The April Fools' Day Murder (7 page)

“It didn’t involve Will. It was his wife. She was driving one of their grandchildren somewhere on a snowy day and somehow got involved in a one-car accident. The grandchild died.”

“I see,” I said. “How did Mr. Platt take it?”

“Very hard. He blamed himself. Said she drove a small car and he didn’t think that was as safe as the car he drove, a bigger, heavier model. Also, he thought he should never have let his wife near the car on a day like that.”

It’s the kind of statement that annoys me, although I understood why Willard Platt had said it, if indeed he had. I can’t imagine my husband forbidding me to drive my car if, in my judgment, I was able. But the Platts were older people and perhaps lived by a different set of rules. I wasn’t about to argue. “There was another accident, wasn’t there? Something that left Mr. Platt with a cane?”

“Oh that.” He smiled. “That was before I knew him. I think he broke a leg. There are several stories about how it happened but the bottom line is the leg didn’t heal perfectly. He could walk without the cane, but the truth is, he liked it, thought it made him look distinguished. He had a few of them, some of them hand-carved, real works of art.”

“But you don’t know how he broke the leg or when it happened.”

“Not really. He never talked about it.”

“How many students are in the drama club?” I asked, changing the subject.

“We have fifteen this year. Fourteen of them took part in the hunt. Robby McPhail didn’t show up.”

“Any reason?”

“I haven’t seen him.” He looked at his watch. “He’ll be in my class in a few minutes. Maybe I’ll ask him.”

“Could I have a list of the members?”

“Sure.” He got up and went to a phone. In a short conversation, he asked someone to make a copy and drop it off at the main office. “It’ll be waiting for you,” he said when he came back. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Why are you here? What’s this all about?”

“I feel a personal interest, Mr. Jovine. I was very upset when I found Mr. Platt on Saturday afternoon. I thought he was dead and I called the police. When he was actually killed a couple of hours later, I couldn’t believe it. I just want to find out what happened.”

“So do we all, Mrs. Brooks. I’ve talked to the police and I think they’ve talked to most of the kids in the club. I don’t think they’ve come up with anything.”

“I haven’t either,” I admitted. “But I’m just starting.”

“Let me know if you turn anything up.”

I had used up most of the forty-five minutes and I didn’t want to keep him. I thanked him for his time and asked if he minded if I talked to the members of the drama club. That was all right with him, so we shook hands and I found my way back through the auditorium to the main office. The woman behind the high counter had a couple of sheets of paper for me, which I tucked in my bag. Then I went home and started making calls.

Because the three teams hunted in a staggered order, team three should have arrived at the Platts’ first and
team one last. I started calling names on the team one list first, trying to find a parent at home. On the third try a woman answered.

“Mrs. Powell, this is Chris Brooks here in town. I’d like to ask you about your daughter’s participation in the drama club treasure hunt last Saturday.”

“What’s your question?” she asked, sounding a little defensive.

“Who drove the car for Ronnie’s team?”

“Ronnie did. She drove my car. It’s a van. She’s seventeen and it was daylight.”

“I would just like to know who was in the car with her.”

“I don’t remember how they divided up. She’ll be home from school by four. Would you like her to call you?”

I said I would and gave her the number. It was only a quarter after two, and whether Eddie was awake or asleep, I didn’t have to rush back to get him. I went out to the car and drove to the apartment complex where Roger Platt lived. I parked near what appeared to be a central entrance and went in to look at the mailboxes. There were four buildings altogether but I didn’t know which one I had seen Roger walk into, so I went through all the names. There was no Platt anywhere, no Roger as a first name. This man was certainly trying very hard to keep his whereabouts a secret. It occurred to me that he might not even receive mail at this address. People who didn’t know he lived here would write to him at his wife’s house. Others might be directed to a P.O. box, possibly with a fictitious name or even none at all.

I was about to leave when a man in work clothes came out of the lobby.

“Help you?” he said.

“I’m looking for Mr. Platt.”

“Platt? No one here by that name.”

“He lives over in that section.” I pointed.

“Sorry. Better check the address.”

“He’s about six feet tall, nice looking, late forties.”

“Sorry, miss. I can’t help you.” To emphasize that that was it, he walked away.

I went back to my car and drove to Elsie’s.

I knew Jack would get the highlights of the autopsy report from someone at the Oakwood Police Department. He had a good relationship with them, and that was information they would be much more likely to give him than to give me. I assumed the autopsy would be today, so it was possible he might know something when he came home, but I didn’t want to ask him at work. I took Eddie home and waited for a phone call from Ronnie Powell.

It came at four-fifteen. “Mrs. Brooks?”

“Yes. Is this Ronnie?”

“Yes. My mom said you called?”

“I wanted to ask you some questions about the treasure hunt on Saturday.”

“That was so terrible, what happened. We didn’t hear about it till later. That poor man.”

“Ronnie, how many people did you drive to the Platts’?”

“Just four. There were five on team one and five on team two, but Robby McPhail didn’t come in time so we went without him.”

I looked at my list and checked the name. “Did he come later?”

“I don’t think so. He wasn’t in my car anyway. We waited five extra minutes and then Mr. Jovine said to get started.”

“Have you seen him since Saturday?”

“Uh, no, I don’t think so.”

“Was he in school today?”

“I’m not sure. We don’t have any classes together. I only know him from acting.”

“Who were the other people in your car?”

“Karen, Steve, and Missie Carter.”

Those were the other names on my list for team one. “Did they all go through the whole treasure hunt with you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“When you left the Platts’, were all four of you in the car?”

“Yes. Two in the back, two in the front.”

“Where was Mr. Platt lying when you got to his house?”

“On the grass. He was, like, on his stomach and the knife was sticking out of his back.”

“Did you see his cane?”

“Uh …”

I waited. “Ronnie?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Where did you park when you got to his house?”

“In the driveway. We all got out and ran over to him and Steve pulled the knife out. It wasn’t a real knife, you know.”

“It was a prop.”

“Yeah.”

The cane had been near his right hand and the driveway was to the right of the lawn where he was lying. If you ran from the driveway to his “body,” you would almost trip over the cane. “You don’t remember seeing it.”

“No. It could have been there. I just don’t remember it.”

“And the other three team members definitely got in the car with you.”

“Definitely.”

“Thanks, Ronnie.”

I put a check mark next to her name and wrote
absent
next to Rob McPhail’s name. Eddie was playing contentedly so I called the number for Missie Carter.

She answered the phone a little breathlessly and said she remembered the visit to the Platts’ house very well.

“Did you see the knife sticking out of his back?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. It looked so real it was kind of creepy.”

“What about his cane?”

“What cane?”

“Mr. Platt always used a cane.”

“But he was lying down.”

“Did you see the cane anywhere near him?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Who pulled the knife out of Mr. Platt’s back?”

“Steve did.” She was sure of that.

“Did you drive back in Ronnie’s car?”

“Sure. We all did.”

“Have you seen Robby McPhail since Saturday?”

“Uh, no. I don’t know if he was in school today.”

“Thank you, Missie.”

I called Steve Wolfson and went through much the
same questions. He wasn’t sure about the cane either but he had pulled the knife out of Mr. Platt and then they had taken off. “It’s a speed thing,” he volunteered. “You can’t wait around because another team’ll get to the finish first.”

“So you were running all the way.”

“Oh, yeah. We still had a couple of places to go and we’d had a problem before that, which cost us some time. We were really in a hurry.”

“Where on the driveway did Ronnie park the car?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did she pull all the way up to the garage or park near the road?”

“I don’t think she pulled all the way up. Like I said, we were racing against time.”

That could explain why they hadn’t seen the cane. The cane was out of reach of his right hand, closer to the house. If they had approached from where his legs were, grabbed the knife and dashed back to the car, they might not even have glanced over to where the cane lay.

I called Karen Harding, the last member of the team, and asked her the same questions and got the same answers. She just wasn’t sure about the cane but she agreed they had turned into the driveway, stopped, emptied out of the car, run across the lawn, grabbed the knife, and made their getaway.

I knew I would have to call the other ten students who had taken part in the treasure hunt and ask them too, but first I called Mrs. Platt and asked whether she had the cane her husband had had with him on Saturday.

“No,” she said cautiously. “Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered where it was.”

“Does it matter?”

“Probably not,” I said. “It just seemed a loose end.”

But she was sure it had not been left behind when her husband’s body was taken away. I then called Jack.

“Before you ask,” he said, “the autopsy was this morning and I have a preliminary report, by which I mean some stuff was read to me over the phone.”

“Good. Let’s talk about it when you get home. I’m interested in something else at the moment. Do you know what things the police picked up at the crime scene? Like his wallet, his keys, his cane?”

“I didn’t ask. You want me to give them a call?”

“If you have a minute. And one other thing. I don’t know how far an autopsy goes, but I’d like to know what kind of damage one of his legs sustained to make him need a cane.”

“I don’t have that. I’ll get back to them. I’m working my way through a very boring document. It’ll be my pleasure.”

My pleasure was to start dinner.

8

“So what would you like to know?” We had gotten the dishes done and Eddie to bed. The coffee was brewing in the kitchen, its scent traveling to where we sat. Jack took some folded paper out of his briefcase and opened it up. It had notations on it that I assumed had to do with the Platt homicide.

“Start with the property,” I said. “What do they have?”

“No wallet, but that’s probably because he was working in the garage. But his keys were in his pocket, a few coins, a couple of tissues, the watch he was wearing, and that’s about it. They have his clothes and shoes, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“What about his cane?”

“No cane listed.”

“Mrs. Platt says she doesn’t have it.”

“Maybe it’s still in the garage. He could have set it aside when he was working and the cops didn’t see it. There wouldn’t have been any reason to take it.”

“I’ll go up to the Platts’ house tomorrow and see. Tell me about the autopsy.”

He looked down the top sheet of handwritten notes.
“He was stabbed four times, one wound piercing his heart. He died quickly and bled profusely.”

“Anything on the weapon?”

“Yeah, it’s double-edged.”

“How do you walk around with a double-edged knife?”

“I suppose it had a sheath of some sort. We used to see a lot of them back when I was a young cop. They fall into the dagger and dirk category of knives—needle point, slender, sharp edges.”

“You’re still young,” I said.

“Yeah, but it ain’t the same.” He sounded almost wistful. “A knife like that, it’s really a weapon.”

“You bet.”

“So it wasn’t that someone came along and had an argument with Willard Platt and pulled this thing out. Someone went over there to kill him.”

“I’d say so. And maybe it wasn’t the first time in his life someone tried.”

“What do you mean?”

“Autopsies often turn up surprises. Your Mr. Platt took a bullet a long time ago.”

“Someone shot him?”

“Sure looks like it.”

That was a surprise. Then I had a thought. “Jack, he fought in World War Two. Could that have been when he was shot?”

“I’d have to ask the M.E. They said it was an old wound. I don’t know if they can date it.”

“Anything else?”

“I asked them about his legs. They didn’t seem to have anything but they said they’d take some X rays and see if anything turned up. I’ll hear tomorrow.”

“Well, even without that, this has been pretty interesting. I wonder how many people are walking around with a healed gunshot wound.”

At that moment the phone rang. I got up and answered it in the kitchen. It was Mrs. Platt.

“Chris,” she said, “I went out to the garage after you called to look for Will’s cane. There’s no cane out there at all.”

“I see. My husband talked to the police today and asked what possessions of your husband they had. There was no wallet.”

“No, I have that. He left it in the house when he went out to work.”

“And there’s no cane.”

She was silent for a moment. “I don’t understand it. He had a cane with him when he was waiting for the drama students. I know because I saw it on the grass when I looked out the window. I’m sure he had the same one when he went out to the garage. Where could it be?”