The Probability of Murder (9 page)

“Uh, right,” Bruce said, and I knew I’d revealed my ignorance of context. Too late I realized I’d simply told him not to entangle his foot and fall upside down.

I started to sign off with Bruce, ready to worry about snowstorms at high altitudes. If I was lucky, he’d be able to connect by cell, but nothing was guaranteed on a mountain, and I’d come to believe that Bruce liked that feeling. “Conquering planet Earth,” I’d called it.

A shadow crossed my lap. I looked up to see Virgil, his bulk somehow threatening today, as if he were wearing a long, black hood and carrying a scythe.

“It’s Bruce,” I said, showing him my cell phone. “He’s off on a climb with Kevin and Eduardo.”

“Yeah, I know. No accounting for some people’s idea of fun, huh? Harnesses and hitches.”

Virgil had also picked up some climbing vocabulary, though he was as likely as I was to strike out for a mountain to scale.

The astute detective sensed the weight of the duffel as I tried to rise from the seat gracefully while clicking off my phone.

When he took the bag from my hands, I flinched. If he noticed, he didn’t mention it.

“Heavy,” he said. “A present for me?”

“Sort of.”

For the second time in less than a day—sixteen hours, to be exact—I sat in an interview room across from a Henley PD homicide detective.

Virgil didn’t show as much surprise as I’d expected when he saw the contents of the duffel bag, certainly not as much as Ariana or I had. It was as if he’d known all along that I’d be bringing it his way.

“You’re not surprised?” I asked.

“You’ve had this since when?” he asked. My effort to catch him off guard and answer a question hadn’t worked.

“Charlotte dropped it off in my office on Wednesday afternoon.”

“And you didn’t open it?”

“I didn’t even touch it before last night.” No reason to sound defensive, I realized. “I figured it was her gym clothes and that she’d collect them sooner or later.”

“Has anyone else handled the bag since it’s been in your possession?”

I thought for a minute. “Bruce. He carried it to my car yesterday evening. But he has no idea what’s in it. He just plopped it in my den.”

“And left for the hills.”

“Right.” Though Bruce drew a great distinction between the hills and the mountains. I pointed to the bag, now dominating the small table. “I haven’t told him what’s in there.
I don’t want him to have any distractions while he’s hanging by a thread.”

“I hear you. That’s it? No one else touched the bag?”

Ariana popped into my mind. Had she actually touched the bag? Yes, I remembered her sifting through the bills, awestruck, invoking the mother of God. How dumb of me not to keep my friend from contaminating the evidence. Or myself. But at the time the forensics implications hadn’t sunk in.

“Ariana,” I confessed, clearing my throat. “She may have touched the bills.”

Virgil knew Ariana, so he’d have no reason to suspect her of pocketing a few hundreds, if that was his concern. Still, he blew out a breath and said, “That’s unfortunate.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

He spread Charlotte’s notes in front of me. I could have sworn they were warm to the touch from their stint on the copy machine. I’d had the urge to trim the left-hand edges, messy from being ripped from a short spiral binding. “I don’t suppose you know anything about these notes?” Virgil asked.

Other than that one of them referred to a kid she hired to play her nephew as she scoped out an escape route. And that copies of all seven sheets now resided in my purse.

“Nothing I can think of.”

A pang of guilt shot through me, but once the sort-of lie was out, I couldn’t take it back. I had no idea why I was reluctant to tell Virgil the story of Charlotte’s ruse at the airfield. I chalked it up to an inexplicable need to keep my snooping to myself and not to add to the bad marks against Charlotte’s good name.

I felt I was falling into a trap Charlotte had set, and one that would get more tangled before it cleared up.

I was more anxious driving away from the police station than I’d been on the way in. A bad sign that said a lot about my spirit of honesty and cooperation with the Henley PD. Why hadn’t I given the Henley PD every scrap of information
I could to help them solve this case? Did I really think I was better off on my own, calling Charlotte’s contacts?

I realized that Virgil or someone on his investigative team would soon be calling Noah/Jeff. I wondered if the young college student would be savvy—dishonest?—enough not to mention that I’d called him and learned about Charlotte’s scheme. I considered calling Jeff and persuading him to omit any mention of our conversation. It would be to his advantage, I’d remind him. After all, he’d been withholding information by not contacting the police immediately when he found out his employer had been murdered. Unless he already had called them.

I decided that calling Jeff wasn’t a good idea. If I was found out, it could seem like I was tampering with a witness, the only charge I knew that came close to the offense.

I never thought I’d be the guilty party when I had to memorize Sir Walter Scott in high school English.
Oh what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive.

One thing for sure, I had to get busy myself and try to make sense of the notes I’d found in Charlotte’s loaded duffel bag. Since I’d gone to the trouble of copying them, I might as well use them.

First, I had to get rid of Ariana.

I clicked on her smiling picture in my smartphone. “Is there any way you can do without your car for a while if I don’t get you back to it right away?” I asked her. I regretted the poor planning that left Ariana’s car at my house.

“You need some time alone?”

“Uh-huh.”

“No problem,” she said. “I’ll get Luke to take me by and pick my car up later. He owes me for…well, never mind. I left a box of that tea I told you about on your counter. Brew some for yourself, okay? It’ll relax you.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I felt better, knowing that Luke, Ariana’s latest in her “younger man” phase, would be happy to spend some time with her. The new meaning of
cougar
came to mind.

It was nice that not every decision left me guilt-ridden.

*     *     *

Home in my own kitchen, unobserved, I eschewed the box of tea, with its symbols of peace and tranquility on all sides, and made myself a cup of espresso, double strength. I took the brew into my office along with the hot-off-the-press page of names and numbers.

I’d arranged the notes on the glass of the copy machine in a hurried, haphazard way that now irritated me. I didn’t miss the irony as I cut the notes to their original size and arranged them on my desk.

This was an interesting puzzle, I told myself. It had nothing to do with violence or the death of my good friend.

I moved the notes about on my desk, hoping to find a pattern. Three were clearly names and phone numbers. I placed them one under the other:

“Jeff/Noah,” “Marty,” and “Garrett” were each followed by ten-digit numbers. Marty was in the 508 area code that covered Bristol County, Garrett in Boston’s 617 district. Since I knew that Jeff/Noah was someone involved, albeit indirectly, in Charlotte’s escape plan, could I assume that Marty and Garrett were also? I wrote it down as a possibility.

The other four notes had names—Jane 1, Jane 2, John 1, and John 2, clearly code names, followed by strings of numbers. Two were strings of ten numbers, of the form xx-xx-xx-xx-xx. Another was a string of the form x-x-x-xx-xx-xx. The final string had only one single-digit number and four two-digit numbers, x-xx-xx-xx-xx.

It was a good thing I was right at home with number puzzles like this. I knew Ariana would have been dizzy by now. Either that or she would have found some numerological significance having to do with good or bad fortune.

The first thing that came to mind for the four notes that weren’t telephone numbers was the lottery, something that would have been last on my list if I didn’t know about Charlotte’s hobby. I assumed the state lottery had a website and made a note to check it to see if the arrays on the notes
fit the format of the numbers people drew. Or were given. Or bought. Or however lottery numbers were distributed. I’d never risked even a dollar on a gamble like that.

I wasn’t quite brave enough to telephone strangers named Marty and Garrett yet, so I started with the strings of potential lottery numbers.

I went online and learned way more than I wanted to know about the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission, created in 1971, run by state treasurer so-and-so, and bringing new deals to you and yours every day. Amazingly, I could have done my holiday shopping then and there, with season’s lottery tickets for everyone on my list. I couldn’t think of anyone who would be happy to get them.

Except Charlotte.

One more beat and I thought of someone else: Margaret Stone, my mom, whose name I took as my own for my puzzle-making career. For most of her adult life, she kept to bingo and horse races, but I’m sure she could have been persuaded to try the lottery if she thought it could be done as a group sport. I’d heard the itch to gamble skipped a generation, and it fit our family profile.

I couldn’t resist the chance to see how much money the town of Henley had received from the state since the establishment of the lottery. All I had to do was run my mouse over the dollar signs that made up the image of Massachusetts until I found Henley, and the number would pop up. I did it. Eight million and change! That paid the salaries of a lot of cops and firefighters.

I could find no simple explanation of how numbers were submitted or what it cost to play. A host of different—“exciting”—games were offered, online and in person, but unless you knew what you were looking for to begin with, you’d be at a loss on the site, as I was.

I suddenly had a different image of proper librarian Charlotte Crocker standing in a dusty convenience store, scratching off gummy adhesive with her perfect nails, excited to see the winning number, asking the clerk for her cash prize. Or maybe the winnings were in the form of
store credit and she walked away with a free soft drink and beef jerky. Not the Charlotte I knew.

The scene, concocted ad hoc, brought a confusing image to my mind and a smile to my face.

The lottery website needed help. Between ads, popup windows, and animated cartoon characters beckoning me into a world of fun and flashing lights, it was hard to find out just what a set of numbers looked like. I nearly clicked on “Email the Webmaster” when I saw a pull-down menu hidden among the loud promos.

I finally found what I needed by going to a list of recent winning numbers. Comparing the strings of digits on Charlotte’s notes, I saw that two were from a game called Powerball, one was from Megabucks, and the last was from what was termed the thrilling new game, Mega Ball.

So what?
I asked myself, before anyone else could. I now could reasonably say that Jane 1 and John 2 played Powerball, Jane 2 played Megabucks, and John 1 played Mega Ball. Again, so what?

Before I clicked off the site, having learned far too little of anything useful, I was pulled in by the photograph of a middle-aged, red-haired woman smiling out at me and the world. She’d won Boston Bruins tickets for life. I wondered if she was happy with that prize or was stuck with it and would try to trade them in for membership in Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

I found myself wondering what I’d choose if asked. Free puzzle books for life? As a contributor, I already received complimentary subscriptions to as many as I could feasibly read. A fancy new car? I was happy with my reliable Ford. Without risking a penny, I’d recently been awarded a small grant that gave me membership in several special libraries online and in Boston.

I did need blue placemats to match a bowl Ariana had made for me during her brush with ceramics. And matching napkins would be a nice touch. Nothing else came to mind.

Either my life was full and perfect as it was and I didn’t need a lottery win, or I was unambitious and boring.

I abandoned my lottery research project and settled down with a much-too-small portion of shrimp fried rice from a recent, I hoped, takeout dinner splurge. I flipped through a puzzle magazine while I ate, further postponing contacting the people who belonged to the telephone numbers on the notepaper.

After the last kernel of rice, I got down to it and started with Marty, the 508, a local boy. I punched in the full number. It was Saturday, so I wasn’t surprised to hear the click to voice mail after three rings.

I listened to the message by a vaguely familiar female voice.

“You have reached Henley College, Henley, Massachusetts, and the office of Martin Melrose, Controller and Director of Student Financial Services. Our office hours are…”

What?

I clicked off with a gasp, as if I’d dialed the netherworld and needed to erase any trace of my caller ID immediately.

Three-piece suit, bow tie, Coke-bottle glasses Martin, familiarly known as our treasurer? I knew he and Charlotte both played the lottery, but why would a piece of paper with his phone number be in a duffel bag surrounded by literally dirty money? And who called him Marty?