A Little Yuletide Murder (12 page)

“No need to,” said Mort. “I didn’t interrogate him, just told him why I was bringin’ him in and told him to cool his heels in the cell until this thing gets straightened out.”

“Still, Sheriff, there should have been an attorney present from the moment he was in your custody. May I see him?”

“I suppose so,” said Mort, standing, going to his door, and yelling for Tom Coleman. A moment later Coleman appeared.

“Take Mr. Turco to see Mr. Walther, Tom.”

“Mind if I go with you, Joe?” I asked.

“Sure. Why not? Okay with you, Sheriff?”

“Anything Mrs. F. wants to do is always okay with me.”

“That’s very sweet, Mort,” I said, standing.

Tom led us to the cell in which Jake Walther was confined. I noticed that all the other cells were empty—a slow crime day in Cabot Cove, thank goodness.

Jake was sitting on the narrow, hard cot in a far comer of the cell. He appeared to be sleeping sitting up, and didn’t look in our direction when we stopped in front of the door.

“Hey, Jake, wake up,” Tom Coleman said, hitting his ring of keys on the bars.

Jake opened one eye and cast it in our direction. He looked horrible. His hair, which was never particularly neat, was a gray, matted mess. Stubble on his face enhanced the look of fatigue and hopelessness. He wore stained bib overalls over a wrinkled yellow shirt. I noted that his shoes had been removed, probably to ensure that he did not attempt to use the laces to harm himself.

“You got company, Jake,” Tom said. “Mrs. Fletcher and a lawyer.”

Now Jake opened the other eye, turned slightly on the cot so that he faced us, and frowned, saying, “I didn’t ask for no lawyer.”

“No, you didn’t, Jake,” I said, “but Mary asked me to find you one. Mr. Turco is new to Cabot Cove, but is an excellent attorney. He’s agreed to at least sit down with you. He hasn’t committed himself to taking your case, but—”

“Why don’t the two of you get the hell out of here,” was Jake’s reply.

Joe Turco looked at me and shrugged.

I quickly said to Jake, “You can dismiss us if you wish, Jake, but you should talk to Mr. Turco if only out of respect for your wife. She’s very upset, as one can imagine she would be. The least you can do is give Mr. Turco a few minutes so that he can better understand what’s going on. Then he can decide whether he would want to represent you. You do need a lawyer, you know.”

Jake slowly pushed himself to a standing position, stretched, yawned, and approached the bars. When we were only a few feet apart, he said, “I don’t need no damn lawyer. Everybody’s already made up their minds that I killed Rory Brent. Might just as well have the sheriff take me out front right now and shoot me, or hang me from a tree. A lawyer? All that’ll do is cost money, and he ain’t going to be able to do nothing to make it right. Nice you coming here and all, but there’s nothing nobody can say to change nobody’s mind.”

“Suit yourself, Mr. Walther,” Joe said. “I’m not crazy about being here anyway. The one time you and I met up before, you cut me off and threatened to kill me.”

Jake squinted to better see Joe’s face. “That’s crazy talk,” he said. “I never seen you before in my life.”

“Yeah, well, it happened pretty quick. Did you threaten your brother-in-law, Dennis, if he didn’t give you an alibi for the morning Rory Brent was murdered?”

Another scowl from Jake Walther. “Hell, no,” he said. “Dennis has the mind of a mole. Nice enough fella, but he’ll say anything anybody wants him to say. Truth is I was out fixing a wall with Dennis when ol’ Rory got it. That’s what Dennis told the sheriff first time around. But then he changed his mind, probably because the sheriff talked him into it. You can’t believe nothin’ Dennis says, and that’s a fact.”

“So maybe we shouldn’t believe him when he first said he was with you that morning.”

Jake looked at me. “See what I mean, about nobody believing me? This here young lawyer is already trying to tear apart my story.”

“I’m not doing anything of the kind, Mr. Walther,” Joe said. “I’m just looking at it from the viewpoint of a prosecutor. Did you ever threaten to kill Rory Brent?”

“Might have,” said Jake.

Joe turned to Tom Coleman, who stood listening to the conversation. “Mind if we go in the cell with him?” Joe asked. “It’s awkward standing out here. And I’d appreciate being alone with—” Joe looked at me and smiled. “With my client.”

“I suppose it’s okay that you go in,” Tom said to Joe, “but I don’t think Mrs. Fletcher ought to be in there.”

Jake Walther’s laugh was a cackle. “What are you afraid of, Coleman, that I’ll attack her? Damn fool.”

Tom’s anger showed on his face, but he didn’t respond.

I said, “I’d like to be with Mr. Turco when he talks to Mr. Walther.”

“Suit yourself, Mrs. Fletcher,” Tom said, unlocking the door and opening it. Jake stepped back to allow us to enter. The moment we were inside, Tom slammed the door shut with unnecessary force, I thought, and walked away, muttering.

“Mind if we sit down?” Joe asked, indicating the cot.

Jake’s response was to shrug, go to the other comer, and lean against the wall, arms folded defiantly over his chest.

We sat on the edge of the cot. Joe turned to me and said, “Anything you’d like to ask, Mrs. Fletcher?”

“No, I’m just an interested bystander, here on behalf of Mr. Walther’s wife. You’re the lawyer. You ask the questions.”

“Okay,” Joe said. “Let’s start from the very beginning, Mr. Walther. Mind if I call you Jake?”

“Suit yourself.”

I was impressed with Joe Turco’s questioning of Jake. He was forthright, yet gentle, and had a marvelous way of putting Jake at ease, at least to the extent that was possible, considering the circumstances.

“I’m willing to be your attorney, at least for this phase of the case,” Joe said a half hour later. “I won’t promise anything after that. If you want me to represent you, I’ll go straight to the district attorney and demand that she either indict or allow you to go free. But if they let you go, I have to have assurance from you that you won’t go any farther than your farm. Understood?”

“What’s this going to cost me?” Jake asked.

“We can work that out later,” Joe said. “Look, Mr. Walther, I’ll be honest with you. I don’t like you. The one brush I had with you, whether you remember it or not, was enough to turn me off on Mr. Jake Walther for the rest of my life. I’m here because of Mrs. Fletcher, and because I believe in the law. I don’t know whether you killed Rory Brent or not. You say you didn’t, and I accept that. I just don’t want to see a man falsely accused because of his general reputation. That rubs me the wrong way, as it should rub every citizen the wrong way. Want me as your attorney, Mr. Walther? Speak up now, because I’m leaving.”

Jake looked at me, a quizzical expression on his face.

“If I were you, Jake, I’d take Mr. Turco up on his offer,” I said. “You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Again, I remind you that you have a wife who is very worried.”

For the first time since entering the cell, I thought of Jake’s daughter, Jill, attending school in New York City. “And don’t forget Jill,” I said.

The mention of her name generated an interesting softening of Jake Walther’s face. I wondered whether he might even cry.

“You did a good thing for Jill, getting her into school,” he said to me.

Because I knew he’d been adamant in his objection to her attending college, especially one in a big city like New York, I found his expression of gratitude touching.

“I helped her,” I said, “because she’s a very bright young woman who will make a fine writer one day. Have you spoken with her?”

He averted his eyes as he slowly shook his head and said, “No. She probably don’t even know this is happening.” He looked up. “But she will.”

He turned to Joe Turco. “Sure, go ahead and be my lawyer. How old are you?”

Joe laughed and said, “Thirty-two.”

“Too young to be much good at anything, but I suppose you should know somethin’ after spendin’ all those years in school.”

Joe closed the gap between them and extended his hand, which Jake reluctantly took, then quickly dropped.

“I’ll be back,” Joe said, “I hope with some good news.”

I walked with Joe back to his office, where he intended to tidy up a few loose ends on his real estate transaction before seeing the district attorney. We stood on the sidewalk in front of Old Tyme Floral.

“Do you think you’ll be successful with the district attorney?” I asked.

“Probably,” he said. “They either have to indict or let Jake go. I’m not certain of the Maine statutes, but I’ll do some quick reading before I go over there. I’m licensed here, but still have to get up to speed on local law. Think my client is guilty, Jessica?”

“I have no idea, Joe. All I know is that Mary Walther will be extremely grateful for your agreeing to become involved. And I’ll see to it that there’s money for your fee.”

“The last thing on my mind,” he said. “Frankly, doing real estate is a lawyer’s bread and butter, but it can get pretty dull. Defending the grinch who shot Santa has a lot more pizzazz.”

“O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered; Accept our prayers on behalf of the soul of thy servant departed, and grant him an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of thy saints; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Father Wayne Shuttee, Cabot Cove’s Episcopal priest, conducted Rory Brent’s burial ritual. The Brent family were staunch Episcopalians; their generosity was well known not only within the church, but throughout the community.

Rory’s funeral was held at the town’s largest funeral parlor, and had attracted an overflow crowd. Patricia Brent sat stoically throughout the service, which, besides Father Shuttee, consisted of a series of eulogies by townspeople for their departed friend. Bob Brent, the son, wearing jeans with holes at the knees, a T-shirt, and hiking boots, his hair in need of washing, was out of place at such a solemn event. There were muttered comments that he might at least have dressed more appropriately for his father’s funeral, but I don’t think anyone said it to him directly. Funerals, like weddings, always seem to produce a certain tension within families. The trick is to not feed into it out of deference to the bride and groom, or in this case the departed.

Tears flowed easily as Rory’s friends praised him for his civic-mindedness, his exemplary performance as a husband and father, and for what he meant to Cabot Cove. I’d been asked to join the eulogists, but demurred, not because I didn’t have good things to say about Rory, but because I knew I would be uncomfortable in that situation. I was content to listen to the words of others, some wonderfully eloquent, others halting and awkward but brimming with honest emotion.

Now, on a dank, dark day, we stood at the gravesite as Rory’s coffin was about to be lowered into the hard earth.

“... ashes to ashes, dust to dust...”

“I still can’t believe this,” Richard Koser, the photographer, whispered into my ear.

“I know,” I said.

“It’s like ... well, it’s like burying Santa Claus. What will kids all over the world do now?”

Richard’s comment caused me to smile. Somehow, there was something comforting about the Santa Claus connection to Rory Brent, even though that link would accompany him to the hereafter.

The coffin was lowered. Father Shuttee said a few final words, and we returned to the cars that had brought us to the cemetery. As I stood chatting with friends, I saw a lonely figure approaching from the far reaches of the graveyard, growing increasingly larger as she neared.

“Isn’t that Jill Walther?” someone asked.

“Yes, I think it is,” I said.

I wasn’t sure whether to close the gap between Jill and myself, or to simply let her reach us. I decided on the former course of action, and took purposeful strides in her direction. My concern was that the speculation that her father had murdered Rory might cause some of those gathered to take it out on her with an unpleasant comment—or worse. Even if Jake had murdered Rory, it was no reason to demonstrate antagonism toward another member of his family.

“Hello, Jill,” I said when we were face-to-face on the long, narrow concrete road leading from the main entrance.

“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“How wonderful to see you again. Are you home on your Christmas break?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes focused on her boots. “I left a few days early once I heard about Mr. Brent.”

I didn’t know how much she knew about the accusation that her father was the murderer, and didn’t want to prompt her. I silently waited for her to say more.

“I came home last night,” Jill said. “I guess you know that my father is in jail.”

“Yes. I visited him yesterday with an attorney, Mr. Turco. I hope he’ll be successful in arranging for your father to be released, perhaps on bail, although when someone is charged with—”

“Charged with murder,” she said, completing my sentence. Now she looked me straight in the eye and said, “My daddy could never have killed him.”

“I know how you feel,” I said, not adding that no matter how much faith she might have, there was still the possibility that the rumors were true, that Jake Walther had, indeed, murdered Rory Brent.

“You don’t think he killed him, do you?” she asked. Her eyes were moist, and her lips quivered.

“I certainly don’t want to think he did,” I said, evading a direct reply to her question. No sense in feeding into her fears at that point.

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

“I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t want to stay home. Mom asked me to, but I said I needed a walk. I just headed in this direction. I knew Mr. Brent was being buried and wanted to—” Now she broke down completely, sobs racking her small, slender body. I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her face to my bosom.