Later that night, Herc texted that although he’d turned in the gum wrapper for testing, as we thought, the DNA results wouldn’t be in soon enough to stop Roberts from going to Savannah. I was pretty sure Roberts wasn’t our killer, but it would’ve been nice to know for sure, even though the way Herc had obtained the sample was a bit dicey since he’d taken it from Roberts’s apartment without a warrant or permission. If Roberts had proved to be guilty, I was pretty sure the gum sample would’ve disappeared or been buried in the records and another would’ve been obtained legally.
The next morning, we went over our notes from the day before and, over coffee, updated the murder boards at my duplex.
“Thanks for handling the DNA sample without me last night,” I said. “I really needed to relax. I’m used to long days on the renos but not so much investigations anymore. How do you still keep up the pace?”
“In your subtle way are you suggesting we’re both getting too old for this job?”
“I can only speak for myself,” I replied. “If it wasn’t for the accident and the resulting damage to my body, I’m sure I’d be in better physical shape. I don’t want to slow you down, Herc, but my participation in this case may have to be limited to nine-to-five. Can you deal with that?”
“Interesting you brought this up today. I collapsed when I got home last night. And that was only around eight. My brain was still going a mile a minute, but my body was ready for shutdown. Maybe I should start thinking about retirement. At least slowing down.”
“I was talking about my own situation. Not yours. I didn’t mean you were over the hill.”
He waved it off. “Nah. I knew you were referring to your own situation. I still wish I hadn’t been the one driving that day. I came away from that accident so much better than you.”
Once again, he was blaming himself for my having to take early retirement. We’d been through this so many times over the years, I knew my responses by rote anymore. “You weren’t to blame, Herc. You know that. We both knew the risks of our jobs.”
“Yeah. I know. How many times have you told me that in the past? As many as I’ve brought up the accident. Guess I was just feeling sorry for myself again.”
Every time I mentioned being more exhausted for my age than I should be, the subject of the accident surfaced. I had to stop doing this to him. It wasn’t intentional. “Let’s talk about our day. What’s on tap?”
“I checked in with Al last night. He was still working on the prison angle but thought he’d have something today. But not right away. So instead, I suggest we follow up on those ideas you and Al bounced around yesterday. The neighbors in her building and the other business owners near her offices?”
“Okay. Let’s give those a shot while we wait to hear from Al.”
Lila had lived in a three-story twelve-plex, four condos on each floor, two side by side with a corridor down the middle. We started with the apartment next to hers. The owner was a retiree named Wendy Casper. “Can we make this quick? You caught me on my way out to pickleball. I lose my place in line when I show up late.”
“How well did you know the woman next door, Lila Halpern?” I asked.
“Not very. I’m not home very much. I’d only see her when we’d both be coming in and we’d exchange pleasantries. That’s about all. Nice woman, though a bit preoccupied.”
“Why do you say that?” Herc asked.
“I usually had to start the conversation because she’d be off on some other planet thinking about I have no idea what. Once, I asked if everything was okay, and her first response was to look offended that I’d even approached her. But then she must have realized how that looked and said something like, ‘just work things,’ dismissive-like. In the future, I kept my conversational gambits to ‘hi’ and the weather.”
“How would you rate her as a neighbor?” I asked.
“Rate her? There wasn’t anything to rate.”
“Was she noisy?”
“Heavens, no! I worried that I might be making too much noise with my wine-tasting parties and book club. But she never said anything.”
“Was she messy?” Herc asked. “You know, left things out in front of her door?”
“Oh, no. Not a thing.”
“Did you ever see her with anyone else, like guests or overnights?”
She thought about that one. “Months ago. I saw her a couple of times with this guy. Very handsome. They hardly noticed me, they were so into each other. But I haven’t seen him for some time now. Maybe that’s why she looked so down recently.”
“Down? Was that what you meant by her being preoccupied?” I asked.
“Not exactly. Sometimes she was miles away, but other times her whole face appeared sunken. Because we hadn’t developed any kind of rapport between us, I didn’t pursue what was bothering her.” She seemed to think through her last statement. “Perhaps I should have. Maybe I could have helped prevent what happened to her.”
She was seeking our absolution, which officially we couldn’t give, but she deserved something. “From what you’ve told us, what could you have told her? She didn’t seem to want your help,” I said.
She nodded. “Thank you for saying that.”
Herc gave her his card, and we moved across the hall to the next apartment and let Casper get on to her pickleball.
“Hey, Herc,” I said while we waited for the occupant to come to the door. “What is pickleball anyhow?”
“And you call yourself an investigator.”
“You don’t know either, do you?”
“Nope,” he said as the door opened.
An elderly woman in a wheelchair greeted us. “Yes? Are you here about the murder of that poor girl across the hall?”
“Yes, we are,” Herc replied. “How did you know?”
“I’m not psychic, although that would be fun. I’ve been following it on the news. I didn’t really know her, but this is the first time I’ve lived so close to a murder victim. I hope you won’t think less of me for making the most of the situation, but my life is pretty dull otherwise.”
Herc did his thing, and she invited us in.
“Would you like some coffee? I think my caregiver left me a full pot. I’m Suzanne Harper, by the way.”
“No coffee, thanks, Mrs. Harper,” Herc said for both of us.
“It’s Ms. Would one of you mind getting me a cup?”
Herc surprised me and did the honors himself.
“We’re gathering information about the victim,” I said.
She chuckled. “Good luck there. As you’ve probably discovered, the woman was a bit of a mystery. I did my best to crack that nut with very little success.”
“But you did have some?” I said, picking up on the “very little.”
“I’ve been sentenced to this chair for twenty years now. The only way I’ve survived the boredom brought on by my immobility is by taking advantage of every opportunity possible to learn about the outside world, which includes everything under the roof of this building. I’ve learned how to prop this door open by myself and listen. My ears are fine. In fact, my hearing acuity has improved considerably over the years. Out of necessity, I guess.”
“Okay, Ms. Harper,” I said. “We’re kind of in a hurry here, so cut to the chase. What did you learn about Lila?”
Her eyes widened slightly. “No-nonsense approach. I like that. I didn’t learn a lot. Hope I didn’t build this up too much. Over the last several months, there’ve been three men who’ve come to her apartment. I think one was her former boss. The second was her boyfriend; he was the most frequent visitor. And the third was her brother. I tell you this because for a person I’ve never heard raise her voice or act anything but dignified, she had words with each of them at one time or another, both inside and outside the apartment.”
“Arguments?” I wasn’t sure I’d understood her roundabout way of describing what she’d heard.
“You know? Raised voices. Then shouting. I couldn’t hear everything, especially when they’d suddenly slam through the door. After the first time when I got caught with my pants down, so to speak, I perfected an escape routine back inside my apartment before they spotted me. With the old boss it was to tell him over and over that she was not coming back to work for him. He was pleading; she was angry.”
“How did you know it was her former boss?” Herc asked as he handed her the coffee.
“Because she said, shouted, she wasn’t coming back to work for him.”
“How did they leave it?” I asked.
“He finally stomped off but not before saying she’d be sorry. He sounded threatening.”
Duly noted, especially since Trapper claimed they’d parted amicably.
“What about the boyfriend?” Herc asked, moving on.
“That was sad. They’d been so lovey-dovey for months, and then something happened. I never did figure out what that was. They didn’t exactly argue, although their voices were raised. He kept pleading with her to reconsider but not like the boss had done. No, there was actual pain and hurt in his voice. Behind my door I shed a tear myself.”
At this point, I was so glad I only shared my abode with Val. I didn’t want other neighbors to know all the messy details of my life. At times, Val being privy to so much of my private life was hard enough. “And her brother? I thought they’d been close.”
“I couldn’t speak to that part. I only saw him here once and wouldn’t have known it was her brother except he said, ‘Look, Sis, leave it alone. What’s done is done. We can’t rewrite history, especially now that Dad is dead.’ I guess I remembered more of it than I thought I did.”
“Did you ever catch what he meant by ‘it’?” Herc asked, the excitement in his tone the same as mine. This was new stuff she was telling us.
She shook her head sadly. “No, unless they later settled things between them away from her apartment. If they didn’t, now they never will. Since he mentioned their dad, I just assumed it had something to do with him.”
“Do you remember when that argument took place?” I asked.
“Obviously after the father had passed, whenever that was.”
We’d gotten a lot from her, but I had to ask one final question just to be sure. “Anything else to add?”
“I don’t want to give the impression that she was an argumentative person. Everything else I knew about her told me she was decent. She just kept to herself.”
To her disappointment, we wrapped our interview. “Are you sure you don’t want a cup of coffee to get you through the rest of the morning?” she asked.
“We wish we could, but we have several more people to see yet today,” I told her gently.
“You probably won’t find anyone else home in this building until tonight. Wendy across the hall and I are about the only stay-at-homes. Everyone else works outside the home.”
“Thanks for the tip,” Herc said. “We believe you, but just to be sure, we’ll check out the other condos. Otherwise, we may be back later.”
She was right about the rest of the tenants being gone. I was tempted to stop by and tell her as much, but we finished on the ground floor and didn’t want to go back to third.
“What did you gather from all that?” Herc asked once we were in the car.
“Scott Sheridan’s story was right on. Trapper lied about their getting along fine. But it was the brother’s run-in with her that made my heart beat faster. We knew things hadn’t been good between them near the end, but we hadn’t known about this flare-up at her home. Kyle Halpern hadn’t volunteered that information, and since Vicki Halpern hadn’t brought it up, she might not have known about it.”
“Good calls. Time to visit the brother again?” Herc asked.
“I’d prefer we check out the prison first. Maybe we can find out there what they were arguing about.”
He pulled the car over and texted Al. Within seconds, he received a response. Al had some background info for us as well as contact info at the prison, but he wanted us to stop by and see him first.
Though we turned down Ms. Harper’s offer of coffee, we stopped on the way to the station to caffeinate ourselves.
Recharged, we were both in a hopeful mood as we entered the building.