Клео Коул - Murder by Mocha

Madame glanced at me. “Now that does sound like premeditated murder.”

Jeffries nodded. “She brought the gun and she pointed it. The prosecutor believed it was premeditated, too, and he was aggressive. Alicia and Sherri were friendly with Mrs. Temple. They didn’t want to testify against her, but they took their sworn oaths seriously and told the truth as they saw it.

“The prosecutor compelled them to testify for his side—including a statement they overheard Mrs. Temple make during the struggle. ‘I swear I’ll end them both.’ ” He snapped his fingers. “Those two sealed the deal. The scandal with all the requisite publicity ruined them at the college, of course. Alicia resigned her post and went off to be a freelance writer. The jury found Mrs. Temple guilty of all charges. She showed no remorse, and the judge sentenced her to twenty-five years to life.”

“And she died in prison?”

“After seven years, Mrs. Temple applied for early parole. The board denied her request. She still hadn’t shown any remorse, and she’d physically assaulted a female guard. When she heard her parole was denied, she hanged herself in the prison laundry.”

“Dora had a daughter,” I said. “What happened to her?”

Jeffries’s buoyancy flagged suddenly. “Olympia Temple. Now there was a tragedy.”

“How so?” Madame asked.

“Olympia hardly knew her father, but she was close to her mother. Mrs. Temple made bail, and for two years before the trial, that girl listened to her mother rail against the prosecutor, the judge, the friends who had ‘turned on her’ to testify against her. When her mother was sent to prison, the daughter was devastated.”

“Do you have a photo?” I asked.

Jeffries found only a few. Olympia was young during the height of the trial—around thirteen years old. She was a slender, Caucasian girl with long, dark blond hair, which she used to cover her face when cameras began snapping her photo.

He tapped the image on screen. “Several years after Mrs. Temple was sentenced, I wrote a piece about her life in prison. A few days after that article was published, I started getting poisoned-pen letters. Then someone slashed the tires on my car.”

Letters followed by violence? Madame and I leaned forward. “What did you do?”

“I turned the letters over to the police. They believed Olympia was responsible. When I heard that, I couldn’t bring myself to press charges, but they spoke with her, hoped to frighten her into stopping. She didn’t. The tire slashing was repeated after I wrote an article about Mrs. Temple’s parole being denied.”

“There was no one else who could have done it?” I asked. “An angry cousin, an uncle, a sister? The Temples must have had close friends.”

“Dr. Temple and his wife were transplants from Maine. They had no relatives in the area. None that I could find, and I looked, too. Their friends were connected to the college, and when the scandal broke, most of them distanced themselves from Dora Temple—understandable since they had upstanding reputations to maintain and Mrs. Temple couldn’t escape the bad publicity. When Mrs. Temple went to prison, her daughter was taken in by guardians, not related, an elderly couple also connected to the college.”

He shook his head. “After all Olympia had been through, I didn’t wish to press charges against her, and the harassment did stop after she vanished.”

“You mean after she killed herself.”

Jeffries scratched his head. “I’m not so sure she did.”

“But Phoebe Themis told us there were witnesses. They heard a scream, saw something plunge off a bridge. Dora’s belongings and a suicide note were found on top of that same bridge. She’d worn her mother’s wedding gown for that jump and shreds of it washed ashore.”

“And no body was ever recovered.”

Prickles iced my skin. “Are you certain?”

“Are you hungry, Ms. Cosi?”

“Excuse me?” Oh no, I thought. I hope he’s not hitting on me for a dinner date.

“I suggest you stop by the River View restaurant, just outside of our village. Ask for the head waiter, Freddie. Tell him I sent you. Freddie has an eyewitness opinion about what happened.”

“We’ll do that,” I said, rising.

“And try the bay scallops with saffron risotto.” Jeffries kissed the tips of his fingers. “Délicieux!”

By the time Madame and I arrived at the River View, dinner service was under way. In the parking lot, we paused to admire the sweeping view of the “river”—really a long, wide inlet of the Long Island Sound with strong currents shimmering between thickly forested cliffs.

“That’s where Olympia Temple jumped,” Madame said, gazing at the high bridge, where a commuter train was now rumbling across.

Inside, Madame and I grabbed a snack at the bar and asked to see the head waiter. After our wine was poured and fried oysters served, the bartender introduced us to Freddie—really Fredrick Lloyd, a round, bald little man with a charming accent, who told us he was born in London and raised in Oxford.

“Oh, sure. I was there the night of the jumper,” he said. “Me and Connie, who died last year. Most everyone else is new.”

He leaned close, glanced at his watch, and nodded in the direction of the railroad bridge, just visible in the gathering dusk through the large bay windows.

“Keep your eyes on that bridge,” he advised.

We did and within a minute the lights came on, illuminating the entire span. One central light was much brighter than the others. Like a spot, it shone all the way down to the inlet’s rippling waters.

“See that big light. The jump came from right there. I heard this scream, and then some of the guests pointed. Then everyone was screaming and running about. But not Freddie.”

He tapped his temple. “I was feeling nostalgic, so I kept on watching the girl.”

“Nostalgic?” I asked. “What do you mean by that?”

“When I was a boy, me and me mates had an annual ritual. Every May first we rose early and showed up for the Bridge Jumpin’ Festival at Magdalena.”

“Oh, the bridge jumping!” Madame nodded. “If memory serves, students from Oxford have been jumping off that bridge for more than a century. Am I correct, sir?”

“You are indeed, ma’am. But me and me mates, well, to be honest, we were there to watch the girls jump into the Cherwell. It was a long time ago—lots of pretty hippie girls around with their flowered dresses. Those dresses would balloon up, and we pimply faced boys would catch our first glimpse of bloomers, er . . . beggin’ your pardon, ladies.”

“No apologies necessary,” Madame assured him. “Boys will be boys. I have a son myself . . .”

Yes, I thought, one who’s made a global study of glimpsing girls’ bloomers.

“Like I say, I was no stranger to seein’ girls in dresses jump from bridges. And I watched that jumper’s white dress balloon up just fine, but the whole way down it was the same.”

Freddie pressed his arms to his side and stood erect, making like a chubby Oscar statue. “She was stiff, you know? Like an ice sculpture. She never moved once the whole drop.”

He leaned in, lowered his voice. “That’s a big, bright light there, and that bridge is plenty higher than the Magdalena. Yet I didn’t see any bloomers, and I don’t recall seein’ any legs. None at all.”

Twenty minutes later, we stood by our rental car while I took one last look at the railroad bridge and the dark, treacherous depths below it. Our day of inquiry was over, and it yielded a crucial conclusion.

“Olympia Temple isn’t dead,” I said. “She faked her death and created a new identity to get even with the people she blamed for her mother’s imprisonment and suicide.”