Murder on the Bucket List (15 page)

Francine had tears in her eyes on the way home. She'd never done anything even remotely criminal before. Now she felt like a felon. When she pulled onto her street, she noticed another reporter, this one from Joy's beloved Channel 6, parked on the curb in front of her home. Francine was glad she could open the garage door remotely and get in the house while avoiding him.

Once inside, Francine tried to calm down but couldn't stop the shaking. She eyed the clock. She wondered if they'd make the five o'clock news in a half hour. O
ne way or another, she was pretty sure Jud would be visiting them soon.

twenty-three

Not much later Francine
received a call from Charlotte. “Jud's here,” she said. “He'd like you to come over too.”

That was fast. Jonathan isn't even back from seeing Larry's lawyer.
“Is he mad at us?”

“What do you think?”

“I'll be right there.”

If Jud had been angry when he arrived at Charlotte's, he'd mellowed by the time Francine got there. Charlotte had made a pot of tea, and the two of them were enjoying a cup in the dining room. Jud was dressed more like a beat cop, in uniform with his gun obvious. A manila pocket folder sat next to him on the round table. It was stuffed with papers.

Jud stood when she entered. He smiled and gave her a hug, just like he had when he'd hung out with her sons. Although she was fond of Jud, the change in attitude made her suspicious.

“Sit,” Charlotte said, half invitation and half order. “Can I get you some tea? It's English Breakfast.” Tea was always a safe alternative at Charlotte's house. She might drink rotgut brandy, but she stocked a good selection of loose teas ordered from a specialty house in Boston. Without waiting for her to answer, Charlotte poured it into a fancy china cup and saucer, china that was used only when she wanted to impress.

“Jud and I have been discussing strategy for solving this crime,” she said. “I think we've come to an agreement of sorts.”

Jud nodded. “I can't seem to keep you ladies away from this, so what I want to do is keep you safe.”

“Safe is good,” said Francine. “What did you have in mind?”

“First and foremost, we have to share information.” He paused to take a sip of his tea. “Isn't that right, Charlotte?”

Charlotte smiled.

Francine briefly considered that she had crossed into the
Twilight Zone
. “Meaning …?”

“Meaning he's not very happy with us searching Friederich's house without his permission,” Charlotte said.

“I admit it wasn't the brightest move, especially in retrospect, with the press showing up.” She briefly considered throwing Charlotte under the bus by saying it was all her idea, but she figured Jud had already guessed that. She took a softer tack. “You'd already searched the house, hadn't you? We didn't find anything.”

“Ah, but you
did
find something. You took a few magazines out of the house. Channel 59 put the report on their website. Charlotte held them up to hide her face.”

“As a part of our agreement, I returned them to Jud,” Charlotte said.

He tapped the manila folder to indicate he had them.

Francine was quite certain now she'd entered the
Twilight Zone
. This was a Charlotte from an alternate universe. Unless … Jud didn't know about the iPod, and she was hiding it from him.

“Was there anything significant in the magazines?”

“No smoking guns, if that's what you mean. We'd already glanced through them, especially the one at the top of the closet, but Charlotte and I have talked about the ones in the bathroom with the turned-down pages. Her reasoning is making us take a second look.”

“I think the marked pages may reveal some clues to why Friederich had the other one at the top of the closet,” Charlotte said. “It may relate to the crime.”

“Is Emily Barringer going to get in trouble?”

Jud put down his teacup. “Technically, she didn't do anything wrong. The house is listed for sale, and it wasn't a crime scene. We would have preferred it not be shown for a while, but there's nothing we could charge her with.”

“I'd feel really bad if I'd gotten her in trouble,” Charlotte told Francine.

Jud looked at the two women with seriousness. “I'm more concerned about you than Emily. As I said, I need to keep you safe. The problem is, there's been no threat against you, and I can't justify the manpower to give you a police escort everywhere you go. So I want you to court the press.”

Francine winced. “Do we have to?”

Jud, who had taken another sip of his tea, almost snorted it out. “I thought you loved the publicity.”

“Certain members of the Bridge Club do.” Francine threw a glance at Charlotte. “I'm not one of them.”

“Don't look at me. I'm not the one who's been asked to be on
The View
.”

Francine's eyes blazed. “I have no intention of doing that show.”

Jud put up a hand to stop the bickering. “I need for you to pretend you enjoy the press. Just until we have the killer in custody. After that, you can do as you like.”

Francine considered his request. She wanted to say yes, but if it went on for too long she might really end up on
The View
. “Are you close to an arrest? You sound like you might be.”

“We have a lot of circumstantial evidence at this point, but we think we're close to having a case.”

Circumstantial evidence likely pointed to one person.

“You're not close enough to having a case if you think it's Larry Jeffords,” Charlotte said.

“Why are you so certain it's not him? Francine isn't.”

“I'm not?”

“You were at the County Government Center yesterday looking into his property.”

“How did you know that? And anyway, we're out to prove Larry is being framed. I was trying to find out if anyone had accessed information about the building. He didn't have that property listed, but someone who knows a lot about Larry worked his way around the security cameras and then placed the body in his shed.”

“We knew where you'd been because an anonymous source called it in, and I checked it out. Everyone knows who you are. You can't skulk around doing detective work. Nor do we want you to.”

Jud was getting Francine's dander up. “I've known Larry for a long time,” she said. “He's not a killer.”

He rested his forearms on the table. “Really? Just how well do you think you know Larry?”

“Pretty darn well,” Charlotte said. “We've known him and Alice since they moved in thirty years ago.”

Jud looked at his watch. “If you have a half hour, I'll show you that you don't know him like you think you do.”

Francine checked her cell phone. Nothing from Jonathan, but she'd forgotten to leave a note, and now she was worried what he would think if he heard about their escapade from someone else. “Let me make a phone call to Jonathan so he knows where I am,” she said.

She made her way into the hall.

Jonathan turned out to be in the truck on the way home from the lawyer's office. He hadn't heard about the Channel 59 incident, which surprised her. “Don't believe anything you might hear,” she told him. “I'll fill you in when I get home. It'll be a half hour or so. Jud's taking us somewhere to prove we really don't know Larry.”

“Where?”

“I don't know yet.”

He sounded nervous. “Just remember, everything isn't what it looks like.” He hung up.

Francine wondered if they both didn't have a lot to talk about later.

Back in the dining area, she volunteered to drive and Charlotte accepted. After locking up the house, they walked out with Jud. He pointed to two new cars parked out front.

“There's your paparazzi, ladies,” he said, beaming. “Wave to them and make nice. They are your friends right now.”

Francine grumbled but did as she was asked. Charlotte did, too, but with more enthusiasm.

They got into the Prius and Jud got in his police car, and the parade drove over to Friederich's garage on Adams Street.

After they arrived, the press immediately set up and began taking pictures. Jud cautioned them to stay back. He gathered the women by the shop door, using them as a shield to block the reporters from being able to see what he was doing.

He unlocked the dead bolt on the door and then went to work on the numeric keypad. His fingers flew over the numbers with practiced certainty and there was a click. He opened the door. “Let's go in,” he said, leaving the press outside.

The look of delight on Charlotte's face reminded Francine that this was her first look at Friederich's garage. She stepped off the tiles in the entryway and admired the shiny garage floor. “Look how clean it is!”

“If we have time, I'll take you through the rest of the shop,” Jud said. “But not now. Now I want you to see this.”

He flipped a wall switch and the lights went on. Then, bending down to the first tile by the door, he removed it, flipped a lever, and a nine-tile section of the entryway slid back to reveal a staircase leading down.

The women drew in sharp breaths when the staircase appeared.

“Larry installed this?” Charlotte asked.

Jud started down the staircase. “
Had
it installed. Shortly after he bought the building, apparently. Larry was famous for the low-stakes poker tournaments he had here.”

He said the last line pointedly, making Francine realize where he was going. “So more than a few people knew about this.”

He nodded.

Perhaps that's what Jonathan meant when he said not everything was what it looked like.

Jud arrived at the bottom of the stairs and looked back up. “Watch your head, Francine. Charlotte, you may not want to come down. There's no handrail, and I don't want you to fall.”

“Jud, if you told me I had to jump down there onto a trampoline, do a somersault, and land on a skateboard, I'd still do it. As it is, all I need is Francine's hand. I'll be careful!”

The two women took the staircase one step at a time. Francine breathed a sigh of relief when they stood at the bottom.

The first thing she noticed was a faint smell of cigar smoke and stale beer. Jud flipped a light switch and the remainder of the basement lit up. The room was not, in the current vernacular, a man-cave. It was more like an unfinished, bare-bones poker room, with a poker table in the center and a florescent light above it. Two couches in disrepair were in a corner of the room, a small table between them.

A man was lying on one of the couches, curled up, facing the back. The women gasped when they saw him. Jud drew his gun, which scared them even more. The man looked like he could be asleep, but Francine didn't think so. With all the commotion they'd made, they would have awakened a hibernating bear.

Jud motioned them back. He cautiously approached the couch.

“How did he get here?” Charlotte whispered to Francine. “Haven't they had this place closed up?”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Hey, buddy,” Jud said. No response.

“Buddy …”

He jostled the man's shoulder. Still no response. He felt for a pulse at the man's neck. Without a word to the women he reholstered his gun, pulled out a walkie-talkie, and called 911.

twenty-four

“When was the last
time you were here, Jud?” Francine asked while they waited for emergency vehicles to arrive.

He continued to study the body and tried to keep Charlotte at bay. “Yesterday.”

“And the body wasn't here then.”

“Definitely not.”

“Then how the hell did he get down here?” Charlotte asked. She was pressed up against the wall, out of Jud's reach, trying to get a better look at the face that was buried in the couch cushions.

“I don't know!” Jud sounded very irritated.

“You know who I think that is?” she said.

“No, but I imagine you're going to tell me anyway.”

“I don't know who it is,” Francine said, trying to be kind. “You can tell me.”

“It's Jeff Kramer.”

“The reporter you were trying to get hold of ?”

She nodded. “Now we know why he's been gone for a few days. Do you know him, Jud?”

“We know all the local reporters. He normally does sports, but he covers other beats from time to time. Why were you trying to get hold of him?”

“Trying to figure out why Jake Maehler said Friederich had sabotaged his car.” Charlotte inched forward as much as she could without getting Jud any angrier. “There's no blood,” she said. “I bet he was bloodchoked just like Friederich.”

“We're going to let the coroner decide the cause of death. I'm not going to speculate at this point.”

“You know I'm right. Maybe we've got a serial killer on our hands. The blood choke could be his signature killing method.”

Jud turned and planted his hands on his hips. “You better hope this is not a serial killing. None of us wants that kind of scourge in Brownsburg.”

The vehemence with which he spoke made Charlotte recoil. “You're right, Jud. I'm sorry I said it.”

“On the other hand, it does bother me to find two deaths, days apart, by what's probably the same method.”

Francine tried to move forward, only to be stopped by Jud's forearm. “Sorry. I just wanted a closer look at his clothes. Don't they seem damp to you?”

Charlotte craned her neck for a better view. “You're right. I had totally missed that.” The disappointment in her voice was profound. “Why do you think they're damp?”

And that was when it hit Francine. She'd been doing too much of the investigating, too much of the thinking. She'd meant to protect Charlotte, but instead she was depriving her friend of the chance to solve this crime and once and for all, checking off her #1 Sixty List item. If this was going to work, Charlotte had to be empowered to solve this crime. Spinning out before her was a way everything worked out, where Charlotte solved the murder, Joy had her moment in the sun, and, for reasons she couldn't define, she just knew that the others would get something they needed too.

And it all started with eight little words. “I don't know, Charlotte. What do you think?”

Charlotte stared off into space, eyes intense, but didn't answer.

“You read all those murder mysteries,” Francine pressed. “Surely something in one of those would explain the dampness.”

Charlotte pointed toward the body. She was so excited her finger was shaking. “Yes,” she said. “It's been frozen. Or refrigerated. It's in the process of coming to room temperature, and the clothes are damp because of it. And that would mean Jeff Kramer's been dead for a while. Maybe he was even killed at the same time as Friederich.”

Jud nodded his head ever so slightly. Francine caught the movement and prodded him. “What do you think, Jud?”

“She could be right. But we won't know until the coroner tells us. I'm sorry I brought you down here. You didn't need to be exposed to this.”

“But we did need it,” Charlotte said, “for Larry's sake.”

“I guess I've proved my point. You don't know Larry as well as you thought.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” Francine said. “You can't possibly suspect Larry of killing this reporter too. How stupid would it be for a killer to leave one body in his pool shed and then drop a second body in the basement of one of his leased buildings after he's under suspicion of killing the first.”

“She's right, Jud. You'd be dealing with an idiotic murderer, and you know Larry's no idiot.”

“I didn't say he was. Nor did I say the same person did both killings. It could be a copycat murder.” He crossed his arms and stared at the body, thinking. “But, somehow, I think they are related.”

He pulled out his cell phone and began to take photos of the couches and the body.

Charlotte moved away from the wall. She motioned Francine over. “You know what's going to happen when the police get here, don't you?” she said softly.

“The same thing that happened at Alice's house when we found Friederich?”

“Exactly. Except there aren't any rooms per se, so they might whisk us off to police headquarters.”

“Great.”

“So if we're going to investigate anything, we need to do it now before any more police get here.”

Francine knew Charlotte was right. Watching Jud taking photos with his smartphone had made her think about doing the same with hers. She began snapping pictures of the room while trying to hide it from the detective.

The floor was bare concrete. Larry's one concession to civility was a big Oriental rug that the poker table sat on. The rug looked well-used, like it had been bought secondhand. Cigar stubs lay in ashtrays on the table, the source of what Francine had smelled earlier. She imagined the men sitting around the table placing their bets. She walked to the table and took photos of it. “So Jonathan smokes cigars? But he never smelled like smoke.”

Charlotte followed. “Maybe he wasn't involved. Even if he didn't smoke, it would have been on his clothes.”

Francine shook her head. “Based on something he said, I'm guessing he's been down here.”

Charlotte reached to pick up one of the ashtrays.

Jud spoke before she laid a finger on it. “Please don't touch that.”

She jerked her hand back. “I'm just thinking that there aren't that many ashtrays down here. And I'm wondering if Friederich smoked.”

Francine thought back to when they'd been through his house. “His place didn't smell like smoke. I'm curious, though, if Friederich knew about this basement. Do you know anything about that, Jud?”

He didn't respond.

“You can't possibly suspect us of killing either of these two,” Charlotte said. “So share information with us. You said you wanted our help in figuring this out.”

He nodded. “Okay, but you didn't hear this from me. Larry says it wasn't long before Friederich figured out there was a basement, and he asked how to get down there. Larry wouldn't tell him, but they did come to an arrangement. Friederich was advised when they were playing poker, but it was a private game. He could either
not
use the garage that night or work with any noise they made. Larry claims he never showed Friederich how to get in the basement, and they only had poker games once a month.”

Francine nudged Charlotte. “Bet you anything it was the same nights we played bridge.”

“Was the basement here when Larry bought the building?” Charlotte asked Jud. “And did Larry say why he built the staircase?”

“As far back as we've been able to track, the original building had almost this full basement. The owner before Larry finished it out. Larry says he got rid of the outside entrance and had the secret staircase built for no other reason other than he loves secret stuff like he used to read about in old Hardy Boys mysteries.”

Francine looked up at the ceiling and slowly rotated in all directions. “I'm guessing there are no surveillance cameras down here, or the feed would have been recorded on the computer upstairs.”

Jud confirmed it. “We have no way of knowing who's been down here.”

“If Friederich knew about the basement, maybe he figured out how to get down here,” Charlotte said. “With no cameras, he might have used it for God knows what. Maybe something that got him killed.”

“That's a lot of speculation,” Jud said.

“I wonder what's in that refrigerator,” Francine said, pointing out an old unit on the opposite side of the room. It was the type with a freezer compartment on top. “Or maybe what
was
in it.”

“Jeff Kramer is too big to fit in it,” Charlotte said. “At least, I'm pretty sure.” She picked up a bar towel she found on one of the chairs. She crossed the room, continuing to ruminate. “He would take up all the room, though. So if we open it up and there's nothing in it …” She reached for the handle, holding the towel in her hand to keep from leaving fingerprints.

“Don't touch it,” Jud warned.

“Why can't she open it?” Francine asked. “She's not leaving fingerprints. And it's probably just full of beer, unless that's where the killer stored the body.”

“Yesterday that's all that was in it. Beer,” he said.

Charlotte waved the towel at him. “So let's see if that's still true.”

He thought a moment. “Let me do it.” He held out his hand and Charlotte gave him the towel. He opened the door.

Light spilled out. The three of them peered in.

“Beer,” Charlotte said, sounding disappointed.

Just then the emergency personnel arrived. They clomped down the stairs. Jud returned the towel to Charlotte and went to meet them. An EMT checked the body. With Jud distracted, Francine and Charlotte hurriedly examined the contents of the refrigerator. The beer bottles were lined up mostly in rows. The brands were ones their friends drank.

She closed the door and looked back at the poker table.

“Where are the empties?” she asked.

Francine pointed to an orange bin in a dark corner of the room. “They're in the recycle container. Why?”

“What I'm thinking is this,” Charlotte said. “Why are the cigar ashes still there, but the bottles cleared away? Seems odd.”

“The short answer would be, they're men. But it's a smart observation.”

The two women strolled over to the recycle bin, trying not to attract attention. They leaned over it, not touching anything.

They stayed that way for a moment. Charlotte said in a soft voice, “Know anyone who drinks Molson?”

Francine had an ‘aha' moment. “I see what you mean. There's only one Molson. No other imported beers. And there weren't any in the refrigerator, either.”

“Exactly, Watson. And I can't think of anyone in our circle of friends who drinks Molson.”

“I suppose it's possible the poker group could include some men we don't socialize with,” Francine mused. “But it's puzzling there is only one Molson.”

“Maybe whoever brought the dead body brought the beer with him.”

The police and some additional emergency responders pounded down the stairs. Jud spoke to the police and then came over to the recycle bin. “We're all going down to headquarters for questioning. Me too. What are you looking at?”

“The Molson in there,” Francine said. “But you won't find a Molson in the refrigerator, and we don't know anyone who drinks that particular brand.”

“Yes,” Charlotte said. “Could it be that whoever brought the body down here between when you left yesterday and when you returned today had a Molson with him?”

He looked skeptical. “They were responsible enough to recycle it, but not realize they were leaving evidence behind? Not likely.”

“You were the one asking earlier if this was a stupid criminal.”

“I'll note it. But now we need to get going.”

Charlotte looked like she had more to say but was biting her tongue because of Jud and their police escort. As they reached the stairs, Francine insisted on helping her. They went up as they'd come down, one step at a time, together. Halfway up the stairs, Francine murmured, “Something's bothering you.”

Charlotte checked to be sure they couldn't be overheard. “Do you remember the publicity photos we saw on Jake Maehler's website?”

“Sure.”

“There was one of him by a pool, reclining on a beach towel in a beach chair.”

“I vaguely remember it.”

“There was a table next to the chair, and there was a beer on it. The beer had a blue label like Molson's. I want to check it. It doesn't mean anything by itself because I'm sure other people drink Molson. But I like the coincidence.”

Francine hesitated. “I don't think we should say anything to Jud until we're sure.”

“Agreed. But don't be discouraged, Francine. Solving this mystery is not going to be easy, but we can do it.”