Grave Expectations on Dickens' Dune by Anna Celeste Burke

Author:Anna Celeste Burke [Burke, Anna Celeste]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-27T22:00:00+00:00

10 Bah! Humbug!

“Bah!” said Scrooge, “Humbug.” ~ A Christmas Carol

∞

“Nick Martinique spent a few months at The Men’s Colony for his third drug-related offense in two years. Not at the same time as Allen Rogow, but the following year. His stint did overlap with Leonard Cohen, although his police record doesn’t tell us if they palled around together. Nick was a model citizen, completed treatment while he was in the facility, and they released him early.”

“Let me clarify what you’re saying, aloud, so Neely can hear it, okay, Charly? She may have questions.”

“Sure.”

“When Nick was sent to The Men’s Colony, Leonard Cohen was there, and Allen Rogow had been released. Was that before Allen disappeared or after?” I asked Charly.

“After. I’ve been working on a timeline to track where Allen and each of his felonious associates were before and after he vanished. I’ll send you a copy, so you’ll have it to check against whatever story Nick Martinique gives you if I can get it done that fast. That’s assuming he’ll speak to you.”

“A timeline to track who was in prison when would really be helpful, given the dubious company Allen kept.” Neely bobbed her head up and down in enthusiastic support of my comment. “Mark Viceroy, Nick Martinique, and even Wendy Ballard all seem capable of killing him, if Leonard Cohen had it right, and he was murdered.”

“Since we don’t have a time of death for Allen, it’s hard to give anyone an alibi—except Judith, of course, who was out of the area for the entire few days that Allen was in and around Dickens’ Dune.”

“Even though there wasn’t a body on Dickens’ Dune, the call to the police about finding Allen’s dog tags must help narrow down the window of time in which a murder might have occurred,” I suggested.

“True, but I haven’t found anything yet that says the police had much to go on about who might have been in the area with him. Wendy and Nick used each other as an alibi, and Wendy claimed her car wasn’t working and was in the shop. Nick backed her up on that, too.”

“Did the police bother to check to see if her car really was in the shop for service?”

“Yes. On the face of it, she seems to have been telling the truth. It would have raised questions for me, though, that the garage was owned by one of Allen’s Army buddies—Thomas Hilton—now deceased. Judith said she gave the police his name, along with those of Allen’s other Army buddies, but their investigation was focused more on a missing person rather than a murdered one. Who knows if they even dug deep enough to discover that the owner of the garage was one of the men who might have been with Allen when that mishap occurred on Dickens’ Dune?”

“Okay, that is interesting, Charly. I can understand the Army buddies closing ranks if one of them was involved in killing Allen. What I don’t get is how Wendy Ballard figures into the picture.

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