A Function of Murder (30 page)

Monty was the ultimate broken record. I’d have to match him. “I’m really very sorry,
Monty. But we keep our professional and social lives separate.”

Liar, liar
. I chided myself. But in the matter of Chris versus the city of Henley, I really
didn’t have any official
information. It had been Kira, not Virgil, who mentioned emails between Chris and
the mayor as the reason for her current status, and even that was second-or third-hand
campus gossip only.

Once he’d released my elbow, Monty had begun a strange kind of routine, which included
running ahead of me a few steps, then turning around to face me. He’d walk a few steps
backward, then repeat the sequence, talking all the while. I found it disconcerting,
but with only a few yards and a few minutes to go, I wasn’t about to complain to him.

About ten feet from the door to the Mortarboard, Monty stopped, blocking the entrance.
I let out a sigh, this time not bothering to conceal a touch of annoyance.

Monty held his hands up, as if he was surrendering. “Okay, I didn’t want to say this,
because it could sound bad,” he said. “But I’m sure if I share this with you, you’ll
want to think about it and find a way to help, no question.”

“Monty—”

“Just listen,” he said, clenching his water bottle until it popped. I was surprised
it didn’t crack open. “I know what the police have on her. Or what they think they
have on her.”

“Oh?” Now I was listening.

“Chris was in there with Ed. In the humanities office that night. The night he was
killed. They were in Bev Eaton’s office. It’s where they’ve been meeting the last
few weeks. Chris has a roommate, and Ed has a…well, had a wife, you know, so they’d
meet there.”

An English professor’s office as a trysting place? It made for a bizarre scenario,
unless, like Ed and Kira, they were just talking. I remembered tracing back the one
light that was on in the Administration Building on Saturday night to Bev’s office.
I had my own feelings of regret now. If I’d told Virgil about the light right away,
he might have
been able to rush in there and…and what?.. catch a killer who had nonchalantly waited
around to be caught?

“The mayor dumped my sister for good that night,” Monty continued. “It had been coming
on for weeks. He’d been hinting that he considered her just a good friend, but when
he finally came out with it, how he had a wife and son he’d never leave, and all that
drivel, she was devastated. Never mind that Chris had given him her heart. Plus a
major chunk of money to his campaign. Our aunt Tess died and left us each”—Monty waved
away the story as if it was a gnat aiming for his face—“never mind that. Chris was
destroyed. But she didn’t kill him. She saw him walk away. I swear.”

If nothing else, Monty would make an excellent, persuasive character witness for his
sister.

“Did Chris tell all this to the police?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Unless she told them yesterday when they picked her
up. I haven’t talked to her since then. It’s driving me crazy.”

Watching Monty hop in place in front of the Mortarboard, I didn’t doubt him for a
minute. “What about your lawyer? Shouldn’t she or he be able to have Chris released
if she hasn’t been charged?”

Monty mopped his brow, having generated his own heat on what was a cool spring morning.
He threw up his hands. “He’s supposed to be working on it. Whatever that means. I
know Chris freaked out when she heard Ed had been murdered; that’s when she told me
she was probably the last person to see him alive.”

I thought of the list I’d given Virgil of those who’d voted
no
on the mayor as speaker. Chris had been on it, though I hadn’t highlighted her, or
any of the faculty, as Virgil had wanted. “Did the police interview her?”

“Yes, and I advised her not to tell them about that night. Even though she had nothing
to hide. You know how cops can be.” I nodded as if one were not a close friend. “Now
I’m kicking myself. I feel like I’m to blame for this mess
she’s in. Maybe if she’d come right out and admitted she was with him just before
he was killed, they’d have believed her and it would be all over and she’d be here
now.”

“Chris made her own choice, Monty. You just have to let her work it out.”

Monty gave me an angry, questioning stare, as if to ask if I’d been listening at all.
“Are you saying you won’t help? You won’t at least make sure the police know that
she withheld information only on my advice, that she did nothing wrong? Maybe I could
just take an obstruction of justice charge myself and that would be it.”

I was spared from having to decline once again to intercede on Chris’s behalf by the
presence of a figure in black who came up to us on the pathway. Twenty-one-year-old
Kira Gilmore had outfitted herself head to toe with the color of mourning, looking
like the old Italian woman who lived on my street when I was a kid. With the specks
of beige and gold in my paisley top, my outfit seemed gaudy in comparison.

“Hi, Mr. Sizemore and Dr. Knowles,” she said, then, “Are you coming with us, Mr. Sizemore?”

Though I hadn’t verbalized it, Monty realized I still hadn’t made a commitment to
help him out. I wasn’t sure why not myself, except that I had no reason to believe
in Chris’s innocence, but every confidence in Virgil and the HPD’s ability to figure
it all out.

Monty barely acknowledged Kira. He glared at me again. “I hope you’re not sorry about
this, Sophie,” he said.

It sounded too much like a threat this time. Was he going to start another Facebook
attack? I was beyond being intimidated, no matter how great the difference in our
heights and weights.

“Have a nice day,” I said.

“You never say that,” Kira said, once Monty had taken off. She was clearly confused
by what she’d happened upon. “I thought you hated that expression.”

“Extraordinary times,” I told her, and we headed toward city hall.

I couldn’t remember the last time I was in Henley City Hall. Possibly three years
ago when I was maid of honor, complete with a tacky fuchsia dress and matching heels
and bouquet, for a friend who wanted a civil ceremony. The inside of the building
was no match for the impressive exterior. It was as if the city had run out of money
after applying the expensive coat of gold leaf to the magnificent dome, in imitation
of the lavish golden dome of the State House that was one of Boston’s great attractions.

Inside, the city hall was like any other government building, with modest wooden floors
and moldings and a collection of statues in the great entryway. Paul Revere, John
Quincy Adams, Edward Everett Hale, and a host of other patriots watched over us all.

The building may have been ordinary, but I shouldn’t have been surprised that the
gathering in Mayor Graves’s honor was unlike any other memorial service I’d attended.
It seemed every cop and firefighter in Bristol County was present. I hoped everyone
who depended on them was safe. This would be the perfect time to throw a brick through
someone’s patio door.

Nora and Cody Graves sat on a stage at the front of the large assembly room that had
been outfitted for the service with jardinieres and banks of flowers. I wondered if
Mrs. Graves was thinking back only three days to a time when she shared a simpler
stage setting with her husband on the Henley campus.

Surrounding the mayor’s widow and son were about a dozen people I recognized as city
council members, not from lunch dates with them, but from the political literature
strewn around at election time. Bruce was more in tune with the VIPs than I was. He’d
once served—he
would have said hobnobbed with—state and national celebrities and politicians when
he worked as a pilot for a private helicopter company. I seemed to remember that Superintendent
Collins had been among them at one time. If prompted, Bruce could go on and on, without
naming names, about CEOs who played golf during working hours and rock-star women
who slipped away for a weekend, allegedly with the girls.

I sat on a folding chair, but not on the stage this time, with a subdued Kira next
to me. I wondered how either of us would ever get close enough to Nora to offer a
personal greeting. Or, in my case, ferret out a clue that might help find her husband’s
killer.

With Kira not interested in conversation, I scanned the assembly for people I knew,
spotting a few Henley faculty members, but no Principal Richardson or Superintendent
Collins. I figured they’d had their secretaries send flowers and counted that the
end of their obligation.

I tuned into the buzz around me, picking up bits of the low-level chatter that precedes
any formal gathering. I realized I had a de facto list of words that reached my ears
with particular clarity and bias. I heard them now, in succession.

A man behind us to my left complained to his companion, “I should be at a board meeting
right now. Services like this are a waste of time.”

Waste.
I thought of the city’s contentious waste management contracts.

The mother of a middle schooler, both of whom were sitting in front of us, took the
opportunity to bond with her daughter. “Dad and I are so proud of your report card,
sweetie. Your grades are so much better than last year.”

Grades.
I wondered if the girl was a Zeeman Academy student whose grade was inflated.

Two young women next to me chatted in vivid detail about the faults of their current
boyfriends. “Sometimes I want to kill him,” the first said.

Kill.
When her friend nodded and exclaimed, “Totally,” I wondered if they’d end the day
with a plot to murder each other’s problem guy. I figured this particular association
was due in part to the many times I’d watched Hitchcock’s
Strangers on a Train
with Bruce and Virgil.

But on the whole, it was the murder of Mayor Edward P. Graves, and not movie references,
that had seemed to consume my mental energy since Saturday night. I was in the middle
of a self-inflicted rebuke about this when two voices behind me seemed to rise above
the others in my vicinity.

“Thomas is dead,” said the man who wished he was at a board meeting.

“Long live the Stewart Brothers,” said the other.

“Money talks,” said the first.

“Unless you’re dead.”

I hoped no one else had heard the exchange, utterly inappropriate at a memorial service,
even if it was late getting started.

Their words bounced back to me, striking a chord in my head. I’d heard the combination
of names, Thomas and Stewart, before. Kira’s soft sigh reminded me of when—during
her tutorial on the waste management dispute between the mayor and Monty Sizemore.
Mayor Graves had wanted to give the contract to the Thomas Company and Monty had preferred
the Stewart Company. Or vice versa. I closed my eyes and tried to remember. It came
to me. The W. Thomas Company and the Stewart Brothers, that was it. Apparently the
mayor’s death ensured the Stewart Brothers victory in the battle.

Could they have killed Mayor Graves? But why, if the contract had already been awarded?

I leaned into Kira, whispering, “Did you tell me that Edward gave the waste contract
to Thomas?”

The question, out of context to say the least, shook Kira awake. She gave me a confused
look. “They hadn’t closed the deal yet. Edward just gave them a verbal last week.”

Was this an
aha
moment? A suspect I hadn’t thought of? “Thanks,” I said to Kira.

“Why—”

“We’ll talk later,” I said, cutting her off and giving her hand a squeeze.

I hoped Kira would forget the issue by the time the service was over. If it would
only begin. Now I was eager to leave to pursue my new line of inquiry. Monty had popped
up on my suspect list because he wanted to have the contract, probably getting a kickback.
But why not Stewart himself? Or themselves, if there were really brothers involved.
I felt handicapped that I had no clue who the owners of the offending company were,
but I liked the idea that the murderer might be someone completely disconnected from
Henley College.

I wondered if Virgil was up to speed on the contract dispute. Surely, the HPD would
go through all of the mayor’s outstanding negotiations, but what if the waste management
issue was at the bottom of their stack?

The question was whether I should tell Virgil also of what Monty had spilled out about
Chris’s confrontation with the mayor on Saturday night, minutes before he was stabbed.
Perhaps Chris had already confessed. If not, would I be getting her into more trouble
than her emails did?

Rushing out to call Virgil with both bits of news was an option I considered seriously,
but howling feedback from the mic told me the service was about to start and my exit
would be awkward. I couldn’t claim this was an emergency. In fact, the way things
had been going lately, Virgil might already have released Chris Sizemore and brought
in the Stewart Brothers.

I wished I could have said that the speeches in honor of the mayor were better than
his own at the Henley graduation. In both cases, however, the words hardly seemed
to matter, except to those most affected. For the most part, the prayers and hail-fellow
commentary seemed part of just another day in the life of the attendees.