File M For Murder

THIRTY-NINE

As I expected, they all looked puzzled by my statement. Even Diesel meowed.

“Bear with me,” I said. “This is going to take a few minutes to explain. First off, we know that Sarabeth Norris, now Conley, used to babysit Connor. Evidently he would stay with the Norrises when his parents went out of town.”

Ray was scribbling in his notebook.

“In fact,” I continued, “Sarabeth was my babysitter too, although quite a few years earlier.”

Sean and Laura smiled at that.

“Now, jump forward almost thirty years, to a party held not long ago in Sarabeth’s house, the house that belonged to her parents. I was sitting alone in the kitchen, not feeling much inclined to rejoin the party. I was over in the corner, out of sight, when Connor came in to get something to drink.”

“I sort of abandoned you, didn’t I?” Laura frowned. “Sorry about that, Dad.”

“I was fine.” I smiled. “Anyway, there I sat, drinking my wine, when Connor came in and got himself a beer. He leaned against the counter and lit a cigarette. While he drank and smoked, he was staring at something in the kitchen. Then he went over and squatted in front of a cabinet in the wall and opened the door. He looked inside, and then he said, ‘Not so nuts after all.’”

“What a strange thing to say.” Stewart scratched Dante’s back, and the poodle whimpered with pleasure. “What the heck did it mean, though?”

“That cabinet obviously held some kind of memory for him. In his notes he even wrote the word cabinet. All kind of strange, but then when you add to it another odd remark he made to Laura, it starts to make more sense.” I paused to let Laura speak.

She looked puzzled for a moment, and then I could see that she figured out what I was talking about. “Yes, he said something about a fat woman. That she ‘may think she can shut me in like she used to, but I’m too big now.’ Do you think he was talking about someone who shut him up inside a cabinet?”

I nodded. “I think he was. I think Sarabeth might have put him inside that cabinet, probably to punish him. I imagine he was a pretty rambunctious child.”

“He was also a little claustrophobic,” Laura said. “Maybe that’s why.”

“That’s all interesting speculation,” Ray said. “But how does that connect with Norris’s death?”

Stewart snorted. “Come on, Ray, don’t be so dense. Remember the old saying, ‘Little pitchers have big ears’?” He shook his head. “They probably locked the kid in the cabinet and forgot he was there. No telling what he might have heard.”

“There was a child in the play,” Laura said. “A child named Connie. I thought Connie was a girl.”

“But Connie could be a nickname for Connor,” Sean said. “He could have called himself that, or something close to it. I remember I had trouble with Laura when I was small.” He smiled at his sister. “I called you Lah-wuh until I was five or six.”

“What’s this about the play?” Ray looked puzzled, and I couldn’t really blame him. He didn’t have all the details that we did.

I hastened to explain. “There are scenes in the play that are reminiscent of what happened in the Norris family. In fact, the family in the play is named Ferris. Not that different from Norris.”

“So you think the play Lawton was writing was based on his childhood memories?” Ray scribbled some more in his notebook. “Fascinating.”

“Repressed memory, isn’t that what it’s called?” Stewart asked.

“Yes,” I said. “According to Laura, Connor didn’t remember much about his life in Athena until he came back here. Then, slowly, memories started to surface.”

“That’s when he totally changed the focus of the play.” Laura ran a hand through her hair a couple of times. “At first he probably wasn’t aware of what he was doing. The story was just there, in his subconscious, and out it came. The more he wrote, the more he saw of people and places here, the more memories that surfaced.”

“That’s exactly what I think happened.” I nodded approvingly at my daughter.

“So, basically what you’re telling me is this.” Ray fixed his gaze on me. “Sarabeth Norris drowned her father in the bathtub because the old man refused to help her brother. Lawton overheard something potentially incriminating when he was possibly locked inside the kitchen cabinet. Then, nearly thirty years later, he comes back to Athena and starts writing a play, and that play is about what happened to the Norris family.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much it.” Sean nodded. “Then Sarabeth, or maybe her brother, killed Lawton because they wanted to stop the play. They were probably afraid that people would remember their father’s death once they saw the play and start connecting the two.”

“Seems kind of far-fetched to me,” Appleby said. “Like something out of Agatha Christie.” He shook his head. “But it’s just oddball enough to be true. What do you expect me to do?”

“Nothing, for the moment,” I said. “This is all speculative. The only thing to do is to lay all this in front of Kanesha Berry and let her handle it.”

“Are there any other suspects? She hasn’t had much to say to the press about the investigation so far, simply the standard comments about following up leads.” Ray sounded disgruntled.

I’d been so caught up in developing my hazy, unformed idea into a full-blown theory that I’d forgotten all about Ralph and Magda Johnston. We had all spoken freely with Ray about Sarabeth’s alleged involvement in Connor’s death, mainly because I needed information that only Ray could supply. But could I justify telling the reporter about the Johnstons’ dirty laundry?

I realized that Laura, Sean, and Stewart were watching me expectantly, waiting for me to respond to the question.

“Guess there must be,” Ray said with a slight smirk. “Otherwise you would have denied it already. So who is it?”

“I’m on the proverbial horns of a dilemma,” I said in an effort to stall. I continued to think. I could tell him what Helen Louise told me, because evidently the Johnstons’ marriage woes were widely known in town. But I didn’t think I should say anything about the letter Connor wrote concerning Ralph’s play.

“Okay, here goes,” I said, and four pairs of eyes stared at me. “Connor was having an affair with a married woman, one who’s apparently notorious for sleeping around.”

“You mean Magda Johnston.” Ray’s statement didn’t really surprise me.

“Yes. I had it from a very reliable source that she and Connor were seen together on several occasions, and their behavior with each other made it clear they were having an affair.” This was all so sordid, just as the story of the Norris family was. But somewhere in all the sordidness lay the answer to Connor’s death—and perhaps to Hubert Norris’s and Damitra Vane’s deaths as well.

“Johnston did try to beat up that athlete his wife was screwing around with.” Ray cocked his head to one side as he regarded me. “So maybe Johnston finally went postal and offed the guy his wife was sleeping with?” He nodded. “That doesn’t sound nearly so far-fetched to me. There are all kinds of stories about those two nuts.”

“There’s another motive as well, but one that I really can’t go into detail about,” I said, feeling somewhat foolish. “But it has to do with a professional matter.”

“Let me guess,” Ray said, a speculative gleam in his eye. “Ralph Johnston—excuse me, Montana Johnston—fancies himself as a playwright.” He snorted derisively. “But I saw that play of his, and it was horrendously bad. Your cat could probably write something better.”

I smiled fondly at Diesel, who lay by my chair, his head on his front paws. “I can’t argue with that. I saw the play, too.”

“Then I’ll bet Lawton mouthed off about Johnston’s play.” Ray grinned. “I interviewed Lawton right after he first got to town, and he was pretty full of himself. I left out some of the less-than-polite things he had to say about the Theater Department at the college.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny your conclusion.” I smiled. Ray Appleby was sharp, I had to admit.

“No need to.” Ray nodded. “I’ve also interviewed Johnston a couple of times. He’s his own biggest fan, believe you me, and I know he wouldn’t take it too well to have someone like Lawton come in here and tell him he’s an idiot.”

“What do we do now? Invite them all over for tea in the library where you do your best Hercule Poirot imitation and reveal all?” Stewart’s facetious question was directed at me.

“That’s not exactly what I had in mind,” I said in a mild tone. “My plan is to lay it all in front of Kanesha and let her handle it from there. I don’t want any more incidents—” I broke off, remembering too late that I didn’t want to bring up the attacks aimed at Laura in front of a reporter.

Ray was quick to seize on my gaffe. “Incidents? Like what?” He paused for an answer, but when none of us responded, he continued. “That must be why the police are watching your house. Unless, of course, one of you is a suspect.” He eyed each of us in turn, then fixed his attention on Laura. “You knew Lawton pretty well, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did,” Laura said. “But I didn’t have anything to do with his murder. And neither did anybody else in this room.”

Ray focused his gaze on me. “I really don’t think one of you is a murderer, although you do seem to have a knack for getting involved in murders. Tell me, then, why are the police watching your house?”

I figured I couldn’t hold out any longer. “There have a couple of attacks aimed at Laura. She was assaulted in her office on campus, and earlier today there was an envelope in the mail, addressed to her, that might have been a letter bomb.” I left out the attempted arson.

Ray whistled and looked at Laura. “Somebody’s sure got it in for you. Why?”

“We don’t know,” Sean said curtly. “Whoever’s behind it must think she knows something incriminating.”

“Something that Lawton told you and no one else.” Ray was still focused on Laura.

Laura shrugged. “I have no clue what that could be. Anything that seems pertinent I’ve already discussed with my father and my brother.”

Ray turned back to me. “You know, the more I think about it, the odder it seems. You’ve got old man Norris, death by drowning in a bathtub, right? And then Lawton, how did he die?”

“Suffocation, I think.” I wondered where Ray was going with this.

Ray nodded. “Okay. Then there’s this Damitra Vane woman. She has to be connected, right, because the only reason she was in town was because of Lawton, correct?”

I nodded.

“She had her throat cut.” Ray looked thoughtful as he continued. “Then your daughter was attacked in her office. You also tell me that she got sent what could have been a letter bomb.”

Again I nodded. There was also the arson, but I still didn’t bring it up. I was beginning to see the point he was trying to make.

“Two men suffocated to death. Nasty, but not really violent, right?” Ray gazed at us each in turn, and we all nodded. “Then you have a stabbing, an assault, and a bomb. All really violent.”

He paused, and again we nodded.

“Don’t you see?” Ray asked. “Looks to me like we’re talking about two very different people committing these crimes.”