On Friday morning, the day after Georgette Grove was murdered, Jeff MacKingsley called a meeting in his office for the team of detectives assigned to solve her homicide. Joining Paul Walsh were two veteran investigators, Mort Shelley and Angelo Ortiz. It was apparent to all three that their boss was deeply concerned.
After the barest of greetings, Jeff went straight to the point.
“The red paint used to vandalize the Nolan home came from Tannon Hardware in Mendham and was custom mixed for the Carrolls, the people who own the house on Holland Road. It shouldn’t have taken a phone call from me to Mrs. Carroll in San Diego to find that out.”
Ortiz responded, his tone defensive: “I looked into that. Rick Kling, with the Mendham police, was assigned to check out the paint stores there. The kid on duty at Tannon Hardware was new and didn’t know anything about checking records on paint sales. Sam Tannon was on a business trip until yesterday. Rick was planning to see him, but then we found the empty cans in the Holland Road house.
“We knew Tuesday afternoon that whoever vandalized the Nolan home used Benjamin Moore paint,” Jeff replied firmly. “Since Tannon Hardware is the only store in the area with the franchise to sell that brand of paint, it would seem to me that Detective Kling might have decided it was worth a phone call to Sam Tannon, wherever he was, to see if he would remember a purchase that involved mixing the Moore red color with burnt umber. I spoke to Mr. Tannon an hour ago. Of course he remembered the sale. He worked with the interior designer, mixing all the paints for the Carrolls’ home.”
“Kling realizes that he dropped the ball,” Ortiz concluded. “If we had known that the red paint was part of the overage on that redecoration, we would have been on Holland Road on Wednesday.”
The weight of what he was saying hung in the air. “That doesn’t mean we could have saved Georgette Grove’s life,” Jeff acknowledged. “She may have been the victim of a random robbery attempt, but if Detective Kling had followed through, we would have opened that storage closet and confiscated the remaining paint on Wednesday. It looked pretty stupid to acknowledge at the press conference that we couldn’t trace the source of the red paint immediately when in fact it was purchased right here in Mendham.”
“Jeff, in my opinion the importance of the paint is not when we found it, but that it was used on Little Lizzie’s Place. I think that the murder weapon was centered on the splash of paint to emphasize that fact, which brings us back to Celia Nolan, a lady I think needs a whole lot of investigating.” Paul Walsh’s dry tone bordered on insolence.
“That gun was deliberately placed on the red paint,” Jeff shot back. “That was obvious.” He paused. His voice more emphatic, he said, “I do not agree with your theory that Mrs. Nolan is concealing something. I think the woman has had one shock after another in the past three days, and naturally she is nervous and distressed. Clyde Earley was in the squad car that rushed to the house after she dialed 911, and he said that she couldn’t have faked the state of shock she was in. She couldn’t even speak until she got to the hospital.”
“We have her fingerprints on that picture she found in the barn and gave to you. I want to run them through the database file,” Walsh said stubbornly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that lady has a past she might not want us to find out about.”
“Go ahead,” Jeff snapped. “But if you’re going to be in charge of this investigation, I want you concentrating on finding a killer, not wasting your time on Celia Nolan.”
“Jeff, don’t you think it’s funny that she talks about her kid being at St. Joe’s?” Walsh persisted.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“She said it like someone accustomed to saying it that way. I would think that someone new to the town and to the school would call it ‘St. Joseph’s.’ I also think she was lying when she said Georgette Grove gave her directions to Holland Road. If you remember, Nolan contradicted herself when I asked her that question. First she said ‘No,’ then in a heartbeat said, ‘Yes, of course.’ She knew she had blundered. Incidentally, I checked the time she called 911 from her home. It was ten after ten.”
“Your point is . . . ?”
“My point is that according to her testimony, she went into the house on Holland Road at quarter of ten, and walked around the main floor calling Georgette’s name. That’s a big house, Jeff. Mrs. Nolan told us that she debated about going upstairs, but remembered the door in the kitchen to the lower level was open, went back to the kitchen, went downstairs, checked the doors to the patio and found them locked, then walked down the hallway, turned the corner, and found the body. She then ran back to her car, got in, and drove home.”
Paul Walsh knew he was as much as telling his boss that he had missed the salient facts of a crime scene, but he forged ahead doggedly. “I went back last night and clocked the trip between Holland and Old Mill Road. Getting to Holland, and leaving it, can be confusing. I made a wrong turn on my way to Old Mill, went back, and started again. Normal driving, by which I mean about ten over the speed limit, it took me nineteen minutes from Holland Road to Old Mill Lane. So let’s do the arithmetic.”
Paul Walsh glanced at Shelley and Ortiz, as if to confirm that they were following his reasoning. “If Celia Nolan was correct about getting to the house on Holland Road at quarter of ten, and if she had to leave that house by nine minutes of ten to drive back home without flooring the gas pedal, it means that she was in the house only four to six minutes.”
“Which is possible,” Jeff said quietly. “Fast, but possible.”
“That would also assume she drove straight as an arrow, and knew exactly when to turn on unfamiliar and confusing roads while she was in a state of severe shock.”
“I would suggest you make your point,” Jeff said grimly.
“My point is that she either got there much earlier and was waiting for Georgette, or that she has been at that house before and was sure of the roads she would take back and forth.”
“Again, your point?”
“I believe Nolan when she said she didn’t know about the real estate law that could have gotten her out of the sale. Her generous husband bought the house for her, and she wanted no part of it, but didn’t dare tell him. She somehow learned about the vandalism the kids pulled last Halloween and decided to go it one better. She got someone to mess up the house for her, arrives, and pulls the fainting act, and now she has her way out. She’s leaving the house she never wanted, and her nice new husband understands. Then somehow Georgette caught onto her act. She was carrying a picture of Celia Nolan doing her swan dive in her purse. I say she was going to show it to Nolan and tell her she wasn’t going to get away with it.”
“Then why weren’t there any fingerprints on the picture, including Georgette’s?” Ortiz asked.
“Nolan may have handled it but been afraid to take it with her in case other people had seen Georgette with it. Instead, she wiped it clean of any fingerprints and put it in Georgette’s bag.”
“You’ve missed your calling, Paul,” Jeff snapped. “You should have been a trial attorney. You sound persuasive on the surface, but it’s full of holes. Celia Nolan is a wealthy woman. She could have bought another house with a snap of her fingers, and sweet-talked her husband into going along with it. It’s obvious he’s crazy about her. Go ahead and check her prints in the database and then let’s move on. What’s happening, Mort?”
Mort Shelley pulled a notebook from his pocket. “We’re putting together a list of the people who might have had access to that house and then we’re interviewing them. People like other real estate agents who have keys to the lockbox, and people who do any kind of service, like housecleaning or landscaping. We’re investigating to see if Georgette Grove had any enemies, if she owed any money, if there’s a boyfriend in the picture. We still haven’t been able to trace the doll that was left on the porch of the Nolan house. It was expensive in its day, but my guess is it was picked up at a garage sale at some point and has probably been in someone’s attic for years.”
“How about the gun the doll was holding? It looked real enough to scare me if I was facing it,” Jeff said.
“We checked out the company that makes them. It’s not in business anymore. It got a lot of bad publicity because the gun is too realistic. The guy who owned the company destroyed all the records after seven years. That’s a dead end.”
“All right. Keep me posted.” Jeff stood up, signifying the meeting was over. As they were leaving he called out to Anna, his secretary, to hold any calls for an hour.
Ten minutes later, she buzzed him on the intercom. “Jeff, there’s a woman on the phone who claims she was in the Black Horse Tavern last night and heard Ted Cartwright threatening Georgette Grove. I knew you’d want to talk to her.”
“Put her on,” Jeff said.