Donna Andrews - Chesapeake Crimes - This Job Is Murder!

The four of us sat in their living room, Jennifer McNally and her parents on the sofa, me settled on a recliner in front of them.

“Jennifer, can you tell me what you remember about that phone call?”

She licked her lips before she spoke, the silver stud in her tongue visible for just a second.

“Yes, sir. I, like, remember writing down the message for Annette; she was at lunch. I mean, someone called to say that, like, her daughter’s shower had changed. Then they gave me directions to, like, give to Annette.”

This is, like, going to take, like, a really long time.

“Did you recognize the caller’s voice?”

“No, sir. I mean, the lines are, like, really busy during lunch, and, you know, I’m the only one there. I just, like, try to get the phone calls over with as quickly as possible, you know?”

“Of course, that’s understandable,” I said. “Do you remember if it was a man or a woman who called?”

“No, I mean, I can’t remember; there were a lot of calls yesterday.”

“So, someone called, gave you directions to Stacy’s baby shower, and hung up. That’s it?”

She nodded.

“Jennifer, is there anything else you can think of?” I asked.

“There is, like, one thing,” she said. “I, like, always look at the caller ID when a phone call comes in, you know, so I don’t have to ask for the phone number. I mean, it just, like, saves me some time or whatever, you know?”

I nodded. Like, go on.

“Well, anyway, this call came from somewhere, like, on campus. The number was only four digits long, you know.”

Yes, I know.

My interview with the student aide ended just before six p.m., leaving me enough time to make the 6:20 bus-the same bus Annette said she took the night before.

I re-traced Annette’s bus route. The weekend bus schedule was the same on Friday and Saturday evenings, as were the drivers. All three remembered Annette because she had asked them several times if she was going the right way, how far away her stop was, exactly which bus she should take to make her transfer. I also stopped at the house from which she had called her daughter. The people who lived there remembered her.

“She was a pretty woman, but that dress she was wearing wasn’t the least bit becoming,” the wife noted.

“Pretty or not, she didn’t have to behave so poorly,” the husband added. “Rude, really.”

Not at all Annie’s personality, but, under the circumstances, understandable. She was so easily flustered.

“That’s it, then. Annette made the phone call herself, to give her a way to get out of going to the party,” President Smithson decided when I briefed him in his office the next morning.

“Why would she do that, sir?” I asked. When I could have done it just as easily. I knew she wouldn’t be there, and the student aide wouldn’t recognize my voice.

“Come on, Steve. Do I have to do your job for you? She was never planning on going to the baby shower. She just told everyone she was. She made sure a couple of bus drivers and some random family remembered seeing her far away from the murder site, so she’d have an alibi. Why else would she have acted so agitated, if not to be memorable?”

Her only daughter? Her first grandchild? I can see it.

“Maybe she was just frustrated because she was lost?” I said.

“Yes, or maybe the blood residue your people found in the ladies room sink in Dillard came off of Annette’s hands. How long before we know if the blood is George’s?”

I can tell you now; it’s George’s.

“Not long, sir. But chances are pretty good it’s his, since the doors to Dillard were locked at 6:15 last night. Officer Reynolds was on duty, and he recorded the time in the police log.” I had to re-lock them when I left.

“And Annette was the last person to see George alive,” he said, putting his own pieces together.

Second to last.

“But, sir, the lab results showed no blood residue on Annette’s muumuu. If she had mutilated George Lewis, the medical examiner said she definitely would have been covered with his blood.”

“Really, Steve, you disappoint me. A muumuu? When have you ever known Annette to wear a muumuu? I don’t mind telling you, I’ve watched her from time to time. That woman knows how to wear clothes right.” He waggled his eyebrows.

Didn’t I mention the baby shower had a Hawaiian theme?

“Don’t you see it, yet, Steve? All right. I’ll spell it out for you. Annette was wearing a muumuu because it was easy for her to take off. The reason you didn’t find any blood on her clothes was because she wasn’t wearing any when she killed George. She distracted him, beat his brains out, washed up, then put her muumuu back on. My wife sleeps in one, and they’re the easiest things to get in and out of, if you know what I mean.”

Yes, I know what you mean.

I dropped my head into my hands and said through my fingers, “And the murder weapon, sir? What did she do with that?”

“She must have gotten rid of it that night. It’s dark by five-thirty nowadays; it’s not like she’d have to worry about being seen,” he said, wiping his palms together to suggest a clean disposition of the matter.

You’re right; a dark blue police uniform, even a blood-soaked one, would hardly be noticed in the dark. And now, all that was left of it was ashes, which, along with a steel baseball bat, were somewhere at the bottom of the Clinch River. There was no evidence left to trace anyone to George Lewis’s murder.

“Not bad, not bad,” Smithson said to himself and nodded. “Clever, really. I guess our little Annette is more than just a pretty face.” Sherlock Holmes sat back, pleased with his own adroitness.

“It’s not looking good for Annette,” I said and shook my head with as much disquiet as I could feign.

Annette’s trial lasted only three days. The prosecution hammered on her motive, her access to George’s office, and the fact that she was the last known person to see George alive. By the time the prosecution rested, Annette looked defeated, drained of any hope, ready to give up. She didn’t know what I knew, that in my pre-trial interview with her lawyer, I had given him everything he would need to find all the holes in the case against her. When I told her, she would be so grateful.

I sat back and watched her lawyer go to work. He pointed out to the jury that all the evidence against Annette was circumstantial and that there were no eyewitnesses. He saved his trump card for last.

“Dr. Shepherd,” Annette’s lawyer addressed the chief medical examiner for Boswell County. “A crime of this much violence, this much anger, would you call it a crime of passion?”

“It certainly looked that way. In fact, of the eight blows inflicted, only the first was necessary to kill George Lewis. The remaining seven did nothing more than satisfy some animalistic urge in the killer.”

It was certainly made to look that way.

“Let’s take a look at the timeline, shall we, Dr. Shepherd?”

The lawyer didn’t wait for a response. “You said earlier that such a massacre would take at least three minutes to complete and several more minutes to clean oneself up after. Professor Mancini testified that George Lewis was alive a few minutes after six o’clock, and Officer Reynolds testified that the building was locked at 6:15 p.m., so only someone with a key could have gotten in or out. Wouldn’t that suggest that if Annette Walker had killed George Lewis, she had to butcher him, clean herself up so thoroughly that no blood remained on her body or clothing, lock the building, and catch the 6:20 p.m. bus at a stop that was a good twelve-minute walk from Dillard Hall, all in seventeen minutes?”