“Do you have a reason to doubt his alibi?”
“I met him,” he said.
I wrote the word “NO” down on my notepad and underlined it.
“I know all about men like that. They don’t value life. Prison teaches them to look at everything differently. Jesse didn’t realize that. She was overly sympathetic. That’s how I would put it. Wanting to prove that she respected people for who they are, not who they’ve been.”
He ran a hand through the thick, white hair. It reminded me of Kenny Rogers’ hair. I wrote down “Kenny Rogers” on my notepad. Goofy, I know, but it was amazing sometimes the things that jogged the memory. Who knew, maybe a year from now I’d be looking at my notes on the Barre case, see the Kenny Rogers reference and have some brilliant flash of insight.
I looked at Clarence Barre. Goddamn, I found myself liking him. He had a great face, wide open and honest. I could sense the goodness in him. The pain of losing a loved one.
But I wasn’t going to take a case just because a father was having difficulty dealing with the loss of a child. He probably hated this Hornsby guy and made him into a convenient target for his anger and loss. If the police had checked out the alibi and crossed him off the list, he was probably innocent.
I wasn’t going to take the case. No way. To take Mr. Barre’s money would be another crime.
He must have seen the look on my face because he said, “I know how this must look. A guy just pointing a finger and saying, ‘He did it.’”
That’s exactly how it looked to me.
“How long were your daughter and this Hornsby seeing each other?”
“Way too long.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Years.”
“Had there been any sign of physical abuse? Any problems? Fights?”
“No, but Jesse and I hadn’t seen each other on a regular basis,” he said. And now I could hear even more, deeper pain in his voice. The loss of a loved one you’d fallen out with over petty differences. No getting them back now.
“But as far as you knew—”
“She didn’t say anything, and no, I never saw any bruises or anything on her. But Jesse was very private. Believe me, if she’d wanted to hide something, it would stay hidden until she wanted you to find it.”
“Did the police say if they have any other suspects?”
“I don’t know. They aren’t saying.”
This was about as bogus as it got. Mr. Barre wanted me to make him feel better. He wanted me to make him feel like he was doing something for the daughter he’d grown apart from. Now, when it was too late, he was trying to make things right. I had no intention of taking his money.
I started to tell him that, but he cut me off.
“I just want you to keep an open mind about it and check it out. I’ll pay whatever your rates are and your expenses. If you honestly find out Hornsby had nothing to do with it, and can give me some kind of proof, we’ll shake hands and go our separate ways.”
He pushed back a little and folded his arms across his chest.
I write on my notepad: no. No way. Nuh-uh.
I said, “I’ll think about it.”
•
When I was younger, I used to be very impatient. My dad tried to teach me how to make model airplanes, but I would race through, gluing all the parts together without waiting for them to dry. I would crack open the new box after breakfast and be done before lunch. My plane would always end up shoddily built with a sloppy paint job, and the little decals were always crooked. It might have been a few weeks later, or sometimes even a few months later, when my Dad would finish his. And naturally, it was the picture of perfection. It took quite a while, and quite a few botched P-47s, for me to realize the problem.
Now I sometimes had become the opposite, perhaps in reaction to what my impatient youth had taught me. I tended to wait and think things over. Maybe even over think them a bit. It was probably because I had children of my own, and if there’s one thing a parent needs, it’s patience.
So despite the fact that I had no intention of taking on the case, I decided to think it over. It seemed to me that Clarence Barre was dealing with the death of his daughter the only way he knew how. In his case, it happened to be blaming a man who was most likely innocent. Not something of which I really wanted to be a part. Even if it meant turning down a paycheck.
I also had to admit that I liked the earnest honesty of Clarence Barre. Maybe it was the way he looked me in the eye, or the obvious pain that hung on his weathered face.
Or maybe it was that damn Kenny Rogers hair.
Chapter Six
After Mr. Barre left my office, I logged onto the Internet and searched for newspaper accounts of Jesse Barre’s murder. I found nothing in the local paper, but that didn’t surprise me. The Grosse Pointe newspaper was legendary for not publicizing any stories of crime. Why? Because on the scale of priorities, Grosse Pointe residents placed property values on the same level as breathing. Perhaps even a nudge higher. A weekly report of all the petty crimes that occurred mostly on the direct border with Detroit, more frequently than most would like to admit, might make people think twice about plopping down a half million dollars on that picturesque Tudor with three fireplaces and an annual tax that could make a grown man choke on his bacon-wrapped filet mignon.
Anyway, I found what I was looking for on the Detroit Free Press website. The article there gave me the basic facts: the murder took place at Jessica Barre’s studio on Kercheval, just a few blocks from the Detroit border. It was an abandoned shoe repair shop that she’d converted to a guitar-making studio. The murder took place at approximately eleven p.m. Forced entry. Blunt force trauma. DOA. The article said it appeared to be a robbery but didn’t elaborate. The murder weapon, a heavy hammer that belonged to the victim, was left next to her body.
It was all very straightforward to me. Although Grosse Pointe was by and large a very safe community, when you spent that much time right on the border with Detroit, sometimes bad things could happen. On the Alter Road border, it was pretty common for bicycles and children’s toys to be snatched from the yard. Patio furniture was even known to sometimes get up in the middle of the night and walk across the border into Detroit, never to be heard from again. Same goes for grills and portable basketball hoops.
The other street that bordered Detroit, Mack Avenue, was legendary for carjackings, purse snatchings, and even the occasional bank robbery.
Hey, when your neighbor was one of the most dangerous cities in the country, you had to expect it. Over the years, Grosse Pointe residents had become naturally inured to the bullshit, although on the few occasions something really bad happened, it often gave pause to consider a move to the northern suburbs where McMansions and golf courses rule the land.
I skimmed the Free Press article once again. It all seemed pretty clear cut to me. Someone had probably seen the guitars, a woman working alone, probably late at night. They broke in, killed her, and grabbed what they could. Leaving the murder weapon and wiping it free of prints indicated a certain sophistication, I had to admit, but for the most part, it was probably what it seemed: a robbery that had gotten rough. Innocent people in robberies were killed all the time. Fast-food workers killed execution-style in the walk-in freezer. Why? Because some cold, sadistic psycho didn’t want any witnesses left alive. Or maybe a punk with a gun wanted to feel the ultimate power. Who knew?
There was only one thing that seemed to stick in the back of my brain as I re-read the article. It seemed odd to me that a thief, even taking into account the fact that not all thieves are terribly clever, would choose to knock over a guitar studio. It’s not a cash business. It wasn’t sexually motivated; at least there was no mention of an assault in the papers. And guitars would not be a terribly hot item on the market. From what I’d read and from the impression Clarence Barre had given me, the guitars Jesse Barre made were unique. I wasn’t exactly an expert on robbery and the fencing of stolen goods, but it seemed that trying to sell a Jesse Barre guitar locally would likely present problems. It also held that most guitar stores would not only recognize one of Jesse’s guitars, but would also have heard of the murder. My guess was that the cops had already called all the guitar stores and told them to be on the lookout for the kind of guitars she made. They would urge the shops to get a description and, if possible, a license plate of anyone trying to sell a Jesse Barre guitar. Pretty standard procedure.