The Labor Day Murder Read online

“Where was Ken Buckley’s gear on Labor Day?”

  “Had to be here. With everybody else’s.”

  “Where is it now?”

  Fred shrugged. “Let’s take a look.”

  We all got up and walked past the gleaming vehicles to the far wall. The entire wall was taken up with coat after coat hanging on a hook. Above each one was a fireman’s helmet and on the wall above each helmet was a scrawled name. On the floor beneath each coat was a pair of waterproof boots. Some of the coats had a last name painted in large black letters on a thick, shiny yellow stripe.

  “Here it is,” he called. “Buckley. Everything’s here.”

  I walked over to the start of the line. The gear was arranged alphabetically. Helmet, coat, and boots were in their appointed places, but no name appeared on the outside of the coat. I lifted it off the hook, surprised at the weight, wondering how the men wore these on ninety-degree days. Inside the collar was the name: K. Buckley. I hung it up on its hook.

  “What are we gonna do with that stuff?” Joe said.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Mrs. Buckley wants it. As a memento.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “And maybe she doesn’t.”

  9

  Marti had said not to hurry back, that she loved babies and would enjoy playing with Eddie. We sat on our bikes in front of the firehouse while I calculated distances.

  “You still game for one last visit?”

  “Sure. Why not? I love to listen to your interrogations. You’re damn good.”

  I could feel myself flushing with pleasure. It was a compliment from a pro. “Thank you.”

  “Unsolicited and heartfelt. Where are we going?”

  “I’ve got two ideas, Chief La Coste and the mysterious lady lawyer staying at the Goodwins’ house.”

  “Well, Chief La Coste is an old man and I’ll bet he likes his after-lunch nap.”

  “You’re right. Let’s visit the lawyer.”

  Like everything else in Blue Harbor, she was a few blocks from where we were. Here some of the houses were not on stilts, probably because there was better drainage or a lower water table. The house Ida had sent us to was on the shabby side, needing at the very least a good coat of paint. There were window boxes along the front but all that was growing out of them was weeds.

  “I hope she got a deal on this place,” Jack said, as we stopped.

  “We can’t all stay in Max Margulies’s house. Ready?”

  “I tell you what. I’m going to leave this one to you. She’s a lawyer, I’m a cop. I don’t want to get entangled in something that might compromise the case if it ever gets to court.”

  “OK. See you at home?”

  “Or somewhere. I’ll leave you a note.” He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a keyring. “I’ve got the extra key.”

  —

  I walked up to the front door and rang the bell. I heard it sound inside but I heard nothing else. I pressed it again, holding it a little longer, and waited. Then I heard something.

  The door opened, and an attractive, dark-haired woman with a terrific figure said, “Hi.”

  “Hi. I’m Chris Bennett. I’m spending a couple of weeks here and I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Come in.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know your name,” I said, following her into the living room. Windows were open on two sides and there was a pleasant breeze.

  She said, “Sit,” and took a chair for herself. She was wearing black shorts and a white sleeveless blouse and her skin was a beautiful shade of tan. “If you don’t know my name, how do you know you want to talk to me?”

  “It’s about Ken Buckley’s death.”

  “I see.”

  Well, I thought, she’s a lawyer and she’s only going to answer the questions I ask, till I ask something she can’t or doesn’t want to answer. She’s not giving any more than she has to. “I understand you knew him.”

  “That’s right.”

  I took a deep breath. “There are whispers around that you had a relationship with him.”

  She smiled. “Yes, that’s true. We had a relationship, but not the kind you’re hinting at. That’s scurrilous gossip. Our relationship was all business. And may I ask what your relationship to Ken Buckley was?”

  “It was barely that of an acquaintance,” I admitted. “It’s just that there are some strange things about his death and I’m looking for answers.”

  “How so?”

  “I saw someone at the scene of the fire. I believe she came out of the Buckley house. I told this to the police and they questioned her, but she denied having been there and even denied having seen me. It’s become a matter of my integrity.”

  “And what do I have to do with this person and that murder?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out.”

  She tossed her hair in a way that I was sure she did often. “I think you’re going to leave disappointed, then. I know nothing about the murder and even less about the woman you saw.”

  “Would you mind telling me your name?” I asked.

  “I’m Dodie Murchison.” She got up and left the room briefly, returning with a business card.

  I looked down at it. It read, “Dodie Murchison, Attorney-at-Law” and gave an address in Manhattan. “Can you tell me what your business was?” I asked, with little hope of an answer.

  “I really can’t. It’s privileged.”

  “He’s dead now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m told you came out here regularly till the end of July and then you stopped coming.”

  “That’s true. You can’t always plan your life as perfectly as you’d like to. I had hoped for an easier summer but I wasn’t able to get out here in August until last Friday.”

  “Did it have anything to do with Ken Buckley?”

  “Nothing.”

  I was suddenly rather glad that Jack had decided not to be present. This was an embarrassingly lean conversation. Her responses were very short and gave me almost no information at all. About all I’d learned since sitting down was her name. “Do you have any idea who might have wanted Ken Buckley dead?”

  She appeared to give it some thought. “I don’t think I can answer that,” she said. “I really never met anyone else who knew him.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “You might say I was in the right place at the right time.”

  “The beach at Blue Harbor?”

  She smiled but said nothing.

  “Did you ever meet Mrs. Buckley?”

  “I saw her, but I don’t think we ever spoke.”

  “I’m told you visited him at his house.”

  “That’s true. I went there on a couple of occasions.”

  “Was Mrs. Buckley home?”

  “You are persistent. I don’t know if she was home. I didn’t see her.”

  I didn’t know where to go from there. If Buckley had told her something I could use, she would probably consider it privileged information.

  I wrote down my name, my two addresses and phone numbers, and handed the slip of paper to her. “If you think of anything, I’d really like to hear about it.”

  She looked at the paper. “I’ll tell you one thing. I don’t think he was killed for anything that happened this summer. I think he was a man haunted by something in his past.”

  “Do you know what that something is?”

  “I really don’t think I can answer that question.”

  I stood. “Thank you, anyway.” I looked at her card and as I tucked it in my purse a question occurred to me. “What kind of law do you practice?”

  She suddenly looked uncomfortable. For some reason, she seemed not to want to tell me but she must have known that if I had her card, all it would take was a telephone call to find the answer.

  “I’m in estate planning,” she said.

  —

  I cycled home as fast as I could on the uneven pavement and boards. I put the trike away and went
next door where Eddie was sitting in Marti’s lap. He didn’t look entirely happy.

  As he saw me, he said, “Ma!” loudly and reached his arms out for me.

  “Well, someone’s starting to talk,” Marti said, handing my little son to me.

  “Hi,” I said to her. “Yes, I’m Mama, Eddie, and I’m home. Did you have a good time with Marti?”

  “He’s a bit cranky. I don’t know if he missed you or if he’s teething. I think he’s got a little white showing on his gum.”

  “That’s probably it,” I said. I thanked her and patted Eddie’s back. He had been teething on and off for months and I admitted readily that I had no idea how to deal with a cranky baby, although now that he was on my shoulder, he was quietly sucking his fingers.

  Jack had left a note that he was taking a swim and I got Eddie and me both in our bathing suits and walked out on the beach, which was pleasantly empty. Jack had set up the umbrella and was just getting out of the water.

  “Boy, do I love it,” he said, as he got to us. “How’re you doin’, Eddie? Want a dip in the ocean?”

  Eddie went to him readily and I followed. When we were all thoroughly wet, I said, “Her name is Dodie Murchison and she says her relationship with Ken Buckley was strictly business. She’s an estate lawyer.”

  “I love it,” Jack said. “He was changing his will.”

  “Sounds like it, if she’s telling the truth. It was like pulling teeth getting her to say anything besides ‘That’s true’ and ‘That’s privileged.’ ”

  “I guess you were talking to a lawyer. I was thinking of practicing talking like that to you. How long would our marriage last?”

  “Don’t even think about it. I wait all day for you to come home and then when I ask how your day was you’ll say that’s privileged?”

  Jack laughed. “She give anything at all up?”

  “One parting line that was very intriguing. She thinks that whoever killed Ken Buckley wasn’t doing it because of anything that happened this summer. She said he was a man haunted by the past.”

  “Aha.”

  “And I know she didn’t want to tell me what kind of law she practiced, but she’d already handed me her card, so she couldn’t keep it a secret.”

  “Nice work. Let’s think about this. You can’t change a pre-nup without both parties’ agreement. So unless Eve was in on it, it wasn’t the pre-nup this Dodie was working on. You have any sense of why he went to her?”

  “Frankly, I think he saw her on the beach, looked at those long, gorgeous legs and that very attractive face, and started up a conversation.”

  “That had nothing to do with law.”

  “That had everything to do with her looks. She said that any gossip to the effect that she’d had an intimate relationship with him was scurrilous.”

  “So maybe they started talking and when she said she was an estate lawyer, he decided to talk to her about changing his will. It would give him the opportunity to have some quality private time with her and maybe he’d get the will changed without his regular lawyer knowing anything about it.”

  “That’s probably the way it went. And then she let him know she wasn’t available sexually.”

  “That assumes she told you the truth,” my ever-skeptical husband said.

  Eddie was having a great time in the water. He was splashing around and giggling, but I always worried about the sun.

  “Maybe we should take some time out under the umbrella,” I suggested.

  We made our way out of the water and across the hot sand.

  “Let’s think about Tina Frisch for a second,” Jack said. He picked up a towel and wrapped Eddie in it, then set him down on our big towel in the shade of the umbrella. “You think she’s twenty-five?”

  “Approximately. You know I’m no good at ages.”

  “I think she could be younger. Do we know how old Buckley was?”

  “Ida said they had married young, early twenties. Their kids are in college. So add twenty years or so to the marriage age.”

  “Midforties. That’s about what we figured. Tina could be his daughter by another woman.”

  “And he wanted to provide for her. That makes sense. Then the incident that Dodie Murchison said haunted him would be his relationship with another woman.”

  Jack looked around. “I need a piece of paper.”

  I laughed. He had a special way of taking notes, folding the sheet into quarters and filling one surface before refolding it and using another. “You mean you came to the beach unprepared to take notes?”

  “I’m slipping. Don’t tell my lieutenant. OK, that’s one good option. It doesn’t explain what Tina’s relationship is to old Chief La Coste.”

  “It may be very benign,” I said. “He told me that people came in and helped him out, you know, cooked for him, made him lemonade, maybe cleaned up the house. She may be a good samaritan.”

  “Who had some relationship to Buckley. Damn. I wish I had a piece of paper.” But he made no move to get up and leave.

  It was so pleasant here, the breeze from the water so relaxing, I had no desire to move. Ever. “Maybe she just happened to go to his house to talk to him on Labor Day. And found him dead in his bed.”

  “With a fireman’s coat? So she set the house on fire?”

  “Stranger things have happened in real life.”

  “Try telling that to a district attorney.”

  “Jack, if Tina was going to benefit from a change in Ken Buckley’s will, it’s not very likely she killed him. Or that she set his house on fire.”

  “Did this Murchison woman give you any idea of whether their business had been concluded?”

  “None. How long does it take to change a will?”

  “Not long. You get together with your attorney, decide what you want, and the new will is typed up. Or a codicil is added. He could have left the original will intact and added on a clause that said that in addition to all the other bequests, he wanted so-and-so to receive such-and-such an amount of money. Or real estate. Or jewelry. Or whatever. It doesn’t have to change the main part of the will. If he said in the will that after the bequests were made the remainder of the estate was to be divided among his wife and sons, then one additional bequest just diminishes the amount to be divided. He doesn’t know on any particular day how much he’s worth. None of us do. You own a hundred shares of AT&T and it goes up and down. At some point in the will you have to refer to the rest or the remainder after specific bequests have been paid.”

  “And the prenuptial agreement is invalid if he dies.”

  “I can’t say that, but if what Ida said is true, he was afraid of Eve leaving him and suing for a lot of money. If she stuck around till he died, that was proof of her fidelity.”

  “It’s also a motive for murder.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Maybe the pre-nup was what haunted him,” I said. “Maybe he regretted his father’s pushing him to get it.”

  “Then Eve would have to agree to a change. They both signed it.”

  “It’s an embarrassing thing to ask her.”

  “Maybe Murchison will tell you if you let her know you know about the pre-nup.”

  “Right.”

  We both lay down with Eddie between us. This was the life. I closed my eyes, trying to think of what else might have been haunting Ken Buckley. I rather hoped he wanted to invalidate the prenuptial agreement, make his wife an equal partner. It seemed very cruel of him to have imposed conditions on their marriage. But I supposed if the money involved had been his father’s, as it must have been, he probably hadn’t had much of a choice. I tried to imagine how I would have felt if Jack had said that he loved me and wanted to marry me but there was a little matter of protecting his assets. From me. I was older than Eve at marriage; I had reached my thirty-first birthday. Still, such a proposition would have stung me deeply. I didn’t know enough about wealthy people to know whether such an agreement was the usual thing, particularly twenty
-plus years ago.

  I found myself feeling very sorry for Eve. Two decades of marriage and he still didn’t trust her motives. She had borne and raised their two sons, stuck with him when many other women would have given up. Had it all become too much to bear? Had she seen him with the beautiful Dodie Murchison and assumed the worst when, in fact, her husband was righting an old wrong?

  How long would it have taken for Eve to dash back to her house on Labor Day, leave the magnificent picnic for just a few minutes, and shoot him once in the back of the head? I couldn’t believe she would have been missed. There had been many women at the tent, several of them moving around, making them hard to keep track of.

  It was a possibility. I breathed deeply. In a few minutes, I was fast asleep.

  10

  There was no way I could talk to Eve for several days. She had returned to her home for the wake and funeral, and common courtesy dictated that she not be disturbed during this period of mourning. I would have to look elsewhere for information.

  While I might understand Eve being driven to murder by the combination of a prenuptial agreement that virtually kept her a prisoner in her marriage and a philandering husband who abused her love, I really couldn’t imagine her setting fire to her own house, unless the house itself represented something ugly in her marriage. Perhaps she had wanted to vacation in Maine or Arizona or Paris and Ken wanted only to go to Fire Island, where he enjoyed being fire chief. Marriages, I have discovered, are strange relationships, iceberglike, with the great bulk out of sight.

  Eve’s sister called to answer my question around dinner time.

  “Eve wanted me to tell you,” Mary Ellen said, “that she looked around as best she could and as far as she could see, nothing was missing.”

  “I appreciate your call. If nothing is missing, that certainly tells me it wasn’t robbery.”

  “Did you really ever seriously consider that it was? A man lying in bed shot in the back of the head? It sounds like revenge to me.”

  “Revenge for what?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea. Ken had a top position in his family’s business. Although I believe he was well liked, he could have angered any number of people.”