The Lavender Lane Lothario, page 14
“How did he manage to disappear from work every Wednesday afternoon?” Des asked.
“He was always booked solid on Saturday mornings. That’s when homeowners are available to sit down and discuss whatever permits they’re seeking. He’d put in a half-day on Saturday and take off early on Wednesday.”
“And how did…?”
“I told Gaylord I was there for a spa treatment and an evening yoga class.”
“How long had you and Hubie been seeing each other?”
“About three months.”
“You seem like an unlikely couple, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“I don’t mind. Perhaps we were, on a highly superficial level. Yet I adored that man. And he called me each and every morning just to tell me how much he adored me. Can you imagine that? He was not what I’d call an accomplished bed partner. But that didn’t matter to me. He was genuine. And we were friends. I liked Hubie. He was easy to talk to, and interested in what I had to say. Gaylord isn’t. He just nods and grunts and doesn’t remember a thing. Hubie remembered every single word. I’m terribly sad that he’s gone, especially in such a horrific fashion. Can you tell me if, was he still alive when the fire…?”
“Those details are part of an ongoing criminal investigation,” Des said. “I’m afraid we can’t discuss them.”
“I understand. I was just hoping that he didn’t suffer.”
“We don’t believe he did.”
“I’m glad of that, because he was extremely sensitive to the touch. And so ticklish. The most ticklish man I’ve ever known.”
Des decided that this was not something she’d ever needed to know. She gazed out the window at the lady’s view of the river. Watched a Boston-bound Acela cross the river on the stone railroad bridge. Watched a hawk soar over the blue water, wafting on a current of wind. It seemed so idyllic and perfect here in Loretta Beckwith Holland’s private yoga studio. And yet, as Des had learned ever since she came to work in Dorset, absolutely nothing was what it seemed to be. “You said that you and Hubie were happy together. Yet you were planning to break it off with him, weren’t you?”
Loretta’s blue eyes narrowed slightly. “Mitch told you about our little conversation, I gather.”
“Yes, he did.”
“He’s easy to talk to himself.”
“Yes, he is.”
She took a deep breath in, exhaling slowly. “It’s true, I’d decided I had to end it with him. I had to. Gaylord was starting to act suspicious.”
“In what way?”
“Oh, asking me for details about Pure’s yoga studio. What my teachers’ names were. How many people were in my class. Whether I was taking hatha yoga or ashtanga or what have you. Gaylord’s no fool, Des. And he can be very possessive, like I said.”
“You also said he has a temper.”
“He does,” Loretta acknowledged. “But I wasn’t suggesting he’d do anything to Hubie. Gaylord isn’t the violent type. Kindly put that out of your heads.”
Des studied Loretta, fairly certain that she’d just made sure to put it into their heads. “May I ask how it started between you and Hubie?”
“He stopped by the Fellowship Center one morning,” she recalled, a wistful smile creasing her smooth face. “Told me that we needed to discuss our wheelchair access to the Food Pantry. When we stepped outside he confessed that he actually wanted to know how I felt about Gaylord’s project.”
“Why’d he care about how you felt?” Yolie asked.
“I’m a Beckwith, Lieutenant. We’re one of the three families that settled Dorset back in the 1600s. Our opinion, my opinion, is something that a town employee like Hubie takes seriously when he’s making a critical decision about the future of the Historic District. Hubie was genuinely conflicted about Gaylord’s project.”
Des’s left foot had fallen asleep. She shifted the cross of her legs and said, “What did you tell him?”
“That I thought it was a horrible idea for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that one of the homes was intended for Gaylord’s mistress. You ladies should have seen the look of disbelief on Hubie’s face. It was so sweet. He said, ‘Gaylord is cheating on you?’ I said, ‘It happens, Hubie.’ He said, ‘But it shouldn’t happen to you, Loretta.’ I said, ‘Why not?’ He said, “Because you’re the most beautiful, wonderful woman I’ve ever known.’ I said, ‘Why, Hubie, are you making a pass at me?’ He got terribly red-faced and said, ‘Why, no, never.’ And I said, ‘That’s too bad, because if you’d asked me to have lunch with you I would have said yes.’ And so he did. Don’t ask me why I coaxed him into taking me to lunch. Although I suppose…” Loretta closed her eyes and sat there that way for a moment. Des was struck again by how silent it was in this big house on the hill. Too silent. If she lived here she would start to hear voices. Then the lady opened her eyes and said, “I suppose I needed a sympathetic ear. Hubie provided me with one. We were in bed together one week later.”
“Do you know if Mr. Swope was seeing anyone else?” Yolie asked her.
“Another woman, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Why on earth would you ask me that? Hubie’s love for me was genuine. He was genuine. He wasn’t at all like Gaylord, I assure you.”
“Your husband told us he was at his Lions Club meeting when the fire broke out. He and Sherm Gant both.”
“That’s what he told me, too. But please don’t ask me to verify it, Lieutenant, because I can’t. I wasn’t with him.”
“Where were you yesterday between, say, five and six P.M.?”
She mulled it over, her lower lip fastened between her perfect white teeth. “I stopped off at the Youth Services Bureau after yoga and stayed there for about an hour. Then I came home. It was about four o’clock by then. Let’s see, I went upstairs. I spent some time in the sauna.…”
“You have your own sauna?”
“Right off the master suite. It’s wonderfully detoxifying. Would you like to see it, Lieutenant?”
“Naw, I’m good. What’d you do after that?”
“I stretched out and took a nap on the sun porch until five or so, then poured myself a glass of Merlot and went to work on my laptop at the kitchen table. I’m supposed to be writing a thousand-word entry about our Meals on Wheels program for the town’s annual report. I hate writing. My thoughts get all bottled up and I get so frustrated and flustered. I’m just terrible at it. I almost asked Mitch if he had any advice, but I didn’t want him to think I’m an airhead. I find smart men so intimidating.” Loretta turned her gaze on Des. “Do you find Mitch intimidating?”
Des showed the lady her smile. “At times.”
“He’s a good man, Des. You should hold on to him.”
“I intend to. You were working on your laptop at the kitchen table…”
“Yes. That’s where I was when Gaylord called and told me there was an awful fire raging at The Pit. I didn’t realize that anyone had died in the fire. Not until he got home later and told me that someone had been found and you were pretty certain it was … that it was Hubie.” Loretta’s blue eyes shined at them. “I’m going to miss that sweet little man,” she confessed softly. “I adored him, you know. I truly did.”
* * *
“Is it my imagination or did that wonderfully detoxified bitch just throw her own husband under the bus?”
“Do you mean the part when she went out of her way twice to tell us that he has a temper?” Des replied, easing her Crown Vic down the steep driveway to Elmer’s Ferry Road. “Or the part when she told us she couldn’t vouch for where he was when The Pit went up in flames? Because the answer is no, that wasn’t your imagination.”
“Why do you think she did that?” Yolie wondered.
“Wild guess? Loretta divorced John Friday because Gaylord convinced her that she was the great love of his life. Now he’s getting it on with a younger woman. He’s even building her a damned love nest, or trying to. Loretta is one proud lady. She let herself get royally played by Gaylord. She doesn’t strike me as the type to sit still for that. She’s the type who gets even—by working on Hubie to block Gaylord’s project. I’m sure she was all kinds of persuasive once she got naked with him.” Des took Elmer’s Ferry Road to Eight Mile River Road and started back through the lush green countryside toward town. “Although I do have to admit she came across as genuinely fond of Hubie.”
“Are you buying that she doesn’t know about his other girlfriends?”
“I am. That’s one proud lady, like I said. Not in a million years would it occur to her that little Hubie Swope would feel the need for anyone else.”
“But what if she found out the real deal about him? She has no alibi for yesterday between five and six P.M., in case you didn’t notice.”
“Oh, I noticed.”
The cube vans were gone from Sherm Gant’s cottage. The Fire and Explosions techies had moved on. But Sheila Enman was still out in the yard of her red mill house hand-raking her flower beds.
“Don’t that old lady ever get tired?”
“Never. That would be admitting that she’s human.”
“I don’t understand these people.”
“They take some getting used to. When I first started out here I felt like I’d moved to a foreign country. I had to learn new customs, new ways of communicating, new everything. It wasn’t easy. Especially the smiling part. I swear, by the end of the day my face would ache.”
“What about now? Is Dorset starting to feel like home?”
“Dorset will never feel like home.”
Yolie’s cell rang. She glanced down at it and took the call. “What you got, Sergeant…? Uh-huh.… Okay, good. Hold them at Town Hall. What time does Inez clock out…? Perfect. We’ll see you then.” She rang off and said, “Toni found Petey Neto and Darla Romine at Darla’s crappy apartment in Cardiff smoking weed and watching season two of Game of Thrones. Inez gets off work at the Big Y in about an hour.” Yolie’s cell rang again. She took this call, too. “What’s up, Lieutenant Latham…? No, no. I appreciate you checking in. I was going to call you.… Uh-huh.…”
Now Des’s cell rang. She glanced at the screen and felt her stomach tighten right away. Pulled onto the shoulder of Route 156, got out, and took the call. “What can I do for you, Daddy?”
“I hear that you’re in the middle of a situation down there,” he said in that hard-edged voice she knew so well.
“You hear right. I’m afraid I don’t have anything solid to report yet.”
“Perfectly okay, Desiree. That’s not why I’m calling. I was wondering if I could take you to lunch tomorrow.”
“Lunch?” Des stood there on the country roadside trying to remember the last time her father had asked her to lunch. She couldn’t. He didn’t do lunch. All he ever did was work. He never socialized. In fact, Des wasn’t sure he even had any friends. Just colleagues, all of whom were terrified of him. “Lunch would be great. Absolutely. What’s this about?”
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he replied, sounding uncomfortable.
Her pulse started racing. “Daddy, if this has something to do with your heart I want to know about it right goddamned now.”
“It’s not about my heart. And watch your language, young lady.”
So it was job related. “What have you heard?”
“Like I said, we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Fine.” She rang off and got back in the car.
Yolie was done with her own call. “Everything good?”
“My father wants to have lunch with me.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Trust me, it won’t be.” Des eased the Crown Vic off of the shoulder and back onto the road. “Did Latham have any news we can use?”
“Not exactly. Waldo Pepper couldn’t find any tangible trace evidence in Sherm’s house or truck linking him to the fire. Leland’s condo and car are clean, too. Zimmer’s still looking for Sid, Sherm Gant’s alleged kitchen appliance dealer. That phone number Sherm gave us for him was a burn phone.”
“Whoa, there’s a surprise.” They rode in silence for moment, Des still wondering what the Deacon wanted, before she said, “Do you think you could stand to swing by Hubie’s house on Lavender Lane again for a quick second?”
“I’m cool with it as long as you don’t make me go back inside.” Yolie peered across the seat at her. “Why, what’s the deal?”
“A little something’s been gnawing at me.”
* * *
“Can we talk some more?”
“Sure thing, Des.” Shannon Burns smiled wearily as she stood there in her front doorway. “Come on in. But puh-leeze ignore the mess, okay? I just can’t keep up these days.”
Loretta’s mansion had been so spotless and silent that it seemed devoid of life. Shannon’s cramped little house next door to Hubie’s was anything but. The smell of soiled diapers, dirty socks, cat piss, and fried chicken assaulted Des’s nostrils right away, and a beagle started barking at her when she walked in, and it wouldn’t stop. There was a playpen in the middle of the living room, currently unoccupied. The sofa was occupied by three cats that were dozing on a ratty old blanket. The coffee table was heaped with dirty dishes and empty beer bottles. Four different pairs of shoes were scattered on the floor under the coffee table. A television was blaring from somewhere.
“Hush, Normie, you’ll wake T.J.,” Shannon cautioned the beagle. “I just put him down for his nap,” she explained to Des. “I was getting dinner started while I had a chance. Come on in the kitchen, okay?”
Shannon was browning chicken thighs in a cast-iron skillet. Dr. Oz was holding forth about thyroid health on the TV. Shannon flicked it off and cleared a place at the cluttered kitchen table for Des to sit, then went over to the stove and moved the thighs around with a pair of tongs. Through the kitchen window, Des could see Yolie standing in Hubie’s driveway talking to her crime-scene techies.
“Shannon, I thought maybe we could do a retake, as my friend Mitch likes to say.”
“Do a what?”
“You weren’t totally honest with me this morning about Hubie. You said he was a homebody who hardly ever went out.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Well, no. We’re aware that Hubie had several women friends whom he met on a regular basis. So let’s try again, okay?”
Shannon looked at her uneasily before she turned off the chicken. Then she wiped her hands on a towel and sat down across the table from Des. Normie promptly flopped over on his back at Shannon’s feet. She leaned over and patted the beagle’s belly. “Hubie was a good neighbor. He made me that rocking chair, like I told you. And he took such a shine to T.J. He’d wanted kids of his own, I guess. He and Joanie never had any. And T.J.’s such a cutie. Our little blessing, we call him. We had such a difficult time conceiving. I’d just about given up hope, to be honest. Wasn’t about me. My doctor said I was a baby factory in waiting. It was Tommy. But he refused to go see a fertility specialist. You know how men are.”
“I know.”
“We were so thrilled when we were finally successful. I’d like to try again. I come from a big family. I want a whole mess of kids.”
“You were saying about Hubie…?”
Shannon lowered her eyes. “I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. Or spread rumors. That seems wrong to me.”
“I understand how you feel. But we’re conducting a murder investigation.”
“I know, but it still doesn’t sit right with me. If I tell you something can we keep it between us?”
“I won’t spread it around town. You have my word on that.”
Shannon gave Normie a final pat and sat back up, folding her hands on the table before her. “Tommy was always accusing me of trying to make some kind of a soap opera out of Hubie’s life. But this was no soap opera. This was real. I’m up and down all night, every night with T.J., okay? Plus Tommy’s on emergency call for Ballek’s if somebody’s furnace seizes up in the middle of the night or whatever. I’m up a lot, is what I’m trying to say. And I saw what I saw outside that window with my own two eyes.”
Des leaned forward across the table. “What did you see, Shannon?”
“Hubie coming and going in the night. It was pretty danged hard to believe at first, what with him being so quiet and kind of nerdy, you know? But that man made the rounds, let me tell you. I took to calling him the Lavender Lane Lothario. Fridays and Saturdays he’d stay out until just before dawn. Pull his car into the garage with his headlights turned off so people wouldn’t see him. But I saw him. And I saw him when he prowled the village on foot.”
“I’m sorry, he what?”
“You heard me. That little man was just like a tomcat making his rounds, I swear. He’d head out after midnight and go strolling down the lane toward Dorset Street. Always wore dark clothing so he wouldn’t be real visible. And he always made it back home by about five in the morning.”
“How often did he do this night prowling of his?”
“Two nights a week, maybe three. I’m not sure. The only night I’m positive he stayed home was Sunday. He had to sleep sometime, right?” Shannon went back to the stove and turned the burner back on under the chicken. “If you talk to Tommy about this he’ll tell you I’m full of bull. He thinks Hubie was just hoofing it over to Town Hall to get in some extra work at the office.”
“Maybe Tommy’s right.”
“Oh, yeah? Then explain this to me: If Hubie was going to Town Hall why did he sneak around so late? Why didn’t he walk over there after dinner and come home to bed at a decent hour?”
Des stood up from the table, squaring her big hat on her head. “I can’t explain that, Shannon. But I do appreciate you telling me about it.”
Shannon swallowed uncomfortably, her eyes avoiding Des’s. “I’m sorry I held out on you this morning. That was wrong. I felt super bad about it.”
