Don't Cry Over Killed Milk (7 page)

“That’s understandable,” Damon said. He scratched his jaw. “Did you answer his question?”

 
“No. Mr. Pontfried came to the park before Jeremiah and I started dating, but I knew that he lived in Hollydale because I had been friends with Kathryn, his late wife. I asked Mr. Pontfried why he wanted to know. He said he was working for a client and couldn’t provide me with any more information, then told me it would benefit Jeremiah if I could answer his questions. I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I knew that he was trying to pull one over on me. If finding out about Jeremiah’s background would be so beneficial, why was the private investigator talking to me instead of him?”

“Is that what you said to Pontfried?” Damon asked.

“I wish I had that kind of chutzpah. I just said I didn’t know the answer to his question. That frustrated Mr. Pontfried, but he plastered on a phony smile and began to talk about money. He asked me if I knew whether Jeremiah had made any million dollar transactions.” She looked down at her pink-painted fingernails. “That question stumped me. I’ve been working here for seven years, and I’ve never seen any indication that Jeremiah had much money. He drove a Chevy that had over a hundred thousand miles on it, and he brought a sack lunch to work every day.”

“And you told Marcus Pontfried as much,” Damon said.

“I did. Before he left, Mr. Pontfried asked me if Jeremiah’s fingers were malformed. I didn’t see how I could deny that, so I told him they were.”

Veronica pulled out a bottle of water from a desk drawer for herself and offered one to Damon. He declined and then asked whether she discussed the private investigator with Jeremiah.

“I had to. It’s only natural.”

She drank and wiped a trickle of water from her chin with a tissue. “Jeremiah took it in stride,” Veronica said. “He laughed when I told him that Mr. Pontfried asked about million dollar transactions. Jeremiah said the private investigator must have been looking for a different person. I doubted that but didn’t press the point. After I hung up with Detective Sloman this morning, I recalled a strange thing that Jeremiah said at the time. He asked me if Mr. Pontfried had inquired about anyone else. ‘By name?’ I asked. He said yes but wouldn’t give me a particular name. He said he didn’t have anyone specific in mind, though I suspect he did.”

“That does seem strange,” Damon agreed. “Have you seen Marcus Pontfried since then?”

“No. A couple of weeks after Mr. Pontfried’s visit, I asked Jeremiah if he had heard from him. Jeremiah said he hadn’t. I let it drop after that and didn’t think about it again until now.”

Veronica Maldive took a small sip of water, then shook her head. “I shouldn’t fib,” she said and looked at Damon with puppy-dog eyes. “I
have
thought about my conversation with Mr. Pontfried. And about the money. I’m not a gold digger, Mr. Lassard. The prospect of money had nothing to do with my dating Jeremiah. But I admit that I thought about it. I fantasized about marrying Jeremiah and him telling me on our wedding night that he was fabulously rich.” She rubbed her eyes. “I snooped a bit. There’s an office upstairs in his house. One day when he was picking up some take out food, I went up there and looked inside the desk drawers. I didn’t see anything other than household bills. But there’s a filing cabinet in the office, too. It was locked, so I wasn’t able to look inside.”

“It was a natural reaction,” Damon reassured her.

“Thanks for letting me get that off of my chest, Mr. Lassard.”

A few minutes later, Damon left Veronica to her class preparations. He walked away from Veronica’s office convinced that Jeremiah Milk was hiding a massive secret from those who knew him—a secret that almost surely led to his last breath. And the involvement of a private investigator suggested that an outsider was involved. Perhaps the killer wasn’t a fellow park employee after all.

Chapter 7

Before heading home from the park, Damon stole through the woods to Emmanuel Alvarez’s stomping grounds. The cabin wasn’t marked on the trail map, but Gerry had roughly described its location. Damon found it at the end of a narrow dirt path, nestled among towering oaks and unkempt brush. A sloped roof and stovepipe chimney highlighted the rustic log cabin—it looked as if it had grown in place from roots. The smell of cannabis was patent.

Once past the surrounding undergrowth, Damon faced a bare cement porch. To one side of the cabin sat a freestanding single-car garage. A waist-high metal trash bin stood between the structures—Damon assumed that was where the police found the severed power cord. He walked toward the garage’s raised door, then paused and listened for signs of life. But for rustling that sounded like a small animal, the air was silent. Damon stepped in close to the edge of the garage and scanned its interior.

A mix of maintenance equipment and eclectic gear was scattered on the floor and on shelves lining the garage’s three walls.

“See anything interesting?” a deep voice intoned with mirth.

Damon was so startled he nearly jumped. He turned to see a dark-skinned man in a ribbed gray undershirt and long jean shorts. Wrinkles lined his neck, and small red spots dotted the creases.

“I’m sorry.… I was just looking around,” Damon stammered.

“And what are you looking for, young man?”

“I don’t exactly know,” Damon admitted. “Are you Emmanuel Alvarez?”

“I am.”

Damon introduced himself as Jeremiah Milk’s neighbor. “I heard the police found a severed power cord in the trash here.”

“They did.” He smiled widely, showing white teeth with sizable gaps between them. “It was mighty convenient for those pieces to be left right where I spend most of my time.” Emmanuel pointed at the nearby trash bin.

Damon concurred. “It looks like someone was trying to point the police in your direction.”

“On one hand, finding the cord there makes it look like an obvious frame-up,” Emmanuel said. “On the other, the police could think I put it there on purpose to draw away suspicion—on account of the fact that only a moron would put it so close by.” He paused. “Explain to me again why you’re here.”

Damon recounted his limited history with Jeremiah, and explained that Dottie Milk had asked him to come see Veronica.

“Okay,” Emmanuel said, considering Damon with shrewd eyes. “That clarifies why you’re at the park. So you heard about the power cord and decided to snoop around a little.”

Damon blushed.

“Your curiosity is understandable. Do you want to hear my theory on how Jeremiah was murdered?” Emmanuel asked bluntly. “I plan to tell the police later today, but Lieutenant Hobbes has been pretty rough on me, so I haven’t been in a hurry.”

Damon said he’d love to hear the man’s idea.

“First, let’s grab a couple of beers. I have a fridge in the garage. I’d offer to share a joint with you, but I have to keep my wits about me. I’m sure after I relay my ideas to the police, they’ll question me again.”

Damon followed Emmanuel into the garage and accepted a cold can of Miller Lite. “Do you live here?” he asked.

“I don’t technically live in the cabin, but one could if one needed to,” Emmanuel said and winked at Damon.

Damon popped the top on his can and sipped foam. He leaned his shoulder against an interior wall of the garage. Emmanuel straddled a sawhorse, legs dangling.

“The police showed me the power cord pieces they found,” Emmanuel said. “It was a heavy duty orange one I keep in this garage.” He pointed to a series of hooks along the back wall. One in the middle jutted out, unadorned. “If the killer needed a power cord, and Jeremiah was murdered in the basement of the shed near Cherubim’s Run, why take the cord from here?” Emmanuel asked rhetorically. “Other than a weak attempt to frame me.”

“There are power cords kept closer to the shed?”

“Yes, in two other locations. The police found the severed cord in my trash bin, out here off of the beaten path, so I figure the killer knows park grounds well. If that’s the case, he or she probably also knows that there are other power cords housed closer to the shed off of Cherubim’s Run. That got me thinking.”

Emmanuel drank half of his beer in a single gulp and continued without taking a breath. “I suspect the reason the murderer took the cord from my garage is because there are two other items he or she used that are kept here, and only here.”

Damon surveyed the garage’s interior.

“The first is the electric hedge trimmer,” Emmanuel said. He pointed to an orange and black device with a blade that resembled the oblong snout of a saw shark. “I think the killer used it to blow the electricity on the first floor of the shed. Jeremiah would figure the light bulb in the lamp up there had gone out and go down to the basement where we keep spares.”

“I heard that all of the gear from the basement had been stacked into a corner on the main floor,” Damon said.

“Alex, our operations manager, told me the same thing. But Jeremiah wouldn’t have seen the pile in the dark. He’d have felt his way down to the basement, where I believe the killer was waiting for him.”

“So how do you short an electrical socket with a hedge trimmer?” Damon asked with curiosity.

Emmanuel smoothed the hair on the back of his knuckles. “You plug one end of a power cord into the wall socket and the other end into the electric trimmer. Then you power up the trimmer and slice straight through the cord. In an old shed, it would immediately fry the circuitry in the socket.”

Damon nodded. “So Jeremiah enters at about ten o’clock to sign off on the daily chart and the lamp doesn’t work. He unscrews the bulb and walks downstairs to look for a replacement. Not an easy task in the dark.”

“That’s true,” Emmanuel agreed. “I tip my cap to Mr. Edison. If it wasn’t for electricity, we’d all be watching television by candlelight.” He guffawed.

Damon was too busy thinking for the joke to register. “Wouldn’t Jeremiah be carrying a flashlight?”

“I doubt it,” Emmanuel said, still laughing. “All of the places he checks have lights inside and the golf carts have headlights. I think Lawrence and Aylin use flashlights, but I’ve never seen Milt or Jeremiah with one.”

The maintenance man certainly knows a lot about the rangers
, Damon thought. “So Jeremiah walks down the basement steps in the dark,” he recapped. “Then what?”

“Watch this,” Emmanuel said and led Damon out of the garage. He directed Damon to stand ten feet back from group of oak trees. The elder man wheeled a menacing-looking machine from the garage. Its body was a two-and-a-half-foot box on wheels featuring a large motor and gas tank. It had an appendage that resembled a gun attached to the end of a long wand. Emmanuel connected one end of a hose to the machine’s base and the other to a spigot on the side of the garage. He turned on the water. Then he flicked a switch on the machine, pressed the choke, and pulled violently on a long rip cord. The machine jumped to life with a tremendous roar. Emmanuel pointed the gun at one of the trees and pulled the trigger. A ferocious jet of water obliterated the oak’s bark and tore into its pulp like a food processor pur
é
eing summer squash.

Emmanuel released the throttle after fifteen seconds and the two men approached the oak’s pummeled trunk. It had a gash two inches deep.

“My gosh,” Damon said, staring at the tree’s wound. He turned and looked at Emmanuel. “That’s a pressure washer, right?”

“It is,” Emmanuel said in a serious tone. “The police told me what Jeremiah’s body looked like and that the basement of the shed was damp. I think a pressure washer was used to do the deed. The water would have gone down the drain.” He lifted the machine’s gun. “This one is gas powered. We use it for major jobs, like stripping paint and cleaning the asphalt in the parking lot. I ripped apart that oak tree using the medium setting.”

“That could definitely kill a man. Could it break bones, too?”

“Easily,” Emmanuel replied.

Damon paused. “You probably shouldn’t have used it. The police will want to look at it.”

“The killer didn’t use this one,” Emmanuel said confidently. “I let a buddy of mine borrow it a week ago, and he didn’t return it until this morning. So it wasn’t at the park when Jeremiah died. I think the killer used our electric pressure washer. It’s in there now.” Emmanuel nodded toward the garage but Damon couldn’t see the machine from his position near the trees.

“That one’s not quite as strong as the gas powered washer,” the maintenance man said. “But it has more than enough juice to murder a man if the person wielding the water gun knew what he was doing.”

“Electric,” Damon said. “So it would have to be plugged in.”

Emmanuel cut him off. “Alex told all of the staff here what she saw in the shed. Only the outlet on the main floor was fried, not the one in the basement. And the electric pressure washer has its own cord.”

“But how could the killer have known both outlets wouldn’t blow when he cut the power cord with the hedge trimmer?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have enough experience in circuitry. You could ask Milt Verblanc. He’s a whiz with electronics. Builds his own robots.”

Interesting, Damon thought. Was Emmanuel subtly suggesting that Milt Verblanc was the killer? And did Emmanuel really lack the requisite circuitry knowledge? He seemed fairly astute when describing how the killer could have shorted the outlet on the main floor of the shed.

* * *

Damon’s head was swimming with information when he left Emmanuel Alvarez and made his way to the Tripping Falls parking lot. Emmanuel’s theory about the instrument of murder made sense. A pressure washer could leave horrific marks and break bones, without charring skin. And it would account for Jeremiah’s wet uniform and the damp basement.

Damon’s mind wrinkled. If Emmanuel lived in the cabin, how could the killer have spirited away, and then brought back, the pressure washer, hedge trimmer, and power cord without Emmanuel’s knowledge? Perhaps the maintenance man was involved in the crime somehow.

As Damon returned to his car, he noticed Gerry Sloman in the parking lot speaking with a pair of park rangers. One was a solid man with tree-trunk legs and powerful shoulders. A thick brown moustache lined his upper lip. The other was a wisp of a woman. She had green saucer eyes and straight blond hair with dark roots. Damon tentatively approached the trio. Gerry looked up.

“Hi, Damon,” he said and introduced Lawrence Drake, the park’s ranger who doubled as a naturalist, and Aylin Erul. Gerry asked Damon what he was doing back at Tripping Falls.

Damon stopped himself from blurting out that he hoped to speak with Gerry alone—to get the detective’s thoughts on the private investigator, convey Emmanuel’s theory of how the murder was committed, and discuss the man Cynthia had seen poking around her neighbor’s crepe myrtles. Given the presence of the rangers, he instead said, “I paid Dottie Milk my respects this morning on behalf of Hollydale. She asked me to touch base with Veronica Maldive and arrange a meeting between the two of them prior to Jeremiah’s funeral.”

“Too bad for Veronica,” Aylin said. “I think she liked Jeremiah a lot.”

“Was he an affable person?” Gerry asked.

Aylin hesitated. “To be honest, I didn’t know him very well. He was reserved. When we interacted, we only spoke about work. But he wasn’t unpleasant.”

Gerry turned and looked at Lawrence Drake.

The big man shrugged his massive shoulders. “He was okay,” Lawrence grunted.

“What the hell is
he
doing here?” Margaret Hobbes thundered. She strode out of the visitor center and toward the group in the parking lot. Hobbes jabbed a finger in Damon’s face. “You’re not a police officer, Mr. Lassard,” she shouted. “You interfered the last time I had a murder investigation, and it looks like you’re up to your old tricks. If you want to help the police, enter the academy or join the Crime Solvers group.” She turned to face Gerry and lowered her voice. “Detective Sloman, I know Mr. Lassard is your friend, but you are not to speak with him about this investigation. Do you understand me?”

Gerry nodded, and Margaret shooed Damon away.

* * *

A disappointed Damon left the park. Despite her gruffness, he knew that Margaret Hobbes was right. He wasn’t a police officer.

Hobbes’ suggestion to join the Arlington County Crime Solvers was a good one, Damon thought. It was a local non-profit group staffed by Arlington citizens who monitored an anonymous tip line for county crimes. They maintained a semi-formal relationship with the police.