eighteen

“Olive oil?” Ms. Washburn asked.

She had just driven her Kia Spectra into the driveway of the house I now shared with both of my parents. Ms. Washburn had declined to join us for dinner, largely I believed because it had been a long day and she knew I would probably be talking about Ms. Fontaine’s question until I could put the pieces of the puzzle together in my head. That was a metaphor. There were no pieces of a puzzle in my head. I assume you knew that.

“I believe olive oil might be the key to discovering where Brett Fontaine was actually killed,” I explained. “There were photographs of the scene on Detective Monroe’s desk which he did not attempt to conceal from us.”

“I saw them,” Ms. Washburn said. The car was still running but she had safely placed it in the Park gear and engaged the parking brake. We were not in danger of moving. “They were pretty gruesome, but I didn’t get any connection to olive oil out of them.”

“There was more blood on the pavement than there should have been,” I pointed out. “The medical examiner concluded Mr. Fontaine had been beaten to death somewhere other than the sidewalk on High Street. That meant he was probably not bleeding at all when his body was arranged there. The consistency of the blood on the pavement was wrong.”

“Wrong?” Ms. Washburn bit her lower lip, thinking. “You believe it wasn’t blood at all? They used something that looked like blood? Wouldn’t the ME have figured that out immediately.”

I nodded. “That is why I believe that there was blood on the sidewalk. But not as much as there would have been if Brett Fontaine had been killed there. I think the killer or killers collected some of his blood—so it could properly be identified as his when his body was found—and mixed it with something to make it appear to have more volume than it actually contained.”

It took Ms. Washburn a few moments—six seconds—to absorb the information I’d given her. “And you think what they mixed it with was olive oil? Why?”

“I don’t think it was pure olive oil; that would have been too easy to spot and would not have looked authentic,” I said. “But there was a spot very near Mr. Fontaine’s right hand where the pool of liquid took on an appearance very much like that of consumer olive oil. I think it had started to separate from the solution, or had not been mixed into it adequately.”

“So if we find olive oil, we’ll find the place where Brett Fontaine was killed?” Ms. Washburn looked perplexed. “You think somebody beat him to death with a tire iron in the cooking oil aisle of a supermarket?”

“I most certainly do not. I believe there was a somewhat secluded alternative location nearby. Tomorrow, I propose we retrace your route from that day and see if there are any likely venues.”

Ms. Washburn pondered that. “Okay. But I also want to go talk to Virginia Fontaine and maybe Brett’s mother tomorrow.”

“Then we should get started early. Can you pick me up at eight?” I reached for the car door release.

“You leave the house every day at eight, Samuel. That’s not early.”

I stopped in my motion. “But most days we do not drive directly to the route we wish to follow,” I pointed out.

“Of course.” Ms. Washburn’s voice had an air of something like sadness in its tone.

I stopped and looked at her. “Ms. Washburn, is something wrong? Is there something that is troubling you?”

There was a two-second hesitation. Most people would not have noticed. “No, Samuel. I’m just tired and tomorrow is going to be a long day. I want to get home and relax.”

I was somewhat suspicious of her response but realized I had no fact-based reason to doubt her word. I opened the door and got out of the car. “Rest well, Ms. Washburn,” I said.

“You too, Samuel.”

I closed the car door and Ms. Washburn had the vehicle in motion before I had reached the flagstone path to the front door.

Once inside I found my mother preparing dinner as usual and Reuben sitting at the kitchen table watching her do so without offering to do so much as set the table. I did that without being asked but set it for two people.

My mother glanced over and frowned. “You haven’t left a place for yourself, Samuel.”

“I am not hungry, Mother. Thank you for cooking dinner for me, but I believe I won’t be eating right now.”

She stopped what she was doing at the stove and walked to me. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked.

“I am perfectly healthy,” I told her. “I simply need to think about some things and they are occupying my full attention at the moment. Food is not something very high on my list of priorities this evening.”

Mother searched my face but did not seem to find what she was looking for. She glanced at Reuben. “Is there a reason you don’t feel like eating with us?” she asked.

“None other than the one I’ve already stated. I believe I will go upstairs to my apartment and work. If I feel the need to eat later, I will come downstairs and heat up the chicken you have prepared, Mother. Thank you again.”

I turned to walk to the stairs but Reuben stood up and touched me on the arm, something I would have preferred he not do. I stopped and turned to face him mostly because I wanted him to remove his hand, and he did.

“Is it me?” he asked.

The question was nonsensical. Was what him? I had no context to formulate an answer. “I do not understand,” I said.

That should have been clear enough, but apparently it was not. “I meant, is it me?” he responded, doing nothing but repeating himself. After four seconds during which I did not respond, he added, “Am I the reason you don’t want to eat dinner?”

Everyone I knew—with the exception of Mike the taxicab driver—was behaving in some fashion I did not recognize or comprehend. My mother was being unusually harsh in her assessments, Ms. Washburn was acting distant and somehow disturbed by elements I did not notice, and now Reuben was asking me ridiculous questions.

“Of course you are not the reason I am not eating dinner now,” I told him, although it should have been obvious enough that the question would never have been asked. “I need to work and have no appetite at the moment. I can’t begin to imagine why that might be somehow your doing.” Having answered his question, I walked to the stairs and up to my attic apartment.

Work had until now been my driving force, the thing that occupied my mind almost constantly. Now it was becoming my refuge, where I could forget the strange emotional actions of the neurotypicals and immerse myself in the logic and physical reality of answering a question that dealt strictly with facts.

I began by delving deeper into the reports of Melanie Mason’s death, the only one of three I was currently researching which had no suggestion of foul play. It was the second of the three deaths, but the one that seemed to have set much of the subsequent activity in motion.

According to the one newspaper account that had been written by a reporter doing something more than regurgitating the police report, Melanie Mason had been traveling east on Route 22 in Union when another vehicle, much larger than the one she was driving, miscalculated the flow of traffic on an onramp from the westbound side of the road. Unique to highways in New Jersey, Route 22 incorporates onramps into the left lane of traffic which lead to a higher rate of collisions than on virtually any other such road in the state.

When the larger vehicle—a 2009 GMC Sierra truck—hit Melanie’s 2013 Subaru BRZ, it was traveling at approximately 17 miles per hour. Melanie’s car, however, was going considerably faster, at 62 miles per hour. Her car spun away from the truck and into the center lane, where it was hit again on the passenger’s side by a 2011 BMW 335i, traveling at a rate of approximately 54 miles per hour. That car pushed Melanie’s Subaru for 22 yards before it came to a stop.

Unlike vehicles in accidents on television or in motion pictures, real cars do not explode in flames whenever they are struck. In fact, anytime a vehicle does catch fire it is because the fuel line is ruptured and something ignites the gasoline underneath the damaged car. Unfortunately for Melanie Mason, that was the case in this accident.

Her body had been so badly burned, according to the written account in the Courier-News, that identification could not be made even with dental records. Instead shreds of clothing and a partially melted wedding band were used.

There had been a funeral, as Virginia Fontaine had told Ms. Washburn and me, but all that had been buried was a small urn with some of Melanie’s ashes and her engagement ring, which she had not been wearing at the time of the accident. The melted wedding band was kept by Leon Rabinski.

I decided to seek out a photograph of Melanie Mason. Because the picture Virginia Fontaine had shown us was of her husband getting into an automobile with an open passenger door and no visible person on that side of the car. I had never seen her face. A quick Google search—the simplest kind of internet research—would provide that view, although I knew facial features were not something especially enlightening to me.

Unfortunately, it quickly became obvious that Melanie Mason was not an uncommon name. Even when I added the middle name I’d found in the obituaries (Samantha), the field of photographs was not narrowed by much. I would have to ask Peter Belson or Anthony Deane if either of them had a photograph, vintage or otherwise.

In the meantime I decided to sift through the few hard copy documents I had on my desk. I had brought any paper articles I had in the Questions Answered office home because I knew I would be working on this question tonight, and I had printed out a few at home in previous evening sessions.

There was precious little of note in the small stack to my right hand side. A copy of the incorporation form for Fontaine and Fontaine showed nothing I did not already know. The medical examiner’s report on William Klein’s death reported a finding of considerable blunt trauma consistent with a fall from the height of the fire escape and did not suggest foul play. Anthony Deane’s birth certificate proved only that he had been born twenty-nine years earlier and that his parents were Estella Llewellyn Deane and Peter Deane of Denville, New Jersey. That information seemed to have no relevance to the question at hand.

When I lifted that sheet, however, I found something I had not expected. A single sheet of paper, smaller than the standard copy size I use in my printer, folded in half vertically and a light green shade, had been inserted into the pile. I did not recognize it and had no idea how it had been included in my work stack. Before touching it I put on a pair of latex gloves from a box I keep in my closet to avoid contaminating the paper if it turned out to be evidence in a criminal matter like the death of William Klein or Brett Fontaine.

Using a pair of tweezers from my desk drawer I carefully examined the paper. Because it was folded with nothing written on what was now its “front,” there was little information. There was no watermark or random ink blots on the outside of the sheet. The only data, if there were any at all, would be found by unfolding the prepared message. I hoped there would be some writing inside.

The tweezers might make an indentation if I closed them firmly enough to open the sheet so I relied on my fingers in the gloves to do so. And I was rewarded with a handwritten note on the inside of the green paper.

It read: Meet me at the Hillsdale Cemetery in Scotch Plains at nine thirty tonight. MM.

MM? Out loud I whispered, “Melanie Mason?”