getting the information. Now I’m really interested to get that call log. I wonder what’s on it that he doesn’t want you to know.”
I had no idea at all. Maybe I’d just been out of the loop for too long, but I had no clue why her calls would be that important. First my mother and then my brother and now Siever were all keeping this information from me. Granted I’d been the youngest kid in the family, and probably the most likely to have missed any subtle things going on in the household, but I wondered how I could have missed whatever this was.
We finally hung up. Things seemed to be much better than they had been before the call. My investigation was still just that, and not a surreptitious way of dating Dr. Wilson.
I decided that I was going to do some thinking while I walked the dogs. I put the harness on Number 32. Before I could finish fitting Bruno into his, 32 had escaped down the hall. I picked up the harness and found that at some point she had chewed through the side of the harness which had allowed her to escape from it. I thought back to the life jacket that had been cut. Could this have been used in the same manner?
I realized that I was going about this all wrong. If I wanted to learn who did this, then I was wasting my time in looking at alibis. Either person could have cut the life jacket well in advance of the day they went boating. Then they were relieved of having to find a boat and overpowering Givens. They had to just wait until a time when he jumped in the water and found that his life jacket was cut. He’d know in his last minutes that he’d been set up to die. It was as patient of a way of killing someone as putting a poison pill in a bottle of otherwise healthy medicine.
This was going to boil down to motive. I needed to find out who was the person who gained the most from all of this.
I found another harness and put Number 32 into it, so that she wouldn’t escape during our walk. I thought about the best place to start, and I decided to start with the other people at the rescue seminar. Four people from that session had ended up dead. Two in what appeared to be an accident and a suicide, the other two flat out murders.
I found the paper that Dr. Wilson had given me and I began calling the numbers. The first three were not home, but I got lucky with the four-person on the list. Her name was Blanche Graham and she remembered the evening all too well.
“I should say that I did remember it. I’ve never seen anything like that,” she humphed as she told me the story.
“What exactly were they upset about? Someone told me that they’d heard them discussing something personal in a loud voice, but they didn’t hear the words.” I tried to pretend like I was in the know about everything that had happened there last night. People were more inclined to confirm something that you already knew rather than tell you brand new information. I wasn’t sure why, but it was definitely a trick that worked in my business.
“Several of us did,” she replied. “It wasn’t hard to do. The woman who was there told the man that his wife was having an affair with her husband. It was more soap opera than seminar. Several people in the audience tried to ignore them, but it was hard to do. Those two finally got up and went over to the refreshments. They almost ran into the man who was setting up the refreshments. Given that I think half of the audience just came for the treats, I think there would have been a riot.”
She was a second confirmation that Hale had been at the rescue seminar that night. I wanted as much as I could documented before I turned this over to Green and the TPD.
“What else do you remember? Anything specific would be greatly appreciated.”
She sighed, and there was a silence over the line for a few minutes. “Well, we’d been there a few minutes, and the lady leaned over to the man and asked if he was Mr. So-and-so, sorry I can’t remember the name. He said that he
I had no idea at all. Maybe I’d just been out of the loop for too long, but I had no clue why her calls would be that important. First my mother and then my brother and now Siever were all keeping this information from me. Granted I’d been the youngest kid in the family, and probably the most likely to have missed any subtle things going on in the household, but I wondered how I could have missed whatever this was.
We finally hung up. Things seemed to be much better than they had been before the call. My investigation was still just that, and not a surreptitious way of dating Dr. Wilson.
I decided that I was going to do some thinking while I walked the dogs. I put the harness on Number 32. Before I could finish fitting Bruno into his, 32 had escaped down the hall. I picked up the harness and found that at some point she had chewed through the side of the harness which had allowed her to escape from it. I thought back to the life jacket that had been cut. Could this have been used in the same manner?
I realized that I was going about this all wrong. If I wanted to learn who did this, then I was wasting my time in looking at alibis. Either person could have cut the life jacket well in advance of the day they went boating. Then they were relieved of having to find a boat and overpowering Givens. They had to just wait until a time when he jumped in the water and found that his life jacket was cut. He’d know in his last minutes that he’d been set up to die. It was as patient of a way of killing someone as putting a poison pill in a bottle of otherwise healthy medicine.
This was going to boil down to motive. I needed to find out who was the person who gained the most from all of this.
I found another harness and put Number 32 into it, so that she wouldn’t escape during our walk. I thought about the best place to start, and I decided to start with the other people at the rescue seminar. Four people from that session had ended up dead. Two in what appeared to be an accident and a suicide, the other two flat out murders.
I found the paper that Dr. Wilson had given me and I began calling the numbers. The first three were not home, but I got lucky with the four-person on the list. Her name was Blanche Graham and she remembered the evening all too well.
“I should say that I did remember it. I’ve never seen anything like that,” she humphed as she told me the story.
“What exactly were they upset about? Someone told me that they’d heard them discussing something personal in a loud voice, but they didn’t hear the words.” I tried to pretend like I was in the know about everything that had happened there last night. People were more inclined to confirm something that you already knew rather than tell you brand new information. I wasn’t sure why, but it was definitely a trick that worked in my business.
“Several of us did,” she replied. “It wasn’t hard to do. The woman who was there told the man that his wife was having an affair with her husband. It was more soap opera than seminar. Several people in the audience tried to ignore them, but it was hard to do. Those two finally got up and went over to the refreshments. They almost ran into the man who was setting up the refreshments. Given that I think half of the audience just came for the treats, I think there would have been a riot.”
She was a second confirmation that Hale had been at the rescue seminar that night. I wanted as much as I could documented before I turned this over to Green and the TPD.
“What else do you remember? Anything specific would be greatly appreciated.”
She sighed, and there was a silence over the line for a few minutes. “Well, we’d been there a few minutes, and the lady leaned over to the man and asked if he was Mr. So-and-so, sorry I can’t remember the name. He said that he
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