“Why don’t you just tell us about that day? If it won’t be too painful,” Joe said.
She looked off into the distance, as if she could see into the past that way. “I had gone out around ten. I had a meeting of the garden club. We were planting flowers in one of the local parks. I had dirt all over me when I came home. I had to explain that to Detective Wilkins, because at first the detectives thought that was suspicious. It was Sophia’s day off, so William had been alone. I got home around one and left the car in the driveway, right where yours is now, because I thought I’d hop into the shower, and then William and I could go to a late lunch. We’d talked about that over breakfast. But when I came in and called him, he didn’t answer. He kept his office down in the basement, with all his books and his computer. And of course, the wine cellar is down there. We don’t have a fancy refrigeration system, just the old brick walls and wooden racks. I assumed he had to be downstairs, so I went down, but he wasn’t at his desk. I walked into the wine cellar and…and there he was.” Tears dampened her eyes. “I tried mouth-to-mouth, but it didn’t do any good. Then I called 9-1-1, and the paramedics came, and the police. I couldn’t help thinking that if I had just gotten home sooner, I might have been able to save him, but the police said that he’d been…strangled, and that he was already dead when the murderer left him there. But I’ll still always wonder….”
“And nothing was taken?” Joe asked.
“Nothing I was aware of. Nothing valuable, certainly.”
“Your husband had all kinds of files on Poe, didn’t he?” Joe asked.
She stared at him, clear-eyed and frowning. “Files on Poe? Of course. He wrote a book. It was fiction, of course, but his research was impeccable.”
“Were any of his notes missing?” Joe asked.
She was briefly silent. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know. His desk appeared to be in order.”
“Nancy, do you mind if we go downstairs and look around?” Brent asked.
“Of course not.”
She led the way down a carpeted staircase. The basement was as she had described. There was a huge, polished desk with a computer in the center of the room. There were bookshelves lining two walls and a filing cabinet against a third wall.
The fourth wall was brick and held the door to the wine cellar.
They didn’t need to ask her. She walked straight through the door and they followed. It wasn’t a huge wine cellar, but it went beyond modest.
“He was lying over there,” she said softly. “Right by his favorite merlot.”
The floor was as dust-free as Wilkins had described it. Nancy obviously liked a clean house.
“Do you mind if I look through the filing cabinet?” Joe asked.
“Not at all,” Nancy told him.
There were many files on many authors. William Morton had kept newspaper clippings and magazine articles, along with his own notes. There was, as expected, a folder dedicated to Edgar Allan Poe, containing a few articles and some pictures that had been taken at various sites. But it was curiously…small.
A man who had written a book on Poe should have had far more information, Joe thought. Admittedly, this was the age of the online investigation, but still, when compared with all the information William had stored away regarding Thoreau, Emerson and others, his file on Poe seemed suspiciously slim.
“Did you ever help your husband with his research, or with his filing?” Joe asked.
Nancy played with her pearls again. “Good heavens, no. I wouldn’t have dared interfere.” Nancy led them back upstairs then, and paused by the fireplace to pick up a framed photo of a clean-shaven man with graying hair and a pleasant, dimpled face.
“William, right before he died,” she said.
A few minutes later they thanked her for her time, and she asked them to notify her if they found out anything, or if she could do anything else for them.
As they drove away, Joe looked back at the house. He hadn’t felt anything, hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. He looked at Brent and asked softly, “Well?”
Brent shook his head. “I’ve got nothing, except…you think his killer stole some of his files?”
“Yes.”
“Will that help us any?”
“I don’t know.”
Brent was silent a moment. “Did you see anything?”
“Only in my mind’s eye. A man, dead next to his favorite merlot. Poe, in a way, but badly.”
“How’s that?” Brent asked.
“He was behind a brick wall, but he hadn’t been bricked in, much less bricked in alive.”
“His killer wanted to be sure he was dead and to get away with murder.”
“Yeah,” Joe said darkly. “And so far, he has.”
There was an old stone bench next to William Morton’s family mausoleum. The Federal-style tomb held the mortal remains of the family from eighteen-fifty-five onward, the latest burial being William’s.