The Probability of Murder Page 5

  I could think of a long list of reasons to open Charlotte’s bag, not the least of which was that I was curious. What had she deemed necessary to lock up in a flimsy nylon bag?

  Not that she’d been that security conscious. The tiny padlock was identical to a set of six I’d bought for myself. They were TSA-approved and simply provided some small measure of protection against random unzippings around airports or hotel rooms.

  I fished around in my travel drawer and pulled out a small key that I knew would fit Charlotte’s lock also.

  Back in my office, on my knees again, I inserted the key, removed the padlock, and took the zipper pull between my fingers. At each step, I paused, reconsidering.

  This was Charlotte’s private property. Did her death take away her rights? Did I have any claim to snooping in her bag just because she was no longer able to protect those rights?

  But Charlotte had been murdered. That changed things and involved different questions, didn’t it? Was all of her property, even her laundry, now part of a homicide investigation? Did that mean that I should get in my car right now and drive it to the police station? I couldn’t use the excuse that they’d be closed at this hour. But how silly would I look, delivering dirty tennis clothes to the police in the middle of the night?

  Finally, I came to a decision: Open the bag and determine whether the police should see the contents, or simply get busy, wash Charlotte’s clothes, and put them in the box I kept for a charity pickup.

  I pulled the zipper across the top of the bag and eased the sides away.

  Inside the bag were neither gym shoes nor socks nor sweats nor a magazine nor sunglasses nor a bottle of water.

  It wasn’t a gym bag at all, in fact.

  It was a money bag.

  I could hardly breathe. It took three attempts to get my oxygen intake back to normal.

  The bag was full of bills. Stacks of old used bills in several denominations. The bills had been tossed in, only a few packaged together with rubber bands. There was no orderly arrangement of crisp new bills, such as I’d seen in briefcases and duffels in heist movies and television crime dramas. I riffled through the currency, as if I were tossing a very expensive salad. I saw hundreds, fifties, an occasional twenty-dollar bill, nothing less.

  I sat back on my heels.

  I ran through the Ws: Whose money was this? Where had it come from? Why did Charlotte have all this cash? What should I do with it and when?

  The bag had small zippered compartments at either end and along the sides. I swallowed, took a breath, and explored each one. All were empty except the smallest, at one end of the bag. Only a couple of inches deep, the pocket held several slips of paper, each with names and numbers. I counted seven separate pieces of notepaper, torn from a small book and clipped together. Not exactly the complete address book I’d hoped for, but it was a start.

  Perhaps the money belonged to these particular friends and Charlotte was keeping it safe, as she’d eventually asked me to do. My gut told me such an innocuous explanation wasn’t realistic, but neither was one that involved prim librarian Charlotte Crocker as a cat burglar. I fought against the nasty images that came to mind of Patty Hearst, John Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, Willie Sutton. If Bruce, the movie buff, were here he would have rattled off the best heist movies. And he’d have known which actors—De Niro, Affleck, Wahlberg, Pitt, Clooney—went with which movie.

  I wished he were here to joke about it. I reminded myself that it was my own choosing that he wasn’t, so I switched off the pity track and went to work.

  I shuffled through the notes and found one that read “Jeff/Noah,” followed by a phone number. I’d call Charlotte’s nephew, Noah, in the morning. I guessed Jeff was a roommate. Noah might know exactly what this money bag was all about.

  “That was just like Aunt Charlotte,” he’d say. “She never trusted banks and kept every penny of her savings in cash in a duffel bag.”

  “There are a lot of pennies in the bag,” I’d say, and we’d both have a good laugh over dear Aunt Charlotte.

  A wave of tiredness came over me, as though my mind and body had created enough alternate stories and made enough decisions for one day. I zipped the bag shut and pushed it behind my couch in the den, now realizing why it was so heavy. Bruce hadn’t been kidding.

  Without standing upright, I lifted myself onto the cushions and sank into the soft burgundy fabric. I pulled a favorite afghan, knitted by my mother in many shades of purple, over my body.

  Just before I fell asleep, with an image of Boston’s Great Brink’s Robbery of 1950 in my head, it occurred to me that maybe I should have put the bag on top of the couch and myself behind it.

  I woke up to the sound of my neighbor’s truck. He worked construction on weekends and often served as my alarm clock. But why was I hearing him roar off from the couch in my den, fully clothed, and not from under the lavender comforter in my bedroom? I sat up, disoriented, certain only that it must be nine on Saturday morning, since Jay kept a rigid schedule.

  I wrapped the purple afghan around my shoulders as my mind grappled with strangely angled puzzle pieces that seemed to be from different boxes. A campus scene, close-up on a library with blood-spattered books on its shelves. A hotel on the Leonard P. Zakim Bridge over the Charles River, both hotel and bridge waving in the fall breeze. A mountain climber in full gear, hanging off a steep cliff with only a one-finger grasp on the rock. A montage of American and foreign currency in many colors, and blood-spattered, like the books in the library.

  The experience was disturbing, as if I was dreaming while awake.

  When my phone rang, it was a relief, something real and focused. I reached behind me to the end table, picked up the receiver, and checked the screen. Even better, it was Bruce, and I wouldn’t have to feign cheeriness.

  I muttered something close to “Hey, good morning.”

  “Are you doing okay?” Bruce asked. “Kevin and I got your car home last night. I tried not to wake you.”

  “I didn’t hear a thing.”

  Not because I was sleeping the sleep of the just, but because I was in a fog.

  “So are you okay, really? I know you like to be alone when you’re stressed, but this is different. And I can blow off this trip in a minute.”

  I let out a hoarse laugh. “Let me guess. You told Eduardo that you didn’t go to Boston after all, and he arranged to move up the climbing trip.”

  “Uh…,” followed by a guilty groan from Bruce.

  “And you’ve packed all your cams, ice axes, and pitons and you’re on your way to his house. You’ll pick up Kevin in Medford and be crossing the border to New Hampshire by”—I pulled back the sleeve of the turtleneck I’d worn yesterday and all night, checked my watch, and added a couple of hours travel time—“well before lunch.” I took a breath. “How’d I do?”

  Bruce chuckled. “You’re very good. You know me too well. But I could still hang back. Eduardo can manage Kevin just fine by himself.”

  I remembered that this was to be a teaching trip for Kevin. “But you’re the best teacher, right?”

  “Well, sure.” He paused. “If you need me to stay home, say the word, Soph. Kidding aside, you know I mean it.”

  I did know that he was serious. I loved that I could count on Bruce.

  I glanced down at Charlotte’s bulging duffel, peeking from behind my makeshift bed. I pulled it toward me and with one hand wiggled the zipper open partway. Unfortunately, the contents hadn’t morphed into simple shredded graph paper or a few pairs of dirty socks during the night as I’d hoped. It was still a money bag, full of wrinkled American bills.

  “There’s no reason for you to stay home,” I said.

  The calls started coming around ten, when every adult should be up and about on a Saturday morning.

  Ariana was first. “Bruce just called and told me about Charlotte,” she said. “I’m coming right over with bagels, cookies, and other assorted baked goods from the Volens kitchen.”
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  “I’m okay,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t believe me, and glad that Bruce had arranged for the perfect stand-in.

  “Cinnamon or sesame today?” she asked.

  “Sesame with a cinnamon spread, please,” I said.

  What would I have done without loyal friends who understood my subtext?

  Waiting for Ariana, I fielded several calls, including one from Paula Rogers, wanting to stop by and chat about “the event” as she called it. Her behavior in the hours since Charlotte’s death, on campus and then at the police station, looked like she was jumping at the chance to replace Charlotte on my list of friends. Daryl Farmer, Chelsea’s latest, also called, just to say, yo, could he help in any way?

  Sometimes I questioned whether it had been such a good idea to vote in favor of listing cell phone numbers in the Ben Franklin directory. I’d become the clearinghouse for information for students and faculty both.

  Fran, my colleague in the Math Department, would have had the number anyway, since we’d been friends from my first day at Henley.

  “Do you need anything, Sophie?” she asked. Besides her full teaching schedule, Fran provided part-time day care for her two grandchildren. Good pal or not, I wasn’t about to add to her load.

  I lied for the umpteenth time and promised to call if I thought of anything she might do for me.

  I decided the best way to avoid more calls was to tie up my line. I extracted the slips of paper from the pocket of Charlotte’s duffel and found the one for her nephew, Noah.

  I punched in the number, with its Boston area code, and asked the male who answered if I could speak to Noah.

  He’d picked up right away, but I seemed to have awakened him.

  “Huh? Who’re you calling for?” he asked.

  “I’d like to speak with Noah,” I said again, more clearly, then quickly remembered the “Noah/Jeff” combination on Charlotte’s note. “Is this Jeff?” I asked the sleepy guy.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “This is Professor Sophie Knowles from Henley College. I’m a friend of Noah’s Aunt Charlotte.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m Noah’s Aunt Charlotte’s friend.”

  I spoke each syllable deliberately this time. It must have been earlier than I thought. I should have remembered that college kids kept strange hours. I’d have done better calling him at two this morning.

  “Oh, oh, yeah, hey, Aunt Charlotte.” He laughed. “Sure, this is your nephew Noah. What’s up?”

  Strange. “This isn’t Aunt Charlotte. It’s Dr. Knowles. Sophie Knowles. Remember me from the visit to Henley Airfield, to the air rescue facility? My friend, Bruce Granville, is the medevac pilot.”

  “The…uh…pilot?”

  How many field trips had Noah been on in the last week? Maybe he’d already heard about his aunt’s death and was in shock. I tried a different tack. “Noah, have the police contacted you?”

  “Uh-oh. No?”

  I didn’t recall that Noah spoke principally in question marks.

  “I’m sorry to say I have some bad news about your aunt.”

  I did my best to gently explain what had happened, as if death by violence could be softened. I’d hoped to be able to get through this call without tearing up, but the thought of Charlotte lying dead in her beloved library for nearly a whole day before Hannah found her was more than I could handle. I was dangerously close to crying and upsetting Noah, confusing him further.

  “Wow,” he said, when I finished. Not as overwrought as I’d expected. Certainly not as overwrought as I was. Just curiously surprised, as if his favorite young rock star had died suddenly.

  “I know your mother’s passed on, Noah. I’m assuming you’re Charlotte’s only relative. I can accompany you if you want, when you come to claim her body.”

  I heard an unmistakable groan, and then silence.

  I was afraid Noah had fainted.

  “I can give the police your number instead of waiting until they find you. I’m sure they’d like to talk to you.”

  In fact, I had no idea how the police went about locating relatives of murder victims. Was there a database somewhere with all known kin of everyone? My page would be pretty empty, being the only child of only children.

  Another groan from Noah.

  “Are you okay, Noah? I’m sorry to give you this news over the phone, but maybe it’s better than—”

  A heavy sigh came over the line from Boston, loud enough to interrupt me. “Okay, look. I’m not Noah, okay? I’m Jeff.”

  “You’re Noah’s roommate?” Silly question, but I was at a loss to understand why he’d let me go on so long.

  “There’s no Noah, okay? My name’s Jeff Connelly. I’m a junior psych major at BC and I work in the campus snack bar. I met that lady, Charlotte? She was looking through the notices on the bulletin board and found the one I put up saying I’d do odd jobs.”

  “Charlotte hired you to do a job?”

  “Yeah. I put my work hours down on the ad, and she came to the counter and asked for me.”

  “What did she want you to do?”

  I heard a hemming and hawing. “Look, I’m sorry about this, Dr. Knowles. I can’t believe the lady’s dead.”

  “Jeff, if that’s your name, it would really help if you could tell me why she hired you.”

  “Okay, yeah. The lady, Charlotte, offered me two hundred bucks to pretend to be her nephew. I just had to spend the day with you and her in Henley. It wasn’t the kind of job I had in mind when I put up the ad. I was thinking more like yard work, you know, but I figured, Hey, I’m a psych major, right? Role-playing might make a good term paper or a research project some day.”

  I’d moved to the kitchen where I’d been multitasking, putting water on for coffee and getting plates out for Ariana and me. Now I dropped onto a chair in the breakfast nook and tried to process what Noah/Jeff was telling me.

  “Charlotte Crocker paid you to pretend to be her nephew? For just that day? Did you go anywhere else?” Too many questions. “Sorry, answer any of the above, Jeff.”

  “Yeah, well, nowhere else. All I had to do was make like I was interested in helicopters. And I got a couple of meals and my expenses paid, too.”

  I thought of how many starving students the money in Charlotte’s bag would feed. Two hundred dollars wouldn’t make a dent in the fortune I’d uncovered. I rubbed my forehead with my fist. Massaging my brain.

  “Why would she do that?” I asked, resigned to the fact that an unknown college kid in Boston might know more about my deceased friend than I did.

  “Why’d she need me? I asked her that. She said she wanted some information about private flights from the airfield out there. Nothing to do with that medevac facility your boyfriend toured us through. And she wanted to take someone like me, living far enough away, so no one would recognize me. And maybe she was impressed by, like, the fact I’m a psych major.”

  Impressive, indeed.

  But it made sense, finally. I remembered Charlotte’s showing more interest in the overall Henley Airfield facility than in MAstar. She didn’t ask how the flight nurses who flew with Bruce were trained, or how many calls a week came to them, or any of the usual queries people had when they toured the grounds or even simply heard what Bruce did for a living.

  As I thought back, neither Charlotte nor Noah had shown much interest at all in MAstar.

  I pictured the sprawling airfield on the edge of the town of Henley. MAstar was only one of many aviation-related businesses. Sharing the field were both nonprofit and for-profit companies. In my five years with Bruce, I’d become familiar with pilots’ clubs and associations, civil air patrol staff, touring services, hangar rental procedures, and the equivalent of body shops for planes.

  And a wealth of opportunities for private travel arrangements.

  When Charlotte wandered off to check out the other airfield facilities, I’d been surprised but not suspicious. Of course, I hadn’t known she’d created a fake nephew, eit
her.

  “It seems like a complicated set-up just to book a flight,” I said.

  “No kidding. She said it was some kind of confidentiality thing. This way no one would wonder why she was going out there.”

  She’d used a trumped-up tour of MAstar to scope out the possibilities for a private flight. A getaway.

  She’d used Bruce. And me.

  A wave of anger swept over me. I forgot for a moment that Charlotte was the victim of a homicide. I felt betrayed. I didn’t expect Charlotte to have confided in me if she wasn’t comfortable doing so, but to plan and execute an elaborate hoax? I remembered how generous Bruce and his coworkers at MAstar had been to us, explaining the procedures that took a crew up into the air to a safe landing on a freeway, and a quick transport to the nearest hospital with the requisite services. They’d shown us their dorm-style rooms and their night vision goggles. They thought we were interested in their lives and work.

  Generally, Bruce didn’t enjoy touring people through MAstar. He even griped when they had to clean up for their annual Family Day, when the spouses and children of his colleagues showed up expecting balloons and soft drinks. But he’d willingly arranged the day for Charlotte. Bruce’s coworkers had treated Charlotte and Noah as special guests. Because of Bruce. Because of me.

  I shook myself out of the “me” phase, though it would be a while before I’d forget the subterfuge. Maybe Noah could still help me salvage something useful from the wasted day.

  “Is there anything else you remember, Noah…uh, Jeff? Did she say where she wanted to go on the private plane?”

  “I didn’t ask. I mean, she was paying me, and I didn’t want her to think it mattered to me. She didn’t look like she ran a drug cartel or anything, and I didn’t figure her for an arms dealer, so…”

  I pictured a shrug on the other end of the line.