Rules for Perfect Murders Read online

  “When did she die?”

  “Five years ago, now, although it doesn’t feel that long.”

  “I’m sure,” Gwen said, wiping some foam off her upper lip with a knuckle. “That must have been terrible. Her dying so young. The way she died.”

  “You’ve done some checking up.”

  “Yes. A little bit. When I first got your name, when I found the list, I ran a check on you.”

  “Did you see that I’d been questioned in the murder investigation into Eric Atwell?”

  “I did see that.”

  “I would have killed him, if I had a chance. But it wasn’t me.”

  “I know that.”

  “It’s okay if you don’t. I know you’re doing your job, and I know you’re wondering what connection I have with all these murders. Truth is, I don’t have any, or at least not that I know of. After my wife died, I told myself that I would just go on living by myself, doing my job, reading books. I want a quiet life.”

  “I believe you,” she said, and she looked at me with an emotion I couldn’t quite read. It seemed like affection. Or maybe it was pity.

  “You sure?”

  “Well, this crime scene, Elaine Johnson’s murder, does change things. It’s different from the others. It’s pointing directly at you, directly at the list.”

  “I know it is. It’s giving me a very strange feeling.”

  “Tell me more about Brian Murray. Would he have known Elaine Johnson?”

  “He did, actually,” I said. “Well, I don’t know if he’d spoken to her, but he definitely knew her because Brian comes to all our readings, and Elaine comes, as well. Used to come.”

  “How did the two of you end up buying the store together?”

  “We were friends, not close, but he was in the store a lot, and we’d occasionally get a drink. When the previous owner decided to sell, I must have told Brian about it, about how I’d buy it if I had the money. I think he offered to come in right away. He had his lawyer write up a deal in which he provided the majority of the capital and I’d manage the business. It was a perfect arrangement. It still is. He doesn’t have anything to do with these murders.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I sipped my beer. “He’s an alcoholic, a functioning one, but barely. He writes his yearly book in about two months and takes the rest of the year off to drink. He’s sixty years old but looks seventy, and every time we hang out together he tells me the exact same stories. I just don’t see it. Even if for some reason he had murderous intentions, there’s just no way he could pull it off. He doesn’t even drive. He takes taxis everywhere.”

  “Okay.”

  “You believe me?”

  “I’ll look into him, but, yes, I believe you. I used to read his books, actually, when I was a teenager. Ellis Fitzgerald was one of the reasons I wanted to go into law enforcement.”

  “The early books were good.”

  “I loved them. I remember that I could read an entire book in a day.”

  Our oysters came, and the rest of our food shortly afterward. We didn’t talk anymore about the crime scene, or Brian Murray, or anything remotely personal. We ate, and Gwen went over her plan for the next day. She was going to go into the local FBI office and arrange for a scene-of-crime officer to conduct an investigation at Elaine Johnson’s house. She also wanted to talk with neighbors who might have seen a stranger, or at least a strange car, around the time of Elaine’s death.

  “I can look into a bus that will take you back to Boston,” she said. “Otherwise you can come back with me, but it might not be until late in the afternoon.”

  “I’ll wait,” I said, “unless you think it’s going to be another night. I brought a book.”

  “Another one from the list?” she said.

  “I did. I brought Malice Aforethought.”

  After dinner, we drove back in silence to the hotel, then stood together in the harsh light of the empty lobby. “Thanks for coming on this trip,” she said. “I realize it’s probably an inconvenience.”

  “It’s actually nice,” I said. “Get out of the city …”

  “Visit the scene of a murder …”

  “Yes,” I said.

  We stood awkwardly for a moment. I did briefly wonder if Gwen had some romantic interest in me. I was only about ten years older than she was, and I knew that I was not unhandsome. My hair was completely gray now, more of a silver, really, but I’d kept all of it. I was slim and had a decent jawline. My eyes were blue. I took a step backward. I felt that shimmery glass wall between us, the one that kept me from becoming close to anyone except for ghosts. She must have felt it as well, because she said good night.

  I went back to my hotel room and began to read.

  CHAPTER 16

  What impressed me about Malice Aforethought, back when I’d first encountered it just after college, was the cold determination of the murderer.

  Edmund Bickleigh, we discover on the first page of the novel, has decided that he wants to kill his domineering, vindictive wife. He’s a doctor, with access to an array of drugs. Over the course of the first half of the book, he slowly turns his wife into a morphine addict. He does this by spiking her tea with a drug that gives her blinding headaches, then curing them with the opiate. Then he cuts her off from the morphine, enough so that she begins to fake his signature on prescriptions so that she can procure it herself. It becomes clear to the other residents of their country village that she is an addict. The rest is easy; one evening he simply gives her an overdose. There is no way he can be fingered for the crime.

  I read most of the book that night, then finished it the following morning. It was hard to concentrate but there were times in the novel—it’s actually quite funny—that I was swept up in the story. As always, I thought back to the last time I’d read the book, how young I’d been, how differently I had reacted to the same words. When I’d first started at Redline Bookstore in Harvard Square after my time at college, Sharon Abrams, the owner’s wife, had given me a handwritten list of her favorite books, all mysteries but one. I’ve long since lost that list, but I have it memorized. Besides Malice Aforethought, she’d listed Gaudy Night and The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers, The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the first two Sue Grafton books, The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman, and The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, even though she said she’d never finished it (“I just love the beginning so much”). Her other favorite book was Bleak House by Charles Dickens; I guess you could say that it has mystery elements, as well.

  I remember being so touched by the fact that she’d written this list for me that in the space of about two weeks I read everything on it, even rereading the books I was familiar with. And reading Malice Aforethought back then I remember feeling buoyed by its grim outlook on humanity. It’s satire, essentially, ripping the idea of romance to shreds. Reading the book at the Hampton Inn in Rockland, it felt more like a horror story this time. Bickleigh, obsessed by a life he cannot have, kills his wife in a brutal fashion, and it destroys his life. He is infected forever by the act of killing.

  Just before noon Gwen texted to tell me that she’d be ready to leave Maine no later than four. I texted back that she should take all the time she needed. I had decided to walk into town. It was a sunny day, the temperatures a little higher than they’d recently been, and I’d memorized the way into town the night before.

  I checked out of the hotel, asked the front desk if they could stow my backpack for the day, then walked to Rockland’s town center. I visited a small used bookstore, where I bought a copy of The Hawk in the Rain by Ted Hughes. I took the book with me to the same restaurant where Gwen and I had dinner the night before and sat at the bar. I got a beer and a bowl of clam chowder that came with soft white rolls. I read the poetry and tried to empty my mind of the preoccupations of the past few days. Not only was I worried that Gwen was going to eventually zero in on my role in Eric Atwell’s and Norman Chaney’s d
eaths, but this investigation had churned up memories of Claire, and of the year after her death, that I thought I’d put away for good. After I finished the chowder, I ordered another beer. The lone television soundlessly showed an old episode of Cheers, one of the early ones with Coach and Diane.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket and I assumed it was Gwen, calling to say she was ready to leave. But it turned out to be Marty Kingship.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Gotta minute?”

  “Sure,” I said, and thought about stepping outside of the restaurant, but I was the only one at the bar, and the bartender was unpacking boxes of wine far from where I was seated.

  “I looked into your guy Chaney for you. He was a piece of work, let me tell you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean, if you’re looking for who wanted him dead, you’d be better off making a list of who didn’t want him dead. He most likely killed his wife.”

  “What do you mean ‘most likely’?”

  “There was a house fire, one that he managed to escape, while she didn’t. Chaney’s brother-in-law, the brother of the wife, filed a complaint saying he was sure that Chaney had set it, trapping his wife in the bedroom. He told the investigating officers at the time that Margaret, his sister, Chaney’s wife, was planning on leaving Norman, and that Norman knew it. He’d been a serial adulterer and she had proof, so she was going to get at least half of the money if not more.”

  “Were they rich?”

  “They had some money, for sure. He owned two service stations, but he’d also been investigated for money laundering. It went nowhere, though.”

  “Who was he money laundering for?”

  “Oh, some local drug outfit. He must have stepped out of line at some point because one of his service stations got held up, and an employee got shot. Only no one thought it was a regular holdup. It was probably revenge. This was only about six months before his wife died. Like I said, there was a whole slew of people wanting to get rid of Norman Chaney. He was a bad apple.”

  “What happened to him after the house burned down?”

  “He sold off his service stations and bought a house up in some minuscule town in New Hampshire. Up near the ski resorts. But someone found him there and killed him. Maybe the brother-in-law.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’m not saying it, but the cop I talked to is. He was beaten to death in his own house, and there’d been a struggle. Chances are this had nothing to do with drugs. If he’d been targeted by a dealer, then someone would have just gone up there and shot him. It was an amateur, which means it was probably the brother-in-law.”

  “But he was never arrested?”

  “I guess he had an alibi.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Nicholas Pruitt. He’s an English professor at New Essex University. I know, right … Doesn’t exactly sound like a murderer.”

  “Depends on the type of book you like to read.”

  Marty laughed. “Exactly. Definitely a murderer in an Inspector Morse book. In real life, not so much.”

  “Thanks for doing this, Marty,” I said.

  “You kidding me? This was the most fun I’ve had since that shower I took yesterday. And this is just the start. I’ll keep looking for you.”

  “Will you? That would be great,” I said.

  Marty coughed, then said, “I don’t mean to pry, but you’re not in any kind of trouble, or anything?”

  “No, it’s just like I said. The FBI questioned me about this guy who I’d never heard about, told me he had a collection of used mystery novels, a lot with a bunch of bookmarks from Old Devils.”

  “You believed them about that?”

  I lowered my voice and tried to sound calm. “I don’t know, Marty. Not really. Before she died, Claire was back into drugs … you know all about that. Maybe she knew Norman Chaney and they think that I might have gone after him because he provided drugs to her, or something. That’s what I’m guessing. I should never have asked you to—”

  “No, no, no,” Marty quickly said. “Fuck them. I know you’d have nothing to do with that, but I had to ask.”

  “Honestly, I wouldn’t have worried about it, but when I started to think it had something to do with Claire, I just couldn’t stop turning it over in my mind again and again.”

  “I’ll keep looking into this guy, but nothing about Claire has come up. It won’t, either, Mal. I’m sure of it.”

  “Thanks, Marty,” I said. “What you got is great. I owe you a drink.”

  “Let’s do it sometime soon. I’ll do a little more snooping for you and deliver my report. How about Wednesday?”

  “That works,” I said, and we made it official. Six o’clock at Jack Crow’s.

  After I’d stopped talking on the phone, the bartender floated over to check on my beer. I asked for a pen, instead, then wrote down the name Nicholas Pruitt on a bar napkin. My body was buzzing with excitement. Nicholas Pruitt seemed so right, somehow. If Norman Chaney had killed Pruitt’s sister, then he’d have a definite motive. And he was an English professor, which meant he’d most likely be familiar with Strangers on a Train. I felt like I had found him. I had found Charlie.

  I decided that when I got together for a drink with Marty I’d need to tell him to stop looking into Chaney. He was a retired police detective. Asking him to look into an unsolved crime was a little like dangling a piece of meat in front of a starving dog. I needed to make sure he stopped looking.

  It wasn’t yet two o’clock, but I didn’t feel like sitting at the bar any longer. I went back outside and wandered up and down Rockland’s main street, brick buildings filled with shuttered gift shops, and a few open restaurants. I tightened the scarf around my neck and went and looked out toward the harbor, protected by a mile-long jetty that jutted out into the ocean. It had been so cold that chunks of milky ice floated in the seawater. Farther out the water sparkled in the sunlight. I was standing there, the breeze off the ocean cutting right through the layers of my clothing, when my phone buzzed again. This time it was a text from Gwen, saying that she was back at the hotel, ready to leave. I told her I’d be there in half an hour and began the walk back.

  *

  ON THE DRIVE BACK to Boston, Gwen told me about her day spent wrangling with the local police department, who didn’t seem to consider the death of Elaine Johnson a priority. Still, she’d managed to get a team of forensic investigators to go over the house, in particular focusing on the handcuffs and the eight books in the bookcase downstairs.

  I asked her if I’d get a chance to look at the books, maybe see where they’d come from.

  “They bagged them as evidence, but I’ll have the photographs sent to you. Would you know if they came from Old Devils?”

  “Maybe, if I looked at them. All the books that wind up on the shelf are given a price by me, or by one of my employees, in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. But some books never make the shelves; they get sold online directly, and unless I remember a specific copy of a specific book, then I’m not going to recognize them.”

  “But if Charlie came into your store, and bought the books, or some of them, then …”

  “It would mean he’s a customer.”

  “Right,” Gwen said.

  We had just crossed over from Maine into New Hampshire, and it had gotten dark. Gwen’s face was periodically illuminated by passing cars.

  “I forgot to ask, were there any witnesses?”

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “I mean, did you find a witness who saw someone, or someone’s car, outside of Elaine Johnson’s house around the time of the murder?”

  “Oh, that. No. I questioned the neighbor across the street who reported that Elaine’s mail hadn’t been picked up, but she hadn’t seen anything. She’s old, and I doubt she could even see anyone on the street.”

  “So, no luck there,” I said.

  “I’m not surprised. If there
’s one other connection between all these murders—besides your list—it’s that there have been no witnesses. No clues at all, really. No mistakes.”

  “There must have been something.”

  “There was a murder weapon left behind at the site of Jay Bradshaw’s homicide.”

  “He was one of the A.B.C. murders?”

  “Yes, he was beaten to death in his garage. In some ways his murder is a bit of an outlier. It was messy, for one; he fought back, and there was a lot of blood. His garage was full of tools, all of which could have been the murder weapon, but it turned out that the weapon that was used, at least initially, was a baseball bat.”

  “How do they know it didn’t come from the garage, that it was brought there?”

  “They don’t know, not for a fact, but there was no other sports equipment at Bradshaw’s house. And all the tools in his garage were carpentry tools. That’s what he was—a carpenter—although he’d been charged ten years earlier with attempted rape while putting up bookshelves for a divorced woman. Since then he’d done very little work. He kept a sign up in front of his house at all times, advertising ‘used tools for sale,’ and according to his only friend, he spent most of the day in his garage. He would have been easy to target. The baseball bat was the only piece of evidence found that seemed as though it didn’t belong in his garage.”

  “Was it special?”

  “What, the bat?”

  “Yeah, was there something unusual about it? Was it from the 1950s or anything? Signed by Mickey Mantle?”

  “No, it was new, and it was a brand that’s sold at just about every sporting goods store. It didn’t go anywhere. Also, it didn’t actually deliver the killing blow. Bradshaw was hit by the baseball bat, but he’d been killed with a sledgehammer, directly to his head. Sorry for the image.”

  When Gwen pulled up in front of the bookstore, she said, “Here you go,” then quickly added, “Oh, maybe you wanted to go to your home. I didn’t even ask.”

  “This is fine,” I said. “I should probably check in here anyway, and I only live a few blocks away.”