I couldn’t see Toper wandering around on a chilly October morning when he had the money to buy a bottle and hole up somewhere in comfort.
I sat and waited while the sun rose higher and the day turned balmy. If I had the manpower, I could send someone out to track down Toper’s movements for the past few days, which wouldn’t be difficult. He had a way of floating in and out of view like a disembodied spirit, haunting the town and its environs. Almost everyone knew him and accepted him as part of the local scene.
The phone rang and the voice of Zeller s secretary was more interesting than it had been previously.
“I’ve gone as far as I can, Sheriff,” she said. “From what they tell me, no one named Zoe Milford has used our credit card in more than a week. The last record we have for her is about ten days ago for only five gallons. The only other charge slips we can track down have been signed by a Kirk Milford and all are from an Orbis service station right in your town. Of course, if the purchase was within the past two or three days it may not have come through yet. I asked our people to let me know if any did.”
“The next time I come to town you are entitled to one dinner complete with flowers, candlelight, and wine,” I said.
She laughed. “I’ll look forward to it.”
After I hung up, I tilted my chair back, folded my arms, and thought. I reached for the phone and dialed again. It took three calls before I found the bank where Milford kept his accounts and only a few minutes to determine Zoe Milford hadn’t closed her account, nor had any checks against it been processed in the past week. When I hung up the thought was fixed in my mind that a person cannot exist in today’s society without spending money, and unless Zoe Milford had enough with her to last until she had an income of her own there would be no reason why she hadn’t used her oil-company credit card or cashed at least one check.
Julio came in, Toper Kelly’s clothing in a plastic bag.
“Julio,” I said, “I suppose you realize we’re both stupid.”
He grinned. “I never had any doubt about myself, but I thought you were smart enough for both of us. What’s wrong?”
“There were two cars smashed last night. We’ve eliminated only one.”
His eyes widened briefly. “Milford? I thought there was no question about his accident.”
“Milford’s station wagon has rectangular headlights. So did the car that hit Toper Kelly. What do you think the odds are that three cars smashed headlights in one night in Fox River?”
“You think that Milford hit Toper, realized he had to account for that broken headlight, ran out to the curve, and wiped out the front of the car on the guard posts to conceal the damage?”
“It’s worth checking. Go over to the body shop. You know what to look for. If you find nothing, then the odds are wrong and we look for a third car.”
The radio crackled twenty minutes later. “It will take the State Police lab to confirm it,” said Julio, “but if there isn’t blood on that smashed fender along with white paint from the guard posts I’ll turn in my badge.”
“You wanted to handle it,” I said quietly. “Go get Milford.”
Milford sat alongside my desk, his face white, his tongue wetting his lips occasionally, and I sat and watched him and said nothing.
He spread his hands and said, “It was an accident, Gates, and I panicked. I was thinking of telling you about it when you came in this morning but I lost my nerve. I’m sorry.”
I just sat and looked at him.
His voice rose. “I told you it was an accident. You want to crucify me for accidentally killing a drunk who stumbled in front of my car?”
Julio’s chair creaked as he shifted. The sun had wanned the office and was gleaming on the polished tile floor. A fly, who should have been long dead, buzzed and bumped against one of the window panes.
Milford rose to his feet abruptly. “Look, Gates...”
“Sit down,” I said softly. I pushed my phone toward him. “You’d better call your attorney.”
He reached for the receiver. “I’ll do that. I’ll be out of here in an hour.”
“I think not,” I said. “Tell him the charge is murder.”
He froze, his eyes fixed on me. “You’ve lost your mind.”
“Have you ever put together a jigsaw puzzle, Milford? You start with a couple of pieces you’re sure of and you fit them together, like the broken glass and the blood on your car that say you killed Toper. But you don’t have a complete picture yet, so you begin trying other pieces, and after a time the picture starts to take shape because there’s only one way it can go together.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I told you I ran the man down. That’s all there is to it.”
“I think not,” I said again. “Toper was killed at three in the morning when he had a hundred dollars in his pocket. That wasn’t like Toper. He didn’t wander around when he drank so that people could stare at him. He had a sense of dignity that prevented that. He would get his bottle, hide away somewhere, finish it off, and fall asleep. I think he went out to get that money and was sober when he died. Blenheim can easily confirm that with a blood test.
“The point is that Toper was doing something he wouldn’t ordinarily do and that piece didn’t fit. Then it developed that you ran him down, which could happen to anybody, but you didn’t stop and report it, and that piece didn’t fit either. You tried to conceal it. Why? You had little to worry about. You’re a respected member of the community and Toper was the town drunk. All you had to face was the loss of your driver’s license and an involuntary manslaughter sentence that probably would have been suspended.”
“I told you I panicked.”
“Panic is running away. Panic is not risking injury by smashing a guard rail deliberately.”
“That still isn’t murder.”
“Not yet. We’re still going through the pieces. Toper liked to crawl into cars to sleep it off. He would have loved that limousine of yours. He had worked for you and he knew where it was parked every night.”
“Are you implying I killed him for sleeping in my limousine?”
“Just another piece,” I said. “Now try this one. Suppose Toper was sleeping in that limousine that night your wife disappeared. He heard something, got up to investigate, and saw you carry your wife’s body into the funeral home. She was up when you arrived home, you had an argument, and you killed her. After placing her body in the mortuary, you went back, put her clothes in her car, and drove it away to make it appear as though she had left town.
“Because he was a little fuzzy, it probably took Toper a few days to put it all together and, if it hadn’t been October, he might have come to me and told me about it. But winter was coming and he hated the restriction of that ninety days in jail, so he went to you and told you he would keep quiet if you gave him enough to see him through until spring.
“But you couldn’t afford to have him around. You met him, gave him a hundred dollars, then ran him down. That was enough. If you were seen, you would claim it was just an accident, but you didn’t want to report it unless you had to because you wanted no connection with Toper at all, which was a mistake. We probably would have taken your word about what happened just as we took it about your wife’s leaving because your character and the facts as we knew them justified believing you.”
His voice was careful. “You still have no reason not to believe me.”
“A couple of phone calls give me a good reason,” I said. “I need only two more pieces to complete the picture and they won’t be hard to find because I know what I’m looking for. For instance, there aren’t too many places you could have disposed of the car. The river is one. It’s too cold now to be used very much and it will start to freeze over sometime in December, so there will be no swimming or diving until summer. I’m sure I can find the car, Milford. And then there’s your wife’s body. All I need for that is a court order.”