Til death, p.7
'Til Death, page 7
“He,” I repeated. “So you’re renting the first one to a man?”
“Dr. Martell,” she said. “Rupert recommends him very highly.”
CHAPTER 11
“Coincidentally,” I said, “I met him this morning.
Just before noon.”
“You met Dr. Martell? Where?”
“At the station,” I said. “He was there for an interview with Scott Palmer.”
“You know, since you aren’t doing your field reporting anymore, Maralee, I don’t watch TV in the daytime much anymore.” She glanced up at the clock. “It’s not twelve thirty yet. Do you think I’ve missed it?”
I sure hope so. “Probably,” I said.
She reached for the remote and the small wall-hung TV over a shelf full of cookbooks glowed to life. A serious-looking Scott Palmer faced Michael Martell. My aunt frowned. “I certainly hope he’s not going to mention that ridiculous Jekyll and Hyde idea.”
“So, Dr. Martell,” Scott intoned. “I understand that you’ll be teaching creative writing at the Tabby.”
“Yes, indeed.” Martell smiled into the camera. “Classes have already begun. My students seem very receptive. Teaching has long been a dream of mine.”
“While you were incarcerated, you mean.”
Oh-oh. Scott’s going to be snarky.
“Of course, but even before that.” Dr. Martell’s tone was even. Polite. “I studied journalism at university many years ago.”
“Before your marriage, you mean?” Scott leaned forward, scowling slightly.
“Yes. Before that.”
“Before your wife’s death.”
“Of course.”
Scott leaned back in his chair. Long pause.
Too long. Bruce Doan hates dead air.
He continued questioning. “You wrote a mystery book. Several murder mystery books.”
Martell smiled again. “Indeed I did.”
“You wrote them while you were in prison? Under an assumed name—the same name you’re using as an instructor here at the Tabby.”
“Yes. Fenton Bishop. I’ve written some more scholarly tomes under my real name.”
Scott looked surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
Martell shrugged. “They were in some fairly obscure publications about antiques. I’m an authorized antiques appraiser.” He looked into the camera again. “I’m still writing mysteries under Fenton’s name.”
Scott’s expression brightened. “You say you wrote those mysteries ‘under Fenton’s name.’ Do you think, perhaps, of Fenton as a person other than yourself?”
Martell smiled, chuckled softly. “What a strange idea—but perhaps I do. Maybe I wear my antiques-expert writer hat when I’m working on nonfiction analytical topics, and my Fenton Bishop hat for more lighthearted work.”
“You consider murder lighthearted?” Scott’s tone was smug. “Really?”
Still smiling, Martell answered. “It’s fiction, Mr. Palmer. Not meant to be taken seriously. It’s make-believe. Just like the works of Stephen King or Agatha Christie . . . or Robert Louis Stevenson.”
The music signaling a commercial break swelled. Noon news anchor Phil Archer thanked Scott and Dr. Martell for “an interesting interview” and invited viewers to stay tuned for traffic and weather.
Aunt Ibby turned off the TV with an authoritative click. “I think I’m going to like my new tenant. He put Scott in his place about the Stevenson book, all right, and did it like a perfect gentleman. What did you think, Pete?”
Pete used his cop voice. “The man has served time for what he did. He’s earned his teaching degrees. He’s free to earn a living.”
“I think it’s interesting that he’s written on other topics,” I said.
“I do too.” Aunt Ibby wore her wise-old-owl look. “I mean to encourage him to keep doing both types of writing—that is, if he’s interested in my opinion at all.”
Pete spoke again, this time with cop face and cop voice. “Ms. Russell—I mean Ibby—it may not be wise to interact with these short-term, Airbnb people, other than as the landlady. Remember, this is simply temporary housing for these folks. They’re not here to make friends.”
He’s warning her. My phone vibrated. “Oh-oh. Text from Rhonda. Doan’s on a tear about Wanda’s new look. I’d better get back to the station. Pete?”
“We’d better not keep him waiting, then.” He smiled. Real smile, cop face gone. “Let’s go.” He pulled the back door open, holding it for me. “Keep this door locked, Ibby.”
“You tell me that all the time,” she said, returning his smile. “I will.”
We hurried past the garden and climbed into Pete’s car. “I hope he takes the rear apartment,” I said.
“You do? Why?”
“He’ll enter and leave using the back door, the back stairs. He won’t have any access to the rest of the house.”
“It’s a B and B,” Pete pointed out. “A bed-and-breakfast. I assume she’ll be serving breakfast in her kitchen for both apartments.”
“Oh boy. You’re right. What do you think—about Dr. Martell living there? Have you learned anything about him that I should be worried about?”
“It sounds as if you already are worried.” He reached across the console, patted my knee, and eased out of the driveway onto Oliver Street. “And no. I haven’t found anything that we didn’t already know. As I said before, he’s served his time, he’s earned a teaching degree and he’s free to earn a living.”
“You sounded worried too.”
“I worry about her in general. She and those girlfriends of hers are—well, nosy. They’ll be digging into this poor guy’s life the minute he gets there. Probably even before he arrives. He may not appreciate it.”
My first instinct was to jump to the Angels’ defense, but I stopped to think about what Pete had said. He may not appreciate it. What if Scott was right? What if there was even the tiniest germ of truth to the Jekyll-Hyde idea? If there was, I certainly wouldn’t want my aunt and the girlfriends to say or do anything to upset the new tenant.
“Mr. Pennington says the man is perfectly okay,” I mumbled.
“Pennington is probably absolutely right,” Pete said, “and I already told you I haven’t turned up anything in Martell’s record that says otherwise. I’ll get in touch with his parole officer, just to be sure.”
“So we can stop worrying about it.” I was hopeful.
“You’ll worry about Aunt Ibby for as long as she lives,” he said. “You love her. She’s an important part of your life. She worries about you too. So do I. You’re both intelligent, grown-up women. She’ll be fine. You will too.”
“You’re right,” I said. I hope you’re right, I thought.
Ariel’s bench was unoccupied when we reached the station. Pete and I exchanged a quick kiss across the console. “See you tonight?” I asked.
“Sure. We’ll do something. Love you,” and he was gone.
CHAPTER 12
“Doan’s looking for you,” Rhonda warned as soon as I arrived in her office.
“About Wanda’s makeover?” I asked.
“If that’s what you call it. I think she looks great. Better than ever. Doan’s worried about the fan base.” She made a face. “Worried about the ratings. The sponsors. They all loved her the way she was.”
I wasn’t too concerned about it. She’d only had a haircut and tried on a new suit, for heaven’s sake. “She’ll be fine. If the fans want the old Wanda back, there are wigs, hair extensions,” I said. “Will you buzz Mr. Doan and tell him I’m here?” Rhonda tapped the console, said a few words, then waved me toward the manager’s office.
“Go right in. He’s expecting you.”
“I’m sure he is.” I tapped on the door and pushed it open.
“Ms. Barrett—what the hell have you done to my weather girl? You’ve got her all done up like one of those FOX-TV anchorettes.”
“I haven’t done anything to her, sir.” I spoke calmly. Softly. “You asked me to tone her down a bit for an audition tape for the network show. The haircut was her own idea.”
“Yeah, well, I talked to her. She thinks she’s a meteorologist now. She wants to wear that schoolteacher getup for the six o’clock news tonight.”
“She is a meteorologist,” I said. “She has a master’s degree in meteorology from Penn State, and one in climate science from BU. She even interned for a semester in Texas as a storm chaser. Why not let her try it for tonight? If the audience doesn’t like it you’ll hear about it soon enough.”
“I guess you’re right. It won’t do any harm to let her try it.”
“Of course it won’t—and Mr. Doan, Wanda in formfitting pinstripes doesn’t look like any schoolteacher you or I ever had.”
That brought a grin. I left his office on that positive note and headed downstairs to my own little glass fishbowl beside the newsroom. I phoned Wanda and left a message that she was free to revisit the new Wanda for the evening news—and to use the company credit card for another outfit if she liked—and I was sure she’d like.
I looked through the glass wall to the newsroom. Scott hadn’t yet returned from his noon shoot. I thought back to my own days as a field reporter. It was quite likely that he’d be on his way to another assignment by now—and yet another one after that. The immediacy of actually being there as news unfolded in real time is a thrill I’ll never forget.
I shook away the moment of reflection, spun my chair around, faced my desk, and concentrated on my current job. There are plenty of advantages to being program director. For starters, it pays better and the hours are regular. Working a normal nine-to-five schedule was certainly going to be more convenient for married me than the be-available-24-7 life of the field reporter had ever been.
Still, nagging thoughts about Scott’s current fixation with the twenty-year-old murder of Michael Martell’s wife, and the fact that my beloved aunt was about to invite the man who’d committed that crime into her home, wouldn’t go away. I opened the top desk drawer, pulled out the report Pete had given me, smoothed out the pages, and began to read.
It was, as Pete had indicated, a cut-and-dried account of the event itself. Basically, it said that someone at the motel had reported gunshots. When police arrived the shooter, who identified himself as Michael Martell, was sitting outside the door, the gun still in his hand. The motel manager unlocked the door and police found a woman on the floor bleeding profusely from three bullet wounds. She was transported by ambulance to a hospital, where she was later pronounced dead. Martell admitted the shooting and was arrested without incident. He was detained at Essex County prison, awaiting trial. His court appointed lawyer entered a not guilty plea for him. That, minus a lot of whereases and heretofores, was about it. According to what Pete had told me earlier, about Martell refusing parole and wanting to serve all of his time, the man had been a model prisoner.
It looked to me as if he was entitled to his freedom—to his writing career—to live wherever he liked. I put the pages back into the folder, made a hanging file marked Martell and put it under M in the file cabinet and told myself to forget about it.
Of course, myself didn’t listen. I’d been a reporter for too long. I did, however, put thoughts about Martell/ Bishop on the figurative back burner while I turned my attention to the things I was being paid to do.
The Shopping Salem host had left a message requesting a thirty-second promo. During June she’d be featuring various types of home furnishings from A to Z—”accent tables to zebra rugs” she claimed—and where to find them in Salem. Looked like a made-for-me assignment. Between us, Pete and I had the basic pieces for our new house, but we were going to need some things to tie the whole look together. I returned the call and made an appointment for camerawoman Marty and I to visit a few furniture venues—both new and vintage ones.
Katie the Clown from Ranger Rob’s Rodeo morning show asked about doing a segment on rescue pets and the Saturday Morning Business Hour host had submitted a requisition slip for a paper shredder. I called Animal Aid and arranged for us to film their cutest residents available for adoption, fighting the growing urge to adopt a puppy myself and okayed the business guy’s request. So far, so good for the morning’s work.
My self-congratulatory moment was interrupted by a call from Aunt Ibby. “Michael has decided on the back apartment,” she said. “When you come home this evening, would you drop off your keys to the back door and the back apartment so I don’t have to bother to change the locks?”
“Uh, sure,” I agreed. So they’re definitely on a first-name basis. “Will he be moving in soon?”
“The appliances will be all hooked up by the middle of the week. It’s just a narrow little galley kitchen, you know. Convenient for a single man, I should think.”
“Just right for a short-term residence,” I said. “How long does he plan to be there?”
“That’s kind of open-ended. He’s in a hotel now, so he’s anxious to move in.”
“You say Mr. Pennington vouches for him, right?”
“Absolutely. The Angels do too, and you know how good they are at vetting somebody,” she said with a little giggle. “Betsy went all the way back to his high school yearbook and Louisa says his credit rating is sterling. See you this evening. Don’t forget the keys.” She was gone, and the Martell/Bishop matter zoomed off of the back burner—even one on a narrow little galley-style stove—and right back into my worry zone.
I checked out with Rhonda at exactly five o’clock, tiptoed past Doan’s office, and rode Old Clunky down to the street level. From the sidewalk my new Jeep looked a lot different than the Corvette had, over in the corner of the parking lot, silhouetted against the blue of the harbor. I jumped, startled, when I heard Scott Palmer’s voice from behind me.
“I like the new wheels,” he said. “That’s one badass-looking Jeep. Got everything but a gun rack in the back window. You expecting trouble?”
“Trouble? Not me,” I assured him. “You saw what was left of my last car. Safety first, this time. It’s cool though, huh?”
He fell into step beside me. “Very cool, for sure. I hear our local jailbird celebrity is moving into your old homestead. That right?”
I stopped walking and faced him. “Jailbird celebrity is pretty cold, don’t you think?”
He gave me that familiar long, silent stare. “Well,” he finally said, “he did spend the past twenty years in jail.”
“Twenty years is what the state required. He did it. Debt paid.”
“You’re not worried at all about him living in your aunt’s house?”
“Not one bit,” I fibbed. “And you have no good reason to spread your nutty idea about a split-personality killer. There’s no evidence at all to point to such a thing.”
“Ratings.” He gave an offhand shoulder-shrug. “The audience likes that kind of stuff. It’s an investigative piece. I never actually said that he was guilty of any other crimes besides wife-killing. It’s an interesting possibility, though.”
“It’s mean,” I told him and quick-walked to my new and very cool Jeep.
CHAPTER 13
Pete and I had agreed to do something after work and the something we decided on was moving some of our small items into our house, and placing them in the rooms where we thought they belonged. We agreed to meet at seven, giving me time to return the keys to Aunt Ibby, get myself invited to her place for dinner, and to watch the six o’clock evening news where the new Wanda would be on display.
First of all, I handed over my key to the back door and the back apartment—saving Aunt Ibby the time and expense of new locks, but causing me a moment’s discomfort. What if someday I really need to get in there because of an emergency? I couldn’t think of what emergency it might be, and anyway I still had a key to the front door, so put the thought aside. I’d already prepared a small cache of items and cartons that would fit easily into the Jeep and stashed them on the second-floor landing. I’d parked on the Winter Street side of the house and carried them, one or two at a time, down to the foyer. O’Ryan trotted along beside me on each trip—whether he thought he was being helpful or just because of catlike curiosity about what was going on, I don’t know. Before long I’d packed a couple of lamps—both table and floor types, two occasional tables, about fifty potted plants, three cartons of books, and an assortment of vases, figurines, and other decorative tchotchkes into the Jeep. I tossed in a few throw pillows to keep things from shifting, locked the car, and headed back to Aunt Ibby’s kitchen with the cat in the lead.
Pete had arrived at the new house ahead of me. His brother-in-law Donnie’s pickup truck was parked at the curb, tailgate down. The front door of the house stood open. I could hear voices coming from inside. I stepped into the hallway.
“Pete? You in here?”
“I’m in the den,” came the reply.
I couldn’t remember which room we’d designated as the den, so I followed the sounds of conversation to one of the rooms I’d thought of as perfect for an office. I passed a stack of cardboard boxes, a goosenecked desk lamp, and a pair of tall kitchen stools in the living room. “Hi, babe. Look.” Pete stood on a wooden chair straightening a wall-hung TV—the source of the voices I was hearing. I recognized it as the set from his apartment. “She just fits and the cable connection was already set up.” He stepped down from the chair. “As long as I had the truck I thought I might as well move the TV and my recliner along with some of the other stuff.”
Sure enough, the recliner was there, angled toward the TV and looking comfortably at home. “You’re right,” I said. “It makes a perfect den. Since you have the truck, want to go back to my place and pick up my old glass-front barrister’s bookcase? It will just fit there under the window, and we might as well get the carousel horse too. We can put it in the sunroom and arrange my plants around it. And maybe my bentwood bench too, okay?”
