked away and got back in my car, I breathed a sigh of relief. Sure I’d ended up with more questions than I did answers from my little talk with Helen Lamar, but was that such a bad thing? I had one more person to talk to, plus I’d dodged the prison bullet.

To my way of thinking, that made it a successful afternoon.

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