Setting the Stage for Murder by Robert W. Gregg

Author:Robert W. Gregg [Gregg, Robert W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7414-6944-1
Publisher: Infinity Publishing
Published: 2008-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

Carol’s attempt to learn more about Janet Myers’ whereabouts the day of Harley Gerlach’s murder had been a disappointing failure. Moreover, it had taken several hours of her time on Sunday afternoon, making it necessary to defer the conversation she had hoped to have with Mercedes Redman until another day. Most of the neighbors were at home, but they had nothing to add to Janet’s own account of what she had done and when the previous Tuesday. She had said nothing to any of the neighbors about her plans, and no one had seen her either drive away or return home. The Myers house itself had been empty, and once again no one in the neighborhood knew where either Janet or her husband was. Somebody, she thought, will surely tell them that I was asking for them. She wondered what they would make of that news. It would depend, of course, on whether Janet had visited the Brae Loch campus the afternoon Gerlach had been killed. And on whether she had told her husband the truth about what she had been doing that day.

By Monday morning Carol had more or less gotten over her frustration with what had largely been a wasted Sunday. She had even set aside the Gerlach case for the moment to catch up on other business in her in-basket. It was while she was listening to Officer Grieves trying to justify how he had handled an angry motorist over the weekend that her secretary announced a visitor who wished to talk to her about the murder at Brae Loch.

The young man who came into her office gave his name as Christopher Ellis, a student at the college. He acted nervous and it took a few minutes before he summoned the courage to tell the sheriff what had prompted his visit to her office.

“I’m not sure that what I’m going to tell you is something you don’t already know,” Ellis said, “but I figured I ought to say something. You know, just in case.”

“We always welcome help from our citizens,” Carol said. She wondered how this young man, who claimed to be a business major at the college and an assistant in the provost’s office, could be in a position to provide useful information regarding Gerlach’s murder, but she was willing to listen.

“It’s like this,” he began. “Last Tuesday—that’s the day the man from the opera was killed—last Tuesday I had to go down to the boathouse, and when I did I saw one of the people from the opera down on the beach. His name is Carpenter. I thought I should say something because the rest of those opera people weren’t around, just this guy. There wasn’t anything going on they needed to be there for, not until that night.”

“Why do you assume this might be important?” Carol asked.

“Well, I couldn’t imagine any of us killing that man. You know, any of the college people. I mean, why would we? It probably had to be one of the opera people, and here was one of them, hanging around near where it happened.

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