Murder, Take Two. Carol J. Perry
McGinnis! Oh my goodness, Roger! No. I didn’t know your nephew’s name.” I was shocked by this news. Astonished, actually. “I’m so sorry!”
Roger was right. It was in all the newspapers. Cody McGinnis, an associate professor of history at Essex County University had recently taken a nighttime job teaching Salem History at the Tabby.
Even more recently—only a few days ago—he’d become a prime suspect in a murder investigation. As a matter of fact, my police-detective boyfriend, Pete Mondello, was the lead detective in this particular case. That didn’t mean I had any more information about Cody McGinnis than anyone else did. Pete doesn’t discuss police business with me, especially since I’ve been promoted to field reporter at the Salem-based TV station, WICH-TV. The station had covered the case from the start. I’d even done a standup in front of the courthouse when Cody was first charged with the crime and so far the evidence against the twins’ nephew was pretty much circumstantial—but the circumstances were downright weird.
“Well, of course the kid’s not guilty.” Roger spoke with conviction. “He’s our favorite nephew. A great kid. A good man. That problem he had with the dead guy was no big deal. Nothing you’d want to kill anybody over. Ray and I are coming down to Salem in a couple of days to straighten out this mess before Chief Whaley convinces the prosecutor to file criminal charges. We’ve hired lawyers for Cody. We wanted to give you a heads-up—see if you want to do a little snooping for us before we get there.” He’d dropped the cop voice. “We know how much you love snooping.”
He was right about that. Sometimes Pete calls me and my aunt, Isobel Russell, “the snoop sisters.” My sixty-something, tech-savvy Aunt Ibby and I share the big old family home on Winter Street along with our gentleman cat, O’Ryan. We also share a penchant for getting involved in things that are sometimes none of our business.
I didn’t hesitate. “How can I help, Roger?”
“Thanks, Lee. Could you see what you can dig up about the victim? Samuel Bond? Not the stuff about him being a much-beloved retired professor, pillar of the community and all that crap. Nobody’s as perfect as the press is making him out to be. There must be a good reason somebody offed the old SOB. And it sure wasn’t Cody!”
From what I’d read in the paper, seen on TV—and from the few remarks Pete had made about the case, the old man had no known enemies. Yet he’d been mercilessly beaten to death in his own bed—and so far the evidence pointed directly to the Temple twins’ nephew.
“I’ll do what I can, Roger,” I said, meaning it. I glanced at my kitchen clock, a vintage Kit-Cat, complete with googly eyes and a tail that swings back and forth, marking the seconds. It was six-thirty, still light outside on a pretty New England spring evening. “When will you guys be coming to Salem? Do you have a place to stay?”
“We’ll be there the minute we can get away from here. I guess we’ll be at Phyllis’s. She’s pretty upset about all this.”
“I should think so. I’ll call you right away, Roger, if I find anything interesting. Tell Ray I said hi. See you soon.”
The microwave dinged, Roger and I said our goodbyes, and O’Ryan strolled into the kitchen through his cat door and hopped up onto the windowsill directly behind my chair. The window was partly open, admitting the pleasant early June breeze. “What do you think of that, O’Ryan?” I said, not actually expecting an answer—he is, after all, a cat. But before he came to live with Aunt Ibby and me, he used to belong to a witch named Ariel Constellation, so he’s not exactly an ordinary cat. Some say he was her “familiar.” In Salem, a witch’s familiar is to be respected—and sometimes feared.
I took my dinner out of the microwave, poured a glass of iced tea, picked up the pencil and notepad I use for my grocery list, and returned to my nineteen-seventies Lucite kitchen table. While the macaroni and cheese cooled, I wrote “Cody McGinnis” followed by “County U,” “Samuel Bond,” “Salem History,” and “Tabby.” O’Ryan watched from over my shoulder with apparent interest—whether in my scribbled words or my dinner, it was hard to tell.
“Roger believes his nephew is innocent,” I said aloud. I often talk to the cat. So does my aunt. I guess most people talk to their pets—but it’s usually along the lines of “Good dog,” or “Pretty kitty.” With O’Ryan, it’s quite different. We talk to him as though he understands everything we say. He’s definitely not your everyday housecat. I continued. “Roger wants me to do a little snooping.”
“Mmrrup,” O’Ryan voiced his cat version of a snarky laugh. “Mmrrup mmrrup.”
“Well, excuse me. I’m very good at snooping.”
He turned his back and faced the window, his long tail swinging back and forth in a pretty good imitation of Kit-Cat’s.
“I am too,” I said, and started on my mac and cheese. “Right after dinner I’ll see if anything new has turned up today.”
“Mmrrup” came a muffled snicker from the windowsill. I ignored him, savoring every bite of gooey, cheesy goodness before grabbing my laptop from the kitchen counter and googling “Cody McGinnis.”
There wasn’t much of anything there that I hadn’t already heard at the station, or read in the Salem News or the Boston Globe. Usually a murder this far north of Beantown doesn’t rate much mention in the major papers, but this one was bizarre enough to get some national coverage.
Samuel Bond’s bloodied body had been found by his housekeeper when she’d knocked on his bedroom door as she did every day, carrying a silver tray with his morning coffee, two slices of whole wheat toast, a small pot of marmalade, and the Wall Street Journal. That kind of discovery is pretty upsetting all by itself.
But it gets even worse. The Bond murder darn near duplicates one that happened in Salem well over a century ago, and that’s what’s creeping everybody out.
“I guess I’d better go downstairs and tell Aunt Ibby about Roger’s call,” I spoke aloud in case the tail-swinging cat was still listening, then opened my kitchen door and stepped out onto the maroon-carpeted third-floor landing. Looking over the mahogany railing, I could see all the way down to the first-floor foyer where, within about twenty seconds, O’Ryan skidded to an abrupt halt at the foot of the stairs, then looked up at me with a smarmy cat-smile.
He loves that trick. He races down two flights to Aunt Ibby’s kitchen door, in through her cat door, and out to the front hall before I can get there.
“Smarty pants,” I mumbled when I’d reached the arched entry leading to her living room.
“Aunt Ibby, it’s me,” I called.
Her answer came from the direction of her office. “Come on in, dear. I knew you were on your way down here when O’Ryan streaked past me like a yellow-striped blur.” My aunt’s office is a neat and compact space off the living room. She sat behind her cherrywood desk surrounded by the very newest and most advanced technological gadgets, french-tipped manicured fingers flying across the keyboard of her laptop. “I’ll just be a minute. Brought a bit of work home with me.” Aunt Ibby is the semi-retired head research librarian at Salem’s main library, and bringing work home with her is not in the least unusual.
“Take your time. I wanted to see if you’re up for a bit of snooping to help out a couple of old friends,” I said, knowing that would grab her attention.
It did.
“This can wait,” she said, her green eyes—so much like my own—sparkling, her expression animated. “Which old friends and what’s their problem?”
“You’re following the news about the Samuel Bond murder, aren’t you?”
“Of course. Everybody in Salem is.”
“I had a phone call a little while ago from Roger Temple. Cody McGinnis is the twins’ nephew.”
“Good heavens. I had no idea. That is a problem. How can we help?”