Part Two

“Leave it with me for a day or two,” Trixie suggested. “I know someone from work whose father used to be a police detective. With any luck, she might be able to get me in contact with someone who could give us something to go on.”

Honey nodded. “Okay, that sounds like a plan. But what happens if she can’t?”

Trixie screwed up her nose. “In that case, I think we’ll be doing some very boring research. So, you’d better hope that she can get me something.”

The following evening, Honey received a telephone call from her best friend giving her the details of a meeting she had set up. A thrill of excitement went through her, even as she wondered at the pester-power that Trixie possessed. From the brief description of how the meeting had come about, the colleague’s father had not known anyone involved, but had called around until he found someone who did. Honey was to meet the man, another retired detective, the next evening.

She arrived at the designated meeting place, a small coffee shop, in good time and bought herself a coffee. The older man was already seated at a table, waiting for her. She looked him over, sizing him up as she took her seat across from him.

“Thank you for meeting with me, Detective Higgins,” Honey began, in her most polite voice, after introducing herself.

“Please,” the older man asked, “call me Jack. I don’t need the ego boost.”

Honey smiled. “Thank you, Jack,” she answered. “I think whoever ended up setting up this meeting told you which case I wanted information on.”

He nodded. “Reynolds. Staten Island. 1973. Give me a run-down of what you’ve got and I’ll see what I can remember. It’s a long time ago, though, and my memory isn’t what it used to be.”

Honey began to sketch out the details of the case as she had found them and the circumstance of Dan’s half-memories. The older man nodded, closing his eyes as he thought about her words. As she finished, she added, “What we’re most interested in is whether there is any possible connection between Dan and this case. He would have been a little boy of around three. His parent’s names were Tim and Charlotte Mangan. Charlotte was known as Carrie.”

“They live next door?” Jack asked. “There was a kid next door.”

Honey shook her head. “As far as we know, they lived in Manhattan at the time.”

“Mangan, you say. M-A-N-G-A-N? No, doesn’t ring any bells. I can’t say that I remember any other kids, either. Nasty case. Never did solve it.” He seemed lost in thought for a few minutes and Honey let him be. “The live-in lover’s maiden name was something like that, but I’m sure that wasn’t it. Mason? Milton? Martin? No, I can’t get it. Not any of those. Whatever it was, she had some story about leaving her husband because she’d been abused, but that didn’t stop her using his name and not her own. I knew the husband a little – police. Didn’t like him, and I knew he was a heavy drinker – who wasn’t? – but at the time I wouldn’t have thought he was a wife-beater.”

“If you do remember her maiden name, could you let me know, please?” Honey requested. She smiled as he nodded assent. “Is there anything else that you can remember that might help me? Perhaps something that was off the record, or which mightn’t have made it into the papers?”

Jack gazed at her for some moments, apparently sizing her up. “Off the record? Well, to start with it seemed clear that Dinah had done it. Not so clear whether it was premeditated, or if it was a heat of the moment thing, or even if it was an accident. As the investigation went along, it made less and less sense – especially when I found out that she was working in a real sleazy bar at about the time of the death, though she’d tried to hide it from me. I was just about convinced that she hadn’t done it when she disappeared. It was pretty clear that someone was hiding Dinah, tidying up after her. I thought, for a while, it might have been her sister – or, was it step-sister? It was one of those complicated situations where parents remarried and you can’t figure out whose kids were whose – but she came up clean in the search we made of her place. There was a brother too, but he had an alibi – he was at work at the time and right where people could see him the whole time.”

“What do you think really happened, then?” Honey asked, almost breathless with anticipation.

“Hard to say. My gut tells me it wasn’t murder, but I never could prove what happened to him.” He stared over her shoulder, deep in thought. “Looking back, there are a couple of things I should have done differently. My first big mistake was how I dealt with Logan Veivers – Dinah’s ex-husband, that is.” He shook his head. “He was first officer on the scene. He said he had no idea that it was his ex’s place. I, on the other hand, figured that out in about two minutes and sent him away. He said he hadn’t touched anything, but the further I went, I more I got to thinking that he’d changed something. I should’ve kept a better eye on him. Whether she was telling the truth about him or not, he had a motive to hurt her.”

“Do you think he might have been responsible?”

The older man shook his head. “I know he wasn’t. That was easy enough to prove and it was one of the very first things that I did. That doesn’t stop me thinking that he knew what had happened and wasn’t saying. See, when he got on the scene, the man had been dead a good ten or twelve hours. If it had just happened, there would have been a lot more to be suspicious about. As it was, I didn’t give it enough thought until it was too late.”

Honey frowned. “So, you think he did something to make it look like Dinah was responsible?”

“Yeah, I do.” His voice was soft, but he looked right at her. “I’ve always suspected that he took the weapon that did it away from the scene, and I think he put something between the dead man’s fingers. The more I thought about it, the less I thought the dead man had grasped that little item for himself. Which led me straight back to Veivers. I’m convinced that he knew from the start what had happened, but he wanted Dinah to suffer.”

“Why do you think he would want to do that?” Honey asked.

Higgins gave a short, humourless laugh. “Some men do these things when they think a woman has gotten the better of them. Makes them feel more like a real man, I guess.”

“What about the victim? Was there anything you can tell me about him?”

He frowned, thinking. “We couldn’t dig up much about him, really. We suspected, but couldn’t prove, that he was a petty criminal – something in the line of handling stolen goods, that sort of thing – no big crime connections, though, that we could find. He was good enough at whatever it was that he’d never been caught.”

“So, he might have been killed by someone that he’d crossed, or something of that sort?” Honey queried.

Higgins shrugged. “Could have been. There was no trace of anyone else having been in the house, though. No hair, fingerprints, footprints that couldn’t be tied to either the victim, or Dinah Veivers, or one of Dinah’s relatives – and her relatives all seemed squeaky clean, and believe me, we looked at them pretty closely.” He frowned. “Say, there was a kid. I remember, now: Dinah’s brother had a little kid, but I think it was a girl. I never saw her, though. No need.”

“Can you tell me anything about the scene?” Honey asked. “Or, is that confidential?”

The older man shook his head. “I’ll tell you what I can. The man was lying on the floor in a pool of blood – his own, of course. There was a large slash across his neck, running from left to right, according to the pathologist, and made by a thin blade of some sort. Next to him was a wooden chair. He might have been sitting on it, or standing on it, or just been next to it; there was nothing really to show which. In front of him, there was a pattern of blood splatters on the floor, but they weren’t complete, showing that there had been something there, which had been removed. The shape of the patterns suggested that the item was large and had a straight edge, but that it wasn’t an absorbent surface. There was no sign of a blade of any kind. There was a button from one of Dinah’s dresses between the dead man’s fingers. The dress, with the button missing, was in the bedroom. There was no blood on it, not even the slightest trace.”

“If Dinah cut his throat while wearing that dress,” Honey mused, “she’d have gotten blood on her, wouldn’t she? Even if she did it from behind him, she probably would have. And if she was behind him, how did he get the button?”

“Exactly,” Higgins answered. “It’s within the realms of possibility, but only just.”

“Did the other officer see what the missing object was?” Honey asked.

Higgins shook his head. “The other officer swore that the object was already gone and so did the woman who called the police to report the death. I can believe that they could both overlook the disappearance of a weapon, or a suicide note, or some other small thing like that, but whatever it was that stopped the blood hitting the floor, well, it was large – say, four feet across and five feet or more in the other direction – and it would have been covered in blood. Unless, of course, someone came through and cleaned it between when the man died and when the others arrived.”

Honey frowned. “So, the evidence was stacking up to show that Dinah was not responsible, and yet she disappeared. That seems kind of strange.”

“I don’t know about that. The girl was unstable; that was obvious. Maybe the stress of it all was enough to make her want to do a flit.” He shrugged. “Or maybe her conscience was guilty about something else. That happens a lot. She’d been in some minor trouble with the police as a teen, I remember; maybe she thought we were out to get her. They had her fingerprints on record, so they would have known if she got into any more trouble later.”

“That’s something to think about, at least,” Honey mused. “Well, thank you for your time, Jack. If I think of anything else, could I please contact you again?”

“Yeah,” he answered with a smile. “I’ll let you do that.”

“Thank you. And please let me know if you think of anything else that could help me.”

With a few more parting words, the interview ended and Honey went on her way. With a regretful look at her watch, she decided that it was too late to go and see Trixie that evening, but called her quickly to make a time and place to meet the following day. Not for the first time, Honey blessed her friend’s eccentric boss and irregular working hours. When she arrived at the designated meeting point in the morning, her mind was still spinning with possibilities, ideas tumbling like the first few leaves which had fallen from the trees and were being blown across the ground by the wind. They sat together in the sanctuary of a café that they both knew and Honey recounted the interview from the notes that she had taken.

“That gives us a lot more to go on,” Trixie mused, frowning as she thought. “It’s a lot better than what we got from the newspaper. It gives me more of a picture of what the people involved were like.”

Honey nodded. “It worries me that Dan is involved in this somehow, though. He must be, don’t you think?”

Trixie grimaced. “Yeah, I’m sure he must have been there. It’s too much of a coincidence to be anything else.”

“So, where do we go from here?” Honey asked. “Now that we’ve got an outline of the problem, how do you think we should tackle it?”

“I don’t know how much time I’m going to be able to spare this investigation,” Trixie considered, frowning. “Maybe we should divide up some tasks and we’ll each work on them and meet back.”

Honey nodded. “I’m happy to do most of the work, of course, since it’s my problem. There’s one particular thing that’s worrying me, though. Can you follow up further on potential relationships between Dinah and Dan’s family?” she asked. “I would think that you’d find that easier than I would, after the experience you’ve had researching your own family tree, and Jim’s.”

“Okay,” Trixie answered, “but I’ll need Dan’s cooperation. I’ll see what I can do. Do we know Dinah’s maiden name, by any chance?”

Honey shook her head. “Didn’t I mention that? Jack couldn’t remember it. He thought it was something a bit similar to Mangan, though. Milton or Mason, something like that.”

Her friend frowned. “That’s kind of awkward. Most likely, I won’t know the connection if I see it.”

“I’m not sure how to get it, though,” Honey answered. “It wasn’t in any of the articles I found.”

“Maybe something will turn up,” Trixie suggested. “I’ll start looking at that, anyway. What do you want to start with?”

“I think I might try doing some more research at the library.” Honey glanced at her watch. “How much longer do we have today?”

“A little while, yet. There’s one other thing I want us to do together: I’d like to see where it happened,” Trixie decided. “Not inside the house, necessarily, but the neighbourhood where it happened. Can we take a trip out there?”

“Sure,” Honey answered. “When do you want to go?”

Her friend stared. “Now, of course. Let’s go!”

Honey smiled and shook her head. “That was a silly question, wasn’t it?”

Trixie nodded and grinned. “Yes. Now, can we move, please? I only have a couple more hours before I have to go to work.”

They arrived at the street in question and approached the house next door to the scene of the tragedy some time later, after an uneventful trip. Trixie walked straight up to the elderly lady who was working in the garden, dead-heading flowers and gathering their seeds, and started talking about the plants in her front yard. In no time at all, she had not only been given an envelope of heirloom flower seeds to take home to her mother, but also had found out that this neighbour, Mrs. Young, had lived there for the past fifty-five years and well remembered the tragedy.

“Ray Reynolds, his name was. He inherited that house from his grandparents, you know. They were lovely people, but he was such an unpleasant young man,” the woman recalled. “Rude and sullen, usually; always seemed to have a frown on his face. And the woman wasn’t even his wife, which was still frowned-upon in those days. They argued like cats and dogs, most of the time, but I’m not at all sure that she killed him. She was such a fragile little thing – skin and bone. I can’t see how a scrawny girl like her could have killed a big, strong man like him. It was silly, and I told the detective so. I don’t suppose he listened to me.”

“I suppose they have to investigate every person connected to a crime,” Trixie mused, “even if it does seem a little silly.”

Mrs. Young huffed. “More than a little. I was the one who found the poor man and I can tell you that it wasn’t a girl like that who did such a thing to him.”

“You found him? Oh, that’s terrible,” Honey murmured. “How did that come about?”

A distant look crossed the elderly lady’s face. “I don’t rightly know why I went over there. I suppose I must have heard something, to make me take a second look. It was mostly quiet that day, I remember, so there must have been some kind of clue, but I’ve never known what it was. In any case, I thought something was wrong and went over there to knock on the front door. It swung open when I knocked and I could smell the blood. I called out and took a few steps inside. Then I saw the mess in that room – it was one of the ones just near the front door – saw him lying there with blood everywhere and off I ran to call the police.”

“That’s terrible,” Trixie repeated, in a low voice. “How awful for you.”

“Well, it wasn’t as if I’d liked the man,” her new acquaintance noted with a shrug. “It was a terrible sight, and I’ve never forgotten it, but it could have been very much worse. It certainly wasn’t enough to make me want to leave here.”

Trixie glanced across at the house in question. “I don’t suppose people mind about it now, after all this time. It’s a lovely spot here, and a beautiful house, though the people living there now could do a bit more in the way of keeping the garden nice.”

Mrs. Young gave a short laugh. “Oh, there’s no one living there now. There’s been no one for more than a few weeks in at least fifteen years. Some people say it’s haunted, but I think it’s just that they find that there are unpleasant reminders of the murder and they leave. When the weather’s wet, sometimes, you can smell something not right in that house. Some people say they can smell death there. I’ve been inside several times over the years and I never have, but still, that’s what they say. I don’t know why they don’t tear it down and build something new, to be honest.”

“I wonder why no one has,” Trixie mused.

The old lady suddenly looked rather shrewd. “I think, in the current owner’s case, it’s because he’s already spent more money on it than he wanted to. He thought he was investing in something that would just increase in value automatically. It takes money and effort to build something new. The man who owns it is foolish and lazy and greedy. No one in their right mind would pay what he’s asking for it, especially if they were planning to tear the place down.”

Trixie nodded. “I guess that explains it. I hope it gets sorted out sometime soon. I always think it’s sad to see a house sitting empty and unloved.”

“Perhaps it will sell soon,” Mrs. Young answered with a little sigh.

“I suppose I should be going,” Trixie announced, seeing that the conversation was coming to an end. “Thank you for the seeds. I’m sure my mother will be thrilled with them.”

“Oh, you’re most welcome,” the old lady replied.

Since Trixie needed to go to work, she and Honey parted ways. They met again at Trixie’s house a couple of days later, locked themselves in her study once more and tried to puzzle out the details of the situation. They went over everything they had gathered so far, noting times and dates, persons involved and lines of enquiry they could take.

“So, what about this Veivers character?” Trixie wondered, chewing on the end of her pen. “How can we find out about him, without him knowing that we’re investigating him?”

“He’s no longer a police officer,” Honey told her. “I got a call from Jack Higgins last night and he told me he’d mentioned the case to an old friend, in a casual way, and the friend had told him he’d heard that Logan Veivers had left the force just as he was possibly about to be sacked. It happened about fifteen years ago, I think. He went into private security, apparently, and was really disreputable, but he seems to have stopped that a while back and the other man kind of lost track of him.”

Trixie screwed up her nose. “That’s kind of awkward. So, do we even know where he was based the last time anyone heard of him?”

“New York City,” Honey answered, cringing a little. “It’s like a needle in a haystack. He might still be there, somewhere, or he could have gone anywhere.”

“He might even be dead,” Trixie considered. “Well, maybe his current whereabouts aren’t that important. What we really need to know is what he was doing around the time of Reynolds’ death.”

“However it was that he came to it,” Honey added. “I was wondering whether there might be a reason why Veivers might have changed something to make it look like a murder, when it really wasn’t. Jack Higgins mentioned about men who think they’ve been slighted by women, but I don’t know whether that’s the case here.”

Trixie sighed. “There could be dozens of reasons. I could think of about twenty off the top of my head. The trouble is how to find out which of them might be right.”

Honey nodded. “The other thing Jack said is that he’s remembered that it wasn’t clear from the autopsy whether it really was murder, or if it was suicide, or even an accident.” She tapped her pencil against the table, once or twice. “And, he remembered that some relative of the victim made a big fuss about fifteen years ago and aspects of the case were reinvestigated. Maybe we could find something in the newspapers of the time.”

“It’s worth a try,” her friend answered. “Do you want to go to the library together?”

“It would be more interesting to do it together, I guess.”

They set aside Saturday morning for the task of searching old newspapers at the library. It was a wearying task, especially since they did not have a definite date to search upon. The two sat next to each other and steadily worked for quite some time without result.

“I think I’ve found something, but it’s not about the reinvestigation,” Honey whispered. “Look at this!”

Trixie leaned over and read the article to which her friend referred. It detailed a conviction on drug charges of a security contractor and former police officer of exactly the same name of Dinah’s ex-husband, Logan Veivers. The man had received a prison term for his efforts and had been stripped of various licences. The paper was dated some fifteen years previous.

“So, that’s where he disappeared,” Trixie mused. “Keep looking – maybe there’ll be something more on him, or on the case.”

Not long afterwards, they came across an article on deaths in custody, which mentioned the same man’s suicide while serving his time. A few of the scant details given were reminiscent of the case that the girls were investigating. The man had died from blood loss from a wound to the neck. At first, it had been thought to be a murder, as there was no sign of a weapon, but the dead man appeared to have wedged it into a gap behind the sink in the moments before he lost consciousness.

Trixie gazed at her best friend, eyes opened wide. “What if… this man’s suicide is some kind of clue to the original crime, if it was one? Did he deliberately do this to himself as an admission of guilt, do you think? Or, did he get the idea from the other man’s death?”

“And why did he hide the weapon?” Honey added. “It seems like a strange thing to do if it’s not meant to mean something.”

“If he hid the original weapon in order to incriminate Dinah, but then she made a run for it and was never charged with the crime, then maybe he felt some sort of remorse for what he’d done,” Trixie speculated. “Or, of course, maybe he followed her and killed her in the same way as her boyfriend and this is just some sick kind of shadow of that crime.”

“Well, whatever the reason,” Honey answered, “I don’t think we’re going to find it by just guessing. I suppose we’d better keep searching.”

Trixie nodded and returned to her task. They both worked in silence for some time before the next break-through came.

“I think I’ve found something on the re-investigation,” Honey announced in a voice barely above a whisper. “Look at this!”

Trixie leaned over and started reading the newspaper article. It began with an overview of the case, giving almost the same details that they had garnered from the earlier reports. Next, it mentioned the difficulties associated with missing or dead witnesses, noting the recent decease of one of the first officers on the scene. The article went on to report on the further leads that the investigators were following and included a quote from one of them.

“We have reason to believe,” the office had said, “that some interference happened to the scene of the decease between the time of death and the arrival of investigating officers. We are anxious to speak to anyone who may have information on this matter. In particular, we would like to speak to Dinah Lou Veivers and would like to stress that she is not considered a suspect.”

“I like the way he phrased that first part,” Trixie murmured. “It sounds, on the surface, that he means the interference happened before any of the police arrived, but it could also mean before particular officers arrived. Do you think that means he already suspected Logan Veivers?”

Honey shrugged. “Could be. Look what it says a little lower.”

“About wanting information on the victim? Yes, that’s a little strange, too. I wonder what they found out?”

“They might not have found anything,” Honey answered. “It sounds a little like they’re hinting at what Jack Higgins told us, about Reynolds being involved in crime. If your dead relative or friend was a small-time criminal, would you tell the police all about it?”

Trixie shook her head. “I guess not. It makes me wonder a bit about Dinah, though. Did she know that about him? Did she care? I’d like to know more about her – she’s one of the most mysterious people in this case.”

“I wonder if we can find out if she’s still listed as missing?” Honey thought aloud. “Maybe I could check up on that.”

“That’s a good idea,” Trixie answered. “I’ll keep working on Veivers and see if I can dig anything else up on him.”

Her friend nodded. “Okay. We’ll meet up again in a couple of days and compare notes?”

Trixie smiled. “Jim and Dan are going to start thinking we’re deserting them at this rate, but yes. I’ve got some time free on Friday morning. Your place or mine?”

“Yours,” Honey answered. “I could definitely use the peace and quiet.”

That night, Honey noted a restlessness in Dan’s demeanour which she could not, at first, quite place. She watched him, without seeming to do so, as they went about their business, but did not catch any clues. After dinner, however, matters began to clear when Dan suggested that they go out for a while.

“Where?” she asked, giving him a quizzical look. “What for?”

Dan shrugged. “I just wanted to get out for a while. Let’s go do something fun.”

Honey continued to gaze at him in confusion. “Such as?”

He seemed to think for a few moments, but Honey knew that he was pretending. “How about the Empire State Building?” he suggested, as if he’d just thought of it. “Remember the time we went there with the Bob-Whites?”

“And got chased by the diamond-thieves? Yes, I remember.” She frowned. “Why do I have a bad feeling about this?”

He looked disappointed. “I don’t know, Honey. Why do you?”

“Maybe because I think you’re up to something. You’re not going to propose marriage again, are you? The answer hasn’t changed since you last asked, which you’d know if you’d been paying attention to anything I’ve said in the last couple of months.”

Dan swore, thumping a fist against his thigh. “Why do you have to ruin every romantic moment I ever plan for us?” he demanded. “And why do you have to be so stubborn about this? Okay, yes, I was thinking of asking you again. And, yes, I have been listening, but I was starting to think that maybe you were protesting too much and that maybe, this time, I had a chance. Obviously, I was wrong.”

“Definitely, you were wrong,” she answered. “I don’t think you’ve ever been more wrong than that.”

“Fine. I’m going out. Alone.” He stalked into the bedroom for only a few moments, then returned. “Don’t wait up.”

“I won’t,” she promised, but not until after he had slammed the door.

Her frustration bubbling over, Honey let out a growl and stomped off to the bedroom. Sometimes, she wondered what she and Dan were doing together. She grabbed her most unattractive night attire and started stripping off for a shower. She left a trail behind her, not caring that the tiny apartment was looking messier by the moment. The water was too hot when she stepped underneath it, stinging against her skin, but she did not adjust it.

Her thoughts were still roiling as she dried herself afterwards, dressed and brushed her teeth. She switched off the light and climbed into bed, staring up with unseeing eyes. As her anger subsided, her earlier doubts started to fade. She knew that they were good for each other and that Dan was being very patient with her insecurities. With a guilty sigh, she drifted off to sleep.

Continue to part three.