An old laptop that I couldn’t throw away has a disk drive on it. The operating system is so old that it won’t allow me to download the app to play the video. I could have asked Ken to pick up a CD drive to attach to my new laptop, but I receive a better offer.
April, my youngest granddaughter, is on my lap. Jesse, Erin’s middle daughter, is drawing dinosaurs in a coloring book next to me, and her oldest, Caleb, is in the attic with Ken and my son-in-law, Darren. We don’t ask, but they are doing something with power tools. Erin has played the footage through at various speeds on her screaming fast machine, using the same app the FBI uses, but not until she had scanned the disc for viruses and malware. Wouldn’t it be fun if the Stillmans gave us something that captures every keystroke, turns the camera and microphones on and off, or erases all the data on the machine and sends the virus off to the FBI’s server firewalls? Erin said that to me before I could do anything really stupid. My words, not hers. I won’t be firing up that old laptop again. It’s going into the town dump on Monday.
“It’s a black Honda Accord, about ten years old, give or take a few years,” she tells me.
“Is that good?” I ask.
“No, and yes. That particular model took turns with Toyota’s Corolla being the most popular car sold at the time in America.”
“That doesn’t help us. What’s the good news?” I ask.
“It narrows down the field of people who know Jake or Brian or have business with them.”
“I’ll keep my eyes peeled, Watson,” I tell her. We take turns playing Dr. Watson and the smart-ass he shared rooms with on Baker Street.
“The car enters slowly at two forty-four, stays for about fifteen minutes, and exits quickly. We never see the driver.” She marks the timeline on my chalkboard. Thank goodness I didn’t erase the first one. Two murders with two timelines. In for a penny, in for a pound. “How long before your father and I show up?” I ask.
“The Accord departs at two fifty-eight, and you and daddy arrive at four-fifteen.”
“Hold on, Honey,” I tell her. I swing April onto my hip, and we go up to the attic.
“Caleb is learning how to use a power sander,” I tell her upon my return. I hand her Ken’s phone, and she pulls up the voice message. She notes the time of the call as 2:19 p.m. She sends the message to her phone and then emails it from her phone to her laptop and places it in the Dawson folder.
“I’d love to get his cellphone records,” she says.
“I could circle back with Candace to see if Jake and Brian expensed their cellphones through the business.”
“Earlier, you leave at two-eleven on foot, and eight minutes later he’s leaving you a message on Dad’s phone saying that he forgot to tell you something.” She adds this to the timeline with notations.
“Makes sense. He had a few minutes to think about what we talked about, and since he didn’t know how to reach me, he had to get Ken’s number and then left him a message.”
“But it’s the way he said it, Mom.”
We listen again.
“You’re right, Erin. He knows he’s leaving a message on my husband’s business cell phone.”
“He’s referring to a private conversation he had with you that Daddy wouldn’t know anything about.”
I think aloud. “Otherwise, he would have just said, ‘I forgot to tell you X, Mrs. Strong.’”
“He was expecting you to call him back. Maybe there was more that he wanted to say to you once he had you on the phone.”
“Your father gave me the message as soon as he got home.”
“You tried calling him a little after four.” She looks at my phone’s call log and notes the exact time on the timeline.”
“By that time, Brian was under the car.”
“What was he doing under the car, Mommy?” Jesse asks without looking up from the purple triceratops.
If both Erin and I showed up to ask him one question, Barney Williams would feel like he is being double-teamed. He’s leaning on his cruiser, intently listening to something on his cellphone’s tethered headphones. This rare Saturday appearance of Officer Williams is due to signal repairs on one of the town’s few traffic signals. Everybody has to treat the flashing red lights like the intersection is controlled by stop signs.
I walk around in front of him to get his attention, after calling his name several times. I can hear the country rock leaking from his ears three feet away. “Hi, Barney.”
“Hi, Mrs. Strong. What’s up?”
“It was something Mike Strohmeyer told me. He said I should talk to you. Just a quick question if you are not too busy, officer.” I smile. I can play nice when I have to.
“What is it?” His curiosity is roused by my referencing a county sheriff.
“Sharon McGrath and Jake Dawson had been dating since before high school, but Mike said that Jake might have had a side girlfriend.”
He nodded his head.
“It wouldn’t look good for Jake if Sharon found out about her at their wedding. Trying to think of a reason he’d do that to himself rather than get married,” I tell him. I can’t read his eyes or facial expression, mostly because he is wearing aviator reflector sunglasses.
“He was parked down by the river a couple of months ago. I lit him up with the headlights and the searchlight.” He pats the searchlight that he can maneuver from a swivel inside of his cruiser. “It took him a few seconds to put his pants on, and he came out of his truck and met me halfway between our vehicles. That’s when I recognized him. He was sober and scared that I would see the girl. He was straight up with me and said that it wasn’t his fiancée.”
“Yes, that’s right. It wasn’t Sharon,” I agree.
“I told him I had to make sure that his passenger was safe. I told him that guys sometimes take advantage of passed out girls or they fed them date-rape drugs.”
“Makes sense to me,” I say.
“Then from his truck, I hear her say, ‘I’m okay, Barney, we aren’t doing anything wrong.’ I look at Jake and he’s petrified that I will see who he’s with. There is something called ‘officer’s discretion.’ There are times when what’s going on is none of my business. No laws being broken. Usually, it’s underage kids drinking or doing drugs I encounter down there. He’s not drunk, and I don’t think the woman is in any kind of danger.”
“I can understand that. Some people can’t get the privacy they want when they really need it.”
“I told Jake that it would be a good idea if he left before me.”
“And?”
“He did.”
“And the girl?” There is the question that I had to wait to ask until now.
“Wasn’t one hundred percent sure who it was.”
“But you had an idea,” I proffer.
“Yeah, she tried raising her voice higher than normal, but I’ve heard it before.”
I wait. I want to ask, but he can refuse me. It is better to create the tension for him wanting to tell me.
The cherry picker with the traffic signal repairperson lowers from above the intersection. The signals are now red for the cross street and green for the main thoroughfare. We watch the traffic signals go about their normal change routines of green, yellow and red. The work site will be no longer when the worker gets out of the basket.
Barney gets the thumbs up from the worker. He can leave now. He shuffles his girth into the cruiser and rearranges his police utility belt holding all his toys. I am committed to waiting him out. His need to tell me must be greater than my curiosity. He radios into communications and waits for their acknowledgement. He sets the microphone back on the console. He presses the button to roll down his window. I move closer to his open window.
“I think someday it might come in handy for me,” he says.
“Oh?”
He looks in all his rear-view windows and leans towards me. “Vickie Scudder.”
“The mayor’s daughter?”
“Yep, she’s over eighteen, and I wasn’t about to check out how much clothing she had on. Telling the mayor what she was doing down by the river with Jake wouldn’t win me any points and if I rousted them, the mayor might take sides. I like my job, Mrs. Strong. On the other hand, I might be able to call in a favor with Vickie someday.”
“That was very smart of you, Barney,” I say truthfully.
“I didn’t tell anybody the girl’s name until now. I know that you won’t tell her I told you.”
“It’s our secret. The death by suicide angle makes more sense if Jake was afraid that Vickie was to make a scene at the church.”
The I-told-you-so look on his face doesn’t need further explanation.
I continue. “I have one last thing to do before stopping poking around on this case, Barney. Would you have a problem if I talked to Becky Steele? She might have more to say about Jake. She was there that night with Brian.”
“I don’t see any harm in that, Mrs. Strong, if it helps you satisfy yourself.”
“Thanks, Barney.”
The utility truck and his cruiser ease away. Once out of sight, Erin comes up to me. “What did our friendly constable have to say, Mom?”
“He drove down by the river and spotted a truck parked at night. Jake came out, pulling up his pants and said that he didn’t want Barney to see who he was with.” We walk in the other direction towards home.
“I take it that it wasn’t Sharon.”
“He didn’t see the woman Jake was with, but he thinks by her voice that she is the Mayor’s youngest, Vickie.”
“Oh my. The plot thickens.”
“He said that she tried disguising her voice and said she was all right. He chose not to pursue it, as nothing good would come out of it if she decided to tell her father that the cop was harassing her. Barney thinks that I am buying into the official cause of death ruling. Not sure what he and Shafer are finding out about the Stillman twins. I didn’t want to push my luck. He understood that I wasn’t interested in butting heads with him. He didn’t have a problem with me talking to Becky Steele about the night Jake died.”
“It’s better to look like you are not pursuing the deaths,” she tells me.
“Healthier too,” I reply.
“Speaking of healthier, what are you planning for dinner tomorrow night?”
“The usual Sunday night fare. Yankee pot roast, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, and a cobbler with ice cream.”
“You will get no complaints from my bunch,” she says.
“Can you ask your brother to join us? When was the last time he saw his nieces and nephew?”
“A couple of weeks ago. He stops by all the time,” Erin tells me.
It’s a little disarming that he finds the time to be a doting uncle. “Well, I haven’t seen my baby boy since the Fourth of July fireworks celebration. Please ask him. I don’t want to nag him,” I say.
We get home, and Darren has my adorable grandchildren belted into their car seats. I kiss each one goodbye, and Ken and I wave goodbye to them. Then I fill him in on Barney’s revelation without mentioning the mayor’s daughter. I tell him that I have a couple more interviews to finish on the auto body owners’ deaths over the weekend. I want him to think that I am coasting to the finish line. Part of it is true, part is for show. I don’t want to alarm him further and am trying to fly below the radar; a quote my father is fond of saying.