Mayhem, Mystery and Murder Read online

  Waliewiski rolled her eyes.

  From the viewpoint of the office workers they’d questioned, PacCentral was a non-entity. Someone vaguely remembered that the office name had gone up about six months previously, no one knew anything about what went on behind that closed door, no one had ever seen anyone going in or out.

  To Nolan’s dismay, the planned lunch had to be put off. On the way back to the station, the radio blared. A domestic dispute—a shooting—at least one person wounded. By the time they reached the scene, the wife was DOA. The grim task of taking down the details, of charging the husband and reading him his rights, of supervising the crime scene investigation, and then the long task of filling in the needed reports took the rest of the day. Nolan griped about the sandwich and coffee she had to settle for. Waliewiski even skipped the coffee. Nolan rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

  An unidentified body found floating in the Colusa kept the pair busy for the better part of a week, and only the captain’s prompting brought them back to the problem of the double homicide. This time, Nolan called ahead to make sure Elias was at work. He readily agreed to seeing them.

  On the way, they both speculated about the coming interview.

  “You know, Gina, if there was a third party in that office then…”

  “I know. Elias. But he would have had to move fast. Mrs. Schneider said she called in almost immediately after the shots, and his call followed hers almost immediately. The police car was just a block away and got there maybe two minutes after his call, and he was on the sidewalk waiting for them.”

  “That makes it even more difficult for that hypothetical third party to be anyone else but him. He would have seen him come out of the building.”

  “Unless the person went upstairs instead of coming out the front.”

  “I suppose. It still doesn’t seem likely it could be anyone but Elias—if there was a third person.”

  “INTERNETINSURANCE INC.” The large black letters on a brand new door was the first thing that greeted them as they entered the Kersage’s lobby.

  “It sure didn’t take the landlord long to find a new tenant,” Nolan said.

  “Let’s go in and ask them what happened to PacCentral.”

  “Elias first. Your idea that he could have been a third party is a priority item.”

  The first moments of their interview convinced both of them it couldn’t have been Elias. He didn’t rise from his chair behind the reception desk. The two sticks of aluminum lying against it were mute testimony to his difficulty in moving around. As he explained, a car accident had smashed both legs several weeks before. When the shooting occurred, he’d been wheelchair bound. Under her breath, Waliewiski cursed the sloppy police report which hadn’t mentioned that a prime witness was in a wheelchair.

  Elias, however, seemed to be a thoroughly reliable observer. “Just before the elevator door opened on the first floor, I heard a loud bang—really loud. I thought immediately of gunfire, or maybe an explosion of some kind—because of all of this talk about terrorists, I suppose. I wasn’t sure at the time what direction it came from. Right after the door opened, there was another bang. This one I recognized as a gunshot. No question about it or where it was coming from. Not anywhere near as loud as the first one, but for sure a gunshot. I wheeled out of the building as fast as I could, then called 911.”

  “Did anyone come out of the office after the shots?”

  “Not while I was in the lobby. They might have after I got to the street, but they didn’t come out the front door. I would have seen them for sure.”

  “Did you know anyone at PacCentral?”

  “Nope. Never saw anyone go in or out. But, then, I’ve never spent much time in the lobby.”

  Elias had obviously been pleased to help—partly, Waliewiski was sure, since it was a break from the typical office routine of a legal secretary. His last words were that therapy was coming along well and that, while he wouldn’t be entering any marathons in the near future, he should be able to do without his walking sticks in a matter of weeks.

  The detectives wished him well.

  Going down in the elevator, Nolan commented. “There’s one thing we know for sure, anyway.”

  “Scheider was shot first.”

  “Right. That’s something to flesh out the report. I’m sure the captain will be pleased.”

  The door opened and Waliewiski asked, “InternetInsurance Inc. next?”

  “Why not? More grist for the report.”

  Today, there was no locked door. But, expecting one, Nolan knocked. That produced a loud, “Come on in.”

  The scene that greeted them was a far cry from Marianne Scheider’s description of PacCentral’s operation. The room was packed with one enormous but empty desk, several file cabinets, and computers in full operation. Five people, with earpieces and attached mikes were busy answering phones and typing in messages, while printers ground out paper. The person nearest the door—a male, somewhere in his twenties—smiled and waved them in. “Hi. What can InternetInsurance do for you?”

  Nolan showed her badge, which the man barely glanced at. “Betcha it has to do with that double homicide. Grimmo! Let’s go sit and be comfortable.” He waved them over to the desk after a few words to one of his co-workers on the neighboring computer.

  “Name’s Kevin Miles.” He shook hands, slid into the chair behind the desk and said, “Fire away. Not much I can tell you. No bullet holes when we moved in.”

  “That was a mighty quick move,” Nolan said.

  “Not quick enough, as far as I was concerned. I’d been dickering to take over this office for months.”

  A puzzled look on Nolan’s face was all the prompting he needed.

  “Yeah. We’ve been operating on a small scale for about a year now. I was trying to buy into PacCentral. They were in on the ground floor in this business. Great email list.”

  “You own this business?” Nolan’s skepticism was apparent.

  Miles grinned. “Sure do. I started tinkering with computers and on-line trading and buying and what not when I was thirteen. Actually even earlier than that, but then it was mostly games.”

  “So you moved in last week?”

  A nod. “Sure. I bought out PacCentral just days after the killings. Like I said, I’d been dickering with the old coots who owned the business for months.”

  Old coots, Nolan thought, and caught the smile on Waliewiski’s face out of the corner of her eye. Both Scheider and Rossellini had been in their thirties, a few years younger than her. “When did they sell the business to you?”

  “They didn’t. Stubborn codgers. They were sitting on a gold mine, and they were just skimming off a few nuggets. Can you believe it? They didn’t even accept phone calls. What kind of a personalized service is that?” The several phone conversations going on in the background were evidence that InternetInsurance was not neglecting that aspect of the business.

  It was Waliewiski who picked up on the information, a possible source of disagreement between the two partners. “Which one of them didn’t want to sell?”

  “Neither of them. That was the problem. Scheider could have, since he owned fifty percent of the corporation and his wife owned one percent. Rossellini owned the other forty-nine percent. That’s not unusual in family businesses,” Miles added when he saw the puzzled look on Waliewiski’s face. “Nice-looking old gal, by the way.” Waliewiski purposely didn’t look at Nolan following that remark.

  “Sure. That’s the way it works. The major partner really runs the business, even though he owns only half the shares, because his wife votes with him. Even if she didn’t, it would just mean a tie. It’s supposed to work for tax purposes, too. Not being married, I’ve never bothered to figure that out.”

  “So how did you get the business if they didn’t want to sell?” Nolan asked.

  “I bought it from Mrs. Scheider. She’s a tough old broad. So I ended up paying more than I really wanted to for her share, which was fif
ty-one percent after her husband died. There are still some papers to sign, of course, but my lawyer’s taking care of that. Since I had a controlling interest after buying her out, it wasn’t hard to convince Mrs. Rossellini to sell her forty-nine percent. She didn’t know beans about the business and was glad to get the money. I had to float a big loan and I’m in the hole, of course, but there’s still venture capital around. The way business is going,” he waved a hand at his employees typing away on the computers and answering ringing phones, “I won’t have much trouble getting the financing.”

  “Any idea why the partners killed each other?”

  “Nope. They weren’t exactly rolling in coin, but they were keeping afloat. Considering the way they were running the business, I’d guess you might say they were doing alright.”

  A loud rap on the door elicited another loud “Come on in.” The newcomer could barely make it in, burdened as she was by a tall stack of pizza boxes. Applause from the office personnel greeted her arrival.

  “Pull up some chairs and dig in. We always order too much,” Miles said as he supervised the distribution of the pizzas on the desk, which obviously served chiefly as a food counter. Nolan accepted the invitation with alacrity. Waliewiski looked around for something to drink, which was quickly forthcoming from the no-longer copy room, now filled with a refrigerator, coffee machine, microwave and other food paraphernalia. A case of cold Mountain Dew was broken open for the occasion.

  ***

  Back at the station, Nolan and Waliewiski began their collaboration on what they hoped would be a satisfactory report on the Scheider and Rossellini case for the captain and, from there, for the chief. “We’ve spent our allotted time on it,” Waliewiski said. “The captain can’t fault us for not finding out more.”

  “We’ll stick in the final pm and the ballistics report. That should, as the captain says, ‘Flesh it out nicely.’”

  “What was in them?” Waliewiski asked. “I never did get to see them.”

  Nolan reached into her in file. “Neither have I. They’ve been sitting here since yesterday, but I haven’t gotten around to looking at ’em. Let’s see. Ballistics as expected. Scheider was really blasted. Bullet came from Rossellini’s gun. Perfect match. Same with Rossellini. His wound was a lot smaller. To be expected. The bullet came from Scheider’s gun. Pathologist says he lingered for five minutes or so. Aorta was ruptured. Massive internal bleeding. I’ve seen them like that. If medics can get them in time, there’s a possibility of saving them. There sure wasn’t time in this case.”

  “You know,” Waliewiski said, “we’re missing something.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “If this were the usual homicide, who would we be suspecting first?”

  “The spouse, naturally. But we’ve already talked to Mrs. Scheider. I suppose we could go back and have her fill in the small blanks that are left, like how Rossellini was acting prior to the shooting. Think it’s really worth going back?”

  “What about Mrs. Rossellini?”

  “You’ve got a point. That could round out the investigation. At least enough to keep the chief happy. Her address is somewhere in the file. I remember she works someplace downtown.” Nolan explored the file. “Here it is. We lucked out. Home address and work address. Even phone numbers.” She reached for the phone.

  “No sweat,” Nolan said following the call. “She works in a dress shop on Fourth. Says she’s ready for an afternoon break and will meet us at the coffee shop corner of Fourth and Stevens.”

  “Coffee shop? You don’t mean that Danish pastry shop, do you?”

  “Yeah, that must be the one.”

  “The one with the best cheesecake in the state? Was this her idea to meet there, or yours?

  “What difference does it make whose idea it was?” Nolan asked as she shrugged on her jacket.

  ***

  Mrs. Roselle Rossellini was a petite, very slender woman—attractive, though almost anorexic in appearance. The pastry offerings of the Dansk Coffee Shop clearly held little appeal for her as she sipped at her espresso. Waliewiski settled for a small square, multi-layered confection to go with her coffee, while Nolan ordered a double mocha latte to accompany the macadamia-nut cheesecake she’d ordered.

  “I really have no idea why Rossie and Don would do such a thing. They always seemed to get along so well. Not like the two women who own the dress shop where I work. Now, if those two killed each other, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

  Engrossed as she was in her food, Nolan still managed to note that Mrs. Rossellini showed little of the disastrous effects the killings had had on Mrs. Scheider. Waliewiski’s explanation later was that there was a week-and-a-half for Mrs. Rossellini to recover.

  “Do you have any idea why Mr. Rossellini took a gun to work that day?” Waliewiski asked.

  “No. None. I didn’t even know he owned a gun. In fact, he didn’t like guns. Don was the one all caught up with guns. He used to go shooting at the club at the mall. Joe’s Gun Club, I think it’s called. We were at the Scheiders one time—we didn’t socialize much, by the way—when Don invited us to join him for target practice. Rossie said a most definite no.” She smiled, lifted her cup with a fragile-looking hand and added “I guess I don’t have to tell you I wasn’t interested.”

  ***

  “Think it’s worth it?” Waliewiski asked.

  Nolan grinned. “Checking out the shooting gallery will make our final report a bang-up job.”

  Waliewiski groaned.

  “Just think what it would mean if we found out Rossellini did in fact join Scheider for target practice,” Nolan said. “I can see them now, shooting at targets and making believe it’s their partner they’re shooting at.”

  “Oh, well. Beats our sitting around the office shuffling paper, and even the chief should be satisfied when he sees how thick our report has gotten to be.”

  ***

  Afternoons were obviously a quiet time at Joe’s Gun Club, since there were no sounds indicating the presence of any customers. Joe, himself, was at the front counter, with disassembled guns, rags and cans of lubricant—the odor of gun oil permeating the atmosphere.

  “Daily chore,” he said with a grin, after the officers had identified themselves.

  “What can you tell us about Rossellini and Scheider, the two businessmen who shot each other last week?” Nolan asked, while Waliewiski was inspecting the handguns and rifles arrayed in racks on the wall.

  Joe shook his head. “Stuff like that gives a place like this a bad name. But, what the hell, if it hadn’t been guns they’d have used machetes.”

  Nolan waited for an answer to her question. It finally came. “I knew Scheider. Didn’t know his partner at all. So far as I can tell, he was never in here.”

  “What was Scheider like?”

  “I don’t know. Quiet guy, I guess. He really didn’t come in very often.”

  A few more questions produced little else of note, and Joe was almost apologetic for not having been able to give them any significant information.

  It was as they turned to leave, that the atmosphere changed. “Too bad you aren’t interested in Mrs. Scheider.”

  Both turned. Waliewiski asked, “Why’s that?”

  “She’s one of our regulars. Fantastic woman, that one. Only person I’ve ever seen who could shoot just as accurately both right handed and left handed. And at the same time, mind you. Dead shot. We call her Annie Oakley.”

  ***

  “This is absolutely crazy,” Waliewiski said.

  “I agree. But is it possible?”

  “I guess. It is possible, and it would fill in a lot of blank spaces we didn’t even recognize were there. We were halfway planning to talk to her again, anyway. Let’s do it.”

  Nolan’s expression as she hung up told it all. “Her phone’s disconnected. Any bets she’s taken off?

  “No bets. Let’s go talk to the Captain.”

  ***

  “OK. Start from the
beginning. What’s the scenario you two see?” The captain asked after they’d given him a quick sketch of their suspicions.

  Nolan led off. “All pretty diabolical, Captain. We’re guessing that she planned it all very carefully and well ahead of time. She knew when her husband was due to arrive. Probably discussed it with him before they left for work. He did in fact go to a computer store to buy some supplies. As soon as he walked into the office, she pulled out both guns, shot Rossellini with the 22, then turned and killed Scheider with the 9mm. But that’s when things started to go wrong, and you have to give her credit for quick thinking.

  Waliewiski picked up the thread. “The bullet from the 22 glanced off a rib, nicked the aorta, and left Rossellini dying but not dead. She couldn’t very well shoot him again, and she couldn’t call 911 until she was sure he was dead. On the other hand, there was the possibility someone could have heard the shots and might themselves call 911—which is exactly what happened. So she called in a shooting and acted terrified, making it look like a hostage situation without her actually calling it that. The whole copy room business was faked. She was in the office the whole time, up to when the swat team showed up, then she went into the copy room, closed the door behind her and put on that marvelous act.”

  Nolan broke in. “Believe me, this is one sharp cookie. The reason she reported only one shot was to give the impression that the two men pulled the triggers at the same moment. Given we figured she was terrified, it made sense to think she just didn’t realize there were two shots. I’ll be willing to bet she took every precaution. Plastic gloves to avoid powder traces, then stuffing the guns in the victim’s hands to leave some on theirs, probably even running her cellphone near dry to fit what she reported. As it turns out, no one even suspected it was anything else besides what it appeared to be. We didn’t check for residues. We didn’t even try her phone.”

  “How can we prove she did it?”

  “We can’t,” Nolan said, “Not yet, anyway. The fact that she fired the heavy-duty gun first really screwed up the scenario. It killed her husband instantly, so he couldn’t then have shot his partner.” The sergeant shook her head. “And we didn’t figure that out.