I wondered again about that legal team. I was sure they hadn’t come cheap. I decided not to push my luck by asking Pete about them yet. “Can you tell me what the disagreement was about?”
He was silent for a moment, helped himself to another scoop of vanilla. “I can tell you this much. It was a big deal to Cody McGinnis. I think he’s still pissed about it.”
“Uh-oh. That makes him look more guilty, right?”
“Sure. Got any chocolate syrup?”
“Yeah. In the fridge. Top row inside the door. Was it something that could get a person killed?”
“Offhand, it didn’t seem like it to me. But people get killed for dumb reasons every day.” He poured chocolate onto his ice cream and extended the bottle to me. “Want some?”
I pushed my bowl forward. “Maybe a smidge.” I waited for him to continue with casual observations, hoping for something negative about the departed beloved professor—something I could relay to the twins. Didn’t happen. He savored his ice cream silently for a few clicks of Kit-Cat’s tail, then changed the subject.
“The chief gave me a couple of tickets to the Sox–Rays game for next Wednesday night. Want to go?”
He knew I’d want to go! I lived in Florida long enough to become a Tampa Bay Rays fan, while he remains ever loyal to the Red Sox. “Absolutely,” I said, my mind momentarily derailed from the objective. “I’ll fix it up with Mr. Doan to be sure I can have Wednesday night off.” Bruce Doan is the WICH-TV station manager, and also a Sox fan who believes time off for a home game is more important than a dentist’s appointment any day.
“Good. You’re not going to wear your Rays hat, are you?”
“Of course I am. But listen. Does Cody McGinnis have enough money to pay that team of lawyers I saw going into the courthouse?”
“Maybe. Seems some of his students started a GoFundMe page and have raised quite a bundle of money for his defense.”
I was surprised. “I didn’t know that. He must have a lot of friends.”
“He’ll need ’em. He’s not exactly Dick Crowninshield.”
Richard “Dick” Crowninshield, the son of one of Salem’s wealthiest, socially prominent families, was the alleged perpetrator of the 1830 murder of Captain White.
“True,” I agreed. “But your prosecutor isn’t exactly Daniel Webster either!”
Chapter 4
Pete was up in the morning, dressed, shaved, and ready for the day before I woke up—as usual. My alarm clock jingled at seven, and I awoke to the smell of coffee brewing and country music playing on the radio. He poked his head into the bedroom. “Want to go out to breakfast? I can’t find much of anything in the refrigerator.” That was usual too.
“Good idea,” I said. “I’ll be ready in a jiff.” I padded out to the kitchen, reached up for a good morning peck on the cheek, picked up my waiting cup of coffee, and looked around for the cat. “Did O’Ryan go downstairs already?”
“Yep. Sniffed at his empty red bowl and headed for greener pastures at your aunt’s place.”
“That’s what I usually do too,” I admitted. “But a restaurant breakfast with you sounds even better.” I showered, dressed, did minimal makeup in a hurry, and by eight o’clock Pete pulled the Crown Vic into the parking lot behind our favorite breakfast place. It doesn’t have a name. It’s in an ordinary-looking two-story house on a side street with no sign except a vertical neon OPEN sign in the window. We’re regulars, like most of the customers, so the waitress, calling us by our first names, led us to our favorite booth at the back of the long room.
By the time our breakfasts—ham and eggs for Pete, veggie omelet for me—arrived, I’d already restarted the conversation about murder. “Do you think Roger and Ray will actually be able to help their nephew?” I asked. “I hope the guy is as innocent as they believe he is.”
“Not going to give up, are you, Nancy?” Pete said, shaking his head with a grin. “Okay. Yes, they probably can. They’re good cops. Both of them. They have the old-school methods down pat. They’ll chase tips down every alley. They’ll dig up every scrap of evidence. They’ll ask questions lawyers never thought of. Yes. Cody McGinnis is lucky to have them on his side. Now can I enjoy my breakfast without feeling like I’m a character in ‘Nancy Drew and the Case of the Murdered Professor’?”
I gave up. For the moment. “How ’bout them Rays?” I said.
Pete dropped me off in the driveway behind the house on Winter Street. We managed as good a kiss as is possible while leaning across the radio- and radar-crowded console between us and agreed to call each other. O’Ryan waited for me on the back steps and followed me into the hall. I knocked on Aunt Ibby’s kitchen door. “Come on in,” she called. “It’s open.”
“I have a few minutes before I have to leave for work.” I said. “But I want to catch you up on what I’ve learned so far—even though it’s not very much.”
She looked up from her morning paper. “All ears.”
“Pete says that whatever the disagreement was between Cody McGinnis and Professor Bond, Cody is still angry about it.”
“Does Pete know what it is?”
“Cody told the police about it first thing,” I said, “and no, he didn’t tell me.”
“Too bad. But the twins will have that information anyway.”
“Uh-huh. Another thing. Pete says that Cody’s students at the Tabby have raised quite a lot of money for his defense.”
“No kidding. He must be a good teacher.”
“I checked the course curriculum, which looked wonderful to me. Complete with field trips.” I’m a great believer in field trips and sometimes took my own Tabby classes on several memorable ones—not always in a good way. “He even took them to the scene of the original crime.”
“Captain White’s bedroom?”
“Yes.” I sighed. “If the Bond murder closely duplicated the White murder, well, there was hardly anybody else in Salem so familiar with the details.”
“Except maybe anybody who’d paid close attention to McGinnis’s class,” she reasoned, “or read one of the dozen or so books that have been written about it.”
“Doesn’t make sense that he’d commit a crime that pointed so directly to himself, does it?”
“It doesn’t to me,” she said. “But then, that’s probably what Dick Crowninshield thought too.”
“Crowninshield had accomplices. The papers—especially the tabloids—have been speculating that there may have been others involved this time too.”
“I’ve read that,” she said. “One with a club or a lead pipe of some kind and the other with a knife.”
I checked my watch. “Have to go,” I said. “I’m afraid we don’t have a lot of information for the twins.”
“We haven’t heard from Louisa and Betsy yet, remember. And Rupert knew both Bond and McGinnis.” She wore a look of confidence as she picked up her newspaper. “You’ll see. Leave it to us. We’ll figure it all out.”
I patted the cat, wished my aunt a good day, then backed my blue Corvette out of the garage and headed for Derby Street. I decided to take my aunt’s advice and leave murder solving to the girlfriends and Mr. P.—at least for now.
WICH-TV is housed in one of the lovely old brick Federal buildings that fortunately escaped