After she left Marcella Williams, Dru Perry went directly to the Star-Ledger offices to write her story about the homicide on Holland Road. She then cleared it with her editor, Ken Sharkey, that she would work at home in the morning to put together a feature story on Georgette Grove for the weekend edition of the newspaper.
That was why, with a mug of coffee in her hand, and still dressed in her pajamas and robe, she was at her desk at home on Friday morning, watching local Channel 12, on which the news anchor was interviewing Grove’s cousin, Thomas Madison, who had come from Pennsylvania when he received the news of Georgette’s death. Madison, a soft-spoken man in his early fifties, expressed his family’s grief at their loss and his outrage at her coldblooded murder. He announced the funeral arrangements he had made—Georgette would be cremated when her body was released by the coroner, and her ashes placed in the family plot in Morris County Cemetery. A memorial service would be held at 10 A.M. on Monday at Hilltop Presbyterian, the church she had attended all her life.
A memorial service so soon, Dru thought. That says to me cousin Thomas just wants to get things over with and go back home. As she pressed the remote button and snapped off the television, she decided to attend the service.
She turned on her computer and began to search the Internet for references to Georgette Grove. What she loved about the Internet was that when she combed it for research, she often stumbled across valuable information that she had not expected to find.
“Pay dirt,” she said aloud an hour later, as she came across a school picture of Georgette Grove and Henry Paley when they were seniors in Mend-ham High. The photo caption said that they each had won a long distance race in the annual county competition. They were holding their trophies. Henry’s skinny arm was around Georgette, and while she smiled directly into the camera, his fatuous smile was only for her.
Boy, he looks lovesick, Dru thought—he must have been sweet on Georgette even then.
She decided to try to find more information on Henry Paley. The pertinent facts that turned up were that he had worked as a real estate agent after college, married Constance Liller at age twenty-five, and joined the newly formed Grove Real Estate Agency when he was forty. An obituary notice showed that Constance Liller Paley had been dead for six years.
Then, if one could believe Marcella Williams, he tried to romance Georgette again, Dru mused. But she had wanted no part of it, and lately they had been quarreling because he wanted to cash out his interest in the business and the Route 24 property. I don’t see Henry as a murderer, she thought, but love and money are the two main reasons people kill or get killed. Interesting.
She leaned back in her creaking desk chair and looked up at the ceiling. When they had talked yesterday, did Henry Paley talk about his whereabouts when Georgette was killed? I don’t think so, she decided. Her shoulder bag was on the floor beside her desk. Dru fished in it, pulled out her notebook, and jotted down the questions and facts that were jumping into her mind.
Where was Henry Paley the morning of the murder? Did he go to the office at the usual time or did he have any appointments with clients? Lock-boxes have a computerized record. It should show how often Henry visited Holland Road. Was he aware of the paint cans in that storage closet? He wanted the agency to close. Would he deliberately sabotage the Old Mill property to embarrass Georgette, or to kill the sale to the Nolans?
Dru closed her notebook, dropped it in her bag, and switched back to researching Georgette Grove on the Internet. In the next two hours she was able to form a clear picture of an independent woman who, judging from her many awards, was not only community minded but a dynamic force in preserving the quality of life, as she saw it, in Mendham.
Lots of people who applied for variances to the zoning board must have wanted to strangle her, Dru thought, as she came upon reference after reference to Georgette Grove eloquently and successfully arguing against loosening or bending the existing zoning guidelines.
Or maybe one of them wanted to shoot her, she amended. The record showed that Georgette had stepped on a lot of toes, especially during the last few years, but maybe her pro-community actions had affected nobody more directly than Henry Paley. She picked up the phone and dialed the agency, half-expecting it to be closed.
Henry Paley answered her call.
“Henry, I’m so glad to reach you. I didn’t know if you’d open the agency today. I’m working on the article I’m writing about Georgette, and I was thinking how nice it would be to include some of those wonderful pictures in your scrapbook. I’d like to drive over and borrow your scrapbook, or at least make a copy of some of the pictures.”
After some encouragement, Paley reluctantly agreed to allow her to photograph the pages. “I don’t want the book to leave the office,” he said, “and I don’t want anything taken out of it.”
“Henry, I want you to stand beside me when I’m doing it. Thanks very much. I’ll see you around noon. I won’t take too much of your time.”
When she replaced the receiver, Dru stood up and pushed back her bangs. Got to get them cut, she thought. I’m starting to look like a sheepdog. She went down the hallway to her bedroom and began to dress. As she did, a question came to mind, an intuitive question that was partly hunch, the kind that made her a good investigative reporter. Does Henry still run or jog, and, if so, how would that fact fit into this whole scenario?
It was something else to check out.