Murder by Mocha

Phoebe nodded. “The year her mother died in prison, Olympia jumped to her death from the Bay Creek bridge.”

“Will you tell us more?” I asked.

“I will—and I’ll give you an even more knowledgeable source for future reference.”

Forty-Three

“Can you tell me what actually happened?” I asked.

Madame and I were now sitting in the cramped offices of the Bay Creek Village Chronicle. Phoebe Themis had suggested we speak with Mr. Kenneth Jeffries. According to our helpful librarian, he’d done the most thorough reporting on the case.

“What actually happened?” Mr. Jeffries barked a laugh. “Really, Ms. Cosi, for any trial, that’s a Rashomon sort of question, isn’t it?”

With the late afternoon sun streaming through his window, Mr. Jeffries’s hair looked as gray-white and crumpled as the old newsprint piled around him. He’d been an AP stringer during the years of the Temple murder and subsequent trial. Now he was editor in chief of the Chronicle’s struggling, three-man operation. The grizzled veteran appeared pleased to hear his stories were remembered, though his tone tended to drift into the land of smug.

“What actually happened is entirely dependent on with whom you speak. In the prosecutor’s view, the murder was premeditated, and Mrs. Dora Temple was a cold-blooded killer.”

“And what did the defense believe?” I asked.

“The murder was accidental. Mrs. Temple wanted only to frighten her husband’s young mistress by pointing the gun at her. She never expected the struggle to follow. The fatal wounding of Dr. Temple was sheer accident.”

Madame arched an eyebrow. “And what did you believe, sir? Or don’t reporters have opinions?”

Jeffries blinked, as if waking up to a sharper mind than he’d expected. “Touché, ma’am.”

“No offense,” Madame said.

“None taken. Like politics and jelly doughnuts, the good stuff is usually found in the middle, isn’t it?”

Madame sighed. “Objectivity is a rare thing these days.”

“Well, I’ll tell you this . . .” Jeffries sat up a little farther in his seat, the condescension gone. “I heard every bit of testimony, interviewed all the witnesses, and I think my conclusion is the right one . . ”

According to Jeffries, Mrs. Temple surprised her husband by dropping by his campus office. “A professor named Alicia Bower was standing in the hallway outside, speaking with one of her students—a Sherri Sellars. Mrs. Temple pushed past them both and burst through her husband’s door. She found her Victor half naked with one of his students, Thelma Vale Pixley. She drew the gun and aimed it directly at Thelma. Alicia and Sherri rushed in and tried to wrest the weapon away from Mrs. Temple. During the struggle, Dora pulled the trigger, and Dr. Temple was struck in the groin. He bled to death en route to Bay Village Hospital.”

Madame glanced at me. “Now that does sound like premeditated murder.”

Jeffries nodded. “She brought the gun and she pointed it. The prosecutor believed it was premeditated, too, and he was aggressive. Alicia and Sherri were friendly with Mrs. Temple. They didn’t want to testify against her, but they took their sworn oaths seriously and told the truth as they saw it.

“The prosecutor compelled them to testify for his side—including a statement they overheard Mrs. Temple make during the struggle. ‘I swear I’ll end them both.’ ” He snapped his fingers. “Those two sealed the deal. The scandal with all the requisite publicity ruined them at the college, of course. Alicia resigned her post and went off to be a freelance writer. The jury found Mrs. Temple guilty of all charges. She showed no remorse, and the judge sentenced her to twenty-five years to life.”

“And she died in prison?”

“After seven years, Mrs. Temple applied for early parole. The board denied her request. She still hadn’t shown any remorse, and she’d physically assaulted a female guard. When she heard her parole was denied, she hanged herself in the prison laundry.”

“Dora had a daughter,” I said. “What happened to her?”

Jeffries’s buoyancy flagged suddenly. “Olympia Temple. Now there was a tragedy.”

“How so?” Madame asked.

“Olympia hardly knew her father, but she was close to her mother. Mrs. Temple made bail, and for two years before the trial, that girl listened to her mother rail against the prosecutor, the judge, the friends who had ‘turned on her’ to testify against her. When her mother was sent to prison, the daughter was devastated.”

“Do you have a photo?” I asked.

Jeffries found only a few. Olympia was young during the height of the trial—around thirteen years old. She was a slender, Caucasian girl with long, dark blond hair, which she used to cover her face when cameras began snapping her photo.

He tapped the image on screen. “Several years after Mrs. Temple was sentenced, I wrote a piece about her life in prison. A few days after that article was published, I started getting poisoned-pen letters. Then someone slashed the tires on my car.”

Letters followed by violence? Madame and I leaned forward. “What did you do?”

“I turned the letters over to the police. They believed Olympia was responsible. When I heard that, I couldn’t bring myself to press charges, but they spoke with her, hoped to frighten her into stopping. She didn’t. The tire slashing was repeated after I wrote an article about Mrs. Temple’s parole being denied.”

“There was no one else who could have done it?” I asked. “An angry cousin, an uncle, a sister? The Temples must have had close friends.”

“Dr. Temple and his wife were transplants from Maine. They had no relatives in the area. None that I could find, and I looked, too. Their friends were connected to the college, and when the scandal broke, most of them distanced themselves from Dora Temple—understandable since they had upstanding reputations to maintain and Mrs. Temple couldn’t escape the bad publicity. When Mrs. Temple went to prison, her daughter was taken in by guardians, not related, an elderly couple also connected to the college.”

He shook his head. “After all Olympia had been through, I didn’t wish to press charges against her, and the harassment did stop after she vanished.”

“You mean after she killed herself.”

Jeffries scratched his head. “I’m not so sure she did.”

“But Phoebe Themis told us there were witnesses. They heard a scream, saw something plunge off a bridge. Dora’s belongings and a suicide note were found on top of that same bridge. She’d worn her mother’s wedding gown for that jump and shreds of it washed ashore.”

“And no body was ever recovered.”

Prickles iced my skin. “Are you certain?”

“Are you hungry, Ms. Cosi?”

“Excuse me?” Oh no, I thought. I hope he’s not hitting on me for a dinner date.

“I suggest you stop by the River View restaurant, just outside of our village. Ask for the head waiter, Freddie. Tell him I sent you. Freddie has an eyewitness opinion about what happened.”

“We’ll do that,” I said, rising.

“And try the bay scallops with saffron risotto.” Jeffries kissed the tips of his fingers. “Délicieux!”

By the time Madame and I arrived at the River View, dinner service was under way. In the parking lot, we paused to admire the sweeping view of the “river”—really a long, wide inlet of the Long Island Sound with strong currents shimmering between thickly forested cliffs.

“That’s where Olympia Temple jumped,” Madame said, gazing at the high bridge, where a commuter train