File M For Murder

TWENTY

“We’re home,” Sean announced as he turned the car into the driveway. “That phrase—‘The play’s the thing’—sounds familiar. Where have I heard it before?”

“Hamlet,” Laura and I said in unison. I smiled and deferred to the actor in the family. Laura supplied the whole quotation. “I’ll have grounds / More relative than this—the play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King.”

“That was Hamlet talking about his uncle, right?” Sean pulled into the garage and shut the motor off.

“Yes,” Laura said. “Hamlet wanted a way to test his uncle Claudius to see if he was guilty of killing his father, who was also Claudius’s brother.”

When Laura paused, I added to her comment. “He wrote a play and put in some lines about regicide to see if Claudius reacted.”

Sean opened Laura’s door and offered her his arm. She accepted the gesture with a smile, and I followed them into the house.

Diesel met us a few feet inside the kitchen door, and he warbled up a storm at all of us. He went straight to Laura, though, and rubbed himself against her legs. She cooed at him, telling him what a wonderful kitty he was and how much she adored him. He kept talking to her, ignoring Sean and me.

Sean led his sister to the table and pulled out a chair for her. When Laura sat, Diesel moved in front of her and put both his front paws on her legs. He gazed up into her face and meowed. She scratched his head. “I’m doing okay, sweet kitty.”

I glanced at the clock and was amazed to note that the time was only seven minutes past noon. The morning seemed a day long because so much had happened.

“I’ll fix lunch.” Something fast and easy, I decided. “How about tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches?” Strictly comfort food. Sean and Laura had both, as children and as adolescents, asked for the combination whenever they were sick, and comfort seemed a good idea now.

“Yes, please,” Laura said with a big smile, and Sean nodded. Diesel finally stopped talking and settled down by Laura’s chair. He still hadn’t acknowledged my presence.

“Sean, why don’t you make Laura some hot tea while I get started?” I went to work preparing our lunch.

As I worked and Laura sipped at her tea, we resumed our conversation about Connor Lawton’s quoting from Hamlet.

Sean stirred his tea as he spoke. “The question is, I guess, was Lawton writing about a real murder in his play?”

“And if he was, was he trying to ‘catch the conscience’ of someone he thought was a killer?” I added some heavy cream to the soup before I started on the grilled cheese sandwiches.

“Good questions,” Laura said. She sipped at her tea. “That’s why I wanted to keep the thumb drive, at least for a short time. With the laptop missing, the only complete copy of what Connor had written is on that drive. I’m sure of that. We have some pages we’ve been using for the workshopping, but we don’t have that many.”

“If it turns out that he was murdered,” Sean said, “then there could be a strong connection between the play and the killer.”

“That sounds reasonable to me.” I buttered bread while I waited for the skillet to heat. “And it would mean the killer is someone who saw the workshopping or somehow managed to read as much of the play as Lawton had written.”

“The problem for me is that, based on the bits of the play we workshopped, I can’t remember anything in it that had anything to do with a murder. Though there were elements that made it seem like a mystery novel.” Laura scowled before she drank more of her tea. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Then maybe the incriminating bit is in some part of the play you didn’t workshop,” Sean said. “We’ll just have to read it and see what we can find.”

My cell phone rang, forestalling conversation for the moment. I set down the knife and the piece of bread I was buttering and pulled out my phone. I recognized the number that came up on the screen. “Hello,” I said, and Kanesha Berry responded with a quick greeting.

“What can I do for you, Deputy Berry?” I asked.

“I’d like to ask your daughter some questions, as I told you earlier.” Kanesha’s tone was brisk. “I can be there in about fifteen minutes. Will that work?”

“We’re getting ready to eat lunch. Let me check with Laura and see how she feels.” I muted the phone and explained what Kanesha wanted.

Laura looked alarmed for a moment, then she shrugged. “Might as well get it over with.”

I relayed her assent to Kanesha and added, “We might still be eating lunch when you get here.”

“No problem. I’ll be there in fifteen.” Kanesha ended the call.

I tucked my phone away and went back to the grilled cheese. “She’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Then I’d better go copy the files off that thumb drive right now.” Laura made a move to stand, but winced and subsided into her chair. “Maybe Sean could do it.”

“Make me an accessory, eh?” Sean grinned as he stood. “I expect you to come up with all the bail money. Where is it? I’ll just copy it onto my laptop for now.”

“On the dresser next to my makeup bag,” Laura replied.

Sean headed out of the kitchen.

“I’ll feel better when we’ve turned it over to Kanesha.” I flipped the grilled cheeses over, one after the other. Then I began to ladle up the soup.

As I set a bowl down in front of Laura, she looked at me, her expression serious. “Do you think she’ll charge me with anything, Dad? What do they call it, obstruction?”

“Something like that,” I said. I patted her shoulder in what I hoped was a reassuring manner. “She’s going to be really ticked off about it, probably. At least, based on my own past experience with her, that’s what I’d predict.” I sighed and patted her again. “But I think she won’t go as far as charging you with obstruction or whatever it is.” I hoped fervently that I was right about that.

Laura echoed my thoughts. “I sure hope you’re right. The thought of maybe going to jail makes me sick to my stomach.”

“It won’t come to that.” I went back to the stove and removed two sandwiches from the skillet, added some butter, and put another sandwich in. I plated one and gave it to my daughter. “Eat.”

Laura flashed a grateful smile. She dipped up some soup and tasted it. She sighed after she swallowed. “Totally yum. It’s that cream you add. Love it.” She spooned more into her mouth.

I placed bowls of soup on the table for Sean and me. Then I finished the third sandwich and plated it. I sat down across from Laura and tasted the soup myself.

We ate in silence, and I kept expecting Sean to return. When several minutes passed and he didn’t appear, I was curious. “What’s taking Sean so long, I wonder? How much could that thumb drive possibly hold?”

Laura shrugged. “I’m not sure, but it could be eight gigabytes for all I know. Connor backed up all his stuff on it, so there could be a ton of files to copy.”

I didn’t know they made thumb drives with that kind of capacity, but I wasn’t the most tech-savvy person in the world to begin with.

Laura and I finished our meal, and still Sean hadn’t appeared. “Maybe he’s having technical problems,” I said. “Could it require a password?”

“I doubt it,” Laura said. “Maybe I should go check.”

“No, you stay where you are. I’ll go. Would you like more soup first?”

“About half a bowl, if there’s enough left,” Laura said.

I gave her what she requested, and when I glanced down at Diesel he looked up at me and meowed. I bent to rub his head. “Guess I’m forgiven finally, eh, boy?” He meowed again.

I headed for the stairs, and when I was about halfway up, Sean appeared at the head of the stairs. He stopped and scowled when he saw me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, stopping where I was.

“I can’t find the blasted thumb drive,” he said, and I could hear the frustration in his voice. “It isn’t where Laura said it was, and I’ve practically torn her room apart looking for it. It’s not there.”

“Where the heck could it be?” As I spoke the words, I had an appalling thought.

While we were at the hospital, had someone broken into the house and taken the thumb drive?

The doorbell rang, and both Sean and I tensed.

That could only be Kanesha. Confessing to taking the thumb drive was bad enough. Now we’d have to explain that it was missing.

Kanesha would go ballistic.