Free The April Fools' Day Murder by Lee Harris

was shot then. That was before I met him.” Then she shook her head. “But I can tell you he never got a Purple Heart. I have all his medals.”
    “And you’re sure nothing ever happened while you knew him?”
    “Of course I’m sure. It’s not the sort of thing you’d forget.”
    “In the last few weeks, did your husband seem upset about anything?”
    “You ask the same questions the police asked. And I’ll give you the same answer. He was himself. He spent a lot of time with the high school drama society—they’re working on a play—and he did his usual things around the house. Sometimes he was grouchy, sometimes he was very happy. We were planning a trip for the summer. It was all very ordinary.”
    “Who brought in the mail?” I thought this was a good question because I’m the person who does it most days in our house and I see the envelopes before Jack comes home.
    “Both of us. It just depended who went out for it first.”
    “Did you see anything unusual in the mail?”
    “I don’t think so. It’s all bills and catalogs. We don’t get a lot of letters. Mostly we use the telephone.”
    “OK,” I said. “That’s really all I wanted to ask you, that and the cane.” I got up and we said our goodbyes.
    At home there was a message from Jack and I called him back.
    “Got a call about Platt’s leg X rays. They show absolutely nothing, Chris.”
    “No breaks?”
    “Nothing. The M.E. said he had two healthy legs. Now, that doesn’t mean he didn’t have arthritis or sciatica or something like that.”
    “But he wouldn’t have had things like that as a young man, would he?”
    “Probably not. Mrs. Platt tell you he always used a cane?”
    “From the time she met him.”
    “Maybe it was an affectation. Maybe he thought it made him look distinguished.”
    “I guess that’s possible,” I said halfheartedly. “By the way, she doesn’t know anything about an old gunshot wound. She thought it might have happened during the war but he never got a Purple Heart medal.”
    “Maybe they forgot to give it to him. I’ll see you later.”
    I was making a shrimp dish for dinner and I decided to clean the shrimp before I picked up Eddie. I took them out of the refrigerator and got my special cleaning knife. As I poked it through the first shrimp I realized it was a kind of two-edged knife. That, of course, was one reason I kept it where Eddie couldn’t possibly reach it. I looked at it, testing the edges carefully. It was surely one of thesharpest implements I owned, a very useful tool once or twice a month when I needed it, but potentially a deadly weapon. Anyone who carried around something this sharp and this dangerous could have nothing but malice in his heart.
    Not long after I got back from Elsie’s, Mrs. Platt’s daughter, Toni, called.
    “Mrs. Brooks, I’m sorry to bother you.”
    “It’s Chris, and there’s no bother.”
    “I can only talk a second. Can we meet tomorrow for a little while?”
    “Sure. What time is good for you?”
    “Ten in the morning?”
    “That’s fine. Where would—”
    She interrupted me. “Outside Prince’s. I’ll see you then.” She hung up.
    I gathered she didn’t want her mother to hear the conversation or to know she was meeting me. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I thought it was a good sign. Maybe she knew something that would help find her father’s killer.

9
    Elsie took Eddie in the morning, and I drove to Prince’s, parking in their large lot. Toni Cutler was standing near the automatic doors and she waved when she saw me.
    “Good morning,” she said. “How about a second breakfast?”
    “Sure.”
    “Let’s go across the street.”
    We went to the Village Coffee Shop, a pretty place that served all day long. I had never had anything but coffee or a snack there but I thought that if I had something substantial, I might not have to make myself lunch, for me the most boring meal I eat every day. We sat at a table away from the