Free A Time for Secrets by marshall thornton Page B

to focus. I shouldn’t be in the apartment for long. It was a crime scene, and I didn’t want to disturb it any more than necessary. I glanced at the front door; there was no sign of forced entry. Nor had there been at the back. Was it possible that Ronald knew his killer? Or, at the very least, was his killer someone he felt comfortable letting into his apartment? And was this how things looked over at Vernon Taber’s place?
    I glanced around to see what the apartment might tell me. The dining room didn’t have dining furniture. Instead, there was a small table with one chair shoved up against the front window; next to it, a small, three-shelved bookcase. On each shelf sat a row of gray journals with the year stamped in gold leaf lettering on the spine. Quickly, I scanned the dates. The journals began in 1938 and continued until 1982, which sat on the table. Never to be written in again.
    The journals were a regular paper size, perhaps a little smaller, with a cloth binding. I considered taking the most recent one, but realized that would convince Haggerty that the killer had taken it. He’d think Ronald died for something in the journal, and I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. I didn’t want Haggerty going off on a wild goose chase. I wanted him finding a killer.
    A box of tissues sat on one corner of the table; I grabbed a couple and used them to turn a few pages of the journal. I scanned the last week looking for my name. It wasn’t there. But something else was. On the day he hired me, he’d made the note “Dick has agreed to help.” And just the evening before, “Dick has found him, but V. won’t see me.” I suppose it was kind of funny that he’d used the old euphemism for private detective instead of my name or initials, but I wasn’t in the mood to laugh.
    I moved backward in the journal a week or so, but I didn’t find much. About a week before Ronald hired me, at the bottom of one page he’d written, “It’s time.” Nothing else. It could have meant anything, but I had the feeling it had something to do with finding Vernon. Had something happened to set this in motion?
    I closed the journal and looked around the room one more time. Ronald didn’t have much money , that was obvious. His things spoke to a sad, shabby existence. He was a retired, lonely old man who’d just died on a dirty rug.
    It was time to get out of there. First, though, using the tissue, I picked up the receiver of the heavy black phone and dialed 911. When the dispatcher came on the line I told her it was an emergency and that I needed Detective Haggerty. She didn’t want to connect me, of course; she just wanted to send out a squad car. But I pushed as hard as I could. Even suggesting she might lose her job if she didn’t find him for me toot suite. She put me on hold.
    I waited, standing in the stillness staring at Ronald’s bookcase full of the journals. So many years. I wondered what they might contain. On the second shelf, I noticed a gap where it looked like one of the journals was missing. I took a step forward to check, but Haggerty was on the line barking my name.
    “Where the fuck are you?”
    “I’m at 861 Cornelia. My client—”
    “You went to see a client first? There’s been a murder.”
    “I know. My client hired me to find Vernon Taber.”
    “If you tell me your client would like to confess, I might actually begin to like you.”
    “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen. He’s lying on his living room floor with a bullet through the back of his head.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, so I said, “I assume that’s how Vernon Taber was murdered.”
    “Get your ass out of that apartment and wait for me on the street.”
    “I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.
    Then I hung up and went outside to wait.

CHAPTER NINE
    “Two men are dead and the connection is you,” Haggerty said to me about four hours later. When he got to Meek’s apartment he’d sent me to Town Hall station to