Miranda James - Murder Past Due

Melba pouted for a moment, but she never could stay annoyed or angry with anyone for long. “All right, Charlie. Spoilsport.” She grinned at me. “I’ll get it out of Peter somehow.”

I smiled at her, not doubting for a moment that she could. “Come on, Diesel. Let’s go.”

Diesel sat up and yawned. Then he stretched for a moment before jumping down. He came up to me and rubbed against my legs.

“We’ll see you later.” I waved at Melba as I followed my cat out of the office and toward the stairs.

I had plenty to think about when Diesel and I were once again installed in our accustomed places in the archive office. While the cat settled down for a nap, I stared at the computer screen. I should have been checking e-mail, but instead I kept running a list of suspects through my mind:

Julia Wardlaw

Justin Wardlaw

Jordan Thompson

Peter Vanderkeller

Any or all of them could be lying.

For example, Julia could have seen Jordan Thompson leaving as she herself arrived, rather than the other way around. Peter could be lying about speaking to someone through the door, or it could have been any one of the others in the room when Peter came to speak to Godfrey. Justin could have killed Godfrey, run out of the room terrified by what he had done, and then sat on the bench in the square until I found him.

Then there was the unknown factor: Mr. X or Ms. X.

Godfrey seemed to have angered enough people in his life that there were probably others in Athena who might have wanted to kill him.

But how to find out who they were, that was the question.

I glanced at the inventory of Godfrey’s papers lying on my desk. I knew one place to start.

Sighing, I picked up the inventory and began jotting down the box numbers that contained correspondence. It was going to be a long day.

TWENTY-TWO

I worked my way steadily through Godfrey’s correspondence, stopping only for lunch and the occasional insistent demand for attention from Diesel. At some point Rick Tackett appeared to change the locks on the office door and the storeroom, but until he came to offer me the new keys and take the old ones away, I hardly noticed him.

He stood in front of my desk for a moment, surveying the boxes. “Lotta stuff here. What are you gonna do with it?”

“Keep it in storage until I have a chance to go through it all and catalog it. But that’s going to be a while. I have a lot of other things to see to first.”

“Seems like a lotta work for just a bunch of paper,” he said.

I shrugged. “Someone may be interested in them at some point, want to do a dissertation perhaps. You never know what kinds of interesting stuff you’ll find in a collection like this.”

“Is it valuable?”

“Possibly,” I said. “Like anything, it depends on how much someone would be willing to pay for it. I doubt the college would want to sell the collection, though.”

Rick nodded and turned away. I watched him go, somewhat surprised by the conversation. This was the first time I had heard him express any curiosity about anything archival in nature. In the past when he’d delivered packages to the office he had never asked even one question.

It was probably because of Godfrey’s murder, I reasoned. I went back to my work.

Godfrey had accumulated several boxes full of fan mail, not to mention other kinds of correspondence. I scanned each letter as quickly as I could, looking for evidence of some kind of threat to—or ill feeling toward—Godfrey. There were indeed some of the latter but none of the former. If he ever received a threatening letter, Godfrey hadn’t kept it, apparently. I also skimmed any notations that Godfrey made on the letters, but I gleaned nothing worthwhile.

By five o’clock I had achieved nothing more than a bad headache and a case of eyestrain. There was still the other correspondence to go through, chiefly business stuff, but that would have to wait. I needed a break, and Diesel was more than ready to go home. I usually spent only half a day in the archive on Thursday anyway.

The walk home helped my headache. Being out in the cool late-afternoon air, plus getting some exercise, made a difference. By the time Diesel and I reached the house I was feeling quite a bit better.

After filling Diesel’s food and water bowls and cleaning out the litter box—something I had neglected to do this morning—I contemplated preparing dinner. I found a fresh package of ground beef in the fridge and decided that hamburgers were just the thing. A check of the pantry turned up a large can of baked beans. Add a salad to that, and I’d have a pretty tasty and filling meal for both my boarder and me.

Justin, with Diesel right on his heels, appeared in the kitchen as I was finishing up the burgers. “Good timing,” I said. “I’ll let you fix your hamburgers for yourself.” I pointed with the spatula toward the table. “There’s salad there and baked beans in the pot.”

“Thank you, sir,” Justin said with a shy smile. “I’m really hungry.”

“There’s plenty.” I returned his smile.

Justin never had much dinner-table conversation, and tonight was no exception. I waited until he had dispatched one burger, a large helping of salad, and two helpings of beans before I ventured a question.

“How are you doing?” Still hungry, I reached for the salad bowl, thinking more salad would be better for me than another round of beans.

Justin shrugged. “I’m okay, I guess. It all seems like a really bad dream, you know?”

“I do,” I said. “I know it might be difficult to talk about, but I was hoping you wouldn’t mind telling me a few things.” I had been thinking about the time Justin spent with Godfrey, wondering whether Justin had heard or seen anything that might be a clue to the murder.

“I don’t mind,” Justin said. He got up from the table to fix himself another burger.

“I’m sure Deputy Berry asked you the same questions I’ll probably ask,” I said. “The reason I’m doing this, I want you to understand, is because I’m concerned for you and your mother.”

“Yes, sir, I know,” Justin said. “I know Mama really appreciates it, and I do, too.” Finished at the counter, he returned to the table. He smiled at me again, not so shyly this time.

Good, I thought, he’s beginning to get some of his old spark back.

“You spent several hours with Godfrey yesterday,” I said. “Did anything unusual happen?”

Justin chewed for a moment, and after he swallowed he replied, “Most of the time we just talked. We argued, like I told you, but nothing weird happened.”

“Were you in his hotel room most of the time?”

“Yes, sir,” Justin said. “He said he didn’t want anyone bothering us, so it was better to be somewhere private.” He frowned. “That didn’t stop people from calling him, though.”

“How many phone calls did he get?” These might be slim leads, but they were better than nothing.

“Just two.” Justin ate a forkful of beans. “The first one was from his agent, he said. They only talked a few minutes, and he went into the bedroom to do that.”

“What about the second call?” I asked.

“Somebody else,” Justin said. “He went into the bedroom again, but he wasn’t there long.”

“Did he say who it was?”

“Not exactly,” Justin said. He thought for a moment. “When he came out of the bedroom he was muttering to himself, so I asked him if everything was okay. He said it was just some guy he knew bugging him about reading a book.”

That didn’t sound like a clue to anything. “That was all?”

Justin frowned. “Now that I think about it, he didn’t say book , he said manuscript . That’s different, I guess.” He paused. “I asked him if he read other people’s manuscripts and why, and he said he did sometimes because they wanted him to give them some kind of quote to use on the book when it was published. Then he said a lot of times people wanted him to read their stuff because they thought he would help them get it published. But he said this guy was a pest with no talent, and he wasn’t going to do it.” His face reddened a bit. “Actually the way he said it was a lot ruder, but I’m not going to repeat his actual words.”