Death at Noon

By G. J. Irrera

To solve this mystery Marlow Phillips, Girl Detective, must be able to provide, Motive, Opportunity, Means. She has a room full of people that all hated Gregory Kent for the lies he told about them on his late night radio program. So they all had a motive. They were all having lunch at the restaurant at the time Gregory Kent was murdered. So they all had the Opportunity. The one ingredient missing from the recipe is the Means, Gregory Kent died fifteen minutes after the last of Marlow’s suspects left the restaurant.

• Language: English
• Publisher: G. J. Irrera
• Release date: Oct 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310810930

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A Marlow Phillips Mystery

Death at Noon ©

G. J. Irrera

Copyright G. J. Irrera 2005

Published by DVI Tek Publishing at Smashwords

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Chapter 1.

When we stopped at the Market Street Bistro, all my friends and I wanted was something to eat and a cool drink. How were we to know that within an hour of arriving at the restaurant, Mr. Gregory Kent, a local radio talk show personality, would be lying on the floor dead with broken glass and dishes scattered around him.

Mr. Kent had three visitors at his table that day at the Market Street Bistro, but no one had spent more than a few minutes talking to him; no one had even touched him A good ten minutes had passed since the last of the visitors had gone and Mr. Kent was still alive, but as the doctor now said Mr. Kent was, quite dead.

Let me start from the beginning; this mystery happened the summer I graduated high school. Actually there were two mysteries that summer but in any case I promise that I will tell you everything I know about the crimes as they happened and the evidence leading to the arrest of the murderer (or murderers), and most important of all I promise that the guilty person will not be a new character added at the end that you never heard of before.

It was late August and still hot as heck. I had graduated high school with a 4.0 GPA and a scholarship, thank you very much, and I was getting ready to start a new adventure - my freshman year at Philadelphia Community College.

Why a Community College if I had a scholarship? Well, the most important reason was that I could actually take Criminology 101 which was my major in my freshmen year. Most of the other colleges made you wait until the second half of your freshmen year or even later to start taking your major.

The other reason, or should I say reasons, was I wasn’t quite ready to move into a dorm and the college was close to both my home and my part time job.

Anyway, I decided to take off for the summer so I could start the fall semester fresh and rested. Yeah, Daddy didn’t buy that reason either.

Alright, maybe I just wanted a break from school, studying, and tests. I also wanted to do some shopping and take at least one more trip to the beaches on the New Jersey shore before the Northeast winter set in and turned everything to ice.

This particular morning my two best friends, Mary and Patty, had things to do so I went into downtown Philadelphia on my own to meet my Mom for lunch and do some much needed shopping.

Although I’ve had my driver’s license for almost two years and even my Dad thinks I’m a pretty good driver; I hate driving in the downtown area. You spend more time trying to find a parking space then you do shopping and most of the parking garages charge outrageous prices. So whenever I want to go downtown I usually take the subway. I get off at 8th and Market Streets Station, which puts me right in the middle of everything I want to see and within a few blocks of Mom’s office.

If you are into shopping, which I am, this area has just about every kind of shop you can think of including the Gallery at Market East - one of the best places to shop.

I had to get some new clothes; I just couldn’t start college with my old high school clothes. I know I’ll be a freshman and I’m sure that it won’t take long for the other students at the college to figure out that I’m a freshman, but I don’t want to look like a freshman.

If you’re not a girl I’m sure you’ll have no idea what I’m talking about, but don’t feel bad. My Dad doesn’t get it either. He says that it is just a ploy to get new clothes, he’s so suspicious. I guess that’s what makes him such a good cop.

My Mom’s title is Claims Adjuster, but where most people in this field have a business and insurance background, Mom’s background is Criminology. She doesn’t get the cases where some guy backed into a telephone pole and claimed that someone hit him from behind.

Her cases are a little more involved but they can be something as simple as a merchant burning down his store to collect the insurance to some really devious plots where someone steals their own property and then claims there was a break in and robbery. Later they are usually caught trying to sell the stolen merchandise at a flea market.

As I said, Daddy is a cop. To be more precise he’s a Detective Lieutenant with the Philadelphia Police Department assigned to homicide.

I took my time getting to Mom’s office since she had already told me that she wouldn’t be ready to go to lunch until at least 11:30. It was barely 10 o’clock when I arrived, I knew she wouldn’t be ready but this would give me a chance to talk to Mom’s secretary, Ellen, and then try getting hold of Patty and Mary and set up a meeting place for dinner.

The office building where Mom has her office is at the corner of Eleventh and Market Streets, not too far to walk, but you have to remember that this was August. It was hot and humid, and each city block is one tenth of a mile. I should have gotten off at the Eleventh Street sub-way station.

Anyway, I took the elevator to the fifth floor, down the hall to the right and opened the door to Mom’s office.

Ellen greeted me as I walked into the office, It can’t be eleven thirty already, Ellen said as I walked into the office.

No, I said, I’m just a little early.

Ellen had been working with my Mom for about six years. Daddy says that she’s a ‘wise guy’. (that’s not exactly what he said but I do want to maintain a PG rating on this book)

Well, there could be a problem, Ellen said, This is the second time this morning that your old lady’s been on the phone with the corporate office. This time it’s been over an hour. I would be willing to bet that your luncheon date, as well as your shopping trip, is in real jeopardy.

Two tidbits of information, just in case you ever meet my Mom: Ellen is the only person other than Daddy that ever got away with using the ‘old lady’ reference when talking about her and Daddy is the only person that gets to call her Maggie.

You’re probably right, I said, The corporate office very seldom calls just to say ‘Hello’. It usually means that they have a problem and Mom is being drafted into fixing it.

Fixing (and in most cases removing) problems for the corporate office is something that Mom does quite well. Of course Daddy says that she does it too well and that is why the corporate office is always calling upon her to get their butts out of trouble.

Again not exactly what Daddy said, his language is a bit more colorful than mine, although I’m sure you get the idea.

As I said my Mom is a Claims Adjuster for this big Company in New York City; she handles most of Pennsylvania and the Southern part of New Jersey.

Of course, sometimes good things come out of the corporate office’s dependence on Mom’s skills. A couple of years ago they sent Mom to Orlando, Florida, on a case and when she wrapped it up, they paid for my Dad and me to join her for a week - all expenses paid.

Last year Mom had to go to San Diego and work on a case. The official reason for her trip was to investigate a suspicious claim but what she found was a conspiracy within the San Diego office. Policies were being written on people that did not exist and on businesses that were nothing more than empty buildings.

All of this was being done by the general manager of the office and two of his department managers. After paying on the policies for a few months, sometimes even a couple of years, the non-existent person would die or the equally non-existent business would burn down or be struck by one of California’s earth quakes.

Insurance Agents can’t validate a claim that they wrote the policy for but since the three managers were also the claims adjusters, they could sign off a claim that one of the other managers wrote as being valid. And so all of the claims were paid and the money split between them. This got us two weeks in Hawaii.

I’m sure the fact that Mom uncovered a very elaborate insurance scam in Florida that saved the company twenty-five million dollars and the one in California uncovered over five hundred million dollars in bogus policies plus the recovery of over fifty million dollars from off shore accounts, may have played a small part in their generosity, but they were both great vacations.

Our conversation was interrupted when the phone rang, it was my Mom. Check for the file using the first name followed by the last name, Mom said.

Ellen was busy on her computer looking through some files trying to find information about this case, It’s not filed that way either, Ellen said, What about the policy number?

Mom read her the policy number and Ellen entered the number into her computer, Not there either, Ellen said.

Sorry, Mom said, I misread the number, the last number is a 6 not a 5.

Ellen entered the policy number again, The name of this file is Mark Gordon, Ellen said.

I could hear Mom repeat what Ellen just said, obviously telling the person in New York that the policy information wasn’t in the file, They’ll send it in an email, Mom told Ellen.

Hold on, Ellen yelled, Here it is. I got the policy and all of the attached reports, but why is it Mark Gordon’s file?

We’ll worry about that later, Mom said, Just print out all of the pages and please move everything into the proper file.

Ellen hung up the phone, I can’t believe these people, she yelled. No wonder they can’t fix their own problems, they can’t even manage to put the necessary information in the right files.

She went over to the printer and started separating the pages that were coming out and putting them into a three ring binder with an index tab in between each section. The whole time she was working on the file she was talking under her breath. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, but the few words I could understand, you probably wouldn’t want your preacher to hear you say. I’ll just say they were colorful.

While I was waiting to find out the fate of my luncheon date with my Mom, which I was almost positively would be canceled, I called Mary and Patty. I told them about the pending doom of my date with Mom and they volunteered to meet me in town and try to console me.

She’s off the phone, Ellen said,