Murder on the Mind (22 page)

“Sit down. You really want coffee? How about some hot chocolate?” Brenda asked.

I sat. “I’ll take the chocolate.” Settling my weight on my good arm, I closed my eyes, breathing shallowly.

“You want something to eat?” Richard asked.

“I’m not ready for food.”

“You going to live?”

I squinted up at him. “You tell me.”

Instead he got up, grabbed a white paper bag off the counter, and took out a whole pharmacy of new and different drugs, setting them in front of me. His expression was stern, but his voice was gentle. “I’m telling you this as your concerned brother and as a licensed quack. Don’t fuck with your health.”

I blinked, surprised at his choice of words.

“You ever read the instructions that came with your prescription?”

“Of course. Well, kind of. Only what was on the bottle.”

“Do you know what happened yesterday? You overdosed. Every pill you took made the headache ten times worse. You can’t pop those things like candy. There’s a regimen involved when taking this stuff.”

“Well, I didn’t know.” It sounded lame, even to me. The whole episode should have terrified me, but I’d instinctively known that Richard would be there for me, that he’d take care of me. Exactly what I hadn’t wanted only weeks before.

“I can’t take care of you,” he continued, as though reading my mind. “I’m too emotionally involved. I’ve arranged for someone at the UB clinic to see you on Monday.” He took two of the pills from one of the bottles. “Take these now. We’ll go over the rest of the routine when you can think straight.”

“Yes, sir,” I murmured with respect. He spoke to me like I was a five-year-old, but I was too tired to complain, and ready to do just about anything so not to endure a repeat of the previous day. Brenda put a small glass of water in front of me and I downed the pills.

“Anything break on the Sumner case yesterday?”

“Jeff!”

“Rich, I gotta know.”

“No. Nothing happened. No one was arrested.”

Brenda placed a steaming mug before me and took her seat.

I took a sip of chocolate, avoiding both their gazes. “Sorry I crapped out on you yesterday. We should’ve talked about . . . .” I wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence.

“About Dan’s advice?” Richard said.

I nodded. “I’m sorry I dragged you into all this, Rich. I—”

He held up a hand to stop me. “I’ve had a day to think about it. If you want to continue looking into Sumner’s murder, I won’t stop you. Hell, how could I?”

“But, Jemison said—”

“I know this is important to you. I just want you to consider the consequences if you continue with your—” It cost him to say it. “—investigation.”

I thought carefully before answering. “I keep asking myself, what’re the consequences if I don’t? I
know
what I
know
. I can’t explain to you why I feel obligated to keep looking for answers. I just have to do this.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then, “Okay, then let’s talk about what you’re going to do today—which is nothing,” Richard said.

“No argument there,” I said, glad he’d changed the subject. And I didn’t do anything else that day but rest. I managed to drink the whole mug of chocolate before crashing for a three-hour nap. For lunch, I kept down an entire bowl of soup. By Wednesday evening I began to feel almost human again and choked down at least half the dinner Brenda served me. I watched the evening news, glanced at the newspaper to look for anything new on the Sumner investigation, and was in bed and asleep by eight o’clock.

Thursday morning, I was ready to go back to work.

CHAPTER 18

Brenda had scheduled another clinic visit, so the two of them were gone before ten o’clock. Meanwhile, I started the day by checking the newspaper to see if Sam Nielsen had made good his threat to write about me. He hadn’t. Yet.

Next I got on the phone, checking with the library, the ever-handy City Directory, a patient library assistant, and the local phone book to find the Walker employee who’d been prosecuted for theft. I found four Theodore Schmidts. I narrowed the field to two. On the last call I hit pay dirt. The woman who answered said Schmidt was her boyfriend and I could find him at his job any time during the day.

After that, I called Rob Sumner’s house. No answer. I’d have to try again later.

I retrieved the piece of paper Charlie Nowak had given me days before, and dialed Big Jim Walker’s secretary’s home number. It rang several times before an older woman answered. “Lucy Kaminski?”

“Yes.”

“My name’s Jeffrey Resnick. I’m investigating Matt Sumner’s death. Charles Nowak gave me your name and thought you might be able tell me—”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know the man.”

“But you did work for Sharon Walker.”

“Oh, yes. Sharon was engaged to Mr. Sumner’s son. But that was years ago.”

“Could I come out and talk to you about—?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she interrupted once again.

“Would you speak to me over the phone?”

I pictured her pursing her lips, trying to decide if she should continue the conversation. “I really don’t like discussing such personal matters with strangers.”

“Of course, you’re right,” I admitted, backpedaling. “Mr. Nowak said you worked for Jim Walker for over twenty years.”

“Twenty-five years,” she said with pride.

“Did you retire when the company went under?”

“Yes. It was very sad,” she admitted, and launched into a detailed remembrance—just as I’d hoped she would. I made the appropriate oohs and ahs when necessary, and waited patiently until she was ready to talk about what I wanted to hear.

“Everything must’ve changed when Mr. Walker died.”

“Yes. The company went downhill fast. Sharon just didn’t have the feel for the business end of things.”

“It must’ve been hard for her—caring for her son and all.”

“I know I’m old-fashioned, but if she’d just left running the company to the men, we’d all still be employed. And that poor child. She left him with a babysitter from early morning until quite late in the evening. A mother really needs to be with her baby when he’s that small. Once or twice she brought him to the office when the babysitter was sick.”

“Did she neglect the boy?”

“Who am I to judge?”

I took that as a definite yes. “Did she ever speak about his father?”

“Never.” Her tone changed. “It was very strange. There were four women in the office. We wanted to give her a baby shower, but she refused. She got very angry about it. I think she was embarrassed because she wasn’t married. She knew Big Jim would’ve been disappointed.”

“I take it they were very close.”

“Yes.” She paused. “Oh, dear. I’ve said much more than I intended. And I don’t see what all this has to do with Mr. Sumner’s death.”

“At this point, I’m just looking into his business affairs.”

“I suppose he helped when the company went through bankruptcy, but that didn’t save our jobs.”

I could certainly identify with that. I made a few sympathetic remarks and ended the conversation.

My limousine picked me up at eleven-thirty and the three of us took a lunch break at a local family restaurant before Richard and I dropped off Brenda at home and started off again. Brenda had given me a point-by-point comparison of the clinics they’d already visited, but old Rich was quiet during her recitation. I could tell the clinic they’d visited that day had not met with his approval. Not that he talked about it to me.

We found Ted Schmidt at Mount Olivet cemetery, behind the controls of a backhoe, digging a grave. I watched his precision with the scoop as it gouged the partially-frozen earth, making a hole the exact size of a casket.

It gave me the creeps.

Schmidt was about my age, dressed in work clothes, a heavy jacket, and a yellow hardhat. I waited until he finished the grave before I approached him.

“Ted Schmidt?”

“Who wants to know?”

I handed him one of my cards through the open window on the cab. “I was hoping you’d speak with me about Walker Construction.”

His eyes flashed. “Hey, I did my time. I don’t need to be hassled about it any more.” He shoved the card back at me.

“I’m not here to hassle you. I’m looking into a possible connection between Walker Construction and the murder of Matt Sumner of Bison Bank.”

The anxiety in his face eased. “The guy they found gutted in his garage?”

I nodded.

“Cool,” he said with an eager smile. He turned off the big machine, jumped down from the cab. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything you can tell me.”

He took off his work gloves. “I didn’t work in the office, but I heard what was going on. We all knew the company was going under. Management was hiding assets, so I figured I’d grab my share before there wasn’t anything left to get. Only I got caught.”

“Did you know Sharon Walker?”

“Everybody did. She could handle anything on the site. Run a backhoe, drive the trucks, dump a load of gravel as good as me. But she forgot all that when she went into the office.”

“So she was kind of a tomboy growing up?”

“She was the son old man Walker never had. He even called her Ronnie. First day of trout season, deer season, those two were gone.”

I remembered the reference on Sumner’s calendar on the day of his death: Ron. And she was a born hunter, too.

“Was she good to work with?”

“Before she went in the office, yeah. Just like one of the guys. After her father died and she took over, she started wearing high heels and suits with frilly shirts. She became one of those Feminazis. You know, bossing everybody around. Thinking she was hot shit.”

“I take it she was the one who had you arrested.”

His anger flared anew. “The lousy bitch.” He jabbed his finger in my face to emphasize his words. “Other people were doing the same as me—looking out for themselves—but who did they prosecute? Me!”

Schmidt spewed venom against Sharon and Walker Construction for another ten minutes, giving me his personal opinion on each and every member of management, and the company’s personnel policies. Obviously time in jail had done nothing to cool his hatred toward the company. I was grateful to finally escape.

“You okay?” Richard asked as I got in the car. His tone betrayed his amusement.

“I don’t think I’ll need my ears cleaned for a long time. He reamed them out nicely.”

“You should’ve seen yourself, Jeff. He was shouting in your face and you were bending back so far I thought you’d fall over.”

“But would you have rescued me if he’d really gotten physical?”

The lines around Richard’s eyes crinkled. “I’ve got the cell phone. The police are as near as 911.”

“Thanks for your concern. Hey, can I use this thing to call Rob Sumner’s house?”

“Sure.”

I dialed. No answer.

“What now?” he asked.

“I haven’t talked with the guy Sumner fired. If we could stop over there, I could get that out of the way, too.” I took out my notebook and found the address. As it turned out, it was in the neighborhood and minutes later we pulled into the driveway. As usual, Richard had come prepared, and hauled out a bulky medical text to read while I worked.

I rang the doorbell and waited. A rusting Reliant sedan sat in the driveway, so I figured someone had to be home. Finally the door opened. A harried-looking man of about forty stood before me. Dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt with the tails untucked, his bare feet were stuffed into worn slippers. A wet dishtowel adorned his shoulder and a screaming baby straddled his left hip.

“Yeah?” he demanded.

I handed him one of my cards. “Don Feddar? My name’s Jeffrey Resnick. I’m looking into Matt Sumner’s death, and—”

“Too bad he didn’t die sooner. We’d have all been a lot better off!”

I wasn’t sure how to reply.

“Can we talk?”

He nodded at the baby. “If you can stand her crying.”

He gestured for me to enter. I followed him through the house. Toys were strewn about the place. Dust bunnies thrived in the living room, and the kitchen floor looked like it hadn’t been mopped in months. He sat the baby in the high chair and cleared a stack of laundry off a chair for me.

He tossed my card on the table without looking at it. “I’m currently a house husband,” he said, shoving a teething biscuit at the baby. She grabbed it in her chubby hand and stuffed it in her mouth. Her cries faded to whining. “I haven’t worked since December twenty-third. Wasn’t that a nice Christmas present for the wife and kids?”

“I heard. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”

“You wanted to know if I murdered him, right? If I was going to do it, I’d have done it months ago. And no, I don’t hunt.”

“I heard the police already grilled you.”

“Grill is right. They had me down at the station in Orchard Park for six hours a couple days after the murder.” He shook his head, sat down, and continued folding laundry. “I told them, the night Matt was murdered I was at Tracy’s dance recital. She’s my oldest. I got over a hundred witnesses. I took the video of all the kids. I’m duping copies for a bunch of the parents. Anyway, it didn’t matter to the cops that I have an alibi. They figured I could’ve had someone else do the deed. Yeah, and how was I supposed to pay for it?”