“Improbable as it is, all other explanations are more improbable still.”
SHERLOCK HOLMES, SILVER BLAZE
AFTER NOEL, OR DONALD, WALKED OUT, I stood in Linda Glissan’s living room, in air too thick to breathe.
“Why didn’t he contact Jack and me?” Linda asked, hands on her face. “Why didn’t he stay with us? Why did he pretend?”
I walked around the living room, stepped into the kitchen and back out.
“What are you doing?”
“Walk me through it, Linda. That night you overheard Jack and Noel, when Jack was talking about killing the professor. You came to the kitchen to make tea?”
“Yes.”
“Was that unusual?”
“I do it every night. I turn off the TV at ten and make my chamomile tea to help me sleep. I take it to the bedroom.”
“So Jack would know you’d be coming to the kitchen a little after ten.”
“I suppose.”
“Boil water on the stove?”
“Microwave.” She pointed to it at the end of the kitchen, close to the living room.
“Do me a favor and make your tea like always, okay?”
“I don’t want tea.”
“I’ll drink it. Humor me.”
She went to the cupboard, took out a mug, opened the fridge and poured water from a Brita pitcher, then put the mug in the microwave. She pressed three buttons, making three loud beeps. While the microwave heated the water, she opened the cupboard and grabbed a tea bag. I hoped chamomile wasn’t like Earl Grey.
“Come here,” I said, turning the corner from the kitchen to the living room.
I pointed to the recliner ten feet away, couch on one side, glider on the other. “That’s Jack’s favorite chair, the recliner?”
She nodded.
“Wouldn’t they have to be raising their voices for you to hear them in the kitchen? I mean, knowing you were in the house, wouldn’t it be strange to discuss murder in anything above a whisper?”
“They weren’t raising their voices,” Linda said. “They were sitting right here.” She pointed to the floral patterned love seat just around the corner from the kitchen, ten feet closer than the recliner.
I sat on the love seat. The microwave sounded. I followed her the five feet into the kitchen where she put in the tea bag, dipped it and stirred, and handed me the cup. I took one sip and decided that all those years I’d gone without chamomile tea were well spent. Just give me coffee, then at bedtime knock me over the head with a mallet.
I stepped back to the living room and put the tea down on the coffee table in front of the love seat.
“These two men, cops, were sitting together here in this flowered love seat instead of over there on Jack’s favorite recliner and that comfortable couch?”
“What’s your point?”
“That they sat over here for one reason—so you’d overhear them.”
“But … why?”
“Maybe Jack wanted to test you, to see how you’d feel about his plan to kill the professor.”
“But … why involve Noel?”
“What if they scripted their conversation so if it came to it, you’d testify that Noel had nothing to do with the murder?”
“You think Jack would deceive me like that?”
“When a man’s planning murder, is one more deception that big? He wanted to protect you and Noel both. When we were conducting interviews as partners, Jack would sometimes pretend he was angry, confused, or distracted. We’d rehearse which of us would say what and exactly when. I used to tell him he’d be a great con artist.”
“He wouldn’t con me.”
“Unless he thought it wouldn’t hurt you, maybe even help you. He knew when you came to the kitchen. He heard the beeps when you set the microwave. He knew you’d be standing there five feet from a love seat where two self-respecting men would never sit. It was rehearsed. If you stepped in and said what you did, fine. If you said nothing, fine. To Jack, your silence would be permission. If you opposed the plan, Jack could change his mind if he wanted to. No downside.”
“You really think …?”
“I need to know Donald’s last name.”
“I can’t tell you. I promised Jack I never would.”
“Police academy runs a background check.”
“He had a perfect background. He assumed the identity of that kid who died years ago.”
“That’s what he told you? Here’s the truth—he assumed the identity of a guy who’d disappeared a few weeks before, and his body’s never been found.”
“How could he do that? People would know.”
“Donald did his homework. He found someone who looked like him, whose parents had died, who wasn’t close to relatives, had moved where no one knew him. No friends or neighbors or relatives to say, ‘That’s not him.’ Who’d know it wasn’t the real Noel Barrows? He could probably show up at a class reunion today and fake his way through it.”
She shook her head.
“Linda, at least tell me where he came from.”
“He shouldn’t have lied to me, but Noel’s a decent person, lovable and kind. I keep my promises. Lots of Donalds around. Good luck finding his last name.”
Linda ushered me out the door, and I drove home to Mulch. My dog beside me, looking up at the computer screen, I spent the evening searching the web. After testing the number of Donalds in America and randomly reading a hundred last names to Cherianne Takalo over the phone, none of which were familiar to her, I saw this was going nowhere.
On a whim I Googled the words soda, pop, and Coke. My first hit was www.popvssoda.com. Within ten minutes, I was grateful to Al Gore for inventing the Internet, and for the geeks who waste their lives stocking it with generally useless—but in this case invaluable—information.
I called Clarence and Ray to my house and, trying to appear casual, sat them on both sides of me in front of my computer.
I went to the website and clicked to the county breakdowns at www.popvssoda.com/countystats/total-county.html.
“Okay, green and yellow are where people say soda. If you ask for a soda, you’re from California, Arizona, or the Northeast—New York, Jersey, or New England. Or maybe, Missouri or Nebraska. Pop’s what you call your dad.”
“What’s all the blue?” Clarence asked.
“That’s where people call soft drinks pop. Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, most of the Midwest says pop. Everybody in Oregon and Washington calls it pop, except two small Oregon counties on the California border. But there’s not a county in Washington that favors soda over pop. Soda’s a cake ingredient. You grow up in Liberty Lake, you just say pop. Period.”
“Okay, that confirms your theory,” Ray said. “But how does it help us find which of a gazillion Donalds assumed the identity of Noel Barrows?”
“That’s where it gets good. Check this out.” I pointed to the red dots on the map. “Many Southerners, like Clarence when he was in Mississippi, call any soft drink a Coke. Now look at this—the map shows places where there’s an even split between those who call it soda and those who call it Coke.” I clicked to another page. “In Florida, 45 percent say soda, 46 percent say Coke, and less than 4 percent say pop. You’ve got a population that’s split dead-even between soda and Coke.”
“So what?” Ray asked.
“So yesterday I think back to Noel telling me how excited he was about the Miami Hurricanes playing the Florida Gators. Who gets excited about Oregon playing Oregon State? Not people in Florida, right? So I started wondering about a Northwest guy having such a passionate interest in two Florida teams. Yesterday morning, guided by this Internet map, I called a half dozen Florida police stations in areas where it’s an even split between soda and Coke.”
“I’m impressed with your research,” Ray said.
“That’s high praise coming from you. Anyway, I’m talking to Detective Gary Hunt, formerly of Tampa, now Miami-Dade County, which includes Miami and surrounding areas. Gary says he grew up calling it soda, but half the people there call every pop a Coke. Once in a while it gets confusing. If he’s at the fridge and somebody requests a Coke, sometimes he clarifies by asking “Coca-cola?”
“Like Noel did,” Clarence said.
“I figured maybe it wasn’t a needle in a haystack now, but a needle in a bale of hay. I asked him if he knew of any cases involving a young man named Donald who may have disappeared ten years ago. I said he might have been in trouble, from a rough home, and his girlfriend died in an accident. He said it didn’t ring a bell, but he’d ask around and check the records. Figured I’d never hear back from him. But last night after I came home from Linda Glissan’s, as Mulch and I were eating Polish sausages and sauerkraut, guess who calls.”
“Detective Hunt,” Clarence said.
“Turns out there was a young man named Donald Meyer. Twelve years ago he’d been a suspect in the murder of his girlfriend. He’d been cleared, but some thought he was guilty. One day he disappears. Even his own mother claimed she didn’t know where he’d gone. Since he was twenty-one and no longer a suspect, nobody searched for him.”
“So you think Donald Meyer became Noel Barrows,” Ray said. “But Noel doesn’t have a Florida accent, does he?”
“Accents can be unlearned,” I said. “Radio people and actors do it all the time. If you assume the identity of a Northwesterner, you retrain your voice.”
“But if Noel changed his name, Jack must have known.”
“He did. But he trusted Noel enough not to check him out. Or maybe he checked, but there was no arrest, no charge, no record. Just an investigation. He was cleared.”
“Why would Jack agree to this identity change?”
“Wanted to get him into the police academy, save him the hassle of the question marks from Florida. He believed his tale of abuse.”
“Was Noel’s family abusive?” Clarence asked.
“I’ll let you know. I fly this afternoon to Miami, to call on Donald Meyer’s mother.”