Authors: Elaine Orr
I can't agree more
. "Thanks. Ambrose, did you hear that?"
"Yes. That's the guy you're working for? Tell him I owe him a six-pack."
TWO GOOD THINGS resulted from yesterday's half-hour of IDI agents' questions, all of which were repeats of the first round except mine about Hal's car, which they wouldn't answer. First, Ken Brownberg said that if the agents needed to question me again, they were to call him to bring me to them unless there were 'exigent circumstances.'
Whatever those are
.
Second, I was so damned mad that I was no longer going to presume right would prevail and someone else would be arrested for Hal's murder. I was going to put my five years of investigative skills to work for myself. Not that I really knew what to do beyond the questions I'd already asked at Farm and More.
I'm a good writer, but it's generally not hard to get information in River's Edge. The paper covers a lot of good things going on in town or, hopefully, a new business. Negative stories were about people everyone would agree were bad guys. Meth makers, home burglars, people like that. People were willing to talk about that, if they knew anything.
The stuff people wanted to stay hidden wasn't fodder for
South County News
stories. Lots of folks might want to know whether the chief teller at the bank was sleeping with the woman who sold lottery tickets at the gas station, but Hal never wanted to be sued. He just walked around spreading gossip rather than writing an article.
That's why I was surprised that the Methodist Church was packed for the memorial service.
I was in the last pew because I wanted to see everyone who entered. By the time the service started, about two hundred people were seated, which was close to the church's capacity. I watched the fire chief silently count heads.
Usually a casket sits in the middle aisle toward the front, or a box of cremated remains sits on a round mahogany table. That was likely the small table's only purpose. Who would want to see a stack of church bulletins on it, if their parents or friends had once rested on the table?
But, no box. Probably Hal's body was still in Des Moines for the autopsy. Instead, there was a large photo of Hal on the table. I couldn't tell from where I sat, but Hal seemed to be smiling. That would be unusual. Idly, I wondered if there would be a grave or if his ashes would be scattered somewhere. I couldn't think of anyone who might want his urn.
Reverend Yvonne Patrick told us the opening hymn would be Blest Are the Pure in Heart. I'm not sure I would have picked it for Hal, but Reverend Patrick never worked for him.
Mayor Samuels, jowls jiggling, gave the eulogy. "Hal Morris was a fixture in River's Edge for more than twenty-five years. Anyone who knew him would say…"
This ought to be good
.
"..that he never shied away from a story."
Okay, that was pretty much true
.
The mayor praised Hal's dedication to his work and willingness to bear any kind of weather to cover a story.
The weather? He has to talk about the weather to find anything good to say about Hal
?
I thought about how different my parents' service was. It was so large that the church used a closed-circuit television feed so people could watch from the community hall. The minister stood after twenty minutes of individual tributes, or we would have been in church half the day. The phrase most often used to describe my Mom and Dad was 'generous spirits.'
My eyes started to water, and a tear strayed down my cheek before I could brush it away.
Someone standing behind me squeezed my shoulder lightly, and I looked up to see Fred.
He bent over and whispered, "It'll be okay."
I patted his hand on my shoulder, and he removed it when I turned to face the front again.
Should I tell Fred that the tear wasn't for Hal? Probably not
.
The mayor had finished, and Reverend Patrick asked if anyone else would like to say something. There were a couple moments of rustling, and then Fred strode toward the pulpit.
I supposed someone on the paper should say something, especially since the only family member Betty had found was a second cousin in Omaha. And she hadn't come.
Fred adjusted the microphone and smiled at the attendees. "Since Hal fired me a few months ago, you might not expect me to be up here."
There were titters from almost every row.
"Several people here probably think Hal was hard to like."
A couple more titters, and a few people waved the cardboard fans the funeral home always puts in the pews.
"What Hal was, was dedicated to River's Edge. How many of Iowa's really small counties have a paper as professional as the
South County News?
How many of those send a photographer to literally every high school sports game?"
Salty liked to go to all of them. But it was true, Hal didn't have to pay him for his time.
Heads nodded now.
"A lot of small papers have closed or cut back to one day a week. The News is still at three days, and Hal hired dedicated staff to cover events in our community."
He also fired a lot of them
.
"As we move forward to serve the people of South County, everyone at the paper will use the skills Hal taught us."
Except no one will throw staplers
.
It sounded as if Fred was campaigning for editor. Especially since he said 'we' and 'us.'
He closed with, "Today we are celebrating the life of a man who was dedicated to River's Edge. If Hal were still here he'd be taking notes in the back pew."
A couple people said amen, and some clapped. A few others turned to see who was in the last pew, and someone gasped. That made more people turn.
I felt myself reddening. Why hadn't I thought that some people might think I really had killed Hal?
People didn't stare more than a second, and the organ started the lead-in to Amazing Grace.
Under the cover of voices raised in song, I pushed open the tall door and walked into the vestibule. Thankfully, Fred had stayed near the front of the church and couldn't follow me.
Betty, red-eyed and clutching a wad of tissues, came out as I was pushing the door that led from the vestibule to the street. "Melanie. Those people shouldn't have stared."
At the paper, Betty always dressed precisely, rarely in slacks. I was surprised at her choice of a royal blue dress with a white pin shaped like a rose. It seemed bright for a funeral. I had on grey slacks, a black turtleneck, and a white sweater. Rarely did I feel more appropriately dressed than Betty.
"Come outside. I want to be gone before everyone comes out." I walked toward my truck, but Betty had stopped.
"Aren't you going to the dinner in the social hall?" She asked this in a tone that implied it would be scandalous if I didn't.
I turned to look at her. "Those gasps kind of talked me out of it. Catch you later." I smiled as I spoke, while concurrently taking my keys from a side pocket in my purse.
In television shows, police often go to a service or burial to see if any potential suspects attend. A sheriff's deputy sat in a patrol car not far from the church entrance. No sign of the IDI agents. The patrol car could have been there to direct traffic.
I had intended to use the traditional after-funeral dinner to talk to some of Hal's neighbors. Maybe one of them saw him after about seven-forty-five the night he was killed. With no autopsy report released yet, it wasn't possible to know when and where Hal was killed or precisely how. I assumed he was killed late at night and not early the next morning.
I pulled out of the church parking lot and headed for Hal's neighborhood. Maybe not all the neighbors were at the funeral.
His home was modest – from the look of it, a three-bedroom ranch – as were those around it. They had been built at different times, so there wasn't a cookie cutter feeling. I parallel parked in front of his house and turned my head to look at it.
Dark green aluminum siding and brown shutters made his house appear drab, but the lawn had recently been mowed and a large concrete planter had pansies in it. Either Hal had a lawn service that was continuing to work or neighbors wanted the house to look lived in. No car in the driveway.
The house to the right of Hal's had a stroller in the front yard, and the lawn was a week past needing to be cut. It looked friendly. I headed for it.
In response to my knock, a boy of about six opened the door and stared at me.
"Andrew! You know you aren't supposed to open the door if you don’t know who it is." A woman in her early thirties gently pushed him away from the door and looked at me. "May I help you?"
"Hi, I'm Melanie Perkins. May I talk to you about Hal for a minute?"
"Are you a bill collector?"
My face surely registered surprise. "He has bill collectors? And no, I used to work with him."
She stared at me for a moment, then seemed to realize she knew my name. "Oh, gosh, you found him, didn't you?"
I nodded. "I hoped you could…."
She interrupted me. "Come on in. But please keep your voice down. I just put my daughter down for a nap."
She opened the door, and I stepped into a world very different than my own. The living room seemed to have been divided into thirds. Against a far wall was a toy box, surrounded by about ten things with wheels, at least four of which were dump trucks. On top of the box was a stuffed rabbit that was minus one button eye.
By the wall that led to a dining room was a large yellow blanket. It housed a baby's car seat, above which were strung brightly colored plastic balls about the size of golf balls. A pile of diapers and a diaper bucket completed the look.
Against the wall closest to the front door was a large screen television with two recliners facing it.
Sanity time for mom and dad
.
My survey had taken less than five seconds, just enough time for the woman to take an additional dump truck off one of the recliners.
"Andrew," I said, "I guess you like trucks."
He grinned, revealing a gap where two top teeth had been. "I like to push them on the sidewalk."
"After Stephanie's nap. I'm Jean. Jean Roth." She gestured to one chair and then sat in the one next to mine. "Why are you asking about Hal?"
Because he was murdered
.
"I suppose because I found him. It's hard to think that a killer is still out there."
Jean glanced at Andrew. "You can push your trucks in the kitchen. Just don't make them run into the washer. You'll wake Stephanie." She looked back at me.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare him."
"You didn’t. I just wasn't sure what would come next."
"Me either, right now." I smiled. "I worked for Hal until a few weeks ago. He was very private about this personal life. It's been hard to find anyone who knew much about what he did the night he died."
"Hmm. He did go out about, oh, seven-fifteen, seven-thirty. I was on the porch. He had his fists balled up at his side, and he was walking fast. I figured he was mad about something. Or more than usual."
Ah. You must have known him well
.
"He wasn't really a bad neighbor. My husband said Hal was probably terse because he had to look at bad news all day."
He created it
. I nodded. "There certainly are ups and downs in the news business. Did you see him come back?"
"Oh, yes, he wasn't even gone half an hour. When he came back he had a brown sack, the size of a bottle of whiskey or wine or something."
"Really? We rarely saw him drink."
Jean shrugged. "Maybe he was having company soon." She frowned, as if thinking. "There hadn't been anyone for a while. We figured he must have broken up with his girlfriend."
If Sandi had been with me, she would have shrieked, "His girlfriend!"
"I didn't know her well," I lied. "Are you talking about the one with the light blonde hair?"
"No. Maybe that was before we moved in. This woman was, oh, maybe forty-five, fifty. Not too tall. Always wore a hat."
Betty? Shirley? Impossible
.
"Are you okay?" Jean asked.
I must have done a silent version of a shriek. "Fine. I don't think I ever met that woman."
"We never did either. She usually came after eight or nine o'clock. We used to joke that she was probably married, and they were having an affair."
A clunking sound emanated from the kitchen. Jean stood. "Excuse me."
My mind had jumped to Betty and Shirley, but there were dozens of women about forty-five or fifty in River's Edge. Certainly Hal never acted as if he had a special relationship with either of them. He was as rude to them as everyone else.
Jean came back with Andrew in tow. He didn't look happy. "Stay near the toy box."
I nodded as she sat back down. "Did you see Hal leave again that night? Later than you might have expected him to go out?"
"Didn't see him at all. When my head hits the pillow, I'm out until Stephanie cries for her three o'clock feeding, so I probably wouldn't have heard him."