Archer Mayor - Three Can Keep a Secret

“I don’t know,” Oetjen said, her eyes scanning the screen. “It was a normal workday. I had a couple of appointments.… one house showing.”

Les laid his hand on the desk phone. “Is there cell service from here?” he asked.

“It’s not very good,” she replied.

“So you usually use this?”

“Yes.”

“It looks like a sophisticated phone. Does it record outgoing calls for the previous month, do you think?”

She looked at him. “I don’t know. I suppose it does. I’ve never checked. That would be handy, wouldn’t it?”

Sam had heard enough. She walked away and began sightlessly staring at house offerings on a poster across the room.

Lester smiled. “Dolores,” he offered, “If you’d allow me, I’d be happy to see if it works.”

She waved at the device. “Oh, sure. Be my guest.”

Spinney began punching commands into the phone as Sam turned and asked in a more pleasant tone of voice, “How many extensions do you have in the house?”

“Three,” was the instant response. “And a cell I keep in my purse for when I’m on the road.”

“Les,” Sam asked. “Is that unit gonna capture all outgoing calls, or just the ones placed on that unit?”

Lester was their most electronically skilled member, although Willy had made it his mission to catch up.

Les glanced at Oetjen. “You bought the three phones as a package? This looks like one of these sets that can have up to six extensions.”

“It is.”

“There you have it,” he told his colleague. “All calls’ll be logged in here. This is like the mother ship.”

They watched him as he continued hitting buttons, guided by the small screen mounted into the phone’s display.

“Here we go,” he finally announced, pulling out his own cell phone and quickly taking a picture of the image on the screen. “At ten forty-three that night, lasting three minutes.”

Oetjen half rose in shock to stand and stare at the display. “What? Ten forty-three? Are you sure?”

“Yup.” He tapped the source of the information with his fingertip.

She sat back down heavily. “I don’t believe it.”

Sam quickly returned, circled the desk, and stood with her face inches from Oetjen’s. “It wasn’t you, was it, Dolores?”

“No,” was the barely whispered response.

“So who was it?”

“It must’ve been Aaron.”

“Aaron who?”

“Whitledge.”

“He your boyfriend?”

Dolores nodded, qualifying, “Kind of.”

“How long have you two been seeing each other?”

“Not long. Six months. Usually only on weekends, but not every one, either.”

“Tell us about him,” Lester suggested as Sam backed away.

“He’s nice,” she said vaguely.

“I’m sure he is. How did you meet?”

“At a party.” She rubbed her forehead. “Well, sort of one. It was at a bar, actually. A club, I guess.”

“Name?” Sam asked.

“The Four Leaf Clover, in Montpelier.”

Sam changed her demeanor, becoming more intimate in her body language, and almost confided her next comment. “You more interested in a commitment than he is?”

Oetjen sighed. “Yeah. As usual.”

Lester stayed silent as Sam continued. “He a bit of a player?”

After hesitating, Oetjen murmured, “Guess beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Tell us about that day,” Sam tapped the desk calendar. “What was it like?”

“It was fine. He came up, we had fun, he stayed the night-which he doesn’t always do.”

“How ’bout at ten forty-three? What were you doing then?”

“I was sleeping,” Dolores said, her voice stronger. “I had a sale that day, which is a big deal for me. I’m not doing that well, especially nowadays, and sure as hell not after that stupid storm. So when Aaron came up, we celebrated. I overdid it a little with the wine. By ten o’clock, we’d had dinner, watched a Netflix movie, cuddled a bit. I was wiped.”

“But he stayed over?”

“Yes. That’s what I said.”

“Are you a heavy sleeper, Dolores?” Les asked.

She smiled sheepishly. “I think I am, especially if I’ve been drinking.”

“So Aaron could’ve used the phone without your knowing it?”

“I suppose,” she said. “I don’t know why, though.”

“What do you know about him?” Sam asked. “Where’s he work, for example?”

“Montpelier. I think for state government.”

“You think?”

She flushed. “He said he wasn’t really free to talk about it. That his boss had him do special things sometimes that he couldn’t discuss.”

Lester almost laughed. “Like he was a secret agent?”

Dolores looked embarrassed. “I know. I know. It seemed kinda dumb to me, too, but then I thought maybe he was covering for being a file clerk or something. I liked him. He was nice to me. And so what if he wasn’t into commitment or anything long-term? He made me feel special, and I started thinking that was good enough.”

“Did you ever go to his house?” Sam asked. “Or did he always come here?”

“No, we spent the night at his place a couple of times. Mostly, he wanted to get away from Montpelier. It was a cool apartment, though. I liked going there. It was a converted loft or something, overlooking the main drag-State Street. Not big, but nice, with big windows.”

Lester handed over his notepad, open to a blank page. “Write down the address.”

“And add whatever phone numbers you have for him,” Sam requested.

Oetjen did as requested, asking as she wrote, “Is he in trouble now? You said you were looking into a murder.”

Les made a point of laughing. “Good Lord, no. We’re not looking at him. We just want to see how he connects to this other guy, and even he’s not the one we’re after. This is like looking at a bunch of pick-up sticks, and figuring out which one fell first.”

“That being said,” Sam added grimly, folding the sheet of paper and placing it into her pocket, “We don’t want you calling Aaron after we leave. You do that, we’ll know about it, and we’ll be back to talk about the price of hindering a police investigation. Do you understand that?”

Oetjen nodded.

Sam leaned onto the desk again. “I didn’t hear you.”

“I understand,” Oetjen said meekly.

* * *

Back in the car fifteen minutes later-and after borrowing a photo of Oetjen and Whitledge posing before the statehouse-Sam turned to her partner and asked, “How much you wanna bet she’s on the phone right now?”

Lester laughed. “You and Willy really are a match made in heaven.”

* * *

Joe was on the interstate when his cell phone went off. Someone had asked him once what he looked forward to the most when he retired. He’d reached into his pocket, extracted the cell, and answered, “Turning this damn thing off, once and forever.”

But right now, as usual, he pulled it out and answered, “Gunther.”

“Hi. It’s me.”

Despite his eagerness to reach his destination, he pulled over to the side of the interstate.

“Hey, there, Governor. How’re you doing? I’ve been hearing the news reports. I can’t quite figure it all out, but it sounds like you have your hands full, as if Irene wasn’t enough.”

Gail Zigman sounded tense and exhausted. “Tell me about it. Imagine trying to make political hay while the whole state is hurting. These damn people are like maggots, I swear to God.”

What Joe had been hearing, of course, was far from anything that simple or clear, running the gamut from a political ambush to a prime example of neophyte arrogance and inexperience, combined.

“I am sorry,” he said, hoping to steer clear of a lengthy debate. As a couple, they’d been compatible on some levels, and less so on others, making many of their friends wonder how they’d stayed together as long as they had. One of their points of divergence had been Gail’s tendency to see issues in starker shades of black-and-white than he.