The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [14]
Joe referred to the preliminary autopsy report that Matthews had attached to his e-mail. “According to this,” he reported, “we have a relatively young woman. She drinks; she smokes; she probably does some drugs now and then. She’s had her kicks over the years. And now she’s dead—no signs of violence, no recent romantic entanglements gone sour, and no lingering diseases. Her lungs are a little junky, her liver could stand a reprieve, and her body chemistry ain’t what it used to be, but there’s nothing lethal anywhere. She looks like she just keeled over. The ME’s ruling undetermined, with nothing suspicious.”
“Meaning she died of a little of this and a little of that,” Willy restated. “We’ve had those before.”
“Yeah. But not with a father-in-law/landlord standing in the wings who wanted her out after his son’s recent death so he could get the property back.”
Willy raised his eyebrows.
Joe continued, “The old man had served her eviction orders. As far as we know, she hadn’t responded.”
“So he knocked her off,” his colleague concluded, as if finding that perfectly reasonable.
Joe thought back to Rubinstein’s assessment. “That’s the way the movies would have it.”
“No,” Willy countered. “That would be reality—you don’t like somebody, you kill ’em. The movies would come up with a pile of crap that made no sense at all. You talk to the guy?”
Gunther shook his head and reached for the phone. “That was Doug’s job. Like you said, the golden rule. I was playing support.”
“That why you’re dialing now?”
Joe laughed. “So it’s pushy support. Sue me.” He punched in Doug’s extension after the state police answering machine came on.
“Detective Sergeant Matthews.”
“Hey, Doug. It’s Joe Gunther.”
The other man’s voice perked up. “Hi, you get that e-mail?”
“I’m looking right at it.”
“Guess if it looks like a duck, it’s a duck, right?”
“Well,” Joe hedged, “it does look like a duck, true enough. I visited Linda Rubinstein today.”
He could almost feel Matthews leaning into the phone, his pleasure obvious. “What did you think? Attractive, huh?”
“And interesting. She got me thinking about the father/son dynamics with Fisher’s dead boyfriend. Did you ever get hold of Newell Morgan?”
Doug’s voice dropped a notch. This was not the direction he’d anticipated. “I tried. Didn’t get anywhere. I talked to somebody on the phone over there. His wife, I guess. He’s supposedly out of town for a few days.”
“You going to chase him down?”
“I suppose, just to get it done. It’s not super high on my list anymore, not after that ME report. You have a problem with that?”
“More like a bug in my ear,” Joe had to admit. “I’d love to get it gone.”
“Be my guest.”
Joe straightened in his chair, taken slightly off guard. Cops were traditionally more protective of their turf. “What do you mean?”
“That if you want to interview him, go ahead. Just copy me a report. I mean, I was going to do it. But if you’re champing at the bit, feel free. Like I said from the get-go, if this does go somewhere, you’ll end up with it anyhow, so it’s a good deal for me if you want to poke into it early. You got a pen handy? I’ll give you his phone number and address.”
Joe took them both down, impressed by the man’s affability and struck by his own ironic and miserly reaction to it: that Matthews was probably a slacker.
Maybe spending so much time with Kunkle wasn’t such a good idea.
“You guys going to get together?” Matthews asked after he was done.
“What?” Joe asked, confused.
“You and Rubinstein. Remember, I get to be best man.”
Gunther almost choked. “Right. I’ll make sure you’re the first to know.”
He hung up just as another call came in. “Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Gunther.”
A woman’s voice let out a small laugh. “I still can’t get used to that.”
He laughed back, but recognizing the caller had stimulated a strong emotional jolt, especially on the heels of Matthews’s parting line. “Hey, Gail. Yeah, you ought to try it from my end. I still feel like an impostor. How’re you doing? This is a rare treat.”
But not