Past Tense Page 9

  “You don’t feel threatened?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “Intimidated a little, at least?”

  He shook his head.

  “Damn,” I said. “Well, we better go into your office, then.”

  Soderstrom’s office was cluttered with file cabinets and cardboard boxes and papers stacked in bookcases and piled on his desk. It looked like he was just moving in—or moving out. Julie never would have allowed my office to look like that.

  He picked up a handful of manila folders from the chair across from his desk. “Have a seat,” he said.

  I sat.

  “Sorry about the mess.” He took the chair behind the desk and folded his hands on the glass top. “I’m between assistants these days. That’s why I’m here in the office on a pretty Saturday in August instead of at the lake with my wife and kids.” He smiled quickly. “Have I got your sympathy yet?”

  “Sure.”

  “So you wanted to talk to me about Evie Banyon?”

  “No,” I said. “I wanted you to talk to me about her.”

  He took off his glasses, wiped the lenses with his handkerchief, and fitted them back onto his face. Then he leaned forward on his elbows. “There’s been a good deal of interest in Evie recently. They seem to think she murdered somebody.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Oh, I guess just about everyone who lives in this benighted little town.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Do you think she killed anybody?” I said.

  He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “It hardly matters what I think,” he said.

  “You knew Evie, though, right?”

  He tilted forward and looked at me. “I hired her, Mr. Coyne. She was my assistant for more than three years. I haven’t found anybody like her since. They keep coming and going. Either they can’t do the work, or they’re too lazy to try. Evie was good. I hated to see her go.”

  “You must’ve known her pretty well, then.”

  He lifted a hand and let it fall. “As well as Evie allows anyone to know her, I guess.”

  “So do you think she—”

  “Mr. Coyne,” said Soderstrom quickly, “I think you should tell me exactly what you want and why you’re here. I cannot imagine that my opinion of Evie’s capacity for murder is of the slightest interest to you. I’m sure you know her better than I ever did.”

  “Of course your opinion is important to me,” I said.

  He shrugged. “This murder is a very big story in Cortland,” he said. “Everybody knows how Larry Scott stalked Evie, followed her down to the Cape, had a confrontation with you and her at some seafood restaurant, and ended up getting killed. She’s a prime suspect, I understand, and since the police are looking for her and questioning everybody who knew her—Including me—one can easily deduce that she cannot be found. So is that what it is? Are you looking for Evie?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Well,” he said, “I don’t know where she is.”

  “Could she be here in Cortland?”

  “I guess she could be. But if she is, she hasn’t told me about it. I haven’t seen her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  I smiled. “That would’ve been too easy.” I touched my shirt pocket. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “Me? No, personally I don’t mind. But there’s a policy in this building, and as its chief administrator, I’m obliged to uphold it. It is a medical center, after all.” He smiled. “The doctors all sneak out back for their cigarettes.”

  “As they should, of course,” I said. “Look. The truth is, Evie seems to have, um, disappeared, and I’m worried about her. That’s why I’m here. I don’t know where else to go. I figure she must have friends in Cortland, people she might get in touch with if she felt she was in trouble.” I arched my eyebrows at Soderstrom.

  “She hasn’t contacted me,” he said. “But I wouldn’t expect her to.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “I was her boss, not her friend.”

  “Who, then?”

  “In Cortland?” He frowned up at the ceiling. “You might try Win St. Croix. Or maybe Mary Scott.” He shrugged. “I can’t think of anybody else.”

  “Did you say Mary Scott?” I said.

  He nodded. “She’s Larry Scott’s mother. As I told you, I didn’t know a lot about Evie’s private life. We didn’t share that. She was single and I was married and we traveled in different circles. But I do know that she and Mary Scott were friends. Mary works here in our cafeteria.”

  “Do you suppose they’re still friends?”

  “What? Oh, you mean after …”

  “Yes. After Larry got murdered.”

  Soderstrom shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea. A lot of folks in town seem willing to believe that Evie killed him. I don’t know how Mary feels about it.”

  “Who’s that other name you mentioned?”

  “St. Croix. Winston St. Croix. He’s a doctor here in town. A pediatrician. He and Evie saw each other, um, socially, for a while.”

  “Does he have an office in this building?”

  “Actually, no. He’s been in Cortland since before they built this place. He’s an old-timer, still has his office in his house. They invited him to join the pediatrics group here, but he declined. I hear he’s planning to retire.”

  “Evie dated him?”

  “For a while she did, if that’s what you’d call it. I don’t think anything much came of it. Far as I know, they remained friends.”

  I thought for a minute. “Mary Scott and this Dr. St. Croix, they’re both quite a bit older than Evie, then, right?”

  Soderstrom shrugged. “So?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m a little older than her, too.”

  He smiled. “What, ten years, maybe?”

  “About that.”

  “I’m not sure there’s a useful generalization in that,” he said.

  I asked Soderstrom how to find Dr. St. Croix and Mary Scott, and he gave me directions. Then I took out one of my business cards and put it on his desk. “If you hear anything about Evie or have any thoughts about where she might be, I’d appreciate a call. Anything. No rumor is too insignificant.”

  He took the card, glanced at it, then dropped it onto his desktop. “Sure. No reason not to, I guess.”

  I thanked him and stood up. “I’ve taken enough of your time.” I waved my hand at the clutter in his office. “I’m sure you want to get back to work. It can’t be easy without an assistant.”

  He stood up and came around from behind his desk. “It’s impossible without an assistant.”

  “You must have been pretty upset when Evie told you she was taking another job.”

  Soderstrom took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “It didn’t exactly happen that way, Mr. Coyne.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I figured you knew.” He blew out a quick breath. “I had to ask Evie for her resignation.”

  “You fired her?”

  He nodded.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought …”

  “Right. She was great. The best assistant I ever had. I helped her find that job at Emerson Hospital. Marcus Bluestein is a friend of mine. I recommended her highly. He’s been delighted with her. It worked out well for everybody.”

  “For you, too?”

  “I had no choice, Mr. Coyne.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  He nodded. “So Evie never told you. Not surprising, I guess.” He peered at me through his big glasses. “I don’t see any harm in telling you about it. It’s common knowledge around here.” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “You know that Larry Scott was, um, harassing her. He was a custodian here. He came on at four in the afternoon. Emptied the trash, replaced the lightbulbs, washed the floors after the
building was empty. He always started here on the first floor, worked his way up through the building. I guess that’s how he and Evie met. Here, in this suite of offices, when he’d come in to empty the trash, before Evie left for the day. So anyway, one afternoon I’m in my office and I hear these angry voices out in the reception area, and then suddenly there’s this terrible loud scream. I go running out, and there’s Larry Scott holding his arm”—Soderstrom showed me, gripping his left biceps with his right hand—“and blood is pouring out between his fingers and dripping onto the floor, and Evie’s standing there holding a pair of scissors, and … and she’s screaming at him, Mr. Coyne, out of control like I’d never seen her, telling him if he comes near her again, she swears she’ll kill him.”

  I stared at Soderstrom. “Evie stabbed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Said she’d kill him?”

  He nodded.

  “She stabbed him with a pair of scissors?”

  “Yes.”

  I blew out a breath. “Jesus.”

  “So you see,” he said, “I really had no choice.”

  “What about Scott? Did you fire him?”

  “He stayed. He was the victim.”

  “Even though he’d been harassing her?”

  Soderstrom shrugged.

  “So was Evie arrested?”

  He nodded. “Somebody called the police, and they came and handcuffed her and took her away. It never went to trial, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess they decided they couldn’t make a case. Scott was the only witness, and he refused to cooperate with the prosecutor.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “According to the Cortland rumor mill, he said he loved her.”

  “So you fired her.”

  “I asked for her resignation, Mr. Coyne,” he said. “The board of directors insisted. If I’d refused, they just would’ve fired me and hired somebody else, and Evie still would’ve been fired. I called Marcus Bluestein, and I helped her get a better job, far enough away from Cortland to make everybody happy.”

  “Was Evie happy?”

  He shrugged. “I think she was relieved. Evie wasn’t a quitter, but Scott was driving her to the edge. It was probably a good thing that, um, incident occurred. If it hadn’t, and if she hadn’t left Cortland, I don’t know what might’ve happened.”

  “Except Scott kept following her,” I said.

  “Apparently,” he said. “And now …”

  He didn’t finish his thought, and I didn’t finish it for him.

  Now Larry Scott was dead. He’d been knifed in the stomach.

  Everybody in Cortland knew that Evie had stabbed him with a pair of scissors and threatened to kill him a few years ago.

  I wondered if anybody doubted she’d stabbed him with a kitchen knife on Cape Cod a week ago.

  EIGHT

  It was nearly one in the afternoon. I asked Soderstrom where I might get a sandwich, and he suggested a diner a mile or so down Route 1. I thanked him and we shook hands. As I left his office, he was standing there with his hands on his hips, staring at the stacks of paper on his desk.

  I paused outside the entrance to the medical center to light a cigarette. The air was thick and hot and still, a sharp contrast to the chilly air-conditioning I’d just left. If I wasn’t mistaken, those were thunderheads building up along the western horizon.

  I forced myself to consider the reality: If Evie could stab Larry Scott in the arm with a pair of scissors, she was a logical candidate for stabbing him in the belly with a kitchen knife. The incident with the scissors was what Charlotte Matley had refused to tell me. It’s what Homicide Detective Neil Vanderweigh had been thinking about.

  It’s what everyone in Cortland was thinking, too.

  As I was learning, I didn’t know much about Evie’s personal history.

  But, I kept thinking, I knew Evie. She purred when I lifted up her hair and kissed the back of the neck. Cradling her bare feet in my lap and painting her toenails made her want to make love. Evie liked Ella Fitzgerald and Lord Byron and the Muppets. She hated snakes and spiders and professional wrestling.

  She loved me. I knew that.

  I refused to believe that anyone who loved me was capable of murder.

  I followed the curving brick walkway back to the parking garage, climbed into my car, and headed for the diner.

  I’ve always loved diners, and whenever I’m hungry in an unfamiliar place, I seek one out. Traditionally, diners cater to truckers, and truckers always know where to get the best food for the best prices. Diners serve bacon and eggs and hash browns and unlimited coffee refills all day and night, seven days a week, every day of the year including Christmas and Thanksgiving. Diners have their own special meatloaf recipes, and they serve it with lumpy mashed potatoes made from actual potatoes, and thick brown mushroom gravy, and peas and carrots, with warm homemade apple pie and a slab of cheddar cheese for dessert.

  This diner looked promising. Three ten-wheelers were parked in the spacious side lot, and half a dozen other vehicles were pulled up in front. The neon sign on the roof read DINER, as it should, and the structure appeared to be a genuine old railroad dining car.

  I parked in front, and when I pushed open the door and went in, it seemed to me that the ten or a dozen patrons on the stools and in the booths all paused momentarily in their conversation to size me up.

  If they did, they recovered quickly.

  Probably my overheated imagination.

  I took a booth by the front window, and a glass of water instantly appeared at my elbow. I looked up. The waitress wore a tight-fitting green uniform. Her reddish blonde hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She was fortyish and thin and unsmiling. Her nameplate said RUTH. She plucked a pencil from her bun and held it poised over a pad. “Interested in the specials?” she said.

  I looked up at the menu, which was written on a blackboard on the wall behind the counter. “Just a sandwich,” I said. “Tuna, wheat toast, and iced coffee.”

  “Milk in the coffee?”

  “Black. Please.”

  She was back with the iced coffee in about a minute. While I sipped it, I kept glancing outside at my car.

  The sandwich arrived about five minutes later. It was at least an inch thick, and it came with a handful of ruffled potato chips and a big dill pickle.

  The diner hummed with the drone of conversation mingled with the music from a radio on a shelf behind the counter. The songs were oldies from the seventies. I couldn’t make out what the patrons were talking about.

  As I ate, a pair of men in workclothes left. They paused outside to look at my car. One of them said something and the other one nodded and laughed. Then they wandered away.

  I finished my sandwich and pickle, then ate the potato chips and sipped my iced coffee.

  A pickup truck pulled in out front. A pair of teenaged boys got out. They, too, gave my BMW the once-over before they came in.

  Ruth appeared. She took away my plate. “Dessert?”

  “Tempt me.”

  “Blueberry, strawberry-rhubarb, lemon meringue. Fresh this morning.”

  “Did you make them?” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “You kidding?”

  “I’ll pass on dessert,” I said. I cleared my throat. “I’ve got a question.”

  She shrugged. “What?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  She gave me a quick, cynical smile. “You famous or something?”

  “No.”

  She glanced outside. “You belong to that green BMW?”

  “I do.”

  She nodded. “I know who you are, then.”

  “Do you mind me asking how you know?”

  “I don’t mind you asking,” she said, “but I do mind telling you.”

  “Somebody vandalized my car this morning.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I heard that. It wasn’t me.”

  “Did you know Larry Scott?”

/>   She frowned. “Mary’s a friend of mine. She’s his mother.”

  “What about Evie Banyon?”

  She reached into the pocket of her uniform, took out a slip of paper, and put it on my table. “You can pay at the register on your way out,” she said. “More coffee?”

  “No, I’m all set, thank you.”

  When she turned and walked away, I noticed that the radio was playing “Rag Doll” by the Four Seasons, and all the voices in the diner had stopped.

  I left three dollar bills on the table, got up and paid Ruth at the register, and it wasn’t until I opened the door to leave that conversation inside the diner resumed.

  Outside, the clouds in the west had grown darker. Overhead, the sun still shone bright and hot through the sticky haze.

  None of my tires was flat. This was progress.

  I followed the directions Thomas Soderstrom had given me to Dr. St. Croix’s place. Both the doctor’s home and his office were in an old shingled Cape with new-looking ells jutting off both ends. It was located on a winding country road off Main Street just north of Raymond’s Texaco about a mile out of town. There was a circular driveway with a peastone parking area in front. A little sign hanging from a post read, DR. WINSTON ST. CROIX, PEDIATRIC MEDICINE.

  Three cars were parked in the lot—a new-looking silver Oldsmobile sedan with New Jersey plates, a blue Toyota Camry, and a somewhat-battered Jeep Cherokee. A golden retriever snoozed on the steps by a side door on the righthand ell. His tail flapped halfheartedly when I bent and scratched his forehead.

  A sign on the door invited me to Ring the bell and come on in, so I did, and I found myself in what appeared to be a children’s playroom. There were low tables with crayons and coloring books on them, shelves crammed with books, and colorful kid-sized furniture. Scattered on the floor were dolls and stuffed animals, board games and puppets, toy trucks and puzzles.

  For an instant I thought I’d entered the wrong part of the house. Then a voice said, “Looking for the doctor?”

  I turned and saw a young man in a summer-weight glen plaid suit sitting on a sofa in the corner. He was reading a magazine. A briefcase sat at his feet.