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  I reiterated Todd’s speech about things changing at River Bend the night of the design committee meeting, but Rick shook his head. “Too vague.”

  I frowned but continued. “Means. My friend Norah told me that Garner owns a knife like the one the evidence points to was used on Todd Chatzky.”

  “So do you, and about a thousand other people in the area.”

  “Opportunity. Garner was hanging around after the meeting. He could have argued with Todd and gone after him with his knife.”

  “Could being the operative word there.”

  “But you have all three elements,” I said. “Isn’t that enough to bring him in for questioning?”

  Rick blew out a big breath. “I’ll have a tech examine the rat poison for fingerprints, and I’ll lay this out for my chief they way you have. If he agrees, I’ll bring Garner in. But no guarantees. He may see this evidence as even flimsier than I do.”

  26: Messenger Bag

  I spent most of Friday morning on the phone with Epiphania, who had agreed to bring her next meeting of the La Leche League to Friar Lake that afternoon. She had a dozen questions, and even though I’d answered them all before, she kept asking. Was I sure there would be enough parking? How far was the ladies’ room from the meeting site? How many tables would there be where women could spread out their baby paraphernalia and change diapers if necessary?

  In between calls, I leaned down to Rochester. “Next time I want to offer Friar Lake to a neighbor, please bark or growl or something.”

  He opened his mouth in a big doggy grin as if to say, “You’re the dumb human who invited her.”

  I prepared a quick flyer introducing Friar Lake and offering our meeting rooms for corporate events and community groups, and added directions to the rest rooms at the bottom. When the large classroom was renovated, it had been furnished with rows of tables perfect for diapers, bottles and educational toys – though I was sure the monks were shuddering somewhere at the way I was using it. I even made sure that both the bathrooms were clean and well-stocked.

  The mothers and babies began arriving at 11:45. I left Rochester in my office and stood in the parking lot, where I directed them down the sidewalk to the classroom building. The babies were adorable, which made me happy and sad at the same time. I wanted to pick each one up, kiss their delicate heads, make them smile and gurgle. But at the same time I knew that was some last-ditch atavistic desire toward fatherhood, which had been dealt out of the cards for me years before.

  I didn’t sit in on their meeting. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of breasts. But I didn’t want to see a few dozen of them all at once, and I didn’t want to intrude on the mothers’ privacy.

  Instead, I sat in my office and answered emails until Rick called. “It’s going to take a day to get someone to search the databases for fingerprints on that block of rat poison. I met with the chief this morning, and he thinks all the evidence is circumstantial, which it is. He doesn’t think the DA will give me a search warrant for Earl Garner’s home and the HOA office until we have something more definitive.”

  “Crap.”

  “There’s something more. You know Garner is an attorney, right? He has sued a bunch of towns and townships over handicap access to public buildings. Including a suit against Stewart’s Crossing that required our department to change the angle of the access ramp that leads to our front door and relocate the button that opens the door. A lot of other stuff, too, which cost the department and town a lot of money. I think the chief is scared that if we go after him and he’s innocent, he’ll come back after us again.”

  “I’m sure the town wouldn’t have made the changes if the law didn’t require them.”

  “I know that, and I’m not saying we shouldn’t have open access to all citizens. But he’s a nitpicker and so I have to move very carefully.”

  The La Leche League meeting broke up soon after that. The mothers were friendly and grateful, and I led a group of a half-dozen of them around the winding paths, pointing out the old stone buildings and how we had repurposed them. “This is such a beautiful place,” one of the women said. “So nurturing. I hope we can come back here often.”

  If you can get someone other than Epiphania to be my contact, I thought. But I smiled and said, “We’re here to serve the community.”

  I stood outside the gatehouse and waved goodbye as the last cars left. Those moms were so attentive to their kids, and I wondered how long that would last. Supposedly breast-feeding increased the bond between mother and child. But when those kids grew up to be teenagers, would the bond still be strong? Would these moms, and the dads involved, still pay so much attention to their kids then, keeping them out of trouble?

  I was in a melancholy mood that afternoon, and Rochester sensed that and curled up around my legs. I thought about how lucky those moms were to have children.

  When Mary remarried and gave birth to a healthy baby, I had terrible mixed emotions. I still cared for her, despite all we had been through, and I was happy that she’d been able to have the child she wanted so much. But I was angry and jealous, too. Why couldn’t that baby have been mine? I was sure that could have been a good father. I had a good role model in my own dad.

  But it wasn’t to be. By then I was in my late thirties, and I couldn’t start to date again, no less get married and try once more for a family. It wasn’t until Rochester came into my life that my heart began to open once more. And then I met Lili, who was a bit older than I was, and neither of us were eager to start a family.

  Time kept slipping away, and when Lili turned forty we acknowledged that we were happy enough with the status quo, and neither of us were willing to risk the problems that could come with a late pregnancy.

  I leaned down and petted my furry child. He opened his mouth in a big grin, and rolled over on his back, waving his legs in the air like a water bug. I got down on the floor and rubbed his belly, as he wanted. I was lucky to have him and Lili in my life. I had my health and a fulfilling career, and the support of caring friends and colleagues. I couldn’t ask for more.

  As I drove home, the trees along River Road mimicked my mood. The deciduous ones along the riverbank had lost all their leaves, their bare branches skeletons against a looming gray sky. I upped my speed so I could get Rochester walked before the rain came.

  As soon as we got to the townhouse, I clipped on his leash and led him out. We walked toward the clubhouse, because there was a big stretch of grass near the entrance that he often liked to utilize.

  Earl Garner came down the slight ramp from the entrance to the clubhouse parking lot as we approached. He was wearing a pair of dress slacks and a crew-neck sweater over a button-down shirt, and he had a leather messenger bag slung over the back of his chair.

  “Hey, Earl,” I said.

  “Steve.” He nodded. “Rain’s coming. Been working in the office getting ready for the new property manager, and now I’m trying to get home before I get soaked.”

  “Yeah, I’m doing the same thing with Rochester.”

  He tried to push forward, but Rochester had his nose right up against the leather messenger bag. He swiveled the chair to get the bag away from Rochester, and in the process one of the straps caught in his wheel, and the bag burst open. A thick sheaf of papers fell out and spread over the pavement.

  “Here, let me help you with that,” I said.

  “I can get them,” he said angrily.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Earl. Let me help.” I started picking up the pages before they could blow around in the light wind.

  Many of the pages were printouts of email messages to and from Todd Chatzky, with the Pennsylvania Properties logo prominent at the bottom of each message. I picked up one and saw that it was a list of which residents had liens against their property. It looked like Earl had highlighted several of them with a yellow marker.

  “Those are not your business!” Early said when he saw me reading.

  It began to rain, lightly
at first, and then very quickly the rain came down hard and fast. “Screw it,” Earl said, and he grabbed the half-open messenger bag and held it on his lap. Then he began wheeling away quickly.

  Despite the rain, I picked up every piece of paper I could, holding Rochester’s leash in one hand as he strained to go after Earl Garner. By the time I finished I was completely drenched, my hair plastered to my scalp, my T-shirt and shorts clinging to me like a second skin.

  Rochester quickly did his business, though he didn’t seem to mind the rain, and we hurried home. It was still pouring when we got there, and Rochester stopped underneath the overhang to shake himself.

  “Thanks, dog. As if I could get any wetter.”

  Lili opened the door with a big bath towel in her hands, and I turned Rochester over to her. I stripped naked and left wet footprints all the way to the guest bath, where the washer and drier were. I left the pile of wet paper on the drier, then threw my clothes in the washer and dried myself with a couple of hand towels.

  “What happened to you?” Lili asked. She leaned past me and threw the wet bath towel into the washer with my clothes.

  I held up the pile of wet paper and explained how it had come from Earl Garner’s messenger bag. “You go upstairs, take a shower and dry off,” she said. “Leave the papers with me. When I was in Colombia once for a story all the reporter’s paper notes got soaked, and we dried them off.”

  “You’re a gem,” I said, and I kissed her on the lips. Then my body remembered it was naked, and I grabbed a hand towel, put it over me, and hurried upstairs.

  By the time I returned downstairs, Lili had placed a couple of the big coarse bath sheets we used to dry Rochester across the dining room table. Each of the pages from Garner’s messenger bag was lined up like a row of soldiers. She was running a hair dryer lightly over pages. “This is going to take a while,” she said. “And I’m not sure how much we’ll be able to salvage. You should start reading while the ink is still visible, even if it’s runny.”

  Lili had arranged a couple of pages on ivory bond paper at the far end of the table. Those looked like Pennsylvania Properties letterhead, and they were copies of letters that the company president had sent to Earl Garner.

  I began reading and making notes. The most recent letter was a direct criticism of Garner’s leadership of the board. It pointed out that many of the problems existed because of the policies or lack of enforcement that he and the board had created.

  I called Lili over and showed it to her. “This is proof that the people on Hi Neighbor are making valid complaints,” I said.

  “Down at the other end I saw a sheet with a list of properties with liens against them,” she said. “It’s hard to read because the yellow highlighter ran in the rain. But you think Earl Garner was taking advantage of people with liens against their properties and buying cheap?”

  “I think that’s exactly true.”

  I continued reading, and then I called Rick and asked him to come over and look at what I had assembled. I was worried that Earl Garner would realize that I had those papers, and how incriminating they were, and come after me to retrieve them.

  Lili and I used paper towels and the hair dryer to blot the pages, and by the time Rick got there we had arranged the most incriminating evidence at one end of the table.

  Lili and I continued to dry as Rick read. “It looks like Earl Garner’s little empire is crashing down around his head,” he said, after a while. “Pennsylvania Properties wants to have the whole board removed, and Todd Chatzky assembled this data about Garner taking advantage of people in financial trouble or with big liens against their properties.”

  “The stuff Todd assembled is dated only two days before his death,” I said. “Is it possible that Garner thought he could head off this trouble if he got Todd out of the way?”

  “You mean does this give Garner a motive to kill Chatzky? I’d say yes.”

  “You think the chief will agree?”

  “Let’s get all this paper dry and organized, and I’ll show it to him tomorrow. He’ll have to rule on how admissible all this is, considering how you got it.”

  “When Earl Garner left this stuff on the ground, that’s as good as abandoning it, isn’t it? So there’s no law that says I can’t pick up paper from the street.”

  “It’s not that you couldn’t pick it up. It’s that I—and by extension the police department and the district attorney – only have your word on how you got these. You could have fabricated them yourself.”

  He held up a hand to forestall any argument. “I know you, and I trust you. At the very least, this ought to be enough to convince the chief to get a search warrant for the original emails and any copies of the written letters.”

  That would have to be enough.

  27: Blocking

  We continued to dry and read and organize. The papers that were dated after Todd’s death were the most incriminating. The president of Pennsylvania Properties threatened to recommend a new board to pursue a civil suit for breach of fiduciary duty if Garner and the rest of the board did not resign immediately.

  It was nearly ten o’clock by the time we were finished, with the damp papers carefully packed between layers of paper towels. He insisted on going out on a quick walk with Rochester and me, just in case Garner was lurking somewhere in the shadows eager for a confrontation.

  I didn’t believe he’d be out there, but I’d been wrong about that kind of thing in the past, so I was glad Rick was with us.

  § § § §

  Saturday morning, the streets of River Bend were still damp from intermittent rain during the night, and the wash of negative ions left a freshness in the air. I was careful to stay away from the twin lakes and the area where Todd had died, and from Earl Garner’s street.

  After breakfast, I was antsy, waiting to hear from Rick. But I didn’t know how easy it would be for him to get hold of the chief on the weekend and I knew I couldn’t sit around doing nothing. I decided to take Rochester up to a park along the canal, a few miles north of Stewart’s Crossing, where he could run along the towpath and dart in and out of the stand of trees between it and the river.

  On our way out of River Bend, I passed the street where Earl Garner lived, and I was surprised to see his wife and son carrying suitcases out of the house and into the Mercedes SUV that Garner drove. Were they running away?

  I turned down the next street and circled back, parking in front of a house down the street from Garner’s. Then I called Rick. “Garner may be heading out of town,” I said. “How quick can you get a reason to stop him?”

  “I’m working on it now with the district attorney. I’ll send a couple of uniforms over to block them in while I work.”

  I waited in my parking spot as Garner’s wife and son finished packing the SUV. Garner’s wife slid into the passenger seat, and Garner pulled his wheelchair up to the driver’s side. I watched as he quickly hoisted himself up and into the seat. His son folded the chair and took it around to the back. Then the boy climbed in.

  What should I do? Let Garner get on the road and follow him? Or block him in until the police could arrive?

  He began to pull the van out, and I put my car in gear and drove right up behind him. I parked on the street, blocking his driveway, and he blew his horn at me.

  I didn’t do anything, just hunkered down in my seat and waited. After a moment, Mrs. Garner got out of the SUV and came to the passenger side of my car. She saw Rochester there, and then walked around to my side.

  I rolled my window down an inch. “You’re blocking us in,” she said. “We need to get out of our driveway.”

  “That’s pretty evident to me,” I said.

  “Then why won’t you move?”

  “Because the police are on their way. Your husband may have killed Todd Chatzky and I’m not going to let him get away with it.”

  She looked like I had slapped her face. “My husband didn’t kill anyone.”

  “That’s for the
police and the district attorney, and eventually a judge or a jury to decide,” I said. “Right now I’m just a concerned citizen helping the police with their inquiries.”

  “You’re crazy.” She turned and strode over to where Earl was leaning out the window of the Mercedes. They started arguing, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  Then a police car pulled onto the street, and I moved forward, giving the marked car the opportunity to take my space in front of Garner’s SUV. I watched as an officer got out and walked up to talk to Garner and his wife.

  “I have the search warrant in my hand,” Rick said, when I called him. “I’m on my way to River Bend right now.”

  “You want me to wait here?”

  “No. I want you to get out of there and let the police handle this. The officer has explicit instructions not to let Garner leave before I arrive.”

  I didn’t want to leave, but I’d worked enough with Rick to recognize a tone in his voice that needed to be obeyed. I didn’t want to go too far away, so I shelved the idea of the towpath park and drove into Stewart’s Crossing, where I parked in front of the Chocolate Ear.

  I was too wired for coffee, but I could handle a good hot chocolate, and Gail, with her background as a chocolatier, made some wonderfully flavored ones. My mouth was salivating as I parked and led Rochester into the side room where dogs were allowed. I was surprised to see Mark Figueroa and Brody there.

  Mark wore jeans and a white cashmere sweater that was almost exactly the color of Brody’s coat. Made the problem of dog hair less important, I guessed.

  Rochester tugged forward to them, and I heard Mark say, “Brody. Sit,” in a commanding voice. Brody sat there as Rochester approached, and the two dogs nuzzled each other. Then Brody rolled onto his belly, and Rochester leaned down to sniff him.

  “You think I can leave Rochester here for a minute while I get a hot chocolate?”

  “Brody knows that he has to behave in public. I’m sure they’ll be okay.”

  “I’ll make it quick.” I hurried next door and waited impatiently as Gail brewed a raspberry hot chocolate for me, then decorated it with whipped cream and chocolate curls. Normally I loved standing there, inhaling the scents of chocolate and coffee, relaxing in the casual Parisian atmosphere. But that morning I was too worried about Rochester’s behavior, and what was happening at Earl Garner’s house.