Murder at Charing Cross

By Jack Langley M.D.

Jonas Upton is the son of a wealthy New York family. Devastated by the death of his wife Valerie to cancer after only five years of marriage, he moves to the small town of Clearwater, Wisconsin where he poses as Jonas Cabot.

His apartment building, Charing Cross, is a renovated old tire company plant. He immediately is plagued by a voice during the night repeating "S.A.M." and "S.A.M. murdered me". He investigates the history of murders in the old building and finds only one that has remained unsolved: Jim Henderson, brother of Clearwater police detective Robert Henderson, who continues after twenty years to look for a resolution to the unsolved mystery.

Jonas suggests a possible connection to his voices and the Henderson murder. In doing so, he is forced to reveal his true identity, first to the police and eventually to his employer and new girlfriend and later wife, Libby Harding.

When his father becomes terminally ill, the couple returns to New York. He is followed there by "S.A.M.". After his father's death, he is forced to confront his mother in court for control of his father's company. Though he wins, his plans change dramatically after her murder.

Jonas and Libby, now married, return to Clearwater as partners in the computer software business, CompuWild, where the mystery unfolds and is eventually resolved with a shocking and unexpected conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 26, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595826780

Jack Langley M.D.

John Richard Langley a.k.a. Jack Langley, M.D. was born in Meriden, Connecticut. Raised in a military family, he has lived in numerous parts of the country. He was educated at The University of South Carolina (A.B. English) and the Medical University of South Carolina (M.D.). Following general surgery residency (Norfolk, Virginia) and vascular surgery fellowship (Kansas City, Kansas) he entered private practice in North Carolina. He now resides in Cumming, Georgia and operates Greater Atlanta Vein Clinic, P.C. in Alpharetta, Georgia and does Locum Tenens surgery. He is currently licensed in twelve states. He is married to the former Janet Schmidt of Oconto Falls, Wisconsin. They have three children: Maria, of Flowery Branch, Georgia; John Rudolph (Rudy) of Greensboro, North Carolina and Tiffany of Canton, Georgia. His hobbies include fiction writing, poetry and travel.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The minute he entered the apartment, a strange sensation overpowered him. Its implication wasn’t clear. He tried to shrug it off, but the feeling kept returning, especially at night.

It’s just this apartment: the extra high ceilings and being here all alone, he thought to himself.

And there was the haunting whistle of the trains in the distance as they rattled by all too often during the night.

As he reached to his side, once again he found her not there.

How could she leave me like that? He found himself almost crying into his pillow, much as he had done for the first six months after he had lost her.

Of course it wasn’t her fault…he knew that. She didn’t want to go early, but cancer is funny that way. It observes no rules, accepts no pleas, makes no bargains. It is exceptionally democratic. It insinuates itself on kings and paupers alike.

Not to mention beloved wives.

I’m sure in time I’ll get used to this he thought, as he waved his arms at the expanse of open space that had been his home for just the past ten days.

I have to!

But in his heart he knew that life without her could never be the same again.

CHAPTER ONE

Life in the world of Jonas Upton had been fast and furious. He had been the only child born to financial genius Mark Upton and his wife, Barbara. Jonas had been raised with all the appurtenances that wealth could provide. And he had been blessed with a handsome phy-sique…the result of the blending of the finest genes gleaned from maternal and paternal sources.

Barbara Cabot Upton, his mother, had been raised in the Hamptons, the gold coast of New York’s Long Island aristocracy. Her family descended from the 15th century English explorers, John and Sebastian Cabot. Of more recent import, they were related to the Cabot Lodges of Massachusetts.

Mark and Barbara had met at Columbia University where she had pursued a degree in music while he had majored in economics. Following his earning a Master’s degree in business administration, he enrolled in Columbia Law School where he graduated first in his class.

The couple had married between his first and second year in law school, and Jonas had been born two months before graduation. Mark had immediately been offered a position at one of New York’s most prestigious legal houses where he stayed for three years.

But ambition drove him to found his own firm…not in law, but in internet stock trading. Mark had watched the birth of the internet with interest, and along with visionaries like Bill Gates, Charles Schwab and others had foreseen its applicability to many aspects of business.

He was to become the first of the giants of internet stock trading with his company, JonasStock.com, aptly named for his son, envisioning the day when Jonas would join him in the family business and eventually take over the reigns of the company when his time came to retire.

But that day never came.

Despite his law degree, Mark led the company into financial ruin with some shady decisions at a time when the company was reeling from problems that had begun with the severe recessions that had plagued several successive administrations in Washington…and then was followed by the events of September 11, 2001 that dealt a death blow to many a floundering company.

Mark had been lucky to escape legal consequences. Fortunately, he and Barbara each had some money positioned for just such a scenario, allowing Jonas to be able to complete his education and establish a business of his own.

*     *     *     *

Jonas met his one true love while vacationing along Georgia’s Gold Coast, on St. Simon’s Island. Being the playboy that he was, he knew that to think at a glance that the beauty he had just met would one day be his wife was crazy…totally.

But Valerie Whitney was every man’s vision of the perfect woman with a mane of hair that rivaled Farrah Fawcett’s, and a body as perfectly proportioned as Catherine Zeta-Jones.

The words emanating from her mouth projected a magical tone to all that heard her speak. And the glitter from her eyes fell like stardust on all that gazed her way.

Feeling utterly confident of his choice, Jonas proposed marriage a month after they met. Valerie readily accepted, imagining what a great life it was bound to be with this handsome captain of industry, for Jonas already had established his own company, Upton, Inc., that manufactured computer software. He wanted none of the potential legal hassles with stock trading that had caused his father’s first company its untimely demise.

But fate would be unkind to them. After only two short years of marriage, Valerie discovered a small lump in her left breast. The cancer had already spread beyond her regional lymph nodes. Despite the advances of modern medicine, especially in the fields of radiation therapy and chemotherapy, the combination therapies that followed her surgery had only been marginally effective.

And as they approached their fifth wedding anniversary, it appeared that it would also be their last. Valerie died one day after their anniversary celebration, held in the master bedroom of their home since she was too weak to go anywhere in her terminal condition.

It was a heart wrenching several weeks that followed the funeral. Jonas was like a lamb separated from its mother. He didn’t know which way to turn or who to turn to in his hour of greatest need. Though his parents offered their help, he spurned them. He knew that only time, not talk, could heal his wounds.

He decided that without her, and with no children to concern him, he wanted to get away from the circumstances that he would forever associate with her.

He chose to sell Upton, Inc. and relocate to a small town in mid-America where he could bask in anonymity and be just a face in the crowd.

Clearwater, Wisconsin was that town.

CHAPTER TWO

The move to Clearwater was not entirely a chance event. He knew that there was a computer software manufacturing company there. To avoid the risk of someone recognizing his name, he chose to use his mother’s maiden name, Cabot.

Hence, Jonas Cabot was born.

Approximating fifty-thousand population, Clearwater was a respectable sized community for the upper mid-west north of Chicago. It had humble beginnings in the eighteenth century when French fur trappers first settled along the banks of the LeCroix River in villages once inhabited by various tribes such as the Sioux, the Ojibwa and other local smaller nations.

Following its becoming a part of the English holdings in America after the defeat of France in the French and Indian wars, things stayed unchanged for several decades. But with the advent of westward expansion after the Civil War, the Indians were driven from their lands onto reservations and cities began to spring up as the Industrial Revolution spawned the birth of many industries.

The lands that surrounded Clearwater were fertile with trees of multiple varieties necessary as raw material for numerous manufacturing plants.

*     *     *     *

Plants making a variety of products had sprung up along the nation’s rivers since running water could turn wheels for a variety of uses and later turbines to produce electricity.

Clearwater had gone through the various steps in the Industrial Revolution. Its earliest major product was milled grain. But with the harnessing of power from the LeCroix River and its ready conversion to electric power toward the end of the nineteenth century, the city soon found itself the home of farm implement manufacturing and later rubber tire processing plants.

Roads were built at a record pace in the early decades of the twentieth century as cars and later trucks and heavy duty equipment rolled off the assembly lines in Detroit and other centers of automobile manufacturing, many located in the mid-West.

Roads placed Clearwater on a path between the large cities along the Great Lakes and the emerging industrial giant cities of the upper mid-west such as Minneapolis, St Paul and Duluth in Minnesota as well as the quad-cities at the junction of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota.

*     *     *     *

But just as they had been born of necessity or innovation, companies began to leave for various other reasons. The world toward the latter half of the twentieth century became more complex as product needs changed. Labor and wage disputes forced many companies to relocate to more tax friendly communities…or countries. And the takeover of businesses by foreign conglomerates and the influx of foreign competitors caused the complete overhaul of many communities. Eventually, most of the relocated or defunct companies were replaced by industries completely unknown at the time of their inception.

Thanks to several visionary civic leaders, Clearwater had made a fairly painless transition to become a leading site for communications and technology industries due to a well educated work force…many a product of Clearwater College, the local branch of the University of Wisconsin system, and excellent highway, rail and airline availability.

The city library had a special room dedicated to the commemoration of the early city fathers who recognized the importance of each of these modalities to the future of the city and to the LeCroix Valley of which Clearwater was the leading city of commerce.

*     *     *     *

The first time he heard the blood curdling sound it both startled and frightened him…having awakened him from a deep sleep.

As he surveyed the room, it had become readily apparent that everything was in its normal place. There was no obvious discernible source for the noise. He had gotten out of bed and inspected the entire premises before finally concluding that it had all been a bad nightmare.

Dreams…nightmares…had become all too frequent uninvited guests invading his sleep. Before her death, dreams were rare…but always of pleasant things.

Each successive time he heard the sound…or imagined that he heard it…he tried to envision its source.

Was it noise coming from another apartment, transmitted through the heating and air conditioning ducts?

Was someone repeatedly trying to kill another individual right here in his own apartment building?

Or…was it just his imagination working overtime…parroting the desperate feelings he harbored inside ever since losing his beloved Valerie?

Perhaps time would tell. But for now, he wished that whatever the source it would go away and help assuage his misery.

*     *     *     *

He read the job listings and thought that the position available in the sales and marketing department would suit him perfectly. Compu-Wild, a computer software manufacturing company, was looking for someone with experience in sales and enough technical know how to convince potential clients to buy their product.

Jonas hadn’t quite figured out how he was going to handle the usual need for references yet, but generally his good looks, affable personality and knowledge of his field got him past such hurdles. He would have to temper his experience at being the boss for fear that it might tip his hand concerning his former life. Playing second fiddle to someone generally younger and less experienced wouldn’t be easy, but for sanity’s sake he had to try. He knew he had to put his former life in a rearview perspective if he was to going to start anew.

He could never forget Valerie, but he knew that she would want him to move on with his life. During her final months she had told him that she fully expected him to remarry and have the family they would never have.

She had only one request: that if Jonas ever became the father of a girl, he would name her Emily Valerie Whitney Upton, after Valerie’s mother who was long deceased.

If there was to be a second wife for Jonas in his future, Emily Valerie Whitney Cabot would have to do.

CHAPTER THREE

Hi, I’m Jonas Cabot and I’m here to apply for the sales and marketing position you have advertised.

He wore his best smile and thrust out his hand with the biggest burst of enthusiasm he had felt in almost a year.

Please, come in and have a seat.

Matthew Wilder was senior vice president of CompuWild, a fast growing player in the computer software business. The name was an amalgam of the word computer and a portion of his last name. Matthew’s father, Orson Wilder, had founded the company only a year before his premature death at age forty-eight.

Matthew’s older brother, Orson Wilder, Jr., was the current CEO.

Jonas, I’m Matthew Wilder. After exchanging a few pleasantries, he wasted no time getting down to business.

Please tell me why you want this job and how you think you would be an asset to our company.

Jonas didn’t want to be maudlin by launching into the circumstances of his wife’s death and his motives for moving to a relatively obscure location like Clearwater.

"I came here from the East Coast with hopes of securing a position with your company. I read of your business’ success in several of the trade periodicals and on the internet.

I’ve always been good at software development and program-ming…and people tell me I’m a natural at selling things, myself included…so I thought I might be just what you are looking for.

Besides, I’m unattached, so traveling doesn’t bother me…assuming the job calls for that?"

"Indeed it does. We’re about to launch into foreign markets. So whoever we select for the position will be traveling to Europe and the Far East with great regularity.

Have you traveled outside the country?"

He gave a measured response.

I’ve been to Rome and Paris once each. While that was true, so would have been the addition of at least fifty other excursions to Europe, Scandinavia and Southeast Asia.

How about the U.S.?

This is my first trip to Wisconsin. I’ve traveled most of the East Coast.

Again, the answer was true, but incomplete.

Matthew was quick to decide when he liked a person. He tended to measure them by their enthusiasm and confidence on the first encounter as well as product knowledge…and he was rarely wrong. After a few pointed questions concerning current software applications, he turned to Jonas.

"How would you like to stay for lunch? There are some people I’d like you to meet. In the meantime, I can get my personal assistant to show you around the facility.

That would be great. I had set aside the whole day just in case you needed me to stay.

Then it’s all set.

He stepped into his outer office.

When he returned, a beautiful blond was by his side.

Jonas, I’d like you to meet Elizabeth Harding. She keeps my day organized for me. She’ll be taking you around the plant. I’ll catch up with you again at lunch in our executive dining room.

My pleasure, Jonas said, as he extended his hand toward Ms. Harding.

Please, call me Libby.

*     *     *     *

This year it was raining…just like the day twenty years earlier when the police knocked on her door…and changed her whole life.

Helen was only thirty then. She and Jim had been married for a little over five years and there had been two babies born during the short interval that they were together.

The children, Ben and Alicia, were grown now and would soon be starting their own families.

Helen prayed daily that what had befallen her life…albeit theirs to a lesser degree…would never happen to them.

Murder is something that happens to other people, not to your husband. That ring of the doorbell by the police is something you see on TV, only there the victims are actors who get up and go home when the filming is through.

Murder shouldn’t happen to a productive person like Jim. He had graduated from college only two years earlier; worked an evening job while in college to help support his burgeoning family, and he had agreed to help his former employer on occasion…as he was doing the evening the killer came into the convenience store and presumably demanded cash.

Jim, unarmed, was reaching under the counter for the cash box when he had been gunned down in cold blood. The autopsy later showed that he had died instantly from a single shot to the chest that had punctured his aorta. The security tapes had recorded his death.

The shooter, out