“How about somebody wanting to beat up on him?”
“Plenty of those. It’s been tried a couple of times, but he took a couple of years of karate lessons at the Y and it didn’t work out too great for those who tried it.”
“And if somebody tried to stomp him a little after knocking him down, and he was rolling out of the way, it could have got him right here in the Adam’s apple.”
“I guess it could happen that way.”
“So whoever set him up had to know Feeney was working until six and lived close by to the landfill.” Fairchild sighed and stood up, folding his notebook. “Thanks for your time and cooperation, folks. Come on along, Tommy. We got more calls to make.”
“Yes sir!”
“Night, Miz Beth. Think of anything else, Wade, you call me.”
After the Deputy Chief drove out, the phone rang. It was Brud Barnes calling from the city room of the Courier Journal. “Hey, Wade? You hear about Bern?”
“Chet Fairchild just paid us a call.”
“It was on the ten o’clock news a little while ago. Hell of a thing. No leads yet, they said. I was wondering if ”
“Look, we’re pretty shook by this thing, Brud. I can’t say anything meaningful about it. It’s a terrible tragedy.”
“I was just wondering if it could have anything to do with the Bernard Island deal.”
“What? How the hell could it have?”
“How do I know? Feeney works for Loomis.”
“And Bern was in Tuck’s pocket all the way.”
“Can we talk?”
“Later. Maybe tomorrow.”
Beth sat on a footstool in the living room, elbows on her knees, her hands combed back into her hair. She looked up at him, her expression rueful. “Why am I feeling guilty?”
“We’ve both been wishing him bad luck for a couple of years, honey. Drop dead. Get out of the way. Stop being so tricky. Stop making trouble. Do your job and shut the hell up.”
“Then Nita is feeling guiltier than either of us. I’ll have to go see her tomorrow.”
The phone rang again. This time it was Helen Yoder. “Wade? Helen. Did you hear about it?”
“Yes. I heard but I don’t believe it yet.”
“Neither do I. I’ll go into the office tomorrow and he’ll be there like he always is. Jeanie heard it on the news and phoned all of us. She got hold of everybody except Dawn and you. Your line was busy. She’ll probably try you again.”
“How about you call her and tell her we’ve been told, okay?”
“Sure. What do you make of it?”
“So far it doesn’t make any sense.”
“He called me in and asked me if I’d please stay with him when you two split up. He didn’t want an answer right away. Good thing. He wouldn’t have liked my answer. Someday I’ll tell you why.”
He told her he’d see her in the office tomorrow. After he hung up he felt restless. The kids came home; they had heard about Bern. They had a lot of questions he couldn’t answer. They were awed that someone they knew had been killed. An adult person. They knew kids who had died car smashes, motorcycle accidents, drownings, overdoses, suicides but respectable adults seemed immune to that sort of random violence. He wasn’t exactly Uncle Bern, but he was a familiar figure to them. Why would anyone kill a real estate person?
Beth was getting ready for bed. He dressed and went in and told her he was going down to the office.
“Why!”
“I wondered if there might be something on or in Bern’s desk or in his office that I could tell Chet about.”
“But I don’t want you going down there at night, not this night. I want you here.”
“Honey, it will take just a little while. There’s no open season on the owners of Rowley/Gibbs. And I won’t be able to sleep unless I take a look. Want to come along?”
She bit her lip, thought about it, shook her head. “But you won’t be long?”
“Forty-five minutes. Back before midnight.”
The overhead fluorescents were on in the main room of the offices, as they should have been. When he unlocked the front door and went in, the delay began whining at him, ceasing when he punched out the five-digit combination on the little panel off to the side. He walked through to Bern’s big office and stopped ten feet from the desk and took a deep breath. The man’s presence was tangible, underlined by the pictures of wife and daughter, the framed civic awards, the stationary Exercycle over in the corner, the hole-in-one golf ball on the desk, mounted on a little mahogany pedestal with brass plaque proclaiming the course, the hole, the date.