Being The Steel Drummer Part 15

I smiled. This was one of the many things I loved about Kathryn, that her Lesbian ident.i.ty is important to her and that she's pa.s.sionate about civil rights.

"So what's the deal with Carla Zimmer? I mean, project much?"

"I know. She's always like that. Maybe she's in love with Rowlina Roth. Did you hear how her voice picked up a hint of Rowlina's accent when she got emotional? Perhaps Rowlina only hires people into the Architecture History Department who are deeply in the closet so she can continue to be comfortable in her own dark little walk-in. I wish there was something I could do to help her."

"It's a shame. It's all making her so unhappy and Carla's getting caught in the current. So, Bolton Winpenny is the steel drummer?" I said, considering.

Kathryn nodded. "Oh, here's a revelation. Remember when I told you it was Bolton's idea to end the retreat when that woman in the department became hysterical?

"Professor Panic Attack?"

"Right. Well, it turns out that Bolton put her up to it. It was all an act so that Bolton could suggest we end the meeting and go home. Rather brilliant, really." Kathryn pulled her coat tighter and faced me.

I put my arms around her and we kissed. It made me hear music.

"Thanks for the pizza, but I'm still hungry."

"For more dinner?"

"Not that kind of hunger."

"I'll try to make them hurry so I can get back soon."

"Fat chance of that."

We parted reluctantly. She turned back into the building and I trudged off into the dark cold night to stop back at the library and retrieve the bag of sculpture, then head home.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow I chanted to the musical steel drum beat that looped through my brain.

Chapter 11.

When I got to the loft I dropped off the sculpture, which I'd been carting around all day. It was going to be a while before Kathryn would be released from academic purgatory, so I went down to my office to work on identifying the young man who was killed in the cemetery.

I checked my electronic calendar and found that Nora had made an entry with a note below it that said: Tomorrow, about 8 in the morning, Mrs Henshaw wants a wee talk with you. Her number is below. -- Your faithful minion, Miss Lenderbee I smiled and made a note of it, while I silently wondered if Kathryn would come home in time to make me too tired for an 8 a.m., or if she'd come home so late we'd both be too sleepy for an evening a.s.signation.

I sat at my desk in the empty office and booted up my desktop computer that has enough gigs to store the collective pasts of everyone in Fenchester.

Identification is one of those investigation jobs that has become much easier with each new generation of electronic apps. One of them is the excellent recognition feature that's part of my photo storage program. It matches faces.

When I interned for Seamus A. McFinn Jr. at Discreet Investigations, I hit upon the rather brilliant idea of scanning a decade's worth of every high school year book in the valley. It was an interesting project that I was able to do mostly online at a relatively low cost.

There are two high schools in Fenchester, Carlton Fen and General Merganser Hunterdon High. And there are a couple of dozen other high schools in other towns and small cities in Lenape Valley as well. I'd downloaded every senior picture. The matching program scans a face on one photo and matches it with another. The program could make mistakes and be confused, but all in all it worked rather well. I was the only one in town that had this kind of resource.

If the man killed in the cemetery had been a senior in any of the local high schools in the last few years, there was more than an eighty percent chance I could come up with a match. Of course he may not have been local or he may dropped out before his senior year... or he may have been absent on Senior Picture Day, but it was worth a try.

I downloaded the photo of the shooting victim into my desktop and ran it. Thirty-two similar photos came up. I went through them one by one, taking out the ones that really didn't match, and came up with six possibles. Then I ran the names though a variety of other searches. I ruled out three more. Of those, one now worked in a senator's office, one was a local firefighter and looked different in current photos, and one had died in Iraq.

The three photos left were of Anthony Rossi, Francis Kibbey, and John M. Williams. Rossi and Kibbey had gone to Hunterdon High and Williams had gone to Fen. I printed them and put them in an envelope. Their names were pretty popular so they were going to be harder to track down. I'd work on them tomorrow.

I closed up the office and went back to the loft. I changed clothes and went up to the top floor for a workout that would either take my l.u.s.t-laden mind off Kathryn or greatly increase my preoccupation with her. It did both. Finally I ran two miles on the treadmill full tilt until my mind began to focus on what I was going to say to Lois Henshaw the next morning. I was leaning toward the direct approach.

By the time I was done with the workout I was sweating and tired and sorely hoping I'd find Kathryn slipping into her nightgown downstairs so I could slip her out of it.

But Kathryn still wasn't home. So I did some laundry and housecleaning. By midnight I was still alone and the worse for it. So I went to bed to read more of Fenchester - A History of Love, Loss, and Generosity by Gabriel and Suzanne Carbondale in case I met up with Amanda Knightbridge again and she quizzed me on it. It really was fascinating, though it didn't have as much about Victoria and Evangeline as I would have liked. I read carefully for an hour and then let myself drift off to sleep with the light on, until my phone chirped with a text.

It said, < alas.="" just="" to="" my="" budget="" now.="" go="" to="" sleep.="" profoundly="" sorry.=""> c.r.a.p, I was profoundly sorry too.

The phone chirped again with another text that said simply, < friday=""> That cheered me.

Hours later I vaguely heard the door chime Kathryn in. Moments after that I felt her body, still chilled from the February night, slip next to mine. I put my arm around her and felt her relax into me.

She sighed, "It's nice to come home to you." And then we both fell asleep.

In what seemed like ten minutes later, I felt her leave the bed. The pale rays of winter dawn fought their way through the window. I turned when she came out of the bathroom dressed for the day. She knelt by the bed to put her arms around me.

"Come back to bed," I whispered in her ear.

"Do you really want me to?"

"Yes."

"Don't you want me to see Victoria's journal?"

"Yes, but can't you Skype or clone yourself or some other high tech thing?" I groaned.

"Um..."

"I'll get up and have breakfast with you."

"I don't have time. I have a meeting in less than two hours, and if I don't see this journal this morning, I may self-combust."

"Ha! OK, you can go, but when will you be back?"

"At 5 p.m. I'll be back to help the drywall crew. Farrel said they could all work until ten. That's not too late. Ten? And you know, Friday isn't that far away."

"Mmmmm, OK."

She kissed me goodbye. I got up to dress and have breakfast before beginning my one-floor trek to the office.

Nora wasn't due to come in until 9 a.m. Sara and Emma would come in about then if they didn't have a hearing or other off-site meetings. I had about an hour to get a few things done before office distractions slowed me down. I called Lois Henshaw and she answered before the first ring was through.

"Maggie, sorry to make ya call so early, but I'm the type who's up to catch the worm," she said distractedly. "I have more worms than I know what to do with." Then she laughed longer than there was anything to laugh about, then stopped without anything else to say.

"Lois, look, I read the reports. I know what you want me to do, but I can't figure anything out by retracing the other P.I.s' dead-end paths. So I have a suggestion that you're probably not going to like."

"What?" she asked warily.

"I'd like to just have a talk with Samson and ask him what's up. Maybe he'll tell me. Maybe he even wants you to know and he just doesn't have a way to tell you."

"Just ask him?"

"Yeah, that's my proposal. If you aren't interested I'll just give you your money back, because it's a waste for you to hire me or any other investigator just to do the same thing again. That would be throwing your money down the toilet."

"Gosh darn. Oh, gosh darn it. But what if he...."

"But what if I actually find the answer to his behavior?"

"Yes... no... oh gosh DARN it, Maggie. This is worse than my own cooking. How did I ever get into this fix?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

"Huh?"

"Was that something you want me to answer? Because it's pretty simple. You've lost communication with the person you love best on earth and you're torn between wanting to get it back and finding out something you'd really rather not confront."

There was a long pause. Finally Lois responded with, "I know it's not trendy, but I still like men. I really do love him, Maggie, with all my heart and soul. But I can't go on with things this way. I have to know. So go ahead; ask him. When are you going to do it?"

"I have time today."

"Oh, gosh da... Well, OK, I'll just hold my breath until I hear back from you. But don't tell me anything that will make me upset."

I sighed inwardly. "Is he home now?"

"No, he's running around doing errands. But he'll be at our apartment building remodeling one of the second floor units by about 11:30 a.m. It's at 1012 Washington near 10th."

"Lois, I may not be able to get back to you right away. So really don't hold your breath, OK? Give me a few days."

I had several more hours to work so I took out the three possible photos that might identify the man killed in the graveyard and did a series of searches to find more information on their names. Among other things, I tried Zaba and Nexis, scanned the public voter roles, went through literally hundreds of possible Facebook pages, and ran through public arrest records. After several hours and a dozen search engines, nothing came up. Their names were either too common or they just hadn't created an electronic trail since they'd left high school. It's sometimes hard to imagine, but there are some people who just aren't on the grid.

Ultimately I did some other office work, chatted with Nora for a moment, and at about noon I grabbed my coat and bag and walked the short two blocks to 1012 Washington. It had snowed in the night, not enough to coat the sidewalks, but the lawns in the Mews park were dusted with white. The sun was out and the air was clean and crisp. The day was much brighter than the task I was on for Lois Henshaw.

The apartment house the Henshaws owned was not just a converted single family home. This building, just a block down the street from Farrel and Jessie's, had obviously been built as some kind of commercial and multi-family dwelling in the 1930s. It was triple the width of all the other buildings on the block. The deco style tiles framing the door, the cut gla.s.s transom, and the marble front steps had been kept up nicely over the last eighty years. The building had a dentist's office and a CPA's office on the ground floor. Eight apartments, four on each floor, were in the two upstairs stories.

The apartments were accessed by a central entrance. Each key-locked mailbox had a doorbell b.u.t.ton underneath. Number 2's box had no name-tag.

I turned to look back at the southeast corner of the Mews that was directly in front of the building. The trees lining the central walkway were leafless. Their twiggy branches looked like a spiky line drawing against the blue sky. There was an open section of ivy-covered yard that surrounded a military statue of none other than Merganser Hunterdon in his crisp Civil War general's uniform.

The Carbondales' book said Merganser had reached the rank of general in his twenties and that he was one of the youngest generals of the period. I'd been surprised to find out there'd been a thousand generals in that war. I briefly wondered what Merganser had done to get his commission. Some brilliant battle tactic, some heroic act of bravery? It hadn't said in the book. Merganser's likeness wasn't dashing and young though. It seemed old and tired, and the "unfortunate" quality of his features was more than apparent. I wondered if Victoria had created this sculpture too.

The statue faced west with its back toward the small houses on 10th street where Amanda Knightbridge and Gabriel Carbondale lived. I had a perfect view of the historic house from here. Fen House was where Evangeline had lived, and then after her death, where Victoria Willomere Snow had lived for the rest of her life. I imagined how the row would have looked in the 1870s when Evangeline and her family had had to move in. There would have been no park in front of the little houses then; they had been built for the lowest of workers. It must have been very embarra.s.sing for Evangeline's mother, who was a descendent of three of Fenchester's most affluent families, to be living in a tiny home with stables as her front yard. As Amanda had suggested, the smell must have been awful.

How did Victoria Snow fit into all this? In her journal, she was on her way to rescue Evangeline from poverty with the help of Charlotte Cushman's directed commission. But history indicated that when Evangeline died, she was still engaged to Hunterdon and that he mourned for her for the rest of his life. Maybe Evangeline wasn't a "sister of the heart" after all. Maybe Evangeline needed more support than the comfort Victoria's single commission could buy. After all, Hunterdon was the richest man in the State.

These days the little row homes on 10th street were really quite charming. I wondered when the yew trees that flanked each front door had been planted. By 1900 the Mews Park had been fully installed and was probably quite a community showpiece, as it is now. Victoria had lived there then. She must have liked looking out on it, as much as Suzanne Carbondale had in the years she'd lived in Fen House. I paused and looked up at the front windows of the Henshaw's apartment house. I had a flash of enlightenment.

A tenant swung open the outer door and came down the steps. I took this opportunity to duck into the lobby without ringing. I went up the stairs and found number two, which was the front apartment on the left. While there's never a good excuse for rudeness, when I'm on a case I find that conventional manners can get in the way of sleuthing. The door was unlocked, so I walked in without knocking.

It was a nice apartment. Large, light, and empty of furniture. There was a small kitchen to the right, with room for a tiny table. To the left were two bedrooms and a 1930s tiled bathroom.

Samson Henshaw sat on a metal folding chair looking out one of the deep-silled windows. There was a folded tarp, a full plastic garbage bag, a sealed paint can, and some painting tools on the floor. There were several Brews on the Mews paper cups on the sill. The room looked like it had been recently painted. I sniffed; it smelled fresh and clean.

Henshaw spun around in surprise. He stood up and took two steps away from the chair as though he'd been caught peeping through a bathroom window. Maybe he had, but probably not.

"Maggie! How'd you get in?"

"Door was unlocked," I said as I made my way to the window to see what he was looking at.

Things clicked in place in my mind. Six weeks, the view, what Lois had said, what the other investigators had found. I looked into the garbage bag. It was filled with empty coffee cups and food containers.

I turned slowly and said to Samson Henshaw, "What are you doing here, Samson?"

"I just finished painting."

"Funny, there's no smell of paint in here at all. So, you're waiting for her to come back? Suzanne Carbondale?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah, you do." I sat down on the broad windowsill and looked back out the window. "Samson, this is a stupid place for surveillance. You can't even see the back door. Do you stand out there sometimes too?"

"Not so much, now that it's cold," Samson admitted. He deflated and plunked back into the folding chair.

"Were you in love with her?"

"Still am," Henshaw admitted.

"Have you seen her since she left Gabe?"

"What? No, I haven't seen her since right before she left town. That's when she told me she was going to leave Gabe. We'd been talking for weeks before that though. We'd talk about her work and about the house I wanted to build on speculation. The economy's rotten, but she made me feel like I could pull it off. She was working on a ma.n.u.script. We'd talk over coffee, usually at Brews. Sometimes take a walk." The floodgates in Samson Henshaw tore off their hinges and he spent the next two hours telling the entire story of his obsession with Suzanne Carbondale. Most of it had to do with his own life. I listened patiently.

When he stopped, I asked, "How intimate was this?"

"You mean, were we sleeping together? Well, no. I hadn't really thought about her that way. But when she told me they were going to break up, suddenly I just realized that I loved her, and then she left town before I had a chance to tell her. She wrote that book about Fenchester with Gabe and really Suzanne did almost all of the work. Gabe's really an a.s.shole, you know? What a phony."

"What's her new ma.n.u.script about? Did she say?"

"I guess kind of a sequel to the book they'd done together, but it was all written by her this time. She was really excited about it. Maggie, when she told me she was going to leave Gabe, suddenly the path was clear, know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean, but your path isn't clear. Did you forget you're married to Lois?"