Gin Jones - Helen Binney 01 - A Dose of Death (14 page)

She had to force herself to consider the possibility. A random killer meant that, in all likelihood, he would never be identified and charged with the crime. Notwithstanding all the advances in forensics, there was no way to find a random killer, no way to stop him, no way to feel secure from him. Just thinking about it made her feel more helpless than everyone already believed she was.

Helen was relieved to hear a vehicle’s tires crunching to a stop in her gravel driveway. Even the prospect of more visitors was better than dwelling on helplessness. It was probably the security company, but Pierce didn’t need to know that. Better to let him think it was something he wanted to avoid.

“
It sounds like my lawyer is here,” she told Pierce. “He said he might stop by this afternoon. As long as you’re still here, you might as well make yourself useful, and let him in, so you can discuss cancellation of the contract.”

“
Actually, I was just leaving,” Pierce said, jogging toward the back door. “I’ll talk to him later.”

She was relieved to see him go, and amused by how much of a rush he
‘d been in, as if he’d thought she might try to stop him. There was no chance of that. She couldn’t have caught up with his long-legged pace on a good day, and today definitely wasn’t a good one.

*  *  *

The arriving vehicle actually belonged to Lily. Laura got out of the passenger side and raced over to the front porch to hug Helen.

A moment later, Lily joined them and said,
“Pierce from the nursing agency called me first thing this morning. He’s not happy.”

“
Too bad,” Helen said. “Come see my latest scrapbook.”

“
I’m sure it’s beautiful.” Laura let herself into the cottage and headed over to the kitchen island, where she dutifully turned the pages filled with newspaper clippings. Even Laura couldn’t bring herself to consider the unembellished text esthetically pleasing, so she settled for saying, “Interesting.”

“
I thought you gave up scrapbooking,” Lily said. “Didn’t you switch to photography?”

“
That’s the beauty of retirement. I can do both.” Helen pushed aside an empty scrapbook and found the packet of pictures she’d picked up from the local print shop earlier. “Want to see my latest prints?”

“
Not unless they’re a lot better than the ones you emailed us,” Lily said. “If you hadn’t told me they were from your visit with us, I wouldn’t have recognized anything in them.”

“
She’s bound to get better with practice,” Laura said, pulling the pictures out of the packet. “Or not.”

Lily glanced at the top one.
“That’s a picture of grass. Not bad, if that’s what you’re aiming for, but why would you want a picture of grass?”

“
I like grass.” Helen reached for the pictures. “It’s a classic subject for art. Walt Whitman wrote a whole book of poems about grass. Why can’t I photograph it?”

“
Wait.” Lily tugged the packet out of her sister’s hands and flipped through the pictures. “I know what these are. They’re pictures of the crime scene in your yard. You’re still trying to prove you killed Melissa.”

Helen took the pictures back.
“Someone has to do it.”

“
The police,” Lily said firmly. “Not you. You’re supposed to stay safely inside your nice little cottage, scrapbooking or doing whatever else you enjoy, not wandering around outside taking pictures of grass and police tape.”

Laura said,
“They’re very nice pictures of grass and police tape, actually. I do think you’re getting better at photography. Maybe you’re just better at landscapes than portraits.”

“
That’s a kind thought,” Helen said. “I may have a better hobby lined up, anyway. I met someone who offered to teach me to knit. Or crochet. Something that involves yarn, anyway.”

“
I’m not buying it,” Lily said. “You wouldn’t give up your murder investigation that easily. At least promise me you won’t interfere with the official investigation.”

“
There’s nothing to interfere with,” Helen said. “The police are investigating the wrong suspect.”

“
What if they’re right?” Laura said. “What if the burglar really was here, and he comes back, and he finds you here, all alone?”

“
I’m getting an alarm system.”

“
That’s a good start,” Lily said. “But it’s not enough. By the time the police could respond—assuming you haven’t totally alienated them, so that they dally on the way—you could be seriously hurt.”

“
I’ll get a dog,” Helen said. “Burglars are supposed to be afraid of them. More than they worry about alarm systems.”

“
I’d like a dog,” Laura said. “Howie says we have to wait until the children are older, though.”

“
Aunt Helen won’t get a dog,” Lily said. “The only creature that irritates her more than
homo sapiens
is
canis lupus familiaris
.”

“
I’ll get an attack cat.”

“
Cats are nice too,” Laura said. “Maybe we’ll get a dog
and
a cat for the kids. But a cat might be dangerous for you. They can get underfoot. What if you tripped over it?”

“
Besides, a pet can’t really help if someone’s here to kill you,” Lily said. “A vicious enough dog might protect you, but you wouldn’t be able to handle him by yourself. And a pet can’t dial 911 for real help. You need someone here with you, at least part-time, and you know it.”

“
I don’t need anyone,” Helen said. “Look what happened to the last person who was here, and she wasn’t even full-time. I don’t want another death on my conscience.”

“
You don’t feel the least bit guilty about Melissa’s death,” Lily said.

She was wrong, but Helen didn
‘t want to give her nieces yet another reason to worry. “You and Laura are feeling enough guilt for the three of us.”

“
We did hire her,” Laura said. “It’s natural that we’d feel responsible for her, since she died protecting you.”

“
That’s not what happened,” Helen said, even though she knew it was futile.

“
You just don’t want to believe it’s what happened,” Lily said. “I’d like to not believe it too, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“
It was
not
the Remote Control Burglar who killed her,” Helen said. “If you read the newspaper articles about him, you’d know it. In fact, if you actually want to be helpful, you
would
read these articles about him. There has to be a clue to his identity or at least his MO here somewhere, and I just can’t see it. Maybe a fresh pair of eyes will help.”

“
If that’s what you really want—” Laura began, only to be cut off by her sister.

Lily said,
“Don’t encourage her.”

Maybe establishing a timeline for the burglaries would help establish some sort of pattern to them, Helen thought, tuning out the girls
‘ chatter. The victim advocate had mentioned that virtually all of the burglaries had happened in May, June, and December. So, if the burglar really was the killer, what had he been doing at her house in March? Unless the pattern wasn’t as clear as the victim advocate had suggested. It might be worth double-checking. Now that the newspaper articles were organized in the scrapbooks, she could make a spreadsheet. Date, location, stolen items. That sort of thing. The police had probably done something similar, but it wouldn’t hurt if she went over it again.

Helen searched through the clutter on the kitchen island for a blank piece of paper, and realized that there was pause in the girls
‘ conversation. They were waiting for her to say something. “Right, right. Whatever.”

“
Really?” Laura said, her excited tone warning Helen that it was time to pay attention again. She’d work on the burglar’s timeline after the nieces left.

“
Don’t give her the chance to change her mind,” Lily said.

“
Change my mind about what?”

“
Agreeing to hire a big, strong, scary person to stay here until the killer is caught,” Laura said.

“
I never agreed to that.”

Lily shook her head.
“Short-term memory is a tricky thing. They say it’s the first part of the brain to fail, and before you know it, Dr. Jamison is signing the paperwork to have you committed involuntarily to a nursing home.”

“
It’s up to you,” Laura said. “But it’s a good idea. If the burglar knew there was a big, strong person living here, he would think twice about coming back.”

“
What about your driver?” Laura said. “Would he be interested in a part-time security job?”

“
You haven’t met Jack yet, have you?” Helen said. “He’s not what you’d call big or strong. Unless, of course, the threat comes from an animated villain in one of his video games. Then, he’s lethal.”

“
We can find someone for you,” Lily said.

“
Give me a minute to think.” A live-in bodyguard would be even more irritating than a visiting nurse. She needed to come up with an alternative, someone who would satisfy the nieces, while also staying out of her way. There were a number of people back in Boston who would have been happy to do whatever she asked, stopping by whenever the nieces were visiting, but staying out of her way the rest of the time. Here, though, she couldn’t think of anyone who might help, and it was too far to expect someone to come out from Boston.

Besides Jack, the only person she knew reasonably well around here was Tate. He met the criteria of big and strong, and if she had to have someone around, he had the additional virtue of not talking much. Besides, most of the criminals in town either were indebted to him for keeping them out of jail in the past, or were keeping open the option of hiring him in the future, so they wouldn
‘t bother anyone he was connected with.

“
I’ve got someone in mind,” Helen said. “Before you two do anything drastic, give me a couple days to see if he’s interested.”

After the nieces left, Helen called Jack to take her to Tate’s office. She found the lawyer in his cluttered, dark garage workshop, making what she assumed was another lamp stem. 

“
Don’t tell me,” Tate said as he turned off the lathe. “You’ve killed someone else. Probably the reporter. Geoff Loring.”

“
Not yet, although he’s fairly high on my list,” Helen said. “I promise to make it both unpredictable and unusual when I kill my next victim, though.”

“
I appreciate it.” Tate took off his goggles. “My clients so seldom consider my boredom quotient when they’re contemplating a crime.”

“
I would never be that gauche,” Helen said. “In fact, I’m here because I’ve been thinking about how you deserve something better than this sorry excuse for a woodworking shop.”

He shrugged.
“The price is right. I’d have to convince my nephew to hire me full-time if I wanted to rent a real workshop, and then I wouldn’t have time to use it.”

“
There’s another option,” Helen said. “I have an unused garage on my property. It has much better lighting and more space, and potential clients wouldn’t be able to find you out there.”

“
You
could still find me.”

“
A small price to pay for a nice, private workshop,” she said, skimming over the additional commitment she needed from him: convincing her nieces that he was watching over her on a regular basis. He couldn’t be all that averse to a white lie or two; it was practically a prerequisite for his work as a lawyer, after all. And she only needed him to agree not to contradict her when she claimed he was staying in the guest suite on the second floor of the cottage.

“
With you, there are always hidden costs.” Tate paused, clearly weighing whether he could afford her offer. “You’re right about how cramped this space is, though. No promises, but I’ll stop by later to take a look at your garage. If it’s better than this, I’ll consider it.”

“
You won’t regret it.” Her garage was infinitely better than this place. “I’ll be home all afternoon. Stop by whenever you’d like.”

“
I will. Now, go away so I can get some work done.”

She turned to leave and then remembered her favorite cane, which she still hadn
‘t found. “Do you know if Adam has had a chance to look for my other cane? I still haven’t found it, and I can’t think of where else I might have left it.

He shook his head.
“I haven’t seen it, and Adam hasn’t said anything to me about it. You know, I could make you a new one, if you want. I made several of them as practice pieces when I first took up wood-turning.”

“
I’d rather find the old one,” Helen said. “Its disappearance is going to bug me until I do.”

Adam appeared in the doorway.
“Uncle Tate? One of your old clients is asking for you. Said no one else can help him. He won’t believe me when I say you’ve retired, and he refuses to leave until he hears it from you. You’ll have to explain it to him.”

Helen couldn
‘t have timed the ex-client’s arrival better if she’d planned it. She hid her grin with a scowl. “Some clients are just so demanding. You’ll never get a moment to yourself as long as you’re working so close to the law office.”

Tate shook his head at her, and told his nephew,
“I’ll be there in a minute.”

“
Don’t bother to see me out,” Helen said. “Go take care of your client. I’m sure he won’t take up too much of your valuable woodworking time.”

*  *  *

The next time there was a knock on the cottage’s front door, Helen took the precaution of peering out the window beside the front door to confirm that it was indeed Tate standing on the porch.

“
Give me a minute to get the keys,” she told him, “and I’ll show you the garage.”

Tate nodded.
“I’ll meet you over there. I want to take a look at the windows from the outside.”

Helen snagged the keys from the kitchen island and her ugly spare cane from beside the front door and then headed out of the cottage. Halfway to the garage, she heard another vehicle arriving. This time, it was the security company
‘s van. She tossed the garage keys to Tate, and went to greet the latest arrival.

A muscle-bound, redheaded man was climbing out of the driver
‘s side door. He introduced himself as Marty Reed, the owner of the security company, and launched into an earnest spiel about the urgent need for security in an increasingly unsafe world.

Helen was vaguely aware of another person getting out of the far side of the vehicle, but it wasn
‘t until he came around the front of the van and said, “Afternoon, Miss Binney,” that she realized it was Jack. Instead of his traditional dark suit, he wore a uniform that matched the one the company’s owner wore: blue work pants with a matching shirt emblazoned with the security company’s logo on its back.

“
If the front door’s open,” Jack said, “I’ll let myself in. I need to take some measurements for our records, while the boss is discussing all the options with you.”

Jack was inside the cottage by the time Tate emerged from the garage and strolled over to greet Marty by name. After the two men shook hands, Marty excused himself to go check on his assistant.

“Well?” said Helen. “Would the garage be suitable for your workshop?”

“
I’m considering it.” Tate returned the keys to her. “What’s up with the security system? I thought you didn’t believe the interrupted-burglary theory.”

“
I don’t,” she said. “My nieces were worried, and I didn’t want them upset, so I let them hire the security company.”

“
They made a good choice,” Tate said, leaning against the van. “Marty’s the best in town.”

“
It’s not particularly reassuring to know that my security expert is on a first-name basis with a criminal defense lawyer.”

“
I never represented him,” Tate said. “He installed the system at my office.”

The cottage
‘s front door opened. Jack came down the steps and jogged toward the van.

“
Jack.” Tate acknowledged the man without any of the warmness he’d shown when greeting Marty.

Jack pulled open the back door of the van.
“It’s okay, Tate. Ms. Binney knows about my family’s disreputable past, and that you represented my cousins. I was the one who recommended you to her.”

“
Thanks,” Tate said. “But I wasn’t worried about the effect of your reputation on her. I was more concerned about the effect of her reputation on you. Has she gotten you fired from your driving job already?”

“
Nah,” Jack said. “I just help Marty out whenever he needs an extra hand, if I’m not scheduled to drive. You know how it is. This time of year, things can be a little slow in the transportation industry.”

“
See?” Helen said. “Not everything is my fault.”

“
Just Melissa’s murder,” Tate said dryly.

“
Ms. Binney had nothing to do with that,” Jack said earnestly. “She’s a good person. I should know. I see all kinds in my business.”

“
It’s okay,” Helen told Jack, with a quelling glance at Tate. She really didn’t need yet another person helping her unnecessarily. Especially if he was going to be visiting the garage on a daily basis.

“
But he called you a murderer,” Jack said. “What if someone believed him?”

“
No one really believes I can do anything,” Helen reassured him. “No one’s going to arrest me. And if someone does, I’ve already got Tate on retainer. He’d have to represent me for free if he’s the one who gets me into trouble, and he’d really hate that.”

Tate shrugged.
“I don’t know. Might be nice to have my landlord in jail. No one to bother me in my new workshop.”

“
Workshop?” Jack looked confused.

“
Tate’s going to be using the garage for his woodworking,” Helen said.

Jack perked up.
“That’s wonderful, Ms. Binney. Then you won’t be alone any more.”

Oh, yeah, just what she
‘d always wanted.

Tate grinned and told the well-meaning Jack,
“I’m sure Ms. Binney appreciates having visitors here as much as I enjoyed them in my old workshop.”

*  *  *

Tate took the garage keys with him to have duplicates made, Marty and Jack roamed around the cottage taking measurements, and Helen settled down at the kitchen island to study the newspaper clippings about the burglaries.

There had to be a pattern to the crimes, she thought, even if no one had seen it yet. A spreadsheet, that was what she needed. If she collected all the data she had in one spot, then she
‘d be able to see the missing link. Sort of like when she’d used computerized charts to arrange the seating for her husband’s sit-down events. She’d always found it helpful to have all the information about the guests in one organized spot. That way, she could see who was feuding with whom, so she could keep them apart, while still accommodating all the protocols for seniority and other statuses.

Eventually, Marty and Jack left with a promise to have a quote ready for Lily
‘s approval by Monday. Helen moved her clippings and notes back to the computer desk to begin filling in the cells of a spreadsheet. Dates, addresses, times of day, items taken, anything at all that she could learn about the victims from the newspaper clippings. She added columns for types of residence, size of family, presence of dogs and other security measures. There were houses, condos, apartments; big families, small families and individuals; dogs and no dogs; alarm systems and no alarm systems.

Hours later, when she was done, she had to admit that as far as she could tell, the police were right. There was absolutely no pattern to the burglaries. If not for the one thing that linked them
—the fact that the only stolen items were remote controls—the variety in the data would have suggested that the crimes were unrelated, and there were several thieves instead of just one.

She couldn
‘t believe that there was a whole gang of thieves interested in nothing but remote controls. It
had
to be the work of a single criminal.

Something about the data was niggling at her, though. She was missing some connection, and she knew it. She just
couldn’t seem to put her finger—or her cursor—on it.

Helen retrieved some left-over salad from the refrigerator and nibbled on it at her desk. She studied the spreadsheet for another hour, and the only thing that came close to being a pattern was the time of day when the crimes occurred. She couldn
‘t come up with a specific time for some of the thefts, but at least for those cases where the time could be pinpointed, they had all taken place in the late afternoon, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. The story was the same each time: the victim went to run an errand or pick up the kids at school, and the remote that they remembered tossing on a table or counter on the way out the door was missing when they returned home. But that only accounted for about half of the thefts. The other half of the victims were unable to say when the remote had gone missing. Most couldn’t even say for sure which day it had happened, let alone pinpoint a two-hour timeframe.

Still, Helen thought it was interesting that no one had mentioned a theft happening while they were out delivering the kids to school in the morning, rather than picking them up in the afternoon. Not one of the thefts had been reported to have happened anywhere close to the time when Melissa had purportedly encountered the burglar.

Helen couldn’t point to any concrete reason, but studying the newspaper articles had left her more convinced than ever that Melissa hadn’t been killed by the Remote Control Burglar. Not that anyone cared about what Helen believed. Detective Peterson wouldn’t listen to anything she might tell him, and she had to admit that there probably wasn’t much he could do with the fact that half of the crimes had happened at approximately the same time of day. It didn’t provide anyone with an alibi, it didn’t offer any insights into the burglar’s motivation, and it didn’t narrow down the possible suspects for either Melissa’s killer or the Remote Control Burglar.

Helen had to acknowledge that she
‘d hit a dead end, at least until she could get more information to key into her spreadsheet. The police weren’t going to tell her anything more, but she might be able to get something out of Geoff Loring. At least he pretended to listen to her. It was risky, because she didn’t want to lead him on, giving him a reason to believe she might grant him an on-the-record interview. But she needed to know what he might have left out of the newspaper articles. She’d just have to make it clear that she only wanted to talk about one story—Melissa’s—and not her own.

It was too late to talk to Geoff tonight, but she could call him first thing tomorrow to arrange a meeting.