Gayle Roper - Caught In The Act

“Jolene,” I said hesitantly. “I’ve got to take pictures.” It seemed so intrusive to go flash, flash here and flash, flash there.

She raised her head. “For the paper?”

“Yes. But also to reconstruct the scene and look for possible clues.”

She gave me a watery, wavery smile. “You’ve got the detective bug.”

“Sort of,” I confessed, blushing at the actual verbalizing of that thought. How pretentious of me, though I had actually solved another murder. “But I won’t take any pictures if you don’t want me to.”

“The cops are going to photograph him, aren’t they?”

I nodded.

“Then you might as well, too. Just don’t put him in the paper like that.”

“I’ll tell Mac,” I promised.

I picked up my camera and began circling the room. As I walked, I talked, as much for myself as to keep Jo from falling prey to greater shock.

“How’d you meet Arnie?” I snapped the refrigerator and the couple of notes that were held to it by magnets shaped like fruit. One note from a scratch pad said: Jolene—5:30. The other, an 8x10 printout on a certificate template, read: $50,000.00!

Jolene looked at Arnie. “We met the first day of kindergarten. He was this shrimpy little kid with big glasses and a bigger mouth. He liked to boss everyone around. I hated him.”

I glanced at Arnie. “He’s no shrimp now.”

Jolene shook her head. “But he was all through high school. The littlest guy around. Mr. Brainiac. He and Airy were quite the pair. Two dweebs.”

I thought of the beautiful Airy Bennett. “Dweebs? Airy? Arnie?”

“Hard to believe, huh? I hung out with Airy because I felt sorry for her. And people were nice to Arnie because he’d tell you all the answers or write your paper for you or whatever—for a price. He loved that kind of stuff. But Airy wouldn’t even let you copy her homework. ‘It’s cheating, Jo.’” Jolene’s voice took on a hard edge. “She was the most self-righteous thing!”

I’d never let anyone copy my homework either, but I thought I wouldn’t tell Jolene that little piece of trivia.

In the sink I noticed two glasses with dark liquid dregs. I leaned over and sniffed. Iced tea. I looked for telltale lipstick on one of the glasses, hard to do since I couldn’t pick them up for fear of disturbing prints. If Jolene hadn’t been keeping Arnie company anymore, maybe someone else had.

I sighed. She, if there was a she, either wore that lipstick that never came off or she wore none. Or she’d wiped the glass clean of any evidence. Interesting thought, that.

I noticed a wastebasket tucked in the corner by a cabinet. I walked over and peered in. I saw crumpled paper towels with blue hearts and flowers on them, a clear plastic wrapper from some package, an empty half-gallon Tropicana orange-tangerine juice container and the box and plastic tray from a Lean Cuisine dinner, chicken marsala. No clues as far as I could see, but I took a picture anyway.

“If Arnie was such a brainiac dweeb,” I said as I took a picture of the bullet lodged in the cabinet directly behind where he must have been standing when he was shot, “how did you two ever get together?” I glanced again at the man lying on the floor. “And how did he get to be such a handsome guy?”

“After high school he went away to college,” Jolene said. “He’d earned all these scholarships and stuff. I didn’t see him for about almost four years. Then I went to a New Year’s Eve party, and there he was. I couldn’t believe it! He’d gotten so tall, and he’d started wearing contact lenses. And he pumped iron all the time. There’s all kinds of weight equipment in the room down the hall.”

She looked at me vaguely “He was gorgeous, wasn’t he? I fell for him big-time.”

“And he fell for you?” I prompted as I took a seat beside her. I pushed her purse, gloves and scarf away from the table’s edge.

“Remember, he’d gone with Airy for years. It took me a couple of months to convince him to drop her.”

I looked at Jolene. “Arnie had been going with Airy?”

“Since seventh grade.”

“And you cut her out?”

“Yeah.” Jolene unconsciously sat straighter. “It was easy.”

I nodded as the ladies’ room animosity suddenly made more sense.

“Would you say Airy was a late bloomer, too?” I asked.

“She’s still waiting to bloom,” Jolene said with more than a trace of the nastiness I’d seen earlier. I also recognized a case of wishful thinking. Airy had definitely blossomed.

The doorbell rang, causing us both to jump.

“I’ll get it.” I stuffed my camera in my purse and went to let the police in. I led the two uniforms to the kitchen where they took one look and phoned home. In a few more minutes, my friend Sergeant Poole of the Amhearst police arrived. A crime scene team from the state police followed quickly, as did the coroner. Even a fire truck showed up as part of the first-response team, even though I’d told the 911 operator we didn’t need AFD personnel.

In no time Jolene and I found ourselves back on the huge couch again, our scarves and gloves tumbled in the pile of coats on the floor in the hall.

“What will I do about the blood on my coat?” Jolene asked, staring across the room at the collection of garments, fixing on a problem that had comprehensible ramifications. The busyness of the men in the kitchen and their purpose bewildered and overwhelmed. “I love that coat. Arnie got it for me before our troubles.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I patted her hand. “I’ll take it to the cleaners for you when I take mine.”

She nodded and slumped back on the sofa. We sat silently in the brightly lit room and waited as we had been asked by Sergeant Poole.

Finally we were interviewed, though I didn’t have much to say. I sat stiffly in one of the cherry dining room chairs, hoping I didn’t appear guilty of anything because I wasn’t. I just get a guilty complex around extreme authority. It probably went back to the time when I was a little kid and lied to my mother about where I got the candy bar I’d stolen. As I sat straight and still, stoically waiting my grilling, I studied the porcelain in the china cabinet on the far wall. One shelf was Royal Doulton figurines, their colorful images a contrast to the shelf of sleek, sophisticated Lladro porcelains. The top shelf was full of collectors’ pieces of blue Wedgwood with rings of white flowers encircling them.

Where had the money and the good taste for those things come from?

Sergeant Poole sat across the table from me.

“How can I help, William?”

“How did Mrs. Meister get the blood on her hands and her coat?” he asked.

“She knelt beside Arnie when she first found him. She tried to pick him up and hold him. She didn’t realize he was dead.”

“Um,” he said and waited. I waited, too, because I didn’t have anything else to say. He knew me well enough to realize that if I had been trying to protect Jolene or if I had anything further to say, I would have blurted it when he waited. That authority reaction thing again.

Finally he asked, “What do you know about the victim?”

“Very little. I never met him. In fact, I never even saw him before tonight.”

“Not a great way to make an acquaintance.” And he smiled sympathetically.

I smiled back and relaxed a bit.

“Why did you come here today?” he asked.

“Jolene—Mrs. Meister—was supposed to meet her husband here.”

“Meet him here? Doesn’t she live here?”

“No. They were divorcing, and she lives in her own condominium.”

His eyebrow rose. “Acrimonious divorce?”

“I don’t think so.” I knew exactly what he was looking for. The spouse is always the first suspect.