Gobble, Gobble Murder

by Leslie Meier

  He sat for a while and Lucy wondered if he was drifting off into a drug-induced haze. Then, all of a sudden, he shook his head and spoke. “And all that red tape with health insurance and finding a rehab place that’ll take me . . .”

  “I know a couple people who are brilliant at that stuff,” said Lucy, suddenly inspired. “I’ll bet they’ll help you.”

  Again there was a long pause as Hank mulled things over. Lucy was feeling the chill and Libby had collapsed at her feet, resting her head on her paws. She was about to give up and head home when Hank made his decision.

  “I’ll do it,” he said. “So who are these brilliant people who’ll help me?”

  Lucy was jogging in place. “Never mind that,” she said, worried that the answer would cause him to immediately reject the idea, “just call this number.”

  “Hold on,” he said, producing a cell phone. “Give it to me again,” he requested, and Lucy obliged, with lots of stops and starts, until he got the right digits.

  Back on the trail, she knew she’d done all she could and now it was up to Hank. She wondered if he would actually commit to getting clean or whether he would continue to use and simply slip away like so many others.

  * * *

  When she approached the house, she spotted Zoe’s ancient little Civic in the driveway Her daughter met her at the door, ignoring the dog’s enthusiastic tail-wagging greeting and demanding any news of Matt.

  Lucy got herself a drink of water and filled Libby’s bowl with clean water before sitting down at the golden oak table. She patted the chair Zoe usually used and waited for her to sit down, too, before breaking the news. “It’s not good, I’m afraid,” she said, somewhat out of breath. “The cops believe they found the gun that killed Ed Franklin. It was hidden in the restaurant.”

  As Lucy expected, Zoe promptly exploded, delivering an angry tirade. “That’s absolutely unbelievable! It’s so obvious that somebody set him up! How dumb are they? It’s a construction site, right? Anybody could have gotten in and hidden the gun. Were there fingerprints? How do they know it was Matt’s? That’s crazy! It’s . . . it’s . . . it sucks,” she finally said, running out of steam.

  “It does,” agreed Lucy, “but we don’t know everything that the police know.”

  “Well, I know that Matt would never do something like that,” said Zoe.

  Lucy smiled. “Well, then, he’s got nothing to worry about, right?”

  “Oh, Mom,” groaned Zoe, rolling her eyes. “You’re so naïve.”

  Lucy stood up and rinsed out her water glass, then set it on the dish drainer. Zoe had remained at the table and was tapping away on her smartphone, which reminded Lucy that she needed to give Miss Tilley and Rachel a heads-up about Hank on the slim chance that he might follow up and call them for help.

  Lucy knew that Miss Tilley had a way of getting her way and Hank wouldn’t have a hope of evading rehab if he took that first step and called her. Rachel, who was Miss Tilley’s companion and home aide, was a whiz with red tape and bureaucracy, and had the advantage of being able to get free legal advice from her lawyer husband, Bob.

  “Ah, Lucy, I haven’t seen much of you lately. Have you been avoiding me?” asked Miss Tilley when Lucy called.

  “Not at all,” said Lucy. “You’re one of my favorite people.”

  “Well, I’d never know it, since you never visit,” continued Miss Tilley.

  “I know. It’s been too long,” said Lucy. “And now I’m going to ask a big favor of you and Rachel.” She outlined the program the Harvest Festival planners had come up with and told Miss Tilley about Hank. “So I gave him your number, hoping you and Rachel could help him put together an application.”

  “That was rather presumptuous of you,” said Miss Tilley, causing Lucy’s hopes to wither.

  “I know. I do hope you won’t let that stand in the way . . .” she began, by means of apologizing.

  “But of course we’ll do it,” said Miss Tilley. “Rachel has been so difficult lately, I’ve been at my wit’s end trying to think of ways to keep her entertained.”

  “Right,” said Lucy, suspecting that her old friend wasn’t joking at all, but was quite serious.

  She could only imagine how Rachel, who devoted herself to Miss Tilley’s well-being, was reacting. Though, truth be told, she refused to let Miss Tilley’s little jabs bother her, aware that the old woman’s wit was her sole remaining defense against the inexorable deterioration of old age.

  “I can’t thank you enough for taking this on,” said Lucy.

  “We may not be taking on anything unless he calls,” said Miss Tilley.

  “I hope he does,” said Lucy.

  “So do I,” replied her old friend. “So do I.”

  That task completed, Lucy glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall and realized it was time to think about starting supper. She opened the fridge and discovered it was quite empty; a look in the freezer revealed a whole chicken and nothing much else. She took out the chicken, which was frozen hard as a rock, and decided there was no way she could get it thawed and cooked before midnight. Nothing for it but to call for pizza.

  CHAPTER 15

  Lucy couldn’t believe it when Rachel called on Friday evening, looking for a way to get Hank to New Beginnings rehab in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “They say it’s not a good idea for him to drive himself,” she explained, “as he might get cold feet and decide not to come. I’d do it, but I’ve got a rehearsal tomorrow.”

  Rachel was a gifted amateur actress, who often starred in the town’s Little Theater productions. This year she was playing Scrooge’s housekeeper in the group’s annual production of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

  “You’ve done all this in one day?” asked Lucy, incredulous. “Put together the application, raised the money, got Hank to commit . . .”

  “Well, yeah,” said Rachel as if it hadn’t been much of an achievement. “He called shortly after you did and came over that evening and I have to say he was very sweet and grateful for our help. He called his father and got a thousand from him. It turns out he has a trust fund from his mother’s family and Miss Tilley got her to release some funds from that. He’s on his parents’ health plan so they’re covering fifty percent, so he only needed a couple thousand from Pam’s fund—”

  “You did all this in one day? Including finding a spot in a rehab place?”

  “That was the toughest part,” said Rachel. “We got a list off the Internet and started calling and there were no openings, including this New Beginnings outfit you mentioned, but then they called back later and said they could take him. I think somebody may have decided not to go at the last minute, which is why—”

  “I can do it, but we’ll have to leave early. I’m driving to Boston tomorrow for Ed Franklin’s funeral.”

  “Well, that’s great, Lucy. Hank’s sleeping here at Miss Tilley’s tonight. We’ll have him up and packed bright and early.”

  * * *

  When Lucy arrived at Miss Tilley’s little Cape-style house on Saturday morning, Hank was waiting by the door, every bit as nervous as a kindergartener on the first day of school. Rachel gave him a big hug,

  Miss Tilley took his strong young hand in her age-spotted and blue-veined arthritic claw and gave it a pat. “You’ll do fine, young man, and don’t forget to write.”

  Hank was puzzled. “Write? You mean like Twitter?”

  “I mean letters. You take a pen and paper and write down everything that’s happening. I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.”

  Hank was thinking hard. “Wouldn’t I need stamps for that?”

  “E-mail will be fine,” said Rachel, giving him a pat on the back and a little shove toward the door.

  “That Miss Tilley’s a funny old bird, isn’t she?” he asked as he walked down the brick path with Lucy, dragging a wheeled duffel behind him.

  “A word of advice,” said Lucy, opening the rear hatch on her SUV. “Don’t underestimate her and don’t di
sappoint her, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Hank loaded the bag inside, then turned to her. “You’ve done so much for me. Not just you, but Miss Tilley and Rachel and my folks and the Harvest Festival ladies. I really don’t want to let anybody down.”

  “Well, don’t,” said Lucy, yanking the driver’s side door open and climbing inside. She waited until he was seated beside her with his seatbelt fastened, then started the car and began the three hour drive to Portsmouth.

  Hank was very quiet and when Lucy glanced at him she noticed his eyes were closed as if he had dozed off. Just as well, she thought, relieved that she didn’t have to keep up a conversation.

  It wasn’t until they were going over the Piscataqua Bridge linking Maine with New Hampshire that he woke up, yawning and rubbing his eyes. “We must be almost there.”

  “Pretty close, according to the GPS. Did you have a nice rest?”

  “Sorry about that. I haven’t been sleeping much lately.”

  Lucy remembered how her son, Toby, when he was Hank’s age, used to sleep for twelve hours at a stretch. She and her friends used to be amazed at the amount of sleep their teenage boys needed, and how difficult it was to get them up in the morning in time for the seven o’clock school bus. “How come?” she asked, wondering if insomnia was a side effect of addiction.

  “I keep thinking about Alison,” he said. “I keep seeing her dead, you know, drowned and all wet and ghoulish.”

  “I saw her body,” said Lucy. “She looked just like herself. Not ghoulish.”

  He was silent, looking out the window as they drove down a main avenue dotted with stores and houses. Some of the buildings looked ancient, perhaps dating from the eighteenth century. “She wasn’t on drugs. They say she was, but I know for sure that she wasn’t. I tried to get her to use with me, but she wouldn’t. She used to get mad at me, tell me to get clean or get lost.”

  “Was she dating anyone?” asked Lucy, thinking of Matt Rodriguez.

  “Maybe. I don’t know,” he answered. “We were good friends for a while. We both have kind of messed up families, but we kind of drifted apart when I stopped going to classes.”

  “Do you know why she didn’t want to live with her mother?” asked Lucy. “It seems kind of odd that she chose to live with her father and his new, young wife.”

  “She hated her mom, and she really hated her stepdad. She called him a weasel. She didn’t always agree with her dad, she told me, but at least he was honest, even if all he really cared about was having a lot of money.”

  “You have reached your destination,” the GPS informed her in a crisp British accent.

  Lucy spotted a small, discreet sign announcing NEW BEGINNINGS on a patch of grass in front of a large Federal-style brick building. “We’re here,” she said, noticing that Hank seemed to have lost all the color in his face. “Are you okay?”

  “I will be,” he said, opening the door and climbing out.

  Lucy popped the rear hatch and he pulled out his duffel, then he came around the car to her door. She hit the power button and lowered the window, expecting him to say good-bye.

  But there was something else on Hank’s mind. “Alison was really excited about having a little half sister or brother. She loved kids.” He swallowed hard. “It’s too bad she never got to have any of her own.”

  Lucy reached out the window and squeezed his shoulder. “This is about you,” she told him. “Time for you to concentrate on getting well.”

  He nodded, looking very serious. Then he walked around the car and started up the brick path, dragging the duffel behind him. As Lucy watched him mount the stairs, she saw someone opening the door for him, greeting him with a welcoming smile.

  She remained parked for a few minutes, entering her next destination—Boston’s Trinity Church—into her GPS, and then shifted into DRIVE. As she pulled out into the street, she left with mixed emotions. On one hand, she felt satisfied she’d done all she could for him. On the other, she hoped and prayed that Hank would do the work he needed to do.

  * * *

  Lucy was familiar enough with Boston to know that she wouldn’t be able to pull up next to Trinity Church and park the car, so she was on the lookout for a parking garage when the GPS told her she was approaching her destination. She pulled into the first garage she saw and, after getting over the shock of the price listed on a sign by the entrance, took the ticket and began a long descent into the bowels of Boston. Finally finding a vacant spot, she parked, took the elevator to the surface, and began the short walk to Copley Square.

  Her mother used to scoff that Boston was a “small town” compared to New York, but Lucy found Boston pretty exciting after living so long in Tinker’s Cove. The streets were lined with tall buildings and the sidewalks were filled with people of all ages and ethnicities, all intent on going somewhere. The shop windows were filled with interesting, and no doubt expensive, temptations.

  Arriving at Copley Square where a steel drum band was playing beneath the bare trees, she paused to take in the scene. The square itself was filled with people, some listening to the music, others feeding pigeons or simply taking a rest on one of the benches. The Boston Public Library faced the square on one side, the stately Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel stood on another, and Trinity Church itself stood beneath the gleaming mirrored walls of the sleek Hancock Tower, which was designed to reflect an image of the church.

  A steady stream of people were pouring into the church and Lucy joined them, making sure to have her ID and press pass ready for presentation. As she shuffled along in the line, she recognized some well-known people—the governor of Massachusetts, the mayor of Boston, the senior senator from Massachusetts, Bob Kraft, who owned the Patriots football team, and a couple newscasters she’d seen on TV. The line moved right along as people were identified and escorted to pews in the Romanesque church, but when Lucy handed over her credentials to the gatekeepers she was directed to a small doorway. There she encountered a steep staircase that led to the choir loft, which offered a terrific view of the church below, but was too small for the large number of media people assigned to cover the funeral.

  She was fortunate enough to squeeze herself into a spot in the front row, where she stood in a corner and prayed that whoever designed the 150-year old church had thought to make sure the choir loft was strong enough to hold a large crowd. She wasn’t the only one who had that thought.

  The cameraman from Channel 5 was clearly uncomfortable. “I covered a balcony collapse—a triple-decker—last week,” he told her. “Bunch of college kids. Two were killed.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Lucy. “I hope that doesn’t happen to us.”

  “What are the chances?” he asked. “An old building, constructed before today’s building codes . . .”

  “Back when people weighed less,” added newscaster Monique Washington, who was a beautiful, large black woman.

  “We don’t get no respect,” said a young guy sporting a fashionable day-old beard whose lanyard identified him as working for the Boston Globe. “They want good press, but they don’t want to provide decent accommodations for us. They just crowd us in behind fences like we’re a bunch of cows or stick us up in the attic. Jeez, it’s hot up here.”

  “You said it,” agreed Monique, fanning herself with the order of service she’d picked up off a chair. “So do you think we’ll have any drama? The wives encounter each other and start ripping off black veils?”

  “That’d be something,” said the guy from the Globe in a hopeful tone.

  “Well, here comes the current wife, the show girl,” said the cameraman, swinging his camera to focus on Mireille.

  She was walking slowly down the aisle, leaning slightly backwards and holding onto her mother’s arm. From her vantage point, Lucy could only see her back. Mireille was dressed in low heels and a simple black cloth coat that provided a dark contrast to her flowing blond hair. Mimsy was also dressed simply in a navy pantsuit. A navy and white checked beret w
as on her head. They were following an usher, who led them to the first pew on the left-hand side of the church.

  “Very understated, very tasteful,” admitted Monique with a raised eyebrow. “I’m kinda surprised. I thought she’d be brassier somehow.”

  Lucy wanted to defend Mireille but bit her tongue, unwilling to share her privileged one-on-one interview with the entire press corps.

  “You gotta wonder with a young wife like that, if she’s kinda glad the old boy is gone or whether she’ll really miss him,” said the cameraman.

  “She won’t have to go on Match.com, that’s for sure, not with a billion or two in the bank,” said the guy from the Globe.

  “And she’s got the looks, or will have, once she has the baby,” said the cameraman. He was swinging the camera once again, this time picking up the arrival of Ed Franklin’s divorced wife, Eudora. “Here comes the hag,” he announced.

  “Oh my gosh. She’s gone over the top,” said Monique, rolling her eyes.

  Peering down, Lucy had to agree. Eudora had swathed herself in layers and layers of black gauze, which gave the impression that she was a Muslim woman required to cover every inch of herself with a suffocating chador. Apparently unable to support her grieving self, or perhaps unable to see through the dense layers of fabric, she was supported by her son, Tag, on one side and her husband, Jon, on the other. The trio were led by an usher and followed by an entourage that included two beady-eyed security agents and a couple assistants carrying briefcases and black leather portfolios.

  Lucy would have loved to hear what her companions thought of Eudora and company, but anything they might have said was drowned out by the organ music, which began with a thunderous chord that practically blew the crowd of media representatives right off the balcony. The pipes of the church’s organ were located behind the choir loft, giving the media the full benefit of that magnificent instrument’s awesome power.

  The service was long. Many famous people eulogized Ed Franklin. A famous opera singer sang his favorite song (“I Did It My Way”), and the congregation stumbled through a number of unfamiliar hymns, which didn’t matter because the organ drowned everyone out. Lucy was feeling quite dizzy and nauseous when the casket containing Ed Franklin’s remains was finally lifted off its support and carried down the aisle on the shoulders of six strong men. There was an anxious moment when Eudora and Mireille faced off on opposite sides of the aisle, but Mireille graciously yielded to Eudora, who was determined to be seen as the principal mourner.