The Double Wedding Ring (14 page)

I
fed Allie a snack. We played dolls, and talked a lot about the upcoming wedding. Her duties as a flower girl were a big deal to her, so we went over them carefully until she felt satisfied she could handle the job. When she was bored with me, she went to watch her favorite cartoons and I was left alone in the kitchen with a hot cup of tea and the tote bag that Maggie had given me.

There was a folder in the bag stuffed with various papers, and a thick binder that had to weigh a couple of pounds. I opened the notebook first. Maggie had been busy. There were dozens of printouts on the crime that had ended Bob Marshall's career along with a photo of him from a
Daily News
article as he was entering the courtroom for his trial. In the photo his attorney was a tall, well-dressed man identified as C. G. Kruger. The general consensus in all the articles was that Marshall had been caught skimming drug money off vice arrests, though the word
alleged
was used in every other sentence. The corruption had likely gone back years and involved more than just one bad cop. But Marshall wasn't talking and the silence had cost him. Because he'd been unwilling to cooperate, the district attorney threw every charge he could at Marshall: multiple counts of robbery, tampering with evidence, corruption, and filing false police reports. In the end only one charge stuck: assault with a deadly weapon.

I sat for a minute and looked at the photo until it jumped out at me. C. G. Kruger. That must have been the name on the business card Greg found on Roger's body. The card that Jesse wouldn't put into evidence.

I continued reading the story, going over it for details that might lead to another clue. A rookie named Kevin Findlay had testified that, along with a large amount of drugs and a stash of weapons, five hundred thousand dollars in cash had been found at the scene and bagged for evidence. Marshall had been the one to bring the money to the evidence locker, and somewhere between the drug dealer's home and the police station, the cash had gone missing.

Marshall contended the money never existed. Another officer on the scene backed him up, but Findlay wouldn't change his story. Marshall and Findlay had apparently exchanged words, they fought, and Marshall broke Findlay's jaw with the butt of his gun. It put him in prison for more than two years and ruined his career in law enforcement.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” the prosecutor was quoted as saying in one article. “And the frustrating thing is that guys like Bob Marshall know how to play the system. We're not going to see someone show up with a fancy car, or suddenly take an expensive vacation. These guys are just going to add the money in small amounts, a little bit here and there, and they'll wait out the statute of limitations before early retirements and the good life will begin.”

The other officer on the scene hadn't been identified, but if the man was Roger, it would explain Marshall's appearance in Archers Rest. Roger might have been hiding the money all these years and Marshall was looking for it.

As I reread the prosecutor's statement, I felt slightly sick. “These guys are going to add money in small amounts.” Like bank deposits in odd sums of less than five hundred dollars over a period of three years.

Could Jesse have been holding the money for Roger and paying it out little by little? No, he couldn't have. Jesse was a good man. He didn't have to ask me to believe it; I did believe it. But what if someone else found out about the deposits Jesse had been making, assumed it was the missing cash, and brought Roger up here to get it? That I could believe.

There was a scratch at the window. It sounded like a branch. I knew it was a branch, and when I got up to check it I could see that the wind had picked up, and, in fact, it was a branch from the overgrown oak scratching against the window. The window that was right next to the back door where someone had entered Jesse's house on the night Roger was killed. Maybe someone looking for the money they thought was hidden here.

I walked into the living room to check on Allie, who was half watching the television and half playing with a loom I'd gotten her—one of those simple weaving looms that allows kids to make squares of about six inches. Since I'd gotten it for Allie, she'd been making potholders for everyone she knew. She was making two blue and white ones as her wedding gift, and she was taking the project quite seriously. I stood watching her, but she was engrossed in her task and barely paid attention.

If the money was hidden in the house I didn't know where to start looking. Or even if I should start. Surely going through his things was a huge invasion of Jesse's privacy. And, of course, I reminded myself that the money wasn't hidden here because Jesse would never be involved in anything that terrible.

But someone had been in this house the night Roger was killed, so it made sense he was looking for something. If I could figure out what, maybe I could help.

The other issue was that searching wasn't really necessary. In the year Jesse and I had been dating, I'd opened nearly every closet and drawer in his house. I'd cooked meals, helped him organize toys and clothes, and even sorted through his receipts at tax time. I never saw large sums of cash sitting around, or anything that might contain large sums of cash, like a locked file cabinet or the key to a safe-deposit box.

Jesse certainly didn't live as if he had more money than his salary. Neither one of us were into fancy restaurants or weekends away. Most of our dates had consisted of dinner in town, or cooking at his place so the three of us could be together.

“Instant family.” My mom's words popped into my head.

“Not now,” I answered them silently. I debated asking Allie whether Roger had been in the house recently. His picture was on the bookcase, so it would be easy to ask if she remembered the man, but that seemed like a betrayal both to Jesse and to his little girl. I walked back to the kitchen.

“So what if it wasn't money the killer broke in to find? What if it was something else?” I asked myself.

Maybe a key, a piece of paper, the number of Roger's bank account. But the day of the murder, Jesse had been unconcerned about my theory that someone had been in the house. If he knew something was here that tied Roger to the murder, wouldn't he have immediately looked for it?

Questions. That's all I had, questions on top of questions, and no one to answer them since Jesse wouldn't talk to me about it. I sat back down at the table and took a gulp of my tea. It had gone cold.

There was one box I hadn't opened. A large plastic bin, actually, that Jesse had said was full of old stuff he was saving for Allie. When we'd been organizing her room over the summer I found it in the back of her closet. Jesse told me not to bother with that. It was filled with “keepers,” he said. But a box of old keepsakes might be a good place to hide something.

I stood in the kitchen for ten minutes debating before I finally went upstairs. The box was where it had been before, on the floor in Allie's closet, underneath a pile of neatly folded clothes she'd recently outgrown. I moved the box to the center of the floor and opened it. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was filled with “keepers” as Jesse had said—baby clothes, photo albums, toys from her baby days. I lifted out the top photo album and looked at the first pages. Jesse in college. He was so very young and very handsome. Lizzie was on his arm; pretty, happy, young. The album told the story of their life together, ending with pages of casual wedding photos, the kind taken by friends and family. The next album was the formal wedding photos. I found that I couldn't look at more than a few of those without feeling jealous and sad, and then petty. My punishment for being so nosy. The last of the albums were Allie's baby pictures. At the end of the last book were a few pictures of Lizzie, looking frail and thin, sitting in the hospital bed holding her daughter for what was likely the last time.

As I put the albums back I saw a stack of letters and cards. There was an envelope with Jesse's name written across it, and without wanting to but not being able to resist, I opened the card it contained. “Happy sixth anniversary,” it read. “Whether we have six years or sixty, the happiest moments of my life are the ones I spend with you.” It was dated six months before her death.

I could see Jesse's handwriting on the envelopes of other cards, some pink for Valentine's Day and others that just said “I love you” on the front. But I didn't read them. I put everything back where it belonged—the albums in the box, the box in the closet, and the clothes on the box—and went back downstairs to the kitchen.

I looked at the thick binder that Maggie had given to me. I didn't know how much more evidence I could take in, but it gave me something to focus on so I opened it. Instead of items about the case, it was photos stuffed into clear plastic three-ring folders. Unlike the photos upstairs, these didn't leave me feeling like an intruder. There were snaps of Eleanor from when she was a girl all the way through just a few weeks ago at the town's Christmas Eve party. Another plastic folder held pictures of Oliver from his days at school, to his early art shows, to the same Christmas Eve party. A Post-it note on the stack said that Maggie had tracked down Oliver's relatives in England for the early photos, and gotten the later ones from photo albums Oliver had in his house.

“Not stolen,” she wrote with a smiley face. “Borrowed.”

A slide show of photos for the wedding. I'd insisted on it in September when a January wedding seemed so far away and easy to organize. I liked the idea of showing the very different lives of these amazing two people; how they had met, fallen in love, and found themselves wanting to commit to be together.

My mother had found it odd that two people of an advanced age would want to marry when there were so few years left to share, but all I saw were happy people in love. Besides, what were the guarantees for any of us? Lizzie was proof of that.

I shook off my melancholy. Jesse would be home soon and I promised myself that I'd avoid any talk of the murder, or Lizzie, or the past—his or mine. Instead, we'd just be together and enjoy spending time as a couple. A couple and Allie, which, instant family or not, sounded like a perfect evening to me. I looked up at the clock. It was almost six and completely dark outside. Jesse and Anna couldn't still be at the cemetery, could they?

I went to Jesse's desktop computer and started scanning the photos into a file. The folder was thick; I knocked pens, a zip drive, and a “World's Best Dad” pencil holder off the desk trying to make room. It was a long slow process. Allie helped me by placing the photos in the scanner and keeping track of what had been done. She offered suggestions on the best ones for the slide show and how we could decorate poster boards and display some of the photos in Eleanor's hallway so the guests would see them as they arrived. After each photo was scanned, she took a moment to study it before carefully placing it back in the plastic folder. As excited as Allie was by all things wedding, she was equally fascinated by these images of her beloved almost-great-grandparents as young people.

When we were almost done, I had to take a break and feed us both dinner. A simple task like creating the photo presentation had made me feel useful and clearheaded. And hungry.

“Someday I'll be as old as Eleanor,” I told her as we ate. “And you'll be as old as me.”

“Unless you die like Mommy did,” she said. “Then you don't get old.”

I tried to hide it as I gasped. Allie had spoken of her mother before, of course, but never about her being dead. It was mainly about how Jesse had told her that Lizzie's favorite color was lilac, and her favorite day of the week was Sunday. Allie had been barely three when Lizzie died. She had no memories of her, so understandably Jesse tried to give her all that he could. About her death he had told her only that “Mommy got sick and went to heaven.” I'd never heard him use the word
die
.

“I wouldn't worry about that,” I said, struggling for what words to use. “I'm planning on getting old and cranky, like Eleanor.”

Allie laughed. “You're already old and cranky. But Anna said that since you're not family you might not be around when I grow up. Is that true?”

I could feel my face flush. It was one thing for Anna to mess with my head, but quite another to confuse this little girl. “I'll always be here for you, Allie,” I said. “No matter what.”

Allie studied me then looked down at the salmon on her plate. “Even if I don't finish my dinner?”

Now it was my turn to laugh. Finally an easy question with an easy answer. But even as I was laughing, there was another question forming in my mind, and this one had no answer yet. It had been hours since I'd picked Allie up from school. Where was Jesse?

A
fter dinner, Allie and I read stories to each other. We played cards and watched TV. I tried calling Jesse several times, but it went to voice mail. It was unlike him to be unreachable. I briefly considered that Anna had taken his phone to keep him from being in touch, but that seemed a bit extreme. Besides, Jesse was used to calls from the station and from Allie. If his cell were lost, he'd find the nearest phone and check in just in case.

Not calling, pocketing evidence, and keeping Greg out of the loop of an investigation—the “out of character” moves were starting to add up. There had to be an explanation. And whatever it was, everything would be fine. I'd been telling that to myself for a couple of days now, and as mantras go, it was getting a little stale. He wasn't the latest victim of Roger's killer, I decided, or checking into a hotel room with his best friend's widow. He was lost in the memory of his dead wife, and had forgotten about his girlfriend and daughter.

I was about to suggest that Allie get ready for bed when there was a noise at the front door. Finally. I went to it, ready to fling it open and give Jesse a piece of my mind. But just as my hand reached the knob, I looked through the window and realized it wasn't Jesse. It was Bob Marshall, and he was, for lack of a better word, lurking. It was one thing to stop by Someday, but now Jesse's? We were bumping into each other one too many times for my comfort level.

“Allie, do me a favor and go upstairs.”

“But it's not my bedtime yet. I have fifteen more minutes.”

“I know that,” I said. “I'm not asking you to go to bed. I'm asking you to go upstairs to your room and close the door. Bring the phone with you and call Eleanor on her cell phone. Tell her I'm going to talk to the nice man outside and then tell her all about your day. Don't get off the phone with her until I come get you.”

“Why?”

“Because Eleanor misses you when she doesn't see you, and I have to talk to the man outside.”

Because, I thought, I might be overreacting, but there was no harm in that. And if I wasn't, someone else needed to know that we were in the house alone in case Bob Marshall gets past me.

I watched Allie go upstairs, then I picked up my cell phone and called Jesse. Still voice mail. I called Greg's cell.

“Hey, Nell, what's up?”

“I'm at Jesse's house alone with Allie. Bob Marshall is outside.”

“Who is Bob Marshall?”

“The guy Jesse keeps giving tickets to.”

“I'm leaving now. I'll be there in two minutes.”

I hung up. I switched the porch light on. Marshall was standing on the other side of the door, looking at me through the window in the center of it.

“Hey, Nell Fitzgerald, we meet again. I guess you're more than a passing acquaintance of the police chief.”

“I'm a friend,” I said.

He smiled. “Half the town is betting that it will be a surprise double wedding when your grandmother gets married next Saturday. The nice lady who owns the pharmacy told me that she had a vision that you'll announce your engagement there.”

Bernie. She meant well, but gossip was her second favorite hobby after quilting. The hairs on my neck were standing, but I decided, one last time, to assume an innocent explanation for his being at the door. “Look, Mr. Marshall, I appreciate that you're new in town . . .”

He seemed both amused and slightly annoyed. “I think we both know I'm not moving to Archers Rest. In fact, I'll bet we both know exactly why I'm here.”

“Jesse's busy making dinner right now,” I said. “If you want to talk to him you'll have to come back tomorrow.”

“Jesse isn't here.”

“Yes, he is. . . .”

“Nell.” He stretched out my name in a way that was, I guessed, meant to convey he was running out of patience. “His car isn't here. After he told you to pick up Allie from school, he drove off with Roger's widow. I'm guessing you don't even know where he is.”

“I know exactly where he is.” I hit the number 1 on my speed dial. Jesse's number. I held it to my ear and listened as, once again, it went to voice mail.

“Hey, Jesse,” I said to the recording. “Bob Marshall came to the house to see you. . . . He's here now. . . . Okay. . . . I'll tell him to call you at the station tomorrow.” I hung up. “Jesse said he'll talk to you tomorrow.”

I felt ludicrous doing it, and clearly Marshall didn't think much of my acting skills because he didn't react like a man who believed me.

We stood for a moment, watching each other with only a thin piece of glass surrounded by a wood door that was maybe three inches thick. How hard would it be to kick down a door, I wondered. Marshall looked like he could do it if he wanted to. He'd broken the jaw of a police officer, what could he do to me if he wanted?

His eyes didn't leave me. I tried to match his intensity with my own stare. His face looked older than his years, wrinkled and ashen. Maybe prison does that to a person. But did he look angry? No. About to pounce? Hard to say. Maybe he just wanted to charm me into some con, and when that didn't work, scare me.

“Mr. Marshall,” I said, “I would appreciate it if you left now, and tomorrow you can tell Jesse what you wanted to tell him.”

“I'm not here for Jesse.”

“Then tomorrow I'll meet you at the police station and you can tell me what you wanted to tell me there.”

“Nell, why don't you let me in so we can talk? We had a nice chat this afternoon at the shop, didn't we? I'm not going to harm you. I just want to talk,” he said. “And Allie is upstairs, right? She won't overhear what we say.”

My throat went dry. “Well, Bob,” I said with as much strength as was possible under the circumstances. “Since you're so well versed in the town's activities, you probably already know that Allie is on the phone with my grandmother, and the chief detective of Archers Rest is on his way here right now.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Nell, listen to me. You need to be careful,” he said. “Your Nancy Drew decoder ring isn't going to help you this time.” Then he turned and walked off the porch. I saw him get into his car and drive away just as Greg's car pulled up in front of the house.

“You okay?” Greg asked when I let him inside.

“Don't know yet. Give me a minute.” I went upstairs to get Allie ready for bed, and to assure my grandmother that whatever threat I may or may not have been under was over now. Greg was with me.

“Where's Jesse?”

“I don't know.”

“If he's not home in an hour, you bring Allie to this house and have her spend the night here,” she insisted.

I agreed. There was no way I was letting that little girl stay in the house when Marshall could be back at any minute. I came back downstairs to find Greg making tea. We sat together in the kitchen and I relayed the entire conversation start to finish while he listened, looking more alarmed with each moment.

“I tried the chief when you called me and I left a message,” he said.

“Where is he?” It was a dumb question. He didn't know any more than I did.

“I'll stay until Jesse gets home,” he said as he sipped his tea. “And tomorrow I'll run a background check on Marshall.”

I almost told him that the women in my quilt group had already found out about Marshall's past, but I didn't. I'd been told to stay out of the investigation, so it was probably better if it seemed like I had. In the morning Greg would find out everything we knew about Marshall, and probably some things that we didn't.

“I'm scared of him,” I admitted.

“He threatened you.”

“Did he?” I was thinking out loud. “It almost felt like he was warning me, as if the danger was from somewhere else.”

“From where?”

I closed my mouth tightly, for fear the words would get out. And once they were said, I wouldn't be able to un-say them. But in the end, my lips parted and the sounds leaked out. “I think he was warning me to be careful of Jesse.”