Murder On The Mind Read online

CHAPTER 5

  The sun hadn’t come up yet, but I’d already showered and dressed by the time the Sunday morning paper was delivered. I spread it across the kitchen table, grateful to study it in solitude. As I’d hoped, the top story was still the Sumner killing. Sumner was survived by his wife, Claudia, and three grown children, Rob, Diane, and Michael. There’d be no public viewing. Private interment would take place Monday morning.

  Noises from another part of the house caught my attention. I decided to make myself scarce while Richard and Brenda breakfasted.

  Back in my room, I sat on the edge of my bed. With eyes closed, I cleared my mind. The man in the newspaper picture was older than the face imprinted on my brain. Could I have met him? It seemed likely. But not in New York. It had to be years ago, when I still lived in Buffalo.

  The newspaper said he’d worked for Bison Bank over twenty-five years. Did I meet him at an early point in his career? I’d never had a bank account until I’d joined the Army. Maybe it had nothing to do with banking.

  I thought back to my first summer job at Benson’s car wash. I’d wipe down sleek Corvettes and angular Cadillacs, wishing for a junker of my own. Was Sumner a customer? I remembered the job, but not the people associated with it.

  Damned frustrating, those holes in my memory.

  Another summer I’d flipped burgers at some fast-food joint—anything to keep me out of the house and away from the crotchety old Alperts.

  I let it go. Eventually it would come to me.

  Despite my faulty memory, the bright morning invigorated me. On a whim, I decided to reconnect with the rest of the house, avoiding the kitchen and Richard and Brenda. It was soon obvious that only three rooms were in use: the kitchen, the study, and—I assumed—the master bedroom suite upstairs. Like the living room, much of the furniture in the other rooms was still shrouded in sheets.

  Slipping into Richard’s study gave me my first feeling of homecoming. The old, leather-bound books had always attracted me. The dark-paneled walls lent a feeling of security. Years ago, Richard’s wizened grandfather used to live behind the big mahogany desk. Sometimes we’d sit at opposite ends of the room and read the old man’s books. He’d smoke his pipe, the sweet tang of tobacco filling my nostrils. The grandfather clock ticked loudly in the empty silence. Mr. Alpert and I weren’t friends, but we weren’t exactly enemies, either. I couldn’t imagine Richard taking his place in the oversized, burgundy leather chair.

  A set of the Encyclopedia Britannica filled the shelves behind the desk—recent, by their copyright date. Richard must’ve brought them from California. I pulled out a volume, intending to look up psychic phenomena, and quickly decided against it, shoving the heavy book back into the slot from where I’d plucked it. It might be better to bungle my way through the discovery process with no preconceived expectations—or limitations.

  Could I make it work for me? I picked up objects in the room, trying to zero in on previous owners, previous history.

  A heavy glass paperweight was cold in my palm. The delicate wings of the butterfly encased inside seemed poised for flight, but I felt nothing odd or sinister. Likewise with the dust-free pipes and stand on the polished desk, sitting there as though waiting for old Mr. Alpert to strike a match.

  But something had happened to me when I’d first entered the house. Cold dread . . . horror. Melodramatic, maybe, but that’s what I’d felt. It was time to make another visit to the upstairs bedroom.

  My sneakered feet squeaked on the polished floor as I rounded the corner. The hallway seemed to extend miles ahead of me, like a camera trick in an old Hitchcock film. The staircase, when I reached it, also seemed to have telescoped in length.

  I swallowed, took a step. Okay. Fine. On the second step, the sensation of alarm hit me. Something waited for me in Mr. Alpert’s room. I forced myself to continue upward, tried to be logical. Could the house be haunted? Oh yeah, the skeptic in me taunted, that made a lot of sense. Just as reasonable as visions of dead men and deer.

  My legs were lead by the time I topped the stairs. The closed bedroom door taunted me. Come on, chicken boy, face the worst.

  Panic made me turn, nearly stumble in my haste to get the hell away. I wasn’t up to facing whatever lingered in that room.

  Not yet.

  I grabbed my jacket from the hall closet. Outside, the air was cold, the blue sky clear and incredibly normal. I felt calmer as I poked at the matted leaves around the shrubbery. Tulip spikes protruded through the crusty dirt. The remnants of a hibernating garden lined the property. I followed it around to the side of the house and the driveway, facing the garage. Only drilled holes remained where a backboard had once been. When I was a kid, Richard and I had sometimes played one-on-one. Maybe it was still in the garage.

  I went inside the large, three-car structure, what had once been a carriage house, rediscovering the apartment above. The door opened with a painful creak. I tramped through the dusty galley kitchen, dining area, two bedrooms, living room, and small bath. I vaguely remembered a married couple—the housekeeper and gardener—living there when I was a teenager. My nose wrinkled in the musty, cobwebbed rooms. Old furniture, cartons of dusty books, gardening equipment, and other junk were still stored there.

  A smile tugged at my lips, the seed of an idea forming, but it was too soon to hit Richard with any new requests.

  Downstairs in the garage’s empty bay, I studied the clutter of my own furniture and boxes. Some kind of organization was definitely needed. I pawed through the cartons. My old business cards surfaced first. I’d kept two sets, one with the company address, fax and phone numbers, and e-mail address, the other a calling card. Figuring I could still use those, I stuffed them into my coat pocket, along with a tape measure and a couple of half-used spiral notepads.

  My next find was my old analog watch, with one of those Twist-O-Flex bands. I slipped it onto my right wrist, since the cast covered my left and ended at the knuckle line. I’d reset it once I got inside. I also found my out-of-date passport, grabbed an old pay stub, a canceled check, a bank statement—anything with my name and address on it, in case I needed to prove who I was.

  I’d once considered being a private eye, investigating the field after my four-year hitch in the service—had even earned an associate degree in criminal justice. But New York’s mandatory three-year apprenticeship had been a major turnoff. I’d had enough of being someone’s lackey in the Army. Plus private investigators’ lives are damned boring. I couldn’t see myself on endless stakeouts, spying on adulterous spouses, looking for runaway kids, or repossessing cars from people down on their luck.

  The insurance field is boring, too, and guarantees mountains of paperwork. But the pay and the hours are definitely better, the income reliable, and the work inherently safer. Too many people own guns these days—and use them. Through my work in insurance, I’d known a couple of freelance P.I.s in the city. Quarterly taxes left them cash-starved, with no benefits.

  No, thank you.

  I foraged until I came across my good suit, a shirt, and my lined raincoat—enough for me to get started. Closing the side door behind me, I headed for the house. Inside, I found my family tucked away in Richard’s study.

  “Uh, Brenda, where’s the iron?”

  She looked up from her book. “In the laundry room. You need help?”

  “No, thanks.”

  The dungeon laundry room was in the same place as in years before, although the appliances were brand new and top of the line. I tossed the clothes on the washer and awkwardly set up the ironing board. Trying my best to iron out the wrinkles, I scorched my pants cuff. Moments later, I looked up to find Brenda standing in the doorway.

  “I can do it.”

  “Oh, I know you can—when you have two good hands. But right now, you’ve only got one.”

  I let her take over. Now that my investigator’s training was coming back, I wanted to look my best—trustworthy—when I interviewed witnesses. Having that goal made me
feel whole again.

  Richard showed up as Brenda handed me the freshly ironed dress shirt. I eased it onto a hanger, catching sight of his disapproving stare.

  “Why don’t you just say it?” I challenged.

  “Oh, now you’re reading my mind, too?”

  “It doesn’t take a mind reader to tell what you’re thinking,” Brenda muttered. She turned off the iron, set it on the washer to cool, stowed the ironing board, and stole out of the basement, leaving me alone with a man itching for a fight.

  “Jeff, you’re not well.”

  “I’m not sick, either.”

  “No, but you are recovering from a serious head injury. I think you should just slow down.”

  “I’m not exactly running around.”

  He eyed the suit. “No, but you can’t just show up at the church and—”

  “Now who’s a mind reader?”

  “I read the newspaper, too. You plan to go to the funeral.”

  “If I can get in. How else can I meet Sumner’s family and friends?”

  “Jeff, you can’t just barge in, interfere with people’s lives—”

  “And I just can’t sit around contemplating my navel twenty-four hours a day, either.”

  He followed me upstairs and into the kitchen. I laid the suit and shirt across one of the chairs, and sat down, not daring to look him in the eye.

  “You don’t believe me,” I said.

  Richard took the chair across from me. “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “I don’t know how to make you understand. It’s like a nightmare, only it doesn’t stop when I wake. I have no proof, just a strong feeling that what I know is true.”

  “Jeff, is it possible you’re twisting the facts to support a delusion?”

  “I knew that man was dead. I felt his death. Now I’ve got to prove to myself I’m not some kind of lunatic. But I can’t. Not until I see the place. Not until I talk with the people who knew him. Not until I can put all the pieces together.”

  Richard stared at the table. “Okay. Then let’s prove—or disprove—it together. Let me help.”

  I considered his offer. Was he only placating me? It didn’t matter.

  “Okay.”

  “Where do we start?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow. At the funeral.”