A Penny for the Hangman (15 page)

Then he reminded himself: no questions. He had a pregnant wife and an aging, widower father, and they were looking for a bigger place to live once the baby arrived. Not to mention an education fund—this kid was going to be the first Velasquez to attend college, and that was a promise! He turned up the volume on the radio and sang along with an old Beatles tune, “Nowhere Man.” He’d go home and worry about his own life. And there might be some chicken left.

Two unsigned notes found by police in Tobias Harper’s desk drawer at Tamarind on Saturday, March 14, 1959

Message #1:

You best look to yore bizness, harper. yore men dont like they hard work and low wages. if you dont want bad juju on yore famly, you do somethin about this or else!

Message #2:

Harper, you fix yore bizness or you and yore wife and boys be sorry. this be yore last warnin!

“Excuse me, please,” Karen said, rising from her seat at the dinner table. The two men got to their feet as well. She smiled at them, even as she reached out to grasp the table edge to steady herself. She quickly recovered her equilibrium, picking up her purse to distract them, hoping they hadn’t noticed her momentary dizziness. Apparently not: As soon as she was away from the table, Mr. Anderman and Don Price sat down again and resumed their conversation.

She walked to the archway that led out into the main hall, trying to recall the layout of the ground floor from their guided tour this afternoon. Oh yes. The living room was directly ahead of her, across the wide hall, beyond the staircase. That meant the kitchen was this way, around the corner to her right, and there was a bathroom door next to the kitchen door. Here it was.

As she arrived at the downstairs powder room, she could hear muffled voices from beyond the swinging door to the kitchen. Mr. and Mrs. Graves seemed to be having an argument. Karen couldn’t make out what the woman was saying, but suddenly her husband cried,
“Be still and mind your own business, woman!”
Karen heard those words clearly, then footsteps approaching the swinging door, and she slipped into the powder room and shut the door. The footsteps clomped by outside, then faded away.

She moved to the sink and turned on the cold water, bending down to scoop up handfuls of it and splash it on her cheeks and neck. The water produced a near-electrical effect on her hot, flushed skin, and a chill coursed through her body, revivifying her and clearing her clouded mind. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, thinking, What on earth is wrong with me?

The sudden dizziness, the sense of disorienta
tion, had overcome her at the table for no apparent reason. They’d finished the main course, and Mr. Anderman had been talking about the night of the murders and about the Harper family, and he’d said something about coffee and dessert, and then…

And then what?

Karen studied her face in the mirror. Her eyes seemed to be alert, and her newly tanned skin was unblemished. Her makeup and hair were remarkably intact, considering the ocean trip and the persistent heat in the islands. She looked fine, as far as she could see. She was in a well-appointed, air-conditioned house on a beautiful isle not far from Tortola, and she’d just been served a sumptuous meal. That must be it, she thought. A heavy meal and talk of murder and mayhem. And too much red wine. Her odd sense of disorientation would pass.

The woman in the mirror smiled back at her, reassuring her, and she breathed deeply, sorting her notes in her mind. She’d already solved one mystery surrounding the Harper/And
erman case: where Rodney thought he was going that night, when he’d jumped into the water from the speedboat at the beach below Tamarind and begun swimming out into the ocean. He was coming here, of course, to Hangman Cay. How he thought he was going to swim some twenty miles was something only Rodney Harper, wherever he was, could possibly answer. Now she was working on a second mystery, no less provocative than the first. The machete and knives had belonged to the foreman, Mr.—she had to think a moment—Mr. Vance. She was building a theory, an idea of Rodney Harper’s long-range plan for the night of March 13, 1959….

But now she must rejoin the others or they’d worry about her. She turned off the water and dried her hands on the soft white towel in a wall ring beside the sink.
“Guest towels”
—she could almost hear her mother’s voice, admonishing young Karen never to use the pretty soaps and hand towels in the powder room near the front door of the apartment on West End Avenue. Smiling at the memory, and at her own folly in succumbing to rich food and wine in a tropical climate, she went out of the bathroom and down the hall for coffee and dessert.

From the testimony of Tobias Harper’s construction foreman, Henry Vance, in
People v. Harper and Anderman,
St. Thomas Municipal Court, Tuesday, April 14, 1959

V
ANCE
: I come by the house in my pickup at eight-thirty, just like I was told.

P
ROSECUTOR
: Told by whom, Mr. Vance?

V
ANCE
: By Mr. Harper.

P
ROSECUTOR
: When did Mr. Harper tell you to come to his house that night?

V
ANCE
: Well, sir, it weren’t Mr. Harper hisself that tell me. It were the boy.

P
ROSECUTOR
: Which boy, Mr. Vance?

V
ANCE
(pointing to defendant HARPER): Young Rodney. He come by my house down by Sugar Estate and tell me his daddy want me by Tamarind at eight-thirty Friday night.

P
ROSECUTOR
: Did Rodney Harper tell you why his father wanted to see you at his home?

V
ANCE
: Well, sir, he say something about a raise.

P
ROSECUTOR
: A raise in your salary?

V
ANCE
: Yes, sir.

P
ROSECUTOR
: And what did you think of that?

V
ANCE
: Well, I be surprised, sir. Mr. Harper and me never seen eye to eye much. Everybody know that. He were always tight with the payroll, and we argue about it in front of the men. We nearly come to fists a few times. I never expect he offer me more money. I thought maybe that be the message he tell the boy to tell me, and he really be planning something else.

P
ROSECUTOR
: Something else?

V
ANCE
: Yes, sir, something else. I thought maybe he be fixing to fire me.

P
ROSECUTOR
: So, when you arrived that night, you were expecting to be fired?

V
ANCE
: I didn’t rightly know. But I go like the boy tell me, and I get there at eight-thirty, and that’s when I find—

P
ROSECUTOR
: Yes, thank you, we know what you found. Mr. Vance, when did Rodney Harper deliver this message to you?

V
ANCE
: Let’s see…Thursday, the day before. Yes, it were the day before it, in the afternoon, the same afternoon I find tools was missing from the back of my truck.

P
ROSECUTOR
: You were missing some tools the day before the murders?

V
ANCE
: Yes, sir, my machete and a couple of knives.

P
ROSECUTOR
(going to evidence table and lifting exhibits A-1, A-2, and A-3): Are these the tools that were missing from your truck?

V
ANCE
: Yes, sir, those be them.

P
ROSECUTOR
(holding up exhibits D-1 and D-2): These two messages were found in Mr. Harper’s desk drawer at Tamarind on the morning after the murders. They are handwritten, in capital letters, on plain white paper, and they implicitly threaten Mr. Harper and his family. Mr. Vance, did you write these messages?

V
ANCE
: No, sir. I ain’t much of a one for writing. And if I has something to say to a man, I says it to he face. I never write no messages.

P
ROSECUTOR
: Thank you, Mr. Vance. No more questions for this witness.

As soon as Karen had excused herself from the dining room, Wulf Anderman turned to Sid and said, “We don’t have much time, and I have something to say to you, Mr. Don Price—or, rather, Mr. Sidney Singleton.”

Sid stared at the man. The words were so unexpected that, for a moment, he wasn’t at all certain he’d heard them. But the disdainful expression in the cold blue eyes across the table convinced him otherwise. Even so, he managed to stammer, “What? What are you talking abo—”

“Please! Drop it, Mr. Singleton; there isn’t any time. Don’t bother to look so shocked. Just listen, and listen well. I have tolerated your uninvited arrival here today for Miss Tyler’s sake—I suppose having a large man with her reassured her, made her feel more comfortable in meeting me—but that’s over now. As you and she can both plainly gather, I mean her no harm. And I have much to tell her, but not in your presence. I know precisely who you are and what you’re up to, and it isn’t going to work. You are not going to publish any of what you’ve heard here today. If you so much as attempt to do so, you will seriously regret it. In the meantime, you and I will both remain silent about all this. You have masqueraded as Don Price from the
Virgin Islands
Daily News,
and now you shall play that absurd role to the end.

“When Miss Tyler rejoins us, we shall have dessert and coffee, and then Mr. Graves will escort you down to the jetty. You will return to St. Thomas, and you will send the photographs you took today to Miss Tyler’s magazine. I suggest you use another name to publish them, as the real Mr. Don Price will not be amused by your amateurish snaps bearing his signature in a major national publication. Unless, of course, you wish to face a lawsuit and possibly imprisonment as a result of your little charade. I’m sure the
Daily News
and
Visions
magazine will gladly oblige you. And your lady friend, Miss Gwen Levene, will lose her employment at the magazine, to say nothing of Miss Tyler’s friendship. No, I suggest you remain silent about the whole enterprise.

“Miss Tyler will be my guest here tonight, and tomorrow she and I will continue the interview. But now you will eat your dessert, drink your coffee, make your excuses, and leave with Mr. Graves. Otherwise, I shall tell Miss Tyler exactly who you are and what you’re doing here the moment she returns to this room. And, believe me, you’ll have more to fear from
her
than from me.” He leaned forward, pinning Sid with his merciless gaze. “Your call, Mr. Singleton. Are you going to leave without a scene?”

Sid lowered his gaze from those accusing eyes. After a moment of breathless embarrassment, he nodded.

“Good,” Anderman murmured. “We’ll say no more about it.”

At that moment, Karen came back into the room, and the two men rose to their feet. Sid smiled at her, hoping his hot, flushed cheeks had lost their bright redness. Apparently so: Karen didn’t notice anything amiss. She smiled as Anderman held her chair, and they resumed their seats. Mrs. Graves arrived with the dessert tray, and Sid concentrated on looking as comfortable and alert as before.

Oh well, it didn’t matter, not really. For him, the jig was up. He’d underestimated the kindly older man; there was nothing kindly about him. Sid studied the man as Mrs. Graves served dishes of
baba au rhum
. This man had known everything, all along. Damn!

Sid slumped back in his chair, resigning himself to his fate, and he suddenly felt very tired. Across the table from him, Karen Tyler raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn.

From the testimony of Territorial District Coroner Clive Girard in
People v. Harper and Anderman,
St. Thomas Municipal Court, Wednesday, April 15, 1959

D
R.
G
IRARD
: The substance in all five bodies was secobarbital. It had been administered in the martinis the two couples were served on the veranda, and Bernice Watkins had ingested a similar amount, presumably in the kitchen. I found enough of the drug in their systems to induce unconsciou
sness, even paralysis. I have determined that all five victims were unconscious, or nearly so, when the fatal blows were struck.