Pursued by a Bear
"I'm getting nowhere with this," Dr. Blake groused, glaring at the eggs sitting on his plate.
"It's early days yet," Jean said reassuringly. "And if you're not going to interrogate those eggs, you'd best eat them before they get cold."
Ignoring Charlie Davis' quiet snicker, Lucien began shoveling his breakfast into his mouth, muttering to himself the whole time.
"No ID on the body...well, we didn't expect that. No response to the pictures published all over Victoria. Just a well fed, healthy female between the ages of 19 and 25 who would be alive and probably working or in school somewhere if she hadn't had a breaker bar shoved through her body and been left to bleed out in Patrick Tyneman's cellar. Oh yes...and she apparently tried to blow up the house with no bloody clue how to go about it..."
Jean, who was used to Dr. Blake's tendency to talk his way through every puzzle, tried to ignore the stream of consciousness coming from the table. Charlie, who had to watch uncomfortably as the police surgeon scowled and talked with his mouth full, cleared his throat.
"No other clues as to who might have been with her, Doc?"
"None at all, Charlie," Lucien answered, putting down his fork and staring thoughtfully at the officer. "No clear finger prints on the breaker bar. And the demo squad stamping all over the place ruined any possible footprints – my fault, unfortunately."
"Hardly," Jean broke in as she sat down with her own breakfast. "What were you supposed to do? Wander around looking for odd footprints when there was a bomb sitting right in the middle of the floor?"
"Would you mind reminding Matthew of that little fact?" Lucien said with a grin.
"Where's Mattie this morning?" Charlie asked, hoping to change up the subject a bit.
"Oh...didn't I tell you? She's taken some leave and gone home for a few days. Her mother is having some minor surgery, and she thought she ought to be there. She left yesterday afternoon," Jean answered.
"That's too bad. I was going to ask her opinion on something," Lucien said with a little frown.
"Yes, it's a pity her mother's surgery is inconveniently timed with your murder investigation," Jean replied sharply.
"Of course I'm sorry about her mother. But there's an aspect of this case I just can't wrap my head around."
"And you think Mattie can?"
"Well...would you have any idea why a young woman Mattie's age would be carrying the November 1959 issue of Man's Life in her kit bag next to her explosives?"
Both Charlie and Jean stared at him, speechless.
"It could have been for the cover picture of a buxom blonde grappling with an anaconda, or "thirty feet of writhing hell," as they put it, but I rather doubt it," he went on casually.
"Man's Life?!"
"Buxom blonde grappling with an anaconda!?"
Lucien grinned as Charlie and Jean spoke over one another. Sitting back in his chair, he tugged at the bottom of his waist coat and took a sip of tea.
"Not your typical reading material for a young woman, I'd have thought," Lucien observed somewhat smugly.
"I should hope not," Charlie muttered.
Jean rolled her eyes at them and began to clear the table with her usual quick efficiency. Turning back around to see Lucien's smirk and Charlie's wrinkled brow, she raised her eyebrow.
"I'm not sure what "typical reading material" might be for a young woman who was attempting to blow up a house," she said loftily, "but I doubt very much you're going to find instructions on explosives and mayhem in a recent copy of House Beautiful."
Lucien's mouth fell open as her words sunk in. Suddenly, he jumped up from the table, darted to Jean's side and hugged her. She let out a startled yelp and dropped a pan into the sink with a resounding splash.
"You're amazing!" he shouted in her ear. "C'mon, Charlie. We need to read a magazine!"
Charlie sighed and followed the very excited police surgeon from the kitchen. He grinned sympathetically as he left.
Jean just shook her head and smiled, humming as she finished the dishes.
The Chief Superintendent looked up with annoyance as a tattered magazine slapped down on his desk. His annoyance was exacerbated by the cheerful grin on his police surgeon's face.
"Do you know these are, Blake?" he asked, ignoring the magazine in favor of waving a pile of notes. "These are records of phone calls from Mr. Tyneman wondering what the hell is going on and why can't he return to his home." Blake opened his mouth to respond, but Matthew scooped up another stack of notes. "And these are from the Commissioner in Melbourne, who apparently has socialized frequently with the Tynemans in the last week, wondering what the hell is going on and why the Tynemans can't return to their home."
"Matthew, I think we've found something-"
"If we do not come to some conclusion that permits the Tynemans to return home very soon, I'll be trying to find something," Matthew continued through gritted teeth. "A new, bloody, job!" He glared at the magazine with perplexed distaste. "I hope you didn't confiscate that off of Davies."
Charlie emitted a strangled, sputtering protest from his desk.
"This was found in the kit bag with the dynamite," Lucien informed Matthew.
"So what?"
"So...the cover story didn't provide any clues, but here..." Lucien flipped through the magazine to a fictional feature about the perils of mining in the Sierra Nevadas, "...here we get a step by step, utterly incorrect, guide on how to wire a detonator for a safe and effective explosion!"
"Blake, we already knew that she didn't know what she was doing..."
"Yes, but this gives us a little more insight into her thinking. She desperately wants to blow up Patrick Tyneman, but where is a young woman supposed to find out how to do such a thing, particularly if you don't want anyone knowing about it?"
Matthew just nodded as Blake got wound up and began gesturing.
"This says, at least, that whoever her accomplice and possible murderer is, it's someone who had no access to this information either. And that means, it was probably another woman!"
Matthew raised a skeptical eyebrow at this leap of logic and was relieved at the young Constable who cautiously approached his desk to interrupt.
"Boss? I've, uh, got a bloke here that says the murder weapon is his."
Blake spun around to stare at the Constable and looked over his shoulder to see a bulky man in rough work clothes standing in the center of the office, looking irritated and scared.
"Bring him over, Ned," Matthew ordered. "Maybe this will clear some things up. Do you suppose that his magazine?" he muttered as an aside to Blake.
"I'm thinking you lot have got my breaker bar," the man said with no preamble.
"I'm thinking you'd better tell me who you are and why you think that," Matthew replied.
"Oh...sorry. I'm Fred Ekherdt. And I was doing some work at the Tyneman place-"
"What sort of work?" Lucien broke in.
"Building work. Tyneman wanted part of his cellar partitioned off to store wine in." Mr. Ekherdt looked back and forth between Lucien and Blake, as if trying to figure out who the boss really was.
"You use a breaker bar for that work?" Matthew demanded.
"Sometimes ya gotta take things down before ya can put things up. I'd left my tools and was gonna come back the next day for work, but of course that didn't happen. Then I heard that some bird had got herself speared with a breaker bar, of all things."
"Of all things," Lucien murmured sarcastically. Matthew glared at him and motioned for Ekherdt to continue.
"I know you lot gotta, you know, investigate, but I gotta make a living, and I need my breaker bar." With that, Ekherdt crossed his arms and looked expectantly at the Superintendent.
"My sympathies, Mr. Ekherdt," Matthew began in a voice that wasn't the least bit sympathtic, "but that breaker bar is evidence and evidence it will stay. If I were you, I'd buy a new breaker bar."
Ekherdt opened his mouth to argue, but before he could, Lucien snatched the magazine from Matthew's desk and thrust it towards the man.
"Does this look familiar, Mr. Ekherdt?"
Ekherdt drew his head back and looked at Lucien in confusion. He glanced at the cover and a look of familiarity crossed his face.
"Yeah...I think I have that issue at home. Why?"
"Are you sure its still at home?"
"Where else would it be," Ekherdt said with a chuckle. "Its home and hid proper so my boys don't get hold of it. Don't want 'em getting ideas about...um...wrestling with snakes..."
"So Matthew didn't think much of your two woman theory?" Jean asked as Lucien slumped in a chair at the table, swirling his third whiskey around the tumbler absently.
"No, he didn't. And the more I think about it, the less I think of it." Releasing a huge sigh, he took a sip and relished the burn in his throat.
"Hmmm. I suppose there isn't any way she acted alone, is there?"
"The three feet of breaker bar growing from her torso is a pretty good indicator that someone put it there." At her side eyed glare, he hastened to add: "But its not impossible that something just went horribly awry, I suppose."
"Just not very likely?"
"I just can't see it, Jean. That breaker bar would have to be driven into her body with tremendous force to go all the way through her."
"Just horrible," Jean said with a shudder. "So you think it was a man then?"
Lucien rubbed his forehead and grunted. Jean placed a cup of tea in front of him and surreptitiously removed his whiskey tumbler.
"Is it just you and I tonight, Lucien?" she asked. "For dinner, I mean," she clarified when she caught a twinkle in his eye at her question.
"I suppose. Charlie is still down at the station, going over crime scene inventory with one Mr. Eckherdt."
"The worker Patrick hired? I wonder what he was thinking."
"What do you mean?"
"If its the Eckherdt I'm thinking of, he's slow and barely competent." Lucien looked thoughtful. "And he's a real lad around the ladies," she added darkly.
"Oh…?" When Jean declined to add anything further, he shrugged and said, "he must work cheap."
"Cheaper than most around here. And he does have a contractor's license, although I'm not sure how he manages to hold onto it. His wife is a lovely woman who puts up with a lot for the sake of their three boys," Jean finished with a bite in her tone that Lucien had sense enough not to press on.
"Charlie and I took him over to the crime scene to identify his tools and tell us if there was anything out of place. Other than his breaker bar being gone, his ladder had been set up against the wall, and he was adamant that he'd left it laying on the floor."
"I'd be surprised if he could remember to tie his shoes," Jean commented. "How can he be so sure?"
"Well, there were some drag marks..."
Jean watched as his eyes sharpened and he put his hands in front of him, as if he was gripping a ladder.
"Now, a big bloke like him could easily pick up the ladder to move it without dragging it though. But a young woman-"
He broke off abruptly and stood, reaching out to grab Jean's hand.
"Could you come give me a hand for a moment," he asked as he began walking towards the door to the back garden.
"Seems you've already got it," she replied, but followed him out into the chill darkness of the garden. He began glancing around for something, getting frustrated as his quarry eluded him. "The ladder's in the shed, if that's what you're after."
"Ah! Thank you, Jean."
He darted over to the shed and wrenched the door open. As he peered into the darkness, he felt Jean reach beside him in the doorway. She retrieved a battered torch.
"Even on a sunny day it's impossible to see in here. It needs new batteries," she warned when he grinned delightedly at her. "I keep forgetting to change them out."
Lucien played the feeble light around the overly full interior, looking for the ladder. Fortunately, it was laying on the ground against a wall rather than stashed under a table.
"Do we really need this many clay pots?" he asked.
"Yes," Jean replied authoritatively as she followed him into the shed and shifted around a pile of burlap bags. "What do you need me to do?"
"Can you lift that ladder and prop it just there," he pointed to a clear area next to the door.
"It's too tall, Lucien."
"I just want to see how you'd do it."
She looked at him suspiciously then gave him a little push so she could move next to the ladder.
"Budge up," she said, rolling her eyes when he barely moved far enough for her to squat down and grasp the ladder. He continued to hover as she levered it up and, grunting a bit with the effort, hauled it towards the wall he'd indicated before.
"I'd have worn something a bit more appropriate if I had know we were going to do some construction tonight," she complained.
Lucien ran his eyes over her blue skirt and cardigan draped shoulders before reaching out to take the ladder from her.
"You look lovely," he said absently as he fixed his eyes on the drag marks left by the ladder in the dirt. Jean was a bit taller and probably stronger than the young woman in the Tyneman's basement, and even she had difficulty with the awkward, wooden ladder.
"Well, thank you," Jean replied, flushing a bit. "Are we done?"
"Hmmm? Done? Oh yes, thanks..."
Jean left him to his ruminations and went back in the house to dust off her skirt and scrub up her hands. He followed in a few minutes – not nearly enough time in her opinion to have put the ladder back properly – and leaned against the sink, watching as she cleaned under her fingernails.
"I need to go back to the crime scene. Something's not fitting right."
"Tonight?"
"No. No...tomorrow will be soon enough." He eyed Jean speculatively until she tired of it and turned to look him expectantly in the face.
"Are you busy tomorrow, Jean?"
"I don't think so, other than play practice tomorrow evening. Why?"
"I may need your help figuring out how that poor woman might have done herself in."