Voice Mail Murder

Chapter Six

Friday, the second day of the fall semester at Grace University proceeded less dramatically than the first. Pamela met with her Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes for the first time and, although there was still a lot of talk among the students about the football coach’s murder, she was able to distract them to course content for most of the hour of their scheduled time. When she had first arrived, Jane Marie had informed her that her secretary friend Rosemary in the Athletic Department had told her that the police had expanded their questioning from staff and faculty members of the Athletic Department to members of the football team. It seemed evident to Pamela that there was no obvious suspect or surely the police would have arrested someone by now.

Now it was noon and she was able to relax in her office with one of Rocky’s spectacular bag lunches that he prepared for her each morning. Sometimes she liked to eat out with Joan and Arliss, but most of the time, it was too much of a hassle to find a new parking space, so the three women either ate together in Pamela’s office or—as she was doing now—she dined alone, seated on her comfy couch, heels removed so she could stretch her toes out a bit before another several hours of standing and lecturing in tight shoes. Today Rocky had packed a lovely corned beef on rye with a delicate Thousand Island dressing. He’d included a small container of Asian salad complete with Mandarin oranges, Chinese noodles, cabbage, and a spicy dressing. She sipped a cup of iced fruit tea from her thermos. It was unlikely that she’d get a better meal at a restaurant. She was a lucky woman.

As she savored the delicate flavors of her tea, a man appeared in her doorway. He wore a ragged raincoat and scuffed brown shoes. His head of thick, wiry grayish brown hair and matching full eyebrows contradicted his intense dark eyes.

“Dr. Barnes,” said the man, coughing to get her attention.

Pamela looked up and gulped. “Oh dear,” she choked, setting her thermos lid on the end table by her sofa. “Lt. Shoop.”

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here,” the man said, ambling a few steps into the office.

“Yes,” said Pamela, blinking rapidly and standing to greet her guest, slipping awkwardly into her shoes beside the sofa. “It’s been—what? Easily a year, hasn’t it?”

“More,” concluded Shoop. “All that rigmarole about the disc jockey. Quite a lot going on.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Exciting, but it was rewarding. We helped that young woman in a very difficult time.”

“You did, Dr. Barnes,” said the detective. “And we probably never thanked you properly. That is, the Reardon Police Department probably never thanked you . . .”

“Please,” she countered, “Detective, it was gratifying to help you solve that case and bring that scoundrel to justice.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “I see we see it the same way. I figured you’d see it . . .”

“Detective,” she edged towards her desk as she continued to glare into his piercing eyes, “Why are you here? I take it this isn’t just a social call or some belated recognition of my efforts from the Reardon Police.” She leaned against the back of her desk and tipped her head to the side, expectantly.

“Oh, Dr. Barnes,” said Shoop, shrugging, his eyes now glancing around the small office as if to avoid eye contact. “You are always so perceptive. That’s what I like about you. That, and your constant willingness to jump in and do your civic duty—when that civic duty calls.” He wandered into the small office, looking around.

“What civic duty?”

“I’m sure you’re aware of this rather high profile murder case we’re investigating. The one that concerns your football coach.”

“He’s not my coach,” said Pamela, cringing, and sitting at her desk. Shoop wandered back to the door, and shut it behind him. He poised himself on the edge of Joan’s straight back chair by the door and smiled knowingly at her.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” she blurted. “There’s no way I can get involved in this murder investigation. I’ve heard nothing about the murder being recorded. That would be the only way you’d come asking for my help. I mean, I heard his body was discovered in a motel room. Don’t tell me there’s a recording of the murder?”

“No, nothing quite so helpful as that,” sighed the man.

“Then what? You wouldn’t be knocking on my door asking me for assistance unless you had some sort of recording of the murder . . .”

“Not the actual murder . . .”

“Then what?” she demanded.

“Here’s the story, Dr. Barnes,” he said, arms held wide in a gesture of disclosure. “We’ve got virtually nothing to go on in this case. The coach was found murdered in a motel room yesterday. He had no enemies, it seems. Heck, he had tons of friends—he was the winningest coach this college has ever seen. Everybody loved him—students, faculty, staff. Doesn’t appear that anyone had any motivation to kill him—or know of anyone with a motivation to kill him. He was a saint.” Shoop was rattling off the Publicity Department’s party line if she ever heard it.

“Somebody obviously didn’t think so,” she offered.

“No, somebody didn’t,” he agreed. “We just don’t know who that somebody is. “

“What about the motel?” she asked. “Why was he there? Did you question the motel staff?”

“That’s one of the problems,” he said, sheepishly. “The room wasn’t registered to him.

“Who was it registered to? Seems that would be your primary suspect.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Unfortunately, the room was registered to a woman—who paid cash. No record of her, and the clerk who signed her in remembers virtually nothing about her.”

“Are they allowed to register people like that in motels?”

“No, but it happens. And it happened here. Whether the clerk remembers and won’t say or truly doesn’t remember a thing about the woman, I don’t know. All we know is a woman paid for that room two days ago, but when the coach’s body was discovered yesterday morning by a very surprised cleaning lady, said woman was nowhere to be found. And unfortunately, the Shady Lane Motel has no security cameras so we have no video of anyone entering or leaving the room.”

“Detective, that’s all well and good,” continued Pamela, sitting forward at her desk, hands on her knees, “but I don’t see how it affects me. It seems that this unknown woman is probably your killer and your job is to find her. What can I possibly do to assist you?”

“I’ll tell you, Dr. Barnes,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his overcoat and bringing out a cell phone. “Whoever this mystery woman is, no one seems to know. No one on the staff or faculty was aware that the coach was sleeping with someone—and, believe me, his wife and daughters were not aware of it. That was not a pleasant interrogation.”

“I can imagine.”

“We seem to be at square one,” he continued, palming the little phone and looking at its small screen, “except for this.” He held the phone out to her.

“A cell phone?”

“The coach’s cell phone. We found it under the bed in the motel room, next to his body. The only prints on it were his. There are a number of voice mail messages for him that he hadn’t yet deleted—going back to January it seems, according to our techs. Seems he didn’t delete his messages very often—if at all. Not a very wise thing to do if you’re having an affair.”

“No, I would think not.”

“Anyway,” continued Shoop, “our techs have gone over the messages thoroughly, attempting to identify the speakers. There are seven messages—all short, all apparently from women.”

“More than one?”

“Yes. They all seem to be calling the Coach to verify or change an appointment—probably an afternoon motel appointment, if you get my drift.”

“Yes, I get it,” she sighed.

“We’ve gone over all of the messages and we can’t identify any of the speakers. None of them appear to be family or close colleagues. All of the messages were apparently sent from disposable cell phones that are no longer in service. In fact, when we examined the Coach’s car left at the murder scene, we found a box of new disposable phones in his trunk,” he said. “Unfortunately, we’ve come up empty-handed.”

“So how do I fit in?” she asked, anticipating where this line of reasoning was leading.

“We’d like you to listen to the recordings,” he suggested, reaching into his other large overcoat pocket and retrieving a CD case. “I’ve made a copy of them for you.” He handed her the CD case. “Maybe you can listen to the voices and tell us something about these women that we don’t know. “

“That you don’t know?”

“You know,” he said, shrugging, “anything about them. Starting with how many women there are. We have seven messages, but we aren’t sure that there are seven different women. There might be just one woman who has left seven messages—or there might be seven women each leaving one message—or any variation in between. We don’t know for sure. We figured you could tell us that—and more—with all of your acoustic expertise.” He smiled at her. He was schmoozing her—and it wasn’t something he did well—or often, so he wasn’t very good at it.

“Oh, Shoop!” she lamented, stretching her arms over her head. “I can’t believe you’ve dragged me into another murder investigation.”

“You won’t be involved, Dr. Barnes,” he said with a grimace. “We’d simply appreciate any authoritative input you can give us about the women who are speaking on this recording. Right now, these women are our best leads as to the Coach’s killer—maybe one of them is the killer. We don’t know, but we need to find out who they are—and the more we know about them, the more likely it’ll be that we’ll be able to track them down.”

Pamela looked down at the square plastic case in her hands. The black disk inside was labeled “Voice Mail Murder.” Wonderful, she thought. Already, the crime had a label and it involved voices—her specialty. Of course, she could listen to the voices and determine a variety of information about the speakers. She couldn’t, however, determine which speaker—if any of them—was the murderer. She told this to Shoop.

“All right, Detective,” she huffed. “You knew I wouldn’t be able to say ‘no’ to you, didn’t you? Particularly as this case involves a victim from Grace. I guess I feel a sense of obligation to help you in any way I can and—if as you say—this recording of the Coach’s voice mail is now your primary lead, I guess I’ll have to give it a try.”

“Thank you, Dr. Barnes,” replied Shoop, standing and pulling his overcoat around his body. She rose to see him out. “But, Dr. Barnes,” he added, as he turned back to her at the door. “Be careful. This is a murder investigation. Someone killed this man—possibly one of the women speaking on his voice mail—likely one of the women speaking on his voice mail. Don’t go doing anything foolish as you have done in the past—if you remember.”

“Don’t worry, Detective,” she said, nodding. “I have every intention of staying very safe this time.”