The Question of the Felonious Friend (23 page)

“Martinez is the one who works at the Quik N EZ?” Hessler asked.

“Yes. You'll recall I suggested you obtain a warrant for his home to search for signs of tobacco.”

“Yes, and the county prosecutor reminded me that tobacco is a legal substance and its presence in someone's basement would not indicate a criminal act. Thanks for that one, Hoenig.”

“Nonetheless, Billy Martinez was present in the store when Richard Handy was killed, but it is unlikely he was the shooter because the footage shows him at the counter only a second or two before the shots ring out and he would not have been able to get to the dairy display that quickly.” My mind was racing at the inclusion of firearms among the items sold illegally through the convenience store. There had to be some information in that fact that would lead to an answer to Mason's question.

“Take a look at the security footage, or at least a listen to it, and get back to me,” Hessler said. “Let me know what you hear and don't wait to verify anything. Just call me as soon as you listen to it.”

I looked over at Ms. Washburn, who had returned to her desk and was looking at her computer screen. She looked up at me and nodded. “It's here,” she said.

“I will do that, detective,” I said, and disconnected the call. I did not say “good-bye.” Police officers on television and in motion pictures are often pictured as overlooking the normal niceties of social convention when a case is about to be solved. Of course that usually involves danger to at least one of the major characters, but this was reality so I did not concern myself with that convention.

Ms. Washburn looked up briefly from her screen. “I'll have that audio up in a second,” she said.

“No rush,” I told her. “I have it memorized. Right now, I think the most important thing to do is call Mason Clayton.”

She appeared startled. “Why?”

“Because Mother was right to wonder why Tyler would have started going to the Quik N EZ. That is the key to this question.”

“I'll get him right away,” said Ms. Washburn, reaching for the telephone.

“No need,” I said. “I'll do it.”

Twenty-Seven

Ms. Washburn and I
arrived at Sandy Clayton Webb's Franklin Township home at 2:26 p.m., having arranged a meeting for 2:30. That, Ms. Washburn and Sandy had agreed, would leave some time before her children arrived home on the school bus. We did not expect the meeting to last long.

Mason Clayton had been helpful when I'd called him. He had confirmed, as I'd suspected, that Tyler had not been drawing upon any Able Home Help funds to pay the $100 tips he would leave for Richard Handy every day at the Quik N EZ. Mason had no idea where Tyler might be acquiring so much cash, particularly since his job at the Microchip Mart had been cutting back on his hours for three months before the shooting incident had taken place.

Sandy opened the door immediately when Ms. Washburn pressed the button for the bell, as if she had been waiting in the front window watching us approach. She smiled when she greeted us with an expression that seemed practiced but not without emotion. I simply could not determine which emotion was being expressed.

“You said on the phone you have new information,” she said, ushering us into her very tidy living room. “What have you found out?”

“Why did you give Tyler one hundred dollars per day to put into the tip jar at the Quik N EZ?” I asked. Clearly some rule of social discourse had been violated because both Sandy and Ms. Washburn appeared somewhat surprised by my question, and I had expected only Sandy's expression to change.

“I beg your pardon?” Sandy croaked. She did not ask us to sit down.

“The key is that Tyler ever knew Richard Handy at all,” I said. “He lives with your brother Mason in Franklin Township. It is three-point-four miles from Mason's home to the Quik N EZ in Somerset. But the convenience store is only a seven-block walk from here and it's much faster if someone is driving you. So we can assume that your brother Tyler knew Richard Handy through visits to the Quik N EZ that started here at your house. Isn't that correct?”

Sandy's eyes were trying very hard to look intimidating but the effect was considerably less so than she might have hoped. “So what?” she said. “So Tyler comes over here sometimes and he walks to the convenience store. How does that lead to me giving him all kinds of money to put in the tip jar?”

“That was the question we had to answer.” Ms. Washburn, having recovered from her reaction to what I can only assume was an abrupt change of tone on my part, stood tall. “So we called Mason and asked him about the finances of Able Home Help.”

Sandy's lip curled. “He's going bankrupt,” she said.

“Interesting you should say that,” I answered. “When we first met less than a week ago, you said Mason worked for a company that power washes homes. You did not mention that the company also did home contracting, or that Mason owned the business. And you failed to say that Tyler owns part of the company too.”

“I'll ask again: so what?”

Ms. Washburn took a step toward Sandy to better make her point. “
So
, that means you were concealing some information about Mason's finances. And when we asked him why you might want to do that, he said you might have been covering up the fact that you'd loaned Able Home Help some fifty thousand dollars to stay in business, only three months ago. Did that slip your mind?”

“I didn't want to embarrass Mason by saying his sister had to bail him out of a business that should be thriving except for his bad management,” Sandy said. She also stood tall and seemed to feel she was in direct competition with Ms. Washburn. She did not alter her gaze.

“Where'd you get the money?” Ms. Washburn asked. “You were looking for work and were coming off a divorce. Your husband didn't pay you nearly that much in alimony or child support. Where did the fifty grand come from?”

There was a certain interest in watching the two women contest each other. Since Ms. Washburn was asking the questions I would have offered, but doing so with a considerably more combative attitude than I probably could have mustered, I stood back and waited to see how the scene would resolve itself.

“I had some savings. I'm really starting to get tired of this. You come in here accusing me of … something, and you have no proof. So I loaned Mason some money. What's that got to do with Tyler and these crazy tips he's handing out? And even if I had given him the money for those, what's the problem? It's not illegal to over tip, is it?”

Ms. Washburn seemed to hesitate, so I answered without changing my position in the room. The body language and physical dynamics were interesting to study, so I tried not to disturb them.

“No, it is not,” I said. “But if the tips were meant to help finance an operation that was selling merchandise that was not listed on the books of the Quik N EZ, and if some of those items included firearms, that would certainly be illegal, and might even be considered a federal crime. So Detective Hessler has alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and we are here to see if you can extricate yourself from that investigation by telling us what actually happened, and how it led to Richard Handy being murdered.”

Sandy's eyes were very wide now and her neck muscles barely moved. She was still looking in Ms. Washburn's direction and seemed incapable of turning her head. Her teeth did not clench, but her jaw was very tight as she spoke.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she said.

“Yes, you do,” Ms. Washburn answered. “Someone was selling cigarettes and handguns and other items through the Quik N EZ and they weren't listing those items on the books. It's illegal to sell guns at that kind of store in New Jersey anyway. You have income you can't explain, enough to give Mason fifty thousand dollars and still live in this house despite the fact that you only have one income now that your husband is gone and you've been looking for work. Somehow Tyler had enough money to tip his supposed friend Richard at least five hundred dollars a week. He didn't get that from his job and he didn't get it from Mason. The only person left who could have supplied that money was you.”

Sandy sat down on a loveseat near where she had been standing. In fact, she seemed to collapse without thinking of her position and simply landed on the loveseat. She did not cry. She did not even breathe heavily. But she slumped in the cushions and seemed to be very tired very suddenly. The back of her left hand went to her eyes.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she repeated.

Ms. Washburn, to my surprise, sat down next to Sandy on the loveseat and lowered her tone to a sympathetic level. “Look, I understand how difficult it can be to get divorced. You were secure and now you're scared and you feel like everything is coming down on your head. You're all by yourself and you have kids to raise. That's overwhelming. So when you hear there's a possibility to make some very attractive money helping to sell things that would have been sold anyway, you would have to think about it, wouldn't you?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” The voice was barely audible.

“Sure you do.” Ms. Washburn was almost crooning; she sounded like Mother did when I was a boy and needed encouragement to explain my sudden bursts of anger or sadness. “You're embarrassed and scared because of what you did, but you can make it a little better by telling us how it happened. You'll feel better.” Yes, that was the tone.

Now Sandy could not really speak. She did not vocalize like her brother Tyler, but she shook her head and choked back tears. Her left hand went up as if she were a crossing guard telling an oncoming car to stop and let children cross the street. Her message was very clear and her head was down, staring at her lap.

Ms. Washburn took the opportunity to put her arm around Sandy in what I have seen in motion pictures and television programs as a gesture of support. But she looked at me as she made the move and her facial expression seemed to contain a question, although I could not determine what it might be. I did not respond because I could not answer a question I did not recognize.

She turned back and said softly to Sandy, “You shot Richard Handy, didn't you?”

“No, she didn't,” I said as Sandy looked up with a horrified expression. “Sandy was not present when Richard was shot.”

Sandy pointed at me and nodded, non-verbally confirming my statement.

“But she was involved in the black market running out of the Quik N EZ,” Ms. Washburn argued. “Clearly she introduced Tyler to Richard Handy by starting his habit of going to the convenience store every day. She was behind that from the beginning. And we know Tyler didn't shoot Richard, so Sandy didn't simply put him up to it. Billy Martinez was too far away to do it. So Sandy must have been the one who killed Richard.” She looked at Sandy and tried to modulate her voice to a soothing level again. “Was it because Richard was going to go to the police about the guns and the cigarettes?”

“No,” I said again. “Sandy was not in the store when Richard was shot. It's clear on the audio track that Tyler did not speak in the moments before the shooting, or anytime after he entered the store, even when Molly was obscuring the view of the cameras. And Richard's greeting to whoever was near enough to shoot him was ‘dude.' He would not have said that to Sandy because she is a woman.”

“People that age call everybody ‘dude,' Samuel,” Ms. Washburn explained. “It was not a reference to the shooter's gender identity.”

Sandy, interested but not participating in the conversation, watched Ms. Washburn and me in turn as we spoke, as if she were an attendee at a very well played tennis match.

“Still, I doubt Richard knew Sandy well enough to speak to her in such familiar terms,” I countered.

Ms. Washburn, who is not at all beyond challenging me when she believes me to be incorrect or (in her view) stubborn, considered that and nodded her consent. “So who shot Richard?” she asked. “If it wasn't Sandy, it wasn't Tyler and it wasn't Billy Martinez, who could have done it? I doubt Molly pulled the trigger. She didn't even seem to know Richard had been shot.”

“I don't know,” I answered. Then I made a point of establishing eye contact with Sandy. “Do you?”

Her eyes showed nothing but fear now and she shook her head. “I wasn't there. You said I wasn't there, right?”

Ms. Washburn, facing me and out of Sandy's view, flattened out her lips and cocked an eyebrow. I took that to mean she did not believe Sandy's statement, which was wise on her part.

“Well then,” I said. “I suppose the best thing to do would be to go back to the Quik N EZ and put the question directly to Billy Martinez. And I think your presence in the store will go a long way toward getting the truth from him, Sandy. Would you come with us, please?”

Sandy looked like she would rather do almost anything else. “My children,” she said. “I can't leave now.”

“
Surely you have some contingency in place for such a situation,” I suggested. “What if you had a job interview at this time? Who would you call in that case?”

Sandy stared at me for a moment but must have seen that I was not to be dissuaded. “Probably Mason, or Cindy next door,” she said. “But—”

“This might keep your brother Tyler out of jail,” Ms. Washburn said. “Maybe you'd better call your neighbor and ask about her taking the kids for an hour or so.”

Before our eyes, Sandy Clayton Webb gathered herself into the businesswoman she must have been and the executive she hoped to be. She stood up and straightened her clothes. “There's no need,” she said. “The kids are in the afterschool program and won't be ready to get picked up until five.”

“You said they were coming on the bus,” Ms. Washburn reminded her.

“I lied.”

Ms. Washburn's look as we followed Sandy out of the house was one I would never be able to understand.