Stump Speech Murder (19 page)

“Of course, my dear,” noted Willard, his hand bracing himself against the dashboard, “I forget how involved you’ve been in helping others with your investigative powers.”  He gripped the top of the dash as Pamela took a sharp curve.  Noticing his firm grip, she wondered if Willard had been warned about her driving skills by someone.

“It will feel especially wonderful,” she said to him over her shoulder, “if we can actually figure out who really killed Stacy—assuming, of course, that James didn’t.”

“Oh, he didn’t,” said Willard, his chubby brown cheeks squishing together in emotion.  “Believe me, Pamela, I have known Martin and James for years.  They are both honorable men.  I can’t imagine either of them hurting a fly, let alone a person.”

“I trust your character judgment, Willard,” she assured him.  “We will really both have to get busy and try to figure out what it is about that recording of Stacy that makes it unusual.”

“And hope that whatever it is, it will exonerate James,” said Willard with agreement, tapping his cane on the floor of the passenger side of her car in confirmation.

“Are we in agreement that it’s definitely Stacy’s voice on the 911 recording?” she asked him.  She turned a second time, down a residential street where she knew Willard resided.  Even though she’d never been here, she’d heard him mention his home and location and had registered where it was because it was so close to her own home.

“I would say definitely,” he replied.  “Oh, right here, my dear.”  Willard tapped at the side passenger window at a two-story red brick apartment complex with individual outside entrances for each unit.  “I’m the third door down.”  She pulled into a space directly in front of the apartment.  It was a homey, well-kept unit with a white wooden porch and a porch swing.  She could see several potted plants in the front window.  Willard was a bachelor but obviously took pride in his residence. 

“Let me help you,” she said, hopping out of the car and coming around to the passenger door so she could open it for him.  Willard carefully stepped out, using his cane to assist him. 

“Would you care to come in, my dear?” he asked her.

“Oh, Willard, thank you,” she said with unexpected embarrassment, “but it’s getting late and my husband gets fussy when I return home late.  He expects me to be there to eat what he cooks for me.  He seems to enjoy feeding me.”

“How lucky for you!” exclaimed Willard.  “It must be lovely to be able to share your evening meal with someone.”  She felt terrible at that point and wondered if she should ask him to get back in the car and come over to her house for dinner.  “Of course, I have Phoebe to share my dinner with me,” he added.

“Phoebe?” she asked.  Willard had never discussed his social life—if he had one.  She knew he’d never been married, but he never insinuated that he was dating anyone.  Who was Phoebe?

“Yes,” he said, using his cane to head towards the front door of his small apartment.  “She demands her kitty treats by a reasonable hour or she howls all night long in protest.”

“Oh, you have a cat!” said Pamela, in realization.  “We have a dog!”

“They are like part of the family, aren’t they?”

“Definitely!”  she responded.  At that, he had reached the door and opened it.  Immediately a huge flash of fur zipped out and encircled his feet several times.

“Phoebe!” he scolded the cat, who immediately stopped in front of him, looking up.  “Say hello to Dr. Barnes.”  Phoebe said “meow.”

“My goodness, Phoebe,” said Pamela, bending over and speaking sweetly to the large feline.  “You are quite the kitty!  You must weigh forty pounds!”

“Yes,” he said to her, “something like that.  I’m afraid I’m too indulgent.  I give her whatever she demands.”

“I know how that happens,” she said.  “They can be very persistent.”

“Yes, they can,” he said, now standing in the doorway, facing out.  Phoebe stood beside him, her giant tail flipping back and forth like a fluffy metronome. 

“Willard,” she said, turning to leave, “I’ll see you tomorrow.  We can go over the recording some more then.”

“Very good, my dear,” he said, with a slight wave, then gently closed the door, encasing himself and cat behind it.

Pamela walked back to her car and got inside.  She started her engine and drove down the short street that housed Willard’s apartment complex where she stopped to turn onto the more trafficked roadway.  Before she could enter the road, however, a large, black car–possibly the Lexus that had surveilled their home the night before–pulled directly in front of her and stopped sideways in the street, blocking her movement.  Pamela was flabbergasted.

A large man got out of the car and walked with conviction towards the driver’s side of her car.  She immediately recognized him as Victor Baines, Hap Brewster’s campaign manager.  He was wearing a dark suit, totally inappropriate for this hot summer day.  His red, sweaty face indicated he was annoyed and she surmised that she was partially the cause of his fury.

“Dr. Barnes,” he shouted, pounding on her window.  She kept the window rolled up.  The man had blocked her car’s movement on a public street and he seemed mad enough to harm her.  She grabbed her cell phone, intent on calling the police.  “I just want to talk to you, Dr. Barnes.”  He knocked again on the window.

“Move your car!” she shouted at him.  “You’re blocking my way!”

“Listen, lady,” he yelled through the closed window.  “I’m trying to be polite.”

“Polite people don’t block the street and keep drivers from moving!” 

“I don’t have anything against you, lady,” he continued, his large belly protruding from his tightly buttoned suit jacket.  “I just want to warn you that you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“What I’m getting into?” she yelled back at him.  She held up her cell phone.  “Get out of my way or I’ll call the police.”

“That’s not necessary,” he screamed.  “I’m leaving.  I just want you to know how foolish you are to be mixed up with James Grant and his group.  He killed his wife.  Why not just leave things alone?”

“You mean why not just let Hap Brewster get re-elected?” she cried back.

“An accused killer can’t run for—or be elected–to anything.”

“He can if he’s exonerated.”

“That’s not going to happen, lady!” screamed Victor Baines, his red face, getting a deeper shade of red, sweat pouring off of his forehead. “Just leave it alone!” he repeated.

“Or what?” she asked, bravely—more bravely than she felt.  The pane of glass between them was little comfort if the large man decided to pick up a stone or even his shoe and smash it.

“I’m just trying to reason with you,” he cried, clinging onto the top of her window with his fingertips.  “You’ve been involved in other murder investigations and some reporter seeing you messing around in this one is liable to think there’s some wild chance that Grant’s innocent.”

“He is!” she yelled.

“He isn’t,” retorted Victor Baines, extracting a cloth hanky from his suit coat jacket and wiping the flood of sweat from his brow.  “But with you prancing around the edges, people will think he is!”

“So what?”  she replied, shaking her head.  The man appeared desperate, almost to the point of passing out.  This was hardly the behavior for a political henchman.  “Can’t Hap Brewster compete fairly against a reputable opponent?”

“If you’d just stay out of it, he wouldn’t have to!” replied Baines, panting in the hot late afternoon sun.  “Justice would take its course, Grant would be convicted, and we’d have a nice election with no controversy.”

“You mean, you’d have an election with no opposition,” she shot back.  “Look, I know Hap Brewster has run in every election unopposed.  Or minimal opposition.  This is probably a new situation for him—for you.”

“Lady, Hap has been mayor of Reardon for longer than you’ve probably been alive.”

“So, don’t you think it’s time for a change?” she asked sweetly as she rolled down the window a crack.  “Mr. Baines, you look ill.  I recommend you get out of the sun and take off that suit coat and tie.  That is, after you move your car!”  She yelled this last part.  Victor Baines took another wipe of his forehead with his hanky and then deposited it in his pocket.  Lifting himself with difficulty from the side of her car, where he’d propped himself, he trudged over to his car and got inside.  She watched him fiddle with the dashboard for a minute—probably adjusting the air conditioning upward.  Then, with a lurch, he abruptly turned the wheels and rolled out into the main street traffic with a screeching noise. 

Chapter Twenty-One

Later that night, when she was alone grading papers in her bedroom, she was able to contemplate the events of the day.  She had told Rocky about the group meeting at Grant campaign headquarters because she was quite late for dinner and she had used it as an excuse.  Well, it was a genuine excuse, she thought, although not the only thing that delayed her return home that evening.  She hadn’t mentioned her run-in with Brewster henchman Victor Baines in the street.  If Rocky found out about that, she’d never hear the end of it.  In retrospect, the event sounded worse than it probably was, she thought.  A big, burly guy forced her car to stop in the street, then got out and verbally threatened her at her car window.  Yes, it did sound frightening, but when she replayed the confrontation in her memory, all she saw was an overweight, overwrought man out in the grueling heat who appeared about two minutes away from having a heart attack.  Even so, she saw no reason to mention the brief encounter with Baines to Rocky.  However, she probably should report the run-in with Baines to the police, or at least to Shoop.

She glanced down at the pile of papers on her lap.  These were the students’ rough drafts of their semester research projects.  She knew she wouldn’t finish them all in one evening.  In rough draft stage, they were almost all unbearably unreadable.  It was torture to get through one or two an hour.  She looked at the completed ones on her hassock—maybe five if she was lucky.  She bent back down to the paper in front of her.  Where was Candide?  Her little buddy must be snuggled up with Rocky out in the living room, she surmised.  This thought caused her to remember dropping Willard off at his apartment and seeing his extremely large cat.  She realized that Willard’s cat probably had quite a few pounds on Candide and could probably knock her tiny poodle flat with her tail.

“Hey, Babe,” called Rocky as he sauntered into their bedroom from the living room.  Candide pranced along behind him.  “It’s getting late.  Did you get many of those things read?” he asked referring to the research papers.

“Unfortunately, no,” she replied.  “I keep drifting off.”

“Exhausting day,” he noted.  “That meeting must have been a doozie.”

“Not really,” she shrugged.  “More an organizational thing.  Martin introduced us to his investigator and we all sort of laid our cards on the table.  Unfortunately, nobody has many cards.”

“What’s he like?” questioned Rocky, balancing on the hassock.

“Kind of greasy,” she said, “but I guess that appeals to Joan.  At least, she seemed to be flirting with him when I left.”

“Does the investigator appear to know anything?” he asked.

“He’s done a lot of background stuff on James and Stacy and the Brewster camp,” she replied, “but he hasn’t turned up anything that might help yet.  You know that Stacy is . . . was an ADA.  She’s evidently prosecuted some pretty scruffy fellows.”

“Oh, yeah.  Who?”

“According to Gates—the investigator—tax evasion cases, some domestic violence, burglary.  You know, the usual.”

“You think this Gates guy knows what he’s doing?  I mean, could any of the defendants in any of her cases have come back to kill her?”

“He’s still looking into that,” she said.  “There are quite a few cases that she prosecuted herself or assisted with.  Many of those resulted in a conviction and of those who were, many of those individuals are still in jail—but some are out now.  The question is if a person who was released from jail would risk getting sent back to seek revenge on the prosecutor who sent him there.”

“If they’re mad enough, I suppose,” he said, sitting next to her on the hassock. 

“Hey, don’t mess up my papers!” she cried.   Rocky stood up and restacked the papers.

“Sorry!” he replied.  “Just wanted to get close enough to you to give you a back rub.”

“Why didn’t you say so, Mr. Barnes?” she asked, smiling.  She set down the paper she was grading and went over to the bed, flinging herself face down on top of the covers.  “Here I am.  If you want to give me a back rub.”