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"Would you
mind being one of our subjects?"
"Well, sure, I
guess," Lois said.
"We're asking
people to think back five years," I said. I glanced over at
Ross, who was staring somewhat stupidly at me. Sorry,
Ross. "Aren't you going to take notes?" I asked him. He
continued to stare stupidly at me -- Sorry again, Ross
-- then fumbled in his jacket pocket for a notebook. "Were
you working here five years ago, Lois? May I call you Lois?"
Lois patted her
name tag. "That's my name."
I smiled at her.
"I'm Chloe, and this is Ross. Okay, so here's the trigger.
We're using an event that's rare around here -- murder."
"Oh, my," said
Lois.
"Five years ago, a
woman was murdered in East Hastings --"
"Mary Shackleton,
right?" Lois called out, as if she had her thumb on the
Jeopardy buzzer. She seemed quite proud of herself.
"Right," I said.
"Wow, you really have a good memory. Here's the big question
-- do you remember exactly what you were doing when you
heard that the first murder in this area in nearly fifty
years had just been committed?"
Lois didn't even
bat an eye. "Why, sure," she said. "I was right here. In
fact, I was the one who answered the phone when Mr. Himmel
called with the news."
"Dr. McDermott's
husband told you that Mary Shackleton had been murdered?" I
said.
"No, he told Dr.
McDermott and Dr. McDermott told me. Except Dr. McDermott
wasn't Mr. Himmel's wife then. She had just started seeing
him."
I nodded and
glanced at Ross. He had caught the spirit of the thing now
and was writing everything down.
"Okay. So you
heard that Mary Shackleton had been murdered just after Mr.
Himmel called. Is that right?"
Lois nodded.
"Now this is a
hard one, Lois. Probably the hardest question there is. Do
you remember what time it was when Mr. Himmel called with
the news?"
Lois puffed up
proudly. "It was exactly twelve-thirty."
I don't know what
I had expected, but I sure hadn't expected something so
definite.
"How do you know?"
Her eyes misted
up. "Bunny Rosenburg had just died."
"Bunny Rosenburg?"
"Zachary
Rosenburg's rabbit. He had a tumor. Dr. McDermott tried to
save him, but he died and Dr. McDermott had just asked me to
note the time so she could write it down in her file. Then
the phone rang and I answered it. It was Mr. Himmel." She
paused a moment and thought. " He sounded upset. He wanted
to talk to Dr. McDermott right away, but I had to put him on
hold for a few minutes. Zachary Rosenburg was here and Dr.
McDermott was giving him the bad news. In fact," she said,
her eyes lighting up as more and more details came back to
her -- we had lucked onto something big with this memory
trigger stuff -- "I had to check back with Mr. Himmel three
or four times, because Zachary wasn't taking the news all
that well. And every time I told Mr. Himmel, I'm sorry, he
got more and more excited. He sounded so upset that I
thought maybe the axe had finally fallen on the Breakfast
Club."
"The Breakfast
Club?"
"Mr. Himmel
volunteered at the Breakfast Club. He's been doing it for
five years. It's a hot breakfast program for kids who come
to school hungry. Mr. Himmel was there two mornings a week
-- Tuesday and Thursday -- from seven until eight-thirty,
cooking breakfast. It was on a Thursday that Mary Shackleton
was murdered."
My hope deflated.
If Normal Himmel was serving breakfast in Morrisville until
eight-thirty in the morning, he couldn't have been in East
Hastings much before nine-thirty. Linda Shackleton had found
her sister-in-law at the bottom of the basement stairs at
five minutes after eleven. The pathologist had said that by
then, Mary Shackleton had been dead for a couple of hours.
Which meant that if Normal Himmel hadn't been in East
Hastings until nine-thirty, he couldn't have done it. But if
Normal Himmel had served breakfast in Morrisville until
eight-thirty and he had never left town, why had he shown up
forty-five minutes late for his ten o'clock interview with
Sally?
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