Deadly Places: A Mapleton Mystery Novella (4 page)

Pondering his red folder mystery, Ed drove home, his anticipation—and something else—rising, the closer he got to his house. Lights were on in the boys’ bedrooms. Doing homework, he assumed, although in reality, all it meant was the lights were on. By now, they might be downstairs watching television.

Inside, Buster trotted over in greeting. Ed ruffled his fur. “Someone’s glad to see me.” Ed paused in the kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine, noting the level in the bottle was the same as when he’d left. Maybe his worries were for nothing. He poured a second glass.

The boys
were
watching television. Jeremy glanced up. “Hi, Dad.”

“Homework done?” Ed asked.

Mitch rolled his eyes, a perfect replication of his mother. “Duh, Dad. No TV until homework’s done. We’re watching TV. What do you think? Aren’t you a detective?”

“First, Mapleton doesn’t have detectives. Second, your tone is bordering on an inappropriate way to talk to your father. Third, where’s your mom?”

Mitch ducked his head.

“In the study,” Jeremy said.

Ed wandered down the hall to the study and bumped the closed door with an elbow, careful not to spill the wine. “Honey, I’m home,” he said in his best Ricky Ricardo imitation. When she didn’t answer, he shifted the glasses to one hand and let himself in.

Mary Ellen sat at the desk, staring intently at her computer, moving the mouse, clicking keys, apparently oblivious to his presence.

“Honey?” he said again. “I’m home. And it’s not even nine.”

She glanced over her shoulder. He set her wine on the desk. “Am I interrupting?” he asked.

“Sorry. Last minute rush job.”

“You know, you’re allowed to tell clients they need to give you a reasonable advance notice before they want their websites updated.”

She shrugged. “He called right after you left, and I didn’t have anything else to do.” Her tone suggested she didn’t think he’d be home when he’d said he would.

“Think you’ll be done by the time the boys go to bed?”

“I should be. I need to upload a couple more images, check the links, and that should be it.”

He leaned over her shoulder, enjoying her “Mary Ellen” scent. “You do charge more for these
drop everything and fix this now
clients, don’t you?”

“Sometimes. Depends on the job. This one’s for Father McMahan, and I’m not charging him anything. It’s for the church website.” She pushed the mouse aside. “Have you considered a website for Mapleton? I could give the city a good price.”

“I’m not sure. It might push the nepotism button.”

“Well, there aren’t very many web designers based in Mapleton. I do have an insider’s view of the city.”

“I’ll think about it. Might be something worth mentioning to the mayor. Meanwhile, I’ll hang with the boys.”

Mitch and Jeremy were sprawled across the couch, so Ed sat in his easy chair and sipped his wine. The television was tuned to a police investigation drama, and Ed cringed at how much they got wrong. “You do know it’s not like that,” he said to the boys.

“C’mon, Dad. It’s
television
. We know it’s not real,” Mitch said.

“You figured out the bad guy yet?” Ed asked.

Mitch snorted. “Yeah, in about ten minutes. It’s always someone who shows up in the beginning, then the cops say he couldn’t have done it, and you don’t see him again until it’s almost over, and they nail him. But we’re going to wait to the end to make sure.”

“What’s it really like, finding the bad guy?” Jeremy asked.

“A lot of work, asking a lot of people a lot of questions, and figuring out what they’re trying not to tell you,” Ed said. “Most of the bad guys are lying, so it’s a lot of sorting out the important lies from the ones that don’t matter.”

Mary Ellen joined them a few minutes later, and they all commented on everything from the appropriateness of the women’s attire, to how the crime scene techs really worked, to whether or not a cop would be allowed to do the things they were doing. Ed savored a rare moment of
family
, not just the four of them in the same room.

Later, Mary Ellen tucked alongside him in bed, breathing evenly, Ed got the feeling he’d rounded a corner into an old, familiar neighborhood he hadn’t been aware he’d left. He kissed the top of Mary Ellen’s head and drifted into sleep.

He woke early, refreshed and wide awake. But instead of rushing to his laptop, or his phone, he crept downstairs and made the coffee. On a whim, he started preparing his Sunday morning pancakes. So what if it was Tuesday?

Mary Ellen came down a short time later, wrapped in her pale blue fleece robe. Funny how sexy it looked on her this morning. She helped herself to coffee and raised her brows in question.

Ed waggled his brows in response. Did she think he looked sexy in his sweats? Did the gray at his temples add to his appeal? Instinctively, he sucked in his gut. Not that he wasn’t fit, but it had been a few years since he’d seen the big 4-0. “What can I say? I had this sudden urge for pancakes.”

Her expression said she remembered the first time they’d spent the night together, and he’d tried to impress her with his culinary skills by fixing breakfast the next morning.

She leaned over and speared a cake, taking a bite. She chewed, swallowed, and smiled. “You’ve come a long way.”

Jeremy, their morning son, swept into the kitchen fully dressed, hair combed, ready to face his day. “Wow. Pancakes? On a Tuesday?”

“Set the table,” Mary Ellen said. “And then get your brother. We’ll eat together this morning.”

After a brief interlude of sibling shouting, a pajama-clad Mitch stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “Why did I have to get—? Pancakes? On Tuesday?”

He flopped into his chair, his gaze alternating between Ed and Mary Ellen, the amused expression on the boy’s face telling Ed he was going to have to give him
The Talk
pretty damn soon. How had they grown up so fast?

Ed arrived at his office, acting like there was nothing unusual or wrong about rolling in after eight. Despite his internal argument that it wouldn’t make a difference if he arrived at six-fifteen or eight-fifteen, the anxiety he’d missed something important bounced around his belly. Laurie, who had a key to his office, had left the night reports in his inbox. No red folder this time. Rather than invite any potential questions as to why he was later than usual, Ed sat behind his desk and brought himself up to speed with what had gone down the night before.

Bad choice of words, he thought, as heat rose to his face and a smile played along his lips.

No bear sightings, nor any reports of anything attributable to a bear doing bear stuff in Mapleton. Maybe Miss Menard’s visitor had moved on. After setting the reports aside to be filed, Ed opened his email.

When he saw Detective Rosen’s name in the list, Ed reminded himself his query to the detective was strictly for information-gathering, and—he checked the time stamp—getting here at five in the morning wouldn’t have made a difference. To prove it to himself, Ed bypassed the message and decided that today, he’d open them in the order they’d arrived.

Which meant the one from the mayor was going to wait its turn as well. After all, when the man wanted something he considered important, he called.

Ed reflected on his options as he went through the messages—most of these did little more than eat up his time, and could be fielded by Laurie. When he’d come aboard, she’d said she took care of routine correspondence for Gordon, but Ed had wanted a better feel for all things Chief Stuff, and had been dealing with the same general questions from citizens, requests for interviews, and complaints. Laurie was undoubtedly better at drafting responses than he was.

He admitted he’d been trying to do too much himself. Time to cut some strings. After all, she opened his snail mail and screened it. Since emails addressed to Ed came to his computer, he’d felt an obligation to deal with all of them directly. No more.

He called Laurie in, and they worked out a system where he’d forward the
time waster
messages to her, then she’d draft a response and shoot it back to him so he could modify it if necessary, then copy and paste it as a direct response from himself. Her smile said he’d made the right decision.

He went back to his email and opened the one from Detective Rosen.

M.E. said cause of death for Cardona was a diabetic coma. Man had a history of neglecting to monitor his insulin levels. Ruled it natural causes. However, given your query, I’ll ask whether it could have been homicide.

Ed replied with a thank you. The seeds of doubt had been planted, although Ed had no evidence the M.E. might have been too hasty in his declaration.

He opened the email from the mayor. A request for a summary of everything Ed had done for the town of Mapleton? By Friday? Ed looked at the forms the mayor wanted him to fill out.
Fifteen pages?
Compiling the information Mayor McKenna wanted would take at least a week.

This had to be some kind of game.

Ed printed out the form and summoned Laurie into his office again. After all, if this was a routine process, complex and aggravating as it might be, Gordon must have dealt with it, which meant Laurie had seen it, too.

“These are new under Mayor McKenna,” she said. “And he gave Chief Hepler three months before asking for one. Most of the numbers are already in the various departmental spreadsheets. It’s a matter of pulling them and entering them into the new format. If you’d like, I can do that part of it, and you can do the subjective parts.”

Ed sighed in relief. “Please. And, in case I haven’t told you, I couldn’t do this job without your help.”

She grinned. “Glad to be of service,
Acting
Chief.”

With that out of the way, Ed did his crossing guard duty, promising the kids a look inside a real police car
and
a chance to meet a real police dog if they came to the Trick or Treat Parade. When he returned to the station, he plunged into Chief Stuff, wondering again why he hadn’t utilized Laurie more. He’d known from day one he needed help. Gordon had told both of them to work together. Pride? Stubbornness? Control Freak? Or all three?

His mind strayed to Charlotte Strickland’s interview. Should he call the
Weekly?
Talk to Paul Lipsky, the editor? Ask him to consider all angles before approving it? Edit it judiciously? It wasn’t as if Ed wanted to shackle the press, or tell them what to write. On the other hand, there was no point in printing alarmist articles.

And then here he was, turning to Laurie again.

“They met for lunch at least a couple times a month,” she said. “As time allowed, or the need arose. Nothing regular on his schedule. I never got the impression Chief Hepler tried to get the editor to see things his way, but they both had—have—the best interests of Mapleton at heart.”

“I’ll see if Mr. Lipsky is free for lunch.” He paused. “Or is scheduling meetings something else you did for Gordon?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “Depended on how cop-related it was, or how flexible his schedule was. I’d be happy to set things up with Mr. Lipsky.”

Ed pondered that. “No, this time, let me.” Before she left, he added, “And if there are any other of these touchy-feely things Gordon did you think I should be doing, let me know.”

“Will do, Chief.”

Not
Acting
Chief. A load of tension he hadn’t been aware he’d been carrying left Ed’s shoulders.

He called Paul Lipsky, and they made arrangements to meet at Daily Bread. “I’m still learning the ins and outs,” Ed said over a pulled pork sandwich. “Even though my position is temporary, wherever possible, I want to maintain the status quo. However, I don’t want to be considered a lame duck Chief who’s sitting around waiting for Chief Hepler’s return.”

Lipsky had sounded pleased, and Ed made a mental note to be sure to let the editor know he had the same concerns as Gordon about working together with the press.

Meanwhile, time for more Chief Stuff. He looked at the form the mayor wanted. There were eight fields that required more than statistics or yes-no answers. He’d tackle two a day. The first was
What suggestions do you have for a better utilization of manpower?
Easy. More officers, more money. But he didn’t think that would fly. Nor would,
Why should it matter? I’m only filling in
. He’d never liked essay questions. He’d contemplate his answer while he checked his email.

A message from Sam Fischer saying
Call me
had his blood pumping. He grabbed the phone. His heart pounded faster with every ring.
Pick up. Pick up.

“IT. Fischer.”

Ed tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Ed Solomon calling about your email. Did you find the code name I needed?”

“Sorry, not yet. It’s not like I can install a key logger on these people’s computers. But I’m still working. Contrary to popular belief, there’s no master archive in the clouds with copies of everyone’s emails waiting to be perused.”

“So, why did you ask me to call?” Ed swallowed his disappointment. The miracles the geeks could perform went only so far.

“The email you forwarded came from a public library computer. If your suspect is smart, and she seems to be, she’s not going to be picking up her email from the same place. What I want to do is beef up things from the other end, make your victim more … enticing.”

“More of a deadbeat in need of killing,” Ed said.

“Your words, not mine. At any rate, anyone digging into your potential victim is going to see your fictitious Dennis Donovan was married three times, had two kids with wife number one, three with wife number two, and a set of twins with number three. He hasn’t paid a cent in two years, and the courts have been after him in three states.”

“Sounds good, in a nasty kind of way.”

“If your theory holds, these people are going to do a bunch of research. He has to be
real
when they find him. Next, I need to know more about your cover so I can make sure it’s rock solid
before
Paula, or whoever’s doing this, sees it.”

So far, all Ed had for his part in the charade was his own cover name, Pat Jackson, which could be either Patricia or Patrick, depending on how things played out. Plus, should anyone on Paula’s end be looking, it was a common enough name that they’d need a lot more information—which was probably going to happen
after
he filled out the questionnaire they’d sent.

Logic would say the most obvious person to want a deadbeat out of the way would be an ex-wife, but nothing forbade a concerned parent, good friend, or relative from wanting to intervene on a woman’s behalf, which opened the process to both genders. And, he told himself, the odds anyone involved in assassinating people would want a face-to-face were slim indeed.

“You think I should be an ex-wife?” Ed asked.

“Easier if you’re a friend,” Sam said. “Less likely for someone checking to stumble over reality.”

They decided Dennis Donovan’s ex-wife would have a new boyfriend, one who wanted to see the ex out of the way, and spent a few minutes developing Pat Jackson’s background history, which Sam said she’d plant in the obvious places.

“I’ll get him into the databases the PIs use, set up a Twitter account. If he’s thinking about breaking the law by hiring an assassin, it wouldn’t be unusual for him to keep a low profile in the other social media venues.”

“How skilled do you think these people are?” Ed asked. “Can they trace emails, phone calls, text messages?” The last thing he wanted was for someone to find him and threaten his family.

“I doubt anyone has access to what it would take to break your cover. They might use a private investigator, but again, if they’re trying to stay under the radar, the fewer people who can connect them to either the victims or the … buyers … the better. Your cover should stand up to standard PI checks. Ideally, rather than relying on hacking, we should find someone on the inside and get them to tell us what we want to know. But that can’t happen fast enough for your deadline.”

“Thanks.” Ed disconnected. He
’
d already done a search on Paula Brassington, who appeared to be who she said she was. A single woman, born in Cleveland, but moved around as an army brat. Got a degree in engineering from Iowa State, but never worked in the field that Ed could find. There was a gap of eight years where she was off the radar, until
Paula’s Places
showed up five years ago. No criminal record, no wants, no warrants. No traffic violations, either. Not even a parking ticket. And nothing to indicate she had any motivation to do away with deadbeat dads.

If she was breaking the law with her Deadbeat Dad scheme, odds were she was smart enough not to break any others.

Damn, Ed missed bouncing his ideas off Gordon.

Who would tell you your ideas are off the wall.

True enough. So far, all he had was coincidences and speculation. But Ed’s gut said there was something here, and why not test his theory. Obviously, Colfax thought it was viable enough to authorize time for Sam Fischer. Now, if she could crack the code before his time expired.