Gin Jones - Helen Binney 01 - A Dose of Death (16 page)

“
Some guys like to have the latest tech, even if they don’t actually use it.”

Helen
‘s ex-husband had been like that, replacing his cell phone with the newest technology every few months, without having learned to use even a small percentage of the features in the older cell phone. She suspected Tate either had a simple phone or at least knew how to use every single feature it had. He would have noticed if one of his remotes was stolen, within a few hours.

“
I suppose knowing the exact number of remotes taken isn’t very helpful,” Helen said. “After all, the burglar must have a couple hundred of them by now, far more than he could possibly use, and yet he keeps on stealing them.”

“
It may not be a clue that could be used to narrow down the suspects,” Tate said, “but if he’s ever arrested, the specialized ones for the security system is solid evidence connecting him with the most recent theft. The generic remotes that you could buy anywhere would be easy to explain away if I were defending the burglar, but I’d have a hard time coming up with an innocent explanation for having the remote for an expensive security system.”

“
What else did you hear about the latest incident?” Helen said. “Do they have any idea what time the theft happened?”

“
Not really.”

“
What about a time it could
not
have happened?” Helen said. “I was reading up on the previous burglaries, and it looks like the burglar isn’t much of a morning person.”

“
I didn’t get many details.”

“
Never mind,” Helen said. “I’ll ask Geoff Loring about it. I was planning to talk to him today, anyway.”

“
Just promise me you won’t tell him that you’re the most likely suspect for having killed Melissa,” he said. “He might believe you, and he’d be able to testify against you at trial. I wouldn’t be able to exclude it as hearsay, because a confession is admissible as a statement against interest.”

“
I’ll let him do all the talking,” Helen promised. “I just want to see if he knows anything else about the burglaries. If we can figure out who the burglar is, the police can arrest him, and if we’re lucky, he’ll have an airtight alibi for when Melissa was killed. Then they’ll have to take me seriously.”

“
And I’ll have to defend you against murder charges.” Tate glanced at his piles and piles of wood stock. “I suppose it would be worth my time. I could use some more wood, and it’s not cheap. A murder-defense retainer would just about cover the additional stock I’ve been considering.”

“
Before you start spending that imaginary retainer, you’ll have to help me identify the burglar.”

“
Oh, no,” Tate said. “I just get people out of trouble, not into it. Better that I not know you’re planning to meddle in a police investigation.”

“
Just tell me something,” Helen said. “Is there always a pattern to crimes? An MO, like they say in the movies and on TV?”

“
I suppose. But most of the time, it’s not some master plan. It’s not a purple feather left at the crime scene or some special method of entry into the building. Usually it’s just that the person is a thief or an addict. He happens to see something he wants and he takes it. He doesn’t stop to work out all the details. The pattern has more to do with geography than anything else. At least, that was always the case with my clients.”

“
The difference is,” Helen said, “your clients got caught, and the Remote Control Burglar didn’t. I’m guessing he’s smarter than your clients, and maybe smart criminals have real MO’s.”

“
How smart can he be when he’s risking a jail sentence over a pile of worthless hunks of plastic?”

“
You’re the one who’s supposed to understand the criminal mind,” Helen said. “It’s your job. It’s why I’m allowing you to use my garage, after all—so I have access to your insights.”

“
The way you see it, then, the use of the garage covers the cost of the legal advice you’re asking for?” he said. “Maybe your niece is right, and we should have a lease written up.”

“
I don’t expect you to answer my questions forever,” she said. “Just until I figure out who the burglar is, and he’s arrested, so my nieces will leave me alone.”

“
I see,” Tate said. “Does that mean that if I help you identify the burglar, you won’t need me any longer, and you’ll kick me out of the garage, firing me and evicting me, all in one? Somehow, that doesn’t seem like much of an incentive for me to help you.”

“
I really hate a man who knows the rules of formal logic and isn’t afraid to use them.”

“
You hate everyone.”

“
I try,” Helen said. “But I won’t kick you out of your new studio when we find the burglar. You can stay as long as you’d like. I’m not worried about you pestering me the way everyone else does.”

Tate
nodded. “We’d better get out to the deck before Lily gets suspicious.”

“
She’s always suspicious,” Helen said as she reached for her cane. “It’s when she starts getting helpful that you need to worry.”

Tate deflected Lily’s questions and managed to eat an entire bagel, to Laura’s delight, before Adam returned with Tate’s car, and then the two men left. Helen convinced the nieces to leave shortly afterwards, telling them she’d promised to visit some friends at the nursing home. It wasn’t a lie, as such. She had promised Betty and Josie she’d come back sometime, and the common room of the nursing home would be a good, neutral place to meet Geoff Loring. She sent him an email, asking him to meet her there at 2:00, and received a confirmation a few minutes later. If she got there early, before the reporter arrived, she might be able to ask Betty and Josie about the story they’d hinted at before, the one that Geoff was missing. It probably had nothing to do with Melissa’s murder, but it wasn’t much more of a long shot than expecting to get any more information from the reporter.

Jack delivered Helen to the nursing home at 1:30. She signed the guest ledger and headed for the common room. Betty and Josie weren
‘t in their usual seats near the unlit fireplace, and one of the nursing staff explained that the women had been signed out of the nursing home for a few hours with Betty’s daughter.

As it turned out, Helen wouldn
‘t have been able to have a private moment with them, anyway. Geoff was already there, his youthful blond hair a contrast to the white and silver heads around him. He was wandering from patient to patient, seemingly at random, pumping them for information on his elusive big story.

Helen settled in what she thought of as Betty
‘s chair near the fireplace and waited for Geoff to notice her. He had stopped his wanderings to lean over a frail, old man who was almost completely deaf. Despite the old man’s attempt at conversation, Geoff was looking around the room. Helen could tell when he noticed her. He stood up, tugged on the tails of his faded, moss-green polo shirt, without actually removing any of the wrinkles, and abandoned the old man to race over to perch on the edge of Josie’s chair. 

“
What’s this all about?” he said. “Do you have a story for me?”

“
If I do, you’ll be the first reporter I’ll call,” Helen said. “But first I need some information.”

“
From me?”

“
You’re the best investigative reporter in the area.” The
only
investigative reporter, actually. “If you don’t have the answers, no one does.”

He settled deeper into the upholstered chair, adjusting the pillows behind him before leaning back.
“What do you want to know?”

“
Melissa’s killer,” Helen said. “What are you doing to find him?”

He waved his hand dismissively.
“That story isn’t worth pursuing. Not for someone of my caliber. Everyone knows who killed her. It was the Remote Control Burglar.”

“
But what if it’s not?” Helen said. “And why does everyone assume it’s him?”

“
Who else could it be?”

“
That’s what you’re supposed to be investigating.”

“
I’ve got a bigger story to pursue.” He peered around the room before leaning forward and lowering his voice, which only served to catch the attention of the nearest residents, some of whom had much better hearing than the old man Geoff had abandoned so readily. “I’m working on something that’s going to shock the whole town. Starting with all the town officials who have relatives here at the nursing home.”

The two women and one man who
‘d been blatantly eavesdropping, all shook their heads dismissively and went back to chatting with each other.

“
I’m sure it will be an excellent story,” Helen said, “but I’m new to town, so it won’t really affect me. Not the way Melissa’s murder and the Remote Control Burglaries do. Are you sure there isn’t anything you know about either one that you haven’t included in your printed stories? Maybe something that an editor cut?”

“
Most of my pieces run exactly as I write them,” Geoff said. “There was this one story about the burglaries, though, that hit right around the time when the schools were finishing up for the year last spring, and the paper needed to run a lot of fluff pieces about the high school seniors, and we ran out of space, so a couple of my paragraphs got cut.”

“
Anything interesting in those paragraphs?”

“
If it’s not interesting, I don’t write it,” Geoff said. “Usually, anyway. In that case, I’d added a few paragraphs to recap the previous burglaries. There’d been a whole spate of them that spring, but it had been a few weeks since they’d happened, so I summarized the earlier ones. There’d been five victims, I think, over the course of two weeks in May.”

“
Doesn’t sound terribly riveting.” Helen said. “I can see why the editor cut it.”

“
It was plenty interesting, and I could have written even more if they’d let me. But editors never get it right. The reporter on the ground knows what the real story is. But they never listen to us.” Geoff acknowledged a passing resident before adding, “You know, I’d forgotten, but there was one interesting fact that I noticed when I did the summary. All of the incidents were reported to the police within a couple days of each other, but it seemed likely that the actual burglaries had happened over a much longer stretch of time. A couple weeks, maybe a month. Some of the victims said they’d been too busy to watch television, so it could have been a while since the remotes were taken. One told me she might not have noticed for weeks longer, except she’d needed to play some sample DVDs from the videographers she was considering for her daughter’s wedding.”

“
How did you explain it?” Helen said. “The delay in reporting the thefts, I mean.”

“
I didn’t. It’s not my job to explain anything. I just lay out the facts. The readers get to make up their own minds, come to their own conclusions.”

“
But weren’t you curious?”

“
Not really.” He watched as an attendant pushed an old woman in a wheelchair into the common area. Nodding toward the newcomer, he whispered, “Do you know who she is?”

Helen shook her head. She
‘d never met the woman, although there was something vaguely familiar about her.

“
That’s Judge Nolan’s mother,” he said. “The judge is going to be shocked when she reads my story about what’s been going on here.”

Helen peered at the old woman: white-haired, obviously frail, but cheerful in her greetings of the fellow patients. She didn
‘t use anyone’s name, so perhaps she had a bit of dementia, but she didn’t seem scared or unhappy or anything else that would suggest she’d been mistreated. “She seems fine to me.”

“
Everything always looks fine on the surface,” he said smugly. “Dig a little deeper, though, and everything’s dirty.”

“
How dirty?”

“
I can’t say.” He looked into the mirror over the fireplace to adjust the collar of his polo shirt, removing a few of the creases on one side and pulling the other side out of alignment. “Not yet. Gotta protect my scoop until it’s ready to go to print.”

There was something about the way he said it, or perhaps it was just the way he didn
‘t give in to his enthusiasm for showing off what he knew, that made Helen think that, as Betty and Josie had claimed, Geoff didn’t actually have any inside information whatsoever about problems here at the nursing home. He was just fishing, hoping that if he spent enough time here, he’d stumble across something interesting. His claim to be onto something big was just bait, a form of encouragement for people to tell him their side of a situation he was pretending to have already uncovered. Meanwhile, he was missing out on a real story: Melissa’s murder, and the police mishandling of the investigation.

Despite her misgivings, Helen said,
“Good luck with the scoop.”

“
You could give me your own scoop,” he said. “Just give me an hour’s time, and I’ll write the best piece you’ve ever read. Hey, I could even write your official biography.”

“
No, thanks,” Helen said. “My life isn’t over yet.”

“
Volume one, then.”

“
I’m really not interested in talking about my past. You’ll have to wait until I’m as old as…” Helen caught sight of the white-haired old woman being pushed around the room in her wheelchair. “As old as Judge Nolan’s mother.” 

“
No one will care then,” Geoff said.

“
Good.” Helen pushed herself to her feet.

Geoff stood too.
“I get it. You’ve signed some sort of non-disclosure agreement as part of your divorce.”

“
Believe whatever you want,” Helen said, “but make sure you have impeccable sources before you print anything about me. I’ve got a good lawyer, and I’m not afraid to use him.”

*  *  *

On the ride home, Helen was starting to think she was as ill-suited for crime investigation as she was for scrapbooking and photography. She’d thought talking to Geoff was worth the risk, but he hadn’t known anything useful.

“
Marty called while you were in the nursing home,” Jack said. “He’s got the design of your security system all worked out with your niece already, and he’s ordered a few parts he doesn’t have in stock. Should be ready to install by the middle of the week.”

“
My nieces will be relieved,” Helen said. “I’m still not convinced I need anything more than my cell phones. No matter how fancy it is, the security system can’t do much more than dial 911 for me.”

“
If you use it properly, it can do a lot more than that,” Jack said, earnest in the defense of his part-time boss. “Marty doesn’t throw in extras, just for the sake of driving up the fee. Not unless people want those extras, of course. Some people like bells and whistles. They don’t care about using them; they just want to be able to say they’ve got the latest thing in technology. Like, there was this guy who rented the vehicle a couple weeks ago for a business trip with some colleagues. He made sure everyone knew that he had the newest, most expensive phone on the market, but then when we got to the airport, and he wanted to check to make sure his flight was on time, he couldn’t even figure out how to turn on the phone. He had to borrow mine.”

“
I hope he appreciated it.”

“
Ha!” Jack said. “They never do. I wish someone would teach them how it feels to be taken advantage of and then tossed aside.”

That was it, Helen thought.
Teaching people a lesson
. That was what the Remote Control Burglar was all about. He wasn’t stealing for a profit; he was doing it to teach the victims a lesson. He was showing them what it was like to lose control over their lives.

Interesting, that the burglar was making the exact point that Jack longed to make. The latest victim even sounded a lot like Jack
‘s recent passenger, the one with the high-tech phone he didn’t know how to use. The most recently burglarized homeowner had had a plethora of high-tech equipment, judging by the number of remotes involved, and he didn’t use the technology much, considering how long it had taken for him to notice the remotes were missing or to check his security camera’s images.

What if it was more than a coi
ncidence? What if Jack was the Remote Control Burglar?

Helen forced herself to watch the scenery instead of staring at Jack
‘s reflection in the rear-view mirror, where he might notice her dawning suspicion.

It all fit, from the pettiness of it, to the time of day
, and even the most active months. The crimes never occurred in the morning, and Jack worked an evening schedule, often out driving until 2 in the morning, so he would likely sleep in later than most people and not leave the house before noon unless he had a scheduled driving gig. Most of the thefts had occurred between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, which would be prime recreation time for him, with most of his work shifts scheduled for after dinner time. Plus, there was the fact that the victim advocate had noticed, that most of the crimes occurring in the spring and late fall. They were busy seasons for limo drivers, with proms and weddings and holiday parties, when the sheer numbers of passengers meant that there were bound to be more of them who annoyed Jack into taking his revenge. The rest of the year, when there were fewer passengers, there’d still be occasional causes for irritation, which would explain the burglaries outside the peak months.

It all made sense. Jack was the
Remote Control Burglar, getting even with his worst passengers for their petty cruelties.

Helen was fairly certain she was right, but she didn
‘t have enough to bring it to the police’s attention. It was just a theory, after all. Probably not even enough, if the police believed her, to justify their questioning Jack. Besides, the police wouldn’t pay any attention to her ideas.

For once, it worked to her benefit that no one ever listened to her. She might suspect Jack of some minor thefts, but if the police ever connected Jack to the burglaries, they
‘d be charging him with Melissa’s murder. It was one thing to think that Jack had done some foolish and regrettable crimes, but quite another to suspect him of committing murder in the course of a theft gone wrong.