Murder Past Due

TWENTY-TWO

I worked my way steadily through Godfrey’s correspondence, stopping only for lunch and the occasional insistent demand for attention from Diesel. At some point Rick Tackett appeared to change the locks on the office door and the storeroom, but until he came to offer me the new keys and take the old ones away, I hardly noticed him.

He stood in front of my desk for a moment, surveying the boxes. “Lotta stuff here. What are you gonna do with it?”

“Keep it in storage until I have a chance to go through it all and catalog it. But that’s going to be a while. I have a lot of other things to see to first.”

“Seems like a lotta work for just a bunch of paper,” he said.

I shrugged. “Someone may be interested in them at some point, want to do a dissertation perhaps. You never know what kinds of interesting stuff you’ll find in a collection like this.”

“Is it valuable?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Like anything, it depends on how much someone would be willing to pay for it. I doubt the college would want to sell the collection, though.”

Rick nodded and turned away. I watched him go, somewhat surprised by the conversation. This was the first time I had heard him express any curiosity about anything archival in nature. In the past when he’d delivered packages to the office he had never asked even one question.

It was probably because of Godfrey’s murder, I reasoned. I went back to my work.

Godfrey had accumulated several boxes full of fan mail, not to mention other kinds of correspondence. I scanned each letter as quickly as I could, looking for evidence of some kind of threat to—or ill feeling toward—Godfrey. There were indeed some of the latter but none of the former. If he ever received a threatening letter, Godfrey hadn’t kept it, apparently. I also skimmed any notations that Godfrey made on the letters, but I gleaned nothing worthwhile.

By five o’clock I had achieved nothing more than a bad headache and a case of eyestrain. There was still the other correspondence to go through, chiefly business stuff, but that would have to wait. I needed a break, and Diesel was more than ready to go home. I usually spent only half a day in the archive on Thursday anyway.

The walk home helped my headache. Being out in the cool late-afternoon air, plus getting some exercise, made a difference. By the time Diesel and I reached the house I was feeling quite a bit better.

After filling Diesel’s food and water bowls and cleaning out the litter box—something I had neglected to do this morning—I contemplated preparing dinner. I found a fresh package of ground beef in the fridge and decided that hamburgers were just the thing. A check of the pantry turned up a large can of baked beans. Add a salad to that, and I’d have a pretty tasty and filling meal for both my boarder and me.

Justin, with Diesel right on his heels, appeared in the kitchen as I was finishing up the burgers. “Good timing,” I said. “I’ll let you fix your hamburgers for yourself.” I pointed with the spatula toward the table. “There’s salad there and baked beans in the pot.”

“Thank you, sir,” Justin said with a shy smile. “I’m really hungry.”

“There’s plenty.” I returned his smile.

Justin never had much dinner-table conversation, and tonight was no exception. I waited until he had dispatched one burger, a large helping of salad, and two helpings of beans before I ventured a question.

“How are you doing?” Still hungry, I reached for the salad bowl, thinking more salad would be better for me than another round of beans.

Justin shrugged. “I’m okay, I guess. It all seems like a really bad dream, you know?”

“I do,” I said. “I know it might be difficult to talk about, but I was hoping you wouldn’t mind telling me a few things.” I had been thinking about the time Justin spent with Godfrey, wondering whether Justin had heard or seen anything that might be a clue to the murder.

“I don’t mind,” Justin said. He got up from the table to fix himself another burger.

“I’m sure Deputy Berry asked you the same questions I’ll probably ask,” I said. “The reason I’m doing this, I want you to understand, is because I’m concerned for you and your mother.”

“Yes, sir, I know,” Justin said. “I know Mama really appreciates it, and I do, too.” Finished at the counter, he returned to the table. He smiled at me again, not so shyly this time.

Good, I thought, he’s beginning to get some of his old spark back.

“You spent several hours with Godfrey yesterday,” I said. “Did anything unusual happen?”

Justin chewed for a moment, and after he swallowed he replied, “Most of the time we just talked. We argued, like I told you, but nothing weird happened.”

“Were you in his hotel room most of the time?”

“Yes, sir,” Justin said. “He said he didn’t want anyone bothering us, so it was better to be somewhere private.” He frowned. “That didn’t stop people from calling him, though.”

“How many phone calls did he get?” These might be slim leads, but they were better than nothing.

“Just two.” Justin ate a forkful of beans. “The first one was from his agent, he said. They only talked a few minutes, and he went into the bedroom to do that.”

“What about the second call?” I asked.

“Somebody else,” Justin said. “He went into the bedroom again, but he wasn’t there long.”

“Did he say who it was?”

“Not exactly,” Justin said. He thought for a moment. “When he came out of the bedroom he was muttering to himself, so I asked him if everything was okay. He said it was just some guy he knew bugging him about reading a book.”

That didn’t sound like a clue to anything. “That was all?”

Justin frowned. “Now that I think about it, he didn’t say book, he said manuscript. That’s different, I guess.” He paused. “I asked him if he read other people’s manuscripts and why, and he said he did sometimes because they wanted him to give them some kind of quote to use on the book when it was published. Then he said a lot of times people wanted him to read their stuff because they thought he would help them get it published. But he said this guy was a pest with no talent, and he wasn’t going to do it.” His face reddened a bit. “Actually the way he said it was a lot ruder, but I’m not going to repeat his actual words.”

“I think I can guess the gist of it,” I said. Justin was very different from my son, Sean, at that age. Sean had delighted in trying to shock his mother and me with rude language. “So that was it? Just those two phone calls?”

“Yes, sir,” Justin said. “Oh, I almost forgot. I did ask him about the guy and how he knew he had no talent if he wasn’t going to read the guy’s manuscript.”

“What did he say to that?” As big a bestseller as Godfrey was, aspiring writers who wanted his help probably approached him all the time. Knowing Godfrey, he probably wasn’t that gracious about it, either.

“He said he’d known this guy a long time, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Justin pushed a couple of beans around on his plate with his fork. “You don’t think somebody like that would get mad enough to kill him, do you?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It depends on how desperate the man was. And how stable. Someone with mental health problems might respond violently to being thwarted.”

“That’s pretty freaky,” Justin said. He set his fork aside.

“Yes,” I said. There was something odd about that second conversation. “Which phone did Godfrey talk on? The hotel phone or his cell phone?”

“His cell phone,” Justin said.

“For both calls?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why would Godfrey give his cell phone number to someone he described as a pest?” That was what was bothering me about the second call. “That doesn’t make much sense.”

“You’re right,” Justin said. “It doesn’t. He talked to me about his writing and stuff, and he said once his books started selling really well, he had people coming out of the woodwork all the time. He had his own security guards at his house in California to keep the crazies away from him.” Justin turned a bit pink again, and I figured Godfrey had used a much coarser term than crazies.

“I’m not surprised. I’ve seen it happen before when really big-name authors have signed at the bookstore here in town. I remember one woman who held up the signing line to tell the author in detail about the book she had written. It was sure to be a bestseller, if only she could get someone to read it—according to her. The author politely—and tactfully—declined, but the store staff had to intercede to get the woman out of the line. Even then, she hung around waiting to accost the author again. The staff finally had to eject her. It was embarrassing for everybody.”

“Sure sounds like it,” Justin said. His mouth twisted in obvious distaste. “But how would they find the person he was talking to?”

“They probably could get a record of his calls and trace the number that way,” I said. “Of course, we have no idea where the person was calling from. There’s no reason to think he was here in Athena.”

“That’s true,” Justin said.

“You told all of this—everything you told me just now—to Deputy Berry?” I wanted to be sure.

“Yes, sir,” Justin said. “I told her, but she didn’t say much, just kept asking questions.”

“As long as she received the information,” I said. “That’s the key thing.” I stood up, ready to clear the table.

Justin forestalled me. “I’ll clean up, Mr. Charlie. Why don’t you go relax?”

“Thanks, I think I will.” I smiled and looked down at Diesel, who had been napping on the floor near my chair during dinner. “What about you, boy? You want to come up with me or stay here and help Justin?”

Diesel sat up and warbled at me. He stretched a moment before getting to his feet and walking over to Justin’s chair. “There’s my answer,” I said. “See you later, then.”

I left the two of them and climbed the stairs to my bedroom. I wanted to change out of my clothes and relax with a book—the history book, not Godfrey’s novel. I wasn’t in the mood for it right now.

But when I was comfortably in my pajamas, slouched into my chair, book in hand, I found I couldn’t concentrate on late antiquity. My mind kept returning to the murder.

Was there someone else who might have a motive for wanting Godfrey dead? The mysterious Mr. or Ms. X?

I needed to know more about Godfrey’s past. I needed dirt, if there was any. And I knew the right person to call. Putting my book aside, I retrieved my cell phone and settled in for a long chat.