twenty-two

“He had a conversation with the ghost too?” My mother settled into what she calls her easy chair in our living room after we finished lunch. I saw no feature or quality that made this particular piece of furniture any less difficult than another but I have learned not to question Mother on such terms, largely because the answers to such queries are usually not as interesting as the words she uses themselves.

Ms. Washburn and I had come back to the house to eat and would have left immediately afterward, as I usually do, if not for Mother’s intense interest in the question Virginia Fontaine had asked. She had insisted on hearing all the details and then ushered us into the living room to sit down “and rest my knees,” which were not supposed to hurt anymore.

“Officer Palumbo said he had been at the gravesite himself only once before and had heard the voice of Melanie Mason speaking to him,” Ms. Washburn explained. She and I were seated on the sofa and Reuben Hoenig, wearing socks but no shoes, was scratching the sole of his left foot and listening from the overstuffed chair to Mother’s left. “He said she had told him she was at peace and that he shouldn’t worry about her. The officer said he never mentioned the conversation to anybody before today because he was afraid the other police officers would think he was crazy.”

“Why was he there in the first place?” Reuben asked. “What was he doing at this woman’s grave?”

It was a question I had asked Palumbo myself earlier in the day. “He said the case had bothered him because it was such an unlikely accident, one that should not have resulted in a flaming car and a dead woman. Palumbo told us he had gone to Melanie Mason’s funeral and had then come back to the gravesite three weeks later seeking closure. In the words he supposedly heard the ‘ghost’ speak, he said he thought he had found it.”

“So he didn’t get a note like you did,” Reuben said, still concentrating on his foot.

“No.” I saw no need to elaborate, but it did raise an interesting question: How did the person pretending to be Melanie Mason’s ghost know Officer Palumbo would be visiting at that time? Ms. Washburn and I would have to discuss that later. I found myself feeling uncomfortable discussing my work with Reuben.

Mother sat back and put her hand to her mouth in a gesture of pity or empathy. “The poor man,” she said. “I’m glad that made him feel better.”

Her sentiment made no sense. “The words he heard were lies,” I reminded her. “There is no ghost of Melanie Mason. We found the technology that had been used to carry the sound from another location to the area of the headstone. Officer Palumbo no more heard the spirit of a dead woman than I did last night.”

Mother looked especially concerned. “You didn’t tell him that, did you, Samuel?”

Ms. Washburn looked away. I did not understand why she did that.

“Of course I did,” I said to Mother. “He is an officer of the law and an investigator of crimes. Letting him think he had heard a supernatural spirit when he clearly had not would have been a disservice to him and the badge he wears.”

“Janet,” Mother said wearily.

“I couldn’t stop him, Vivian.”

“What did the officer say?” Reuben asked.

“He suggested I was lying,” I told him. “I don’t understand how he might have come to that conclusion. I never lie and I certainly couldn’t have been dishonest about the existence of a mythical supernatural creature. His suggestion was completely insensible.”

“How did that go?” my mother asked Ms. Washburn.

“About how you’d expect.”

Mother closed her eyes for a moment. “Samuel,” she said slowly, “you simply can’t go around telling people that what they believe in their hearts is foolish.”

“I don’t believe I used the word foolish,” I said. “The suggestion was something more like unrealistic.”

“Did you tell him about the speakers and the antenna?” Reuben asked me. He stopped scratching the sole of his left foot and began on the sole of his right foot. I considered suggesting a strong foot powder but did not know if such a comment might be considered inappropriate. Certainly scratching one’s foot in the company of others couldn’t be thought of as polite, but the situation had never arisen in my presence before.

“I did. Eventually I believe Officer Palumbo realized I was speaking from a position of factual evidence. He said there was nothing he could do about the false voice of Melanie Mason because the cemetery is not within his jurisdiction and neither is the accident. It still falls under the purview of the State Police after three years.”

“What could he do?” Mother said. “Because I know for a fact you didn’t walk away from that conversation without him promising to help you somehow.”

Reuben put both his feet back on the floor, which helped me focus on the conversation. “He agreed to look into sales of such sophisticated wireless transmission and reception equipment between the time Melanie Mason died and the time he believed he heard her voice at the gravesite,” I said.

Mother smiled. “I’m never not proud of you, Samuel,” she said.

It made me feel better that Mother did not seem to consider me an embarrassment, as I had thought she did a moment before. But my reading of Ms. Washburn’s mood was less positive and less definitive. I had been having great difficult predicting her reactions for two days.

“So what’s our plan now?” she asked me.

I thought it would be wise to defer to her judgment. “This has been chiefly your question to answer from the beginning,” I said. “What do you think we should do?”

Ms. Washburn did not smile broadly but it was unquestionably a more satisfied expression on her face. “I think you had a good idea when you suggested we retrace my steps the day I was tailing Brett Fontaine,” she said. “Let’s drive the route now and see if we can find a likely place he was killed before they dumped his body on High Street. Maybe we can figure out how he did it.”

“I believe that is a very good plan,” I responded.

Ms. Washburn’s face did not lose any of its pleasure when she said, “Of course you do. It was yours.”

“Olive oil,” Ms. Washburn said. “You think there was olive oil being used at the place Brett Fontaine died.”

“The evidence would certainly suggest that is the fact,” I agreed. “Detective Monroe bore out that theory.”

We were in Ms. Washburn’s Kia Spectra at Brett Fontaine’s former home, now the sole property of his wife, Virginia, in Highland Park. Ms. Washburn had said it was not worth our time to question Virginia again in the matter until we had more evidence that would pertain directly to her. She was, after all, still Monroe’s prime suspect in her husband’s murder. I usually believe it is always better to talk to each participant in the question as often as possible, but given the strange mélange of facts we had gathered so far, I agreed that Virginia did not seem to be at the center of the question (speaking metaphorically) but somewhere to one side of that point. If such an image is appropriate.

“Let’s look for places that deal in olive oil, then,” Ms Washburn said.

“Where did Mr. Fontaine go first that day?” I asked.

“He went to his office,” she said, starting the Kia Spectra’s engine. “Should I drive extra slow?”

“I don’t believe that should be necessary,” I said. “You were driving alone that day and could not possibly have noticed every building you passed. With me in the car it should be possible to analyze our surroundings in real time. Drive as you would to avoid being spotted as you followed his car.”

There was no need for a Global Positioning System device today. Ms. Washburn had driven this route before and we were traveling over territory that was not at all foreign to her. She proceeded from memory toward the building which housed the office of Fontaine and Fontaine in New Brunswick, a short drive from where we had begun.

The buildings we passed in Highland Park were first residential structures but became more commercial when we reached Raritan Avenue, the commercial center of the borough. I scanned the storefronts and occasional office buildings as we went, but the only one that might have regularly dealt in olive oil was a pizzeria just before Ms. Washburn took the car onto the Albany Street bridge, the most direct route into New Brunswick, the Middlesex County seat.

“Should we even be paying attention to buildings we just pass?” Ms. Washburn asked. “He couldn’t have been killed with several blows to the head while he was in motion in his car. It had to be when he stopped.”

“Astute reasoning,” I said. “How many times did Mr. Fontaine stop in his travels that morning before the car he had been driving headed to High Street and you discovered his body?”

Ms. Washburn, breaking with our established behavior of speaking only when the vehicle was not in motion, said, “Three times. Once at his office, then at a bodega to get a cup of coffee, and then at his first rental property on Wyckoff Street.”

I chose not to continue with her pattern and waited until we had stopped. “It is possible any of those could be the spot where he was killed, although the office seems the least likely, especially given the presence of olive oil. That would not be a typical element found in a real estate company’s headquarters. Still, we need to consider each one as we reach it, and to evaluate the areas surrounding each.”

In another three minutes Ms. Washburn pulled the car up to the curb directly across from the office of Fontaine and Fontaine Real Estate. She did violate the law by parking the Kia Spectra in front of a fire hydrant, but there were no available legal parking spaces on the street and she said she would move if fire department representatives needed to use the hydrant. “Besides,” Ms. Washburn said, “I don’t think we’ll be here very long.”

“Indeed. I believe we can continue on our route now,” I said.

“Already?”

I made a point of looking at each building on the street including the one directly to our left. “There are no likely spots for Brett Fontaine to have been assaulted here,” I said. “The buildings are very close together. Notice that there are people prominently walking on both sides of the street. This is approximately the time of day when Mr. Fontaine was killed. It is unlikely the event could have happened without anyone at least hearing something unusual. The police would probably have been notified, but Detective Monroe had no record of any such call having been made.”

Ms. Washburn put the Kia Spectra’s transmission back into the Drive gear. “So we’re looking for a spot where there would be more space between the buildings or with less foot traffic, is that it?” she asked.

“Yes, and the availability of at least some olive oil,” I answered when it was appropriate.

“The bodega would probably have olive oil,” Ms. Washburn noted.

“Agreed.”

Luckily, after a six-minute drive we found a parking spot two buildings south of the bodega where Brett Fontaine had stopped on the morning he was killed. The business, which according to the sign over its doorway was named B-B-Big Food, was a small space, contradictory to the name, horizontally three doors north of the nearest corner. It was, as are most such enterprises, crammed with products on shelves from ceiling to floor with very little space for customers to maneuver through its aisles.

Ms. Washburn turned the engine off and we walked to the doorway of B-B-Big Food. “Should I look for the olive oil right away?” she asked me. “Is that the idea here, or is there something else we are looking for?”

“The entire floorplan of the store is significant, but it will probably be best for us to divide our focus,” I answered. “You search for the spot where olive oil might be found and I will walk through the store to see what I might observe that would be significant to the question we are considering.”

“Should we go in separately? Should I wait a minute after you go in?”

“Why?”

Ms. Washburn thought for exactly one second. “Good point,” she said.

I held the door open for Ms. Washburn, as I have been taught it is what one does when a woman is entering one. This is a social construct that appears to have survived the thought—in my view, quite correct—that women are equal members of society and do not require special treatment. Customs are fluid things, rarely based on empirical data.

Once inside the store Ms. Washburn moved to the left and began scanning shelves of various products to determine where bottles or cans of olive oil might be displayed. I took the cramped route to the right of the store from the perspective of a customer entering the business and simply observed the conditions of B-B-Big Foods on what I could only assume was a typical day.

It was an unremarkable store, a neighborhood bodega meant to serve basic needs. The only fresh produce was represented by a bowl of red apples on the front counter and another of slightly overripe bananas to its right. Otherwise virtually every product in the store was in a sealed container of some sort.

There was a rather elderly man of Asian descent behind the counter, watching a small television playing a program that to my ear sounded like it was being broadcast in Mandarin. I approached him while observing the rest of the surroundings: One door behind the counter, no doubt leading to a storage area, clean if not necessarily neat shelving and floors, very little free space. The aisles were narrow and made me somewhat uncomfortable. I felt my left hand begin to move involuntarily and since the movement was slight and made me feel better, I did not check it.

“Excuse me,” I said when I reached the counter. The man did not turn down the volume on the television but he did look in my direction. He said nothing. “May I ask about your cleaning procedures?”

The elderly man looked at me with an expression I took for concern but turned out to be suspicion. “Are you from the Health Department?” he asked.

“No. Allow me to introduce myself. I am—”

“You want to buy something?” The man was glancing at the television screen but still directing most of his attention at me.

“I do not,” I said. “I am Samuel Hoenig, proprietor of—”

“If you don’t want to buy anything, why should I listen to you?”

It was a fair, if not a polite, question. “A man who purchased coffee here recently was murdered,” I said. “I am—”

“You think a guy was killed because I sold him coffee?” The man looked angry.

“I do not think that at all. I am wondering if you remember anything about the man.”

The elderly man looked again at his television and then regarded me with something resembling derision. “A guy comes in and buys a cup of coffee and I’m supposed to remember him? You know how many people come in here every day and buy coffee?”

I looked to my left but did not yet see Ms. Washburn approaching. “I have no idea,” I told the man. “But perhaps you might recognize him from this photograph.” I had saved to my iPhone a photograph of Brett Fontaine provided by Virginia. I showed it to the man, who regarded it briefly and shook his head.

“Not a regular,” he said.

“Did he buy any olive oil?” I asked.

“I just told you I didn’t recognize the guy and now you want to know about him buying olive oil?” The man shook his head. “If you don’t want to buy anything, just go, okay? I’m working.” He sat back down and paid more obvious attention to the television, whose screen was not visible to me. I did not know enough Mandarin to decipher the dialogue being spoken by the actors.

With no other interrogative techniques at my disposal, I walked back in the direction I had seen Ms. Washburn taking after we entered the store. I found her sitting on the floor of the most distant aisle to the left. She was perusing various bottles of olive oil. I did not understand the perplexed expression on her face.

“There appear to be only two brands available in this store,” I pointed out. “Is there a reason you seem to be thinking so deeply about them?”

“I’m trying to figure out what could have happened that makes sense,” Ms. Washburn responded. “Brett Fontaine walks into this store and toward this aisle. Someone comes up behind him and beats him to death with a tire iron. When he falls he knocks over a bottle of olive oil, which is in plastic, from the bottom shelf. It falls maybe three inches to the floor and breaks, getting enough olive oil on Brett that the autopsy report will show it mixing with his blood. Then the killer dresses up in Brett’s clothing and somehow carries him out of the store, blood and olive oil dripping all over the place, gets him into his car and drives him to Wyckoff Street, presumably in the trunk of the car, gets out dressed as Brett, goes to the property he owns there, does something, gets back in the car so I can see him being Brett, drives to High Street in the hope that I’ll get caught in a two-minute traffic jam, which will give him enough time to lay Brett out on the sidewalk in front of the building where Virginia Fontaine’s husband first died so I can find him. Is that about it?”

“Perhaps this is not the stop where Mr. Fontaine was murdered,” I said. “Let’s go to Wyckoff Street.”

“Help me up.”