Black Princess Mystery (21 page)

“But,”
said Tasheka, “you have to question the placement of the weapon. If Matt killed
Father Tim, it must have been something he thought of for some time. There was
no recent confrontation between them or everybody would have been talking about
it. If you suspect him, there must have been, at least in your mind, something
resembling a motive. So, if he thought about it for days or weeks, he would
have formulated a plan for proper disposal. It would not have been a
thoughtless, rash move. Behind his service station, for instance, there’s a
scrap yard with a hundred cars in it. Matt’s a genius in mechanics. He could
have cut a golf club up into little pieces and shoved them into exhaust pipes
or radiators, or he could have thrown the club into the huge scrap heap at the
back, or even put it in one of those cars that was hauled away. I saw the
flatbed truck there the morning after the murder. It had six or seven cars on
it. If Matt did the killing, he could have put the club inside one of those
cars and it would have gone through the crusher. No one would have ever found
it.”

“There’s a
huge fence around the yard,” Thorston retorted, “and a gate secured with a
padlock. If we found the club in his scrap yard or in one of those cars, it
would have tied him to it without question.”

“And
finding the murder weapon in his back yard, not twenty yards from his door,
doesn’t tie him to it?”

“Yes,
obviously it does,” Thorston admitted, looking intrigued. “It focuses light on
him, at least.”

Tasheka
shook her head. “I still don’t buy it. The scrap heap at the back of his yard
is about twenty feet high and forty feet across. I’ll bet it weighs twenty tons
or more. Are you telling me the police department has the time and energy to
sift through every piece of metal in that heap thinking that perhaps Matt
scooped up a pile, threw the golf club into it, then covered it over? Are you
telling me the police department would have paid someone to systemically
dismantle a hundred discarded cars and trucks looking for a golf club that may
have been cut into little pieces or might not even be there in the first place?
Are you telling me the police would have tracked down the cars he sent to the
crusher and somehow torn them apart looking for a golf club that might be
inside one of them?”

“Maybe.”

“But that brings
us back to the beginning,” Tasheka continued. “It was cold during the murder
and the killer most certainly would have been wearing gloves or mittens even if
he hadn’t committed the crime. There’s no evidence linking anyone to that golf
club. It’s essentially irrelevant.”

“You’ve
got it all figured out, don’t you?” Thorston asked with a wry smile.

Tasheka
shrugged. “This is a moot point because Matt had neither motive nor
opportunity.”

“You may
have lived here all your life, but you don’t know everything.”

“What do
you mean by that?”

“When John
Gacy murdered dozens of boys and buried them in his cellar, his neighbors had
no idea. They thought he was an outstanding member of the community. He was a
clown who entertained children, for God’s sake. Women considered Ted Bundy a
catch. Wives of serial killers have been known to think their husbands are the
finest men in the world, without realizing there are dozens of bodies buried
behind the kids’ swing set.”

“You found
out I’ve been studying serial killers, haven’t you?”

“We’ve
found out a lot of things, one being your interest in serial killers.”

“Are you
saying Matt Vendor is a serial killer, detective?”

“I didn’t
say that,” he shot back. “What I did say is that you can’t go by appearances.
Most murderers don’t walk around with neon signs on their heads broadcasting
the kind of people they really are. What you see is what people want you to
see. You don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. And you certainly don’t
know what goes on in people’s brains. Don’t be close-minded, Tasheka.”

“I’m not
close-minded!” she snapped. “But I know Matt did not kill Father Tim. He had no
reason, no opportunity, and I could tell the morning I found the body that he
had no idea it was there.”

“He did
have a motive,” Thorston said.

Tasheka
lifted her eyebrows in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

Thorston
glanced around, making sure no one was approaching. From their vantage point at
the edge of the lake, they could have seen anyone in all directions for at
least seventy-five yards.

“Matt
Vendor moved to Lakeside from Jakob’s Settlement,” Thorston said. “His father
gave him the land and house in Lakeside, but it used to be nothing more than a
hunting camp.”

“I
remember,” Tasheka said. “That was when there was nothing commercial on the
Lakeside Road. There wasn’t even a golf course then.”

“Yes,”
Thorston replied. “Before the lake became just another hazard on the golf
course, it was used for hunting waterfowl. Mr. Vendor’s father used to come
down here every fall to hunt ducks and geese. When he died, he left the camp
and two acres to Matt, along with enough money for his son to buy the Lakeside
Garage.” Thorston paused. “But he also left a piece of land to Matt’s sister,
Marissa.”

“What
piece of land?” Tasheka asked with great interest.

“Her
father, as fathers are often wont to do, loved his daughter and thought she was
a little princess. Because he had left Matt an adequate inheritance, he willed
his daughter what land remained. It was a substantial piece of real estate that
ran from Matt’s property line at the back of his house all the way to the golf
course club house. She once owned what is now the entire back half of the
eighteenth hole.”

“How do I
not know this?” Tasheka said, surprised.

“It was
all hidden in trust, but Marissa owned it. Her father knew she was not
particularly stable and didn’t want to leave her money that would be wasted in
days. He felt that as the city sprawled toward Lakeside, this land would be
worth a fortune. By then, he hoped, Marissa would be more mature and would have
settled down.”

“Sounds
reasonable,” Tasheka said.

Thorston
assumed a confident expression. “When Marissa told Father Murphy about her
inheritance, he eventually bought the land from her.” He paused. “For a
thousand dollars.”

Tasheka
rolled her eyes. “A thousand dollars?”

“In time
that land would have been worth a million,” Thorston said, rubbing his hands,
“but he ripped her off big time.”

Tasheka
smirked.

“Tell me
what you know about Matt and Marissa,” Thorston said.

“When Matt
moved here,” Tasheka began, “they had just opened the Lakeside Garage and scrap
yard. He applied for a job at the station as a mechanic and got it. Marissa
never lived here. As far as I know, she never even visited Lakeside. She left
home before her father’s death and moved to the city.”

“She had
nothing,” Thorston said, picking up the history, “except for a pretty face. At
first she got a job at a café, but then she started doing drugs. In time, she
was scraping out a life on the streets, begging for money and sleeping in
alleyways. In the city, priests were always kind to her. They fed her in soup
kitchens, clothed her, found her places to stay. She trusted any man with the
collar.”

“You’re
saying Father Tim used that good will to cheat her?”

He nodded.
“Tim Murphy, God rest his soul, had some flaws. He gained her confidence and
used it to rip her off. Once he stole her land, he created the grandiose scheme
to develop what is now the signature eighteenth hole. He used the money he got
from Henrietta’s client, Mr. Smit, to bankroll the scheme. Everything was
coming up roses until the other golf course cracked his nest egg.”

“I see,”
Tasheka said, carefully considering each word.

“Wait, the
plot thickens. You see, Matt Vendor’s father was always working and never had
time for his kids. He thought, as many of his generation did, that being a good
provider was the only standard by which fathers should be judged. The sole
relaxation he ever allowed himself was to hunt ducks and geese in the fall.
When Matt was a little boy, his father would take him to Dead Man’s Oak and sit
with him in the blind right under those very branches. Ducks would land by
their decoys on the lake only a few yards away. They spent many a cold dawn
huddled together in that blind, father and son together. To Matt, it was the
most special place in the world. So when Marissa sold it, he was livid, not at
her, because he understood that a thousand dollars must have seemed like a
fortune, but with the priest, the man who tricked her and stole his family’s
heritage. When hunting season rolled around, instead of sitting in his duck
blind beside Dead Man’s Oak, there were now dozens of golfers hacking at his
sacred piece of earth.”

“Did he
ever do anything aggressive?” Tasheka asked.

“He made
several threatening phone calls to Tim Murphy and the priest called the
police.”

“Hmm,”
Tasheka mumbled.

“What?”

“Are you
saying that Father Tim called the police to complain about Mike Power, Jake
Thompson, Henrietta Gable, and Matt Vendor?”

“Yes, he
did,” Thorston assured her. “And after little talks, the trouble fizzled out in
every case.”

“I see,”
Tasheka said.

“Marissa
has had a hard life. She went from being a street urchin to a new recruit for a
downtown pimp. She started turning tricks and shooting heroin. She was also
doing crank, too. Somehow, some way, she emerged through it. Her health is not
good, though, and her body has been ravaged by years of abuse.”

“How did
Father Tim meet her?”

“He was
working on a project to keep youths away from drugs and she was hanging around
with one of the guys in the group. A police officer mentioned her name to Tim
Murphy and he asked his housekeeper if she was related to Matt. Mildred had
known the Vendor family for decades, right back to when Matt’s father
originally built the camp. She told him about the land. Tim Murphy saw an
opportunity and made a point of getting to know Marissa and gaining her trust.
It was at that point that he masterminded the land grab and, eventually, the
Henderson Fund, a place where he could secretly develop his own account.”

“Then Matt
found out?”

“Right,”
Thorston said. “Once the golf course expanded and started to develop the old
hunting grounds, Matt smelled a rat. He tracked Marissa down to some crappy
joint called the
Paradise Motel
and
learned the whole story. For a while he basically disowned her, but lately he
had something of an epiphany and sought her out. She was working the uptown
streets in the nastiest section of the city and he felt sorry for her. He
threatened to cut the pimp’s arms off if he made trouble, and then brought
Marissa home to Lakeside. He’s been taking care of her ever since.”

“That
hardly sounds the behavior of a killer.”

“But he
was really mad, Tasheka. He made threatening calls to the priest. Murphy was
patient at first, but then he got angry and threatened to call the police.”

“What did
Matt do?” Tasheka asked, fascinated by the revelations.

“He called
Murphy and told him he was going to bash his head in. That’s when the force got
involved. Everything was swept under the rug at the priest’s request, although
Matt was informed he was now on file. Things calmed down until recently.”

“Until
recently?”

“The
priest walked over to Matt Vendor’s house two days before the murder.
Apparently, he told Mildred it was an unrelated conflict, but things got out of
hand. There was some pushing and shoving.” Thorston paused. “Tim Murphy,
according to his own accounts, pointed his finger at Mr. Vendor’s face and
warned him to back off. Being right-handed, he must have been using his right
hand.”

“And?”
Tasheka asked.

“According
to the police report,” Thorston said, “Matt Vendor grabbed Murphy by the throat
and threatened to kill him.”

“What did
he say exactly?”

Thorston
held up both hands, curling his middle and index fingers in the sign of
quotation marks. “He said, and I took this directly from the report, ‘Don’t
stick your finger in my face, you fucking piece of shit, or I’ll cut your
goddamned arm off!’”

“That
would constitute a threat,” Tasheka conceded.

“That’s
the understatement of the year. But what makes this more interesting is that
Murphy, true to his Irish blood, forgot his vows for a moment and slapped Mr.
Vendor across the chest. At that point, either because he regained his
composure or because he realized discretion was the better part of valor,
Murphy turned tail and ran out of there before he got his ass kicked.”

“Not
good.”

“Not good
at all,” Thorston agreed. “Apparently Matt Vendor is no hot head, but he is a
pressure cooker. He doesn’t get mad often, but watch out when he does. In his
youth, he was charged with assault on four different occasions and once beat a
man unconscious at a night club.”