The Lavender Lane Lothario, page 21
“Well, he wasn’t conscious,” Mary Ellen said. “I can assure you he felt no pain.”
“Would it bother you if he had?”
“Of course. I loved him.”
“What’d you do after you bashed his head in?” Yolie asked her.
“I squirted the lighter fluid all over him and then those picnic tables that were stacked in the middle of the room. Then I went to the door, lit a match, and tossed it inside. Got in my car and drove my way back to Old Shore Road. I didn’t make a left turn back toward town because I didn’t want to drive past the Citgo. Someone might see me. So I made a right toward South Dorset and kept on going for a couple of miles until I reached that park they have there with the basketball courts and baseball fields. It was getting dark by then. The park was completely deserted. I pulled into the parking lot and changed my clothes in the car. I thought that the ones I’d been wearing might smell of lighter fluid. I wrapped them around the empty bottle of the lighter fluid and tossed them into the woods out behind the baseball field. Then I drove home. I got there before Ward made it home from the library. Washed my hands and face, and dabbed a bit of perfume on my neck just in case my hair smelled. Dinner was already taken care of. I’d started it in the slow cooker that morning.”
“What did you make?” Mitch asked her.
“A brisket. Well, sauerbraten, really. It’s my mother’s recipe.”
“I find that so hard to imagine.”
“Making sauerbraten in a slow cooker? Why, it’s as easy as—”
“No, that you had a mother.”
“Who is this guy?” Latham demanded. “And why are words coming out of his mouth?”
Des elbowed him in the ribs again. Even harder.
“We were just sitting down to eat it,” Mary Ellen went on, “when Sherm called to tell us what had happened. We drove straight to Pitcairn Avenue. And there you have it. That’s the whole story.”
“I know I’m just a dumb little girl from Glastonbury,” Toni said. “But I’m totally confused about something, especially because you sound like you were being so careful and thorough. Mr. Swope’s laptop and cell were locked in his car right outside of The Pit. You knew he’d taken photos of you. You had to know we’d find those photos eventually. Yet you left his devices behind.”
“That’s a really good point,” Zimmer said, nodding his buzz-cut head.
“If you’d snatched his car keys from his pants you could have taken the devices with you and destroyed them,” Toni said. “Didn’t that occur to you?”
“Not until I was halfway home,” Mary Ellen confessed with a sigh of regret. “By which time it was too late to go back. You’re absolutely right. I should have taken them, but I was in such a hurry to get out of there that I panicked a little. Once the thought did occur to me it distressed me greatly because, as you say, it was only a matter of time before you people found my pictures.”
“Which explains why you just broke in here,” Latham said, scratching his head.
“What was Plan B?” Yolie asked her. “If you weren’t able to grab the laptop and cell, I mean. What then?”
“Admit to you that Hubie and I had been lovers. How could I not? But that didn’t necessarily mean I killed him and burned down The Pit, did it? Every sign pointed toward Sherm, after all. It was Sherm who was at war with Hubie over the damned place. It was Sherm who was flat broke and staring at foreclosure if Hubie didn’t let him reopen it. I was fairly certain that you’d think Sherm was responsible.”
“But you played it cagey anyway, didn’t you?” Des said. “You started muddying the waters yesterday morning when you checked up on Mitch by tossing out the names of those Casserole Courters whom Hubie might have gotten mixed up with, knowing that Mitch would mention them to me and that we’d have to give a good, hard look at them. You didn’t dare mention Nadine Ambinder because there was a chance Nadine knew all about you and Hubie. He might have told her. But you did mention Nancy Franklin, even though Nancy and Hubie were never anything more than friends. You also mentioned Inez Neto.”
“As if Hubie would ever get mixed up with that cheap bimbo,” Mary Ellen said, her face hardening.
The room fell into strained silence. Mitch was waiting for Des to tell her that Hubie had, in fact, been boinking Inez, not to mention Bitsy, Loretta, and possibly Shannon Burns. But Des kept quiet about it. So did Yolie.
“We considered every possibility,” Des went on. “We looked good and hard at Sherm and Leland and Gaylord. We talked to Leland’s fiancée, Brianna, who told us she’d made the mistake of getting involved with an older man a while back. It did occur to me that Hubie might have been that older man, but we didn’t find any pictures of Brianna on his computer. We talked to Inez and Inez’s son, Petey, and Petey’s delightful girlfriend, Darla. We talked to Shannon, whose husband, Tommy, comes and goes at all hours in his Ballek Oil service truck, which is chock full of flammable liquids. We talked to Nadine, who thought that she was going to start a family with Hubie. Two kids, maybe three.”
“She was quite mistaken about that,” Mary Ellen stated emphatically. “Hubie hated children. He complained about them to me all of the time.”
“We’ve run ourselves ragged these past twenty-four hours, Mary Ellen, and yet here we are with you,” Des concluded. “It all comes back to you.”
“Only because your boyfriend is a big, fat liar,” she said bitterly.
“He’s not a liar and he’s not fat. He’s thick.”
Mary Ellen glowered across the table at him. “You are one conniving bastard, Mitch Berger. If I ever get my hands on you…”
“Never going to happen,” Yolie informed her coolly. “Everything you’re telling us indicates that Hubie’s death was the result of a premeditated assault with intent to kill. We call that first-degree murder. You won’t set foot outside the walls of a prison for the rest of your life.”
“I know that,” she acknowledged. “But I did what needed doing. I took care of Hubie Swope for what he did to me. And I gave Leland a chance at a better life. The boy’s free of that place now.”
“Not necessarily,” Latham said. “If we determine that the arson was the result of a criminal act by a third party—that would be you—then Middlebury Mutual will be obligated to make good on your brother’s rebuilding costs. I’m afraid you didn’t accomplish a thing in that regard.”
“All you did was murder your boyfriend,” Des chimed in, nodding.
Which pretty much lowered the curtain on Mary Ellen’s show of defiance. She crumpled right before their eyes. “H-He promised he was going to m-marry me,” she sobbed, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. “Not Nadine. Me.”
“He’s not going to marry either one of you now. You made sure of that.” Yolie reached over and flicked off the microcassette recorder. “Sergeant, would you please ask those two troopers who’re out in the hallway to escort Mrs. Tatum to the Troop F barracks?”
“Right, Loo,” Toni said, gathering up Hubie’s bagged laptop and cell.
“Would you like us to call Ward for you?” Des asked Mary Ellen.
She looked at Des blankly. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”
“No reason. Just thought I’d ask.”
Dorset’s Town Nurse had nothing more to say about that or anything else. She reached for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes, then got up from the table and went quietly out the door with Toni.
The rest of them remained at the conference table.
“There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Latham told Yolie, his brow furrowing. “How did it come about that she attempted to break in here, did break in here, while you, Sergeant Tedone, and Master Sergeant Mitry were all sitting here—with the door locked?”
“She was hoping to destroy the victim’s laptop and cell,” Yolie answered.
“But why did she think they were locked in here?”
“Sometimes you get lucky. We got lucky.”
“Is that what you call it?” Latham studied Mitch with intense curiosity for a moment before he turned back to Yolie and said, “Okay, we’ll call it lucky and leave it at that.” He got to his feet with a tired groan. “Ladies, it was a pleasure working with you. Or at least I think it was. I’m still not sure I understand what in the hell just happened here.”
Yolie raised her chin at him. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“Nope. Not as far as I’m concerned. But let’s touch base before we file our paperwork, okay? I want to make sure we’re all on the same page.”
“We will be, Lieutenant,” Yolie promised him.
“Make it ‘Jocko,’ why don’t you?”
“Fair enough. Catch you on the flip side, Jocko.”
“C’mon, Zim, let’s hit the road before it hits us.”
“Right, boss.”
Latham and Zimmer went trudging through the doorway of the auxiliary conference room and out into the rainy night.
Yolie started out of the room herself, cell in hand. “It’s been real, Miss Thing,” she said, flashing a grin at Des.
Des grinned back at her. “Yes, it has.”
“Mitch, take care of my girl, hear? Or you’ll have me to answer to.”
“Now I’m afraid.”
“Good. Be afraid,” she barked at him. Then she left them there at the conference table.
A trooper with an evidence bag came in and retrieved Mary Ellen’s pry bar from the table. After that, Mitch and Des were alone in the room.
“Why didn’t you tell Mary Ellen about Hubie’s other women?”
“Didn’t have the heart to,” Des confessed. “Yolie didn’t, either. We’re a pair of marshmallows, I guess. No matter. She’ll find out about them before long.” Des studied him with those pale green eyes of hers. “Are you okay?”
“I guess so,” he answered quietly.
“No, you’re not. What is it, baby?”
“I just think this whole thing’s kind of sad, that’s all.”
“You think I don’t?”
“I think I don’t know how you do this, day in and day out.”
“It’s a snap. I stay up half the night at my easel drawing portraits of dead people. I run ten miles a day. I rescue feral kittens. And I’ve got you, remember?” She squared her big hat on her head and said, “I have to head over to the barracks to file my paperwork. I can stop by later, if you’d like.”
“I’d like.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Cook up a giant batch of my famous American chop suey. There’s nothing better on a cold, rainy night than a hearty bowl of my American chop suey. And then I’m going to do exactly what you suggested—watch Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. The Dude’s never seen it. Unless I decide to watch The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. He hasn’t seen that, either. I haven’t made up my mind yet. It’s a tough decision. These are the hard ones.”
Des brushed his lips with hers, smiling at him. “Yes, they most certainly are.”
EPILOGUE
(THE NEXT DAY)
DRAW WHAT YOU SEE, not what you know.
The late-afternoon sunlight over Uncas Lake came slanting right into her living room thanks to the floor-to-ceiling windows Des had installed when she remodeled her cottage. The living room had become her studio the day she moved in. A cluttered, charcoal-smudged mess of a studio with sketches and sketchpads always scattered about. Right now, dozens of photos of Hubie Swope were taped to every wall. Crime-scene photos of Hubie’s charred remains as well as every photo of the living, breathing Hubie that Des was able to lift from the town’s Web site and online newspaper, The Gazette. Hubie seated behind his desk at Town Hall with a tight, grim look on his face. Hubie standing at the groundbreaking for a new office complex on Big Branch Road with a tight, grim look on his face. It was still so hard for her to believe that Dorset’s building inspector, the persnickety little man who cut his breakfast sausages into identical bite-sized pieces, had wooed and won over five different women at the same time. One of whom had murdered him when she found out the real deal.
And yet it was all true.
Des stood before her eighteen-by-twenty-four–inch Strathmore 400 drawing pad, graphite stick in hand, and drew gesture sketch after gesture sketch, using her whole arm, staying light on the balls of her bare feet as she bopped to Les McCann and Eddie Harris’s joyful rendition of “Compared to What” from their Swiss Movement album. She drew, trying to find the truth of who Hubie Swope had been.
Draw what you see, not what you know.
Her involvement in the case was over and done. Mary Ellen Tatum was over and done, being held without bail on charges of first-degree murder and arson. Earlier that day, Des had driven down to the end of Pitcairn Avenue and discovered two huge Dumpsters there. A workman was clearing away the charred remnants of The Pit with a backhoe.
Chuck Ranberg and Sherm Gant were both there watching him work. Ranberg stood in the middle of Pitcairn Avenue with his hands in the pockets of his Armani leather jacket and the breeze off of the Sound ruffling his glossy black hair. Sherm was watching the final demolition of his beloved family business from the front seat of his pickup truck.
“Jocko worked this case good,” the man from Middlebury Mutual said to her. “You all did.”
“We got it done,” Des said, tightening her hat against the wind.
“We’re still not absolutely convinced that Mr. Gant’s innocent of any criminal association with this fire.”
“Sherm had nothing to do with it. You know that.”
“No, I don’t, actually. And I won’t until it’s been established in a court of law. Some people think he was involved in the arson with his sister.”
“By ‘some people’ you mean you, don’t you?”
Ranberg showed her his nice, white teeth. “We honor our commitments. But we’ve stayed in business for a hundred and forty-seven years because we always make sure, understand?”
“I understand.” Des also understood that this meant it would be many, many months before Sherm would see so much as a nickel from Middlebury Mutual. She strolled over to his pickup and said, “How are you, Sherm?”
“Mad as hell,” he growled at her. “That bastard’s going to stonewall me until the cows come home. You know what I ought to do? I ought to hire me a lawyer.”
“Our First Selectwoman’s a lawyer. Damned good one, too.”
Sherm let out a sour laugh. “I’m the mayor of Pitcairn Avenue. You honestly think high and mighty Glynis Fairchild-Forniaux would help me?”
“I do. She told me herself that Dorset isn’t Dorset without The Pit. But you’ll have to be straight with her about all of the facts.”
“Facts? What facts?”
“Why Tess left town.”
Sherm’s face darkened. “There isn’t a day goes by I’m not sorry about the way I treated her. I’ve never laid a hand on another woman since. Not once, I swear to God. You believe me, don’t you?”
“What I believe doesn’t matter, Sherm.”
“Yeah, it does. It matters.” He sat there behind the wheel watching the backhoe pick up a shovel-load of blackened debris. “I had no idea Mary Ellen was mixed up with Hubie. I thought everything was fine between her and Ward. So did Ward.”
“You’ve spoken with him?”
Sherm nodded. “Poor bastard’s shell-shocked.” He looked back at Des, his gaze troubled. “Leland wants to become a physical therapist.”
“I know.”
“You do? How come I didn’t?”
“You haven’t been listening to him.”
“I guess you’re right about that,” he allowed glumly. “I’ve been sitting here thinking about things. I keep wondering if this whole thing’s been my fault. Like if I’d just been a better husband and father and brother—a better person—none of this would have happened. Like maybe I’m the one who ought to be in jail. Does that sound crazy to you?”
It did and it didn’t. There was never a simple yes or no answer when it came to murder. Legally, Sherm wasn’t responsible for the fire that had taken Hubie Swope’s life. And, yet, if he hadn’t driven his wife, Tess, away by beating the crap out of her, and if he’d been a more tolerant and understanding father to Leland, then maybe he was right. Maybe he was partly to blame. But not completely. Because Sherm had zero to do with Mary Ellen falling in love with Hubie and then bashing his head in when she discovered he was dogging her.
Draw what you see, not what you know.
Des drew, one sketch after another. She drew with her eyes open. She drew with her eyes closed so as to awaken her other senses. She awakened them, all right. Summoned up the smell of Hubie’s burnt flesh. The bilious taste in her mouth. But for some reason Hubie himself continued to elude her. There was a fundamental truth about the man that she was missing.
She was still searching for it when Mitch arrived with the fixings for their dinner. He’d volunteered to bring a chicken to roast. But first he got busy uncorking a bottle of Chianti Classico.
“Sorry I’m so late,” he called to her from the kitchen. “I stopped off at All Pro Automotive so Jeff could take a look at my Studey. It turns out that the left tie rod is, in fact, partially cracked. He told me not to drive it anymore because if it gives way that could lead to a catastrophic crash, which he didn’t recommend.”
“I’m right there with him.”
“He’s going to surf the Internet for a supplier who still carries parts for a 1956 Studebaker.”
“Does he think he can find one?”
“He does. But it’ll take a few weeks, not to mention many, many hundreds of dollars.” Mitch joined her in the studio with two glasses filled with wine. Her three live-in cats, Christie Love, Missy Elliot, and Kid Rock, escorted him, bumping his legs with their heads. “For now, he’s loaned me a flatulent Mercedes diesel wagon that has two hundred and fifty-six thousand miles on it. I feel like a for-real Dorset geezer now. All I need are some egg yolk stains on my sweater and a splash of that special cologne they wear, Eau du Goat.” He handed her one of the glasses. They sipped, Mitch eyeballing her from head to toe.
