Perfectly Criminal

by Celeste Marsella

  I agreed to meet him. I was cocky enough to think that after a day at sea with Scott Boardman, I'd know everything there was to know about him and that fateful night that brought us together. Sure, Vince had warned me to stay away from witnesses. But around Scott Boardman I was safe, not breaking any rules, because Vince didn't consider Scott Boardman a witness. He considered him the killer.

  PILLOW TALK

  EARLY THURSDAY MORNING I WAS WALKING UP the granite stairs to the AG building when a voice stopped me midstep.

  “Miss Lynch, isn't it?”

  I turned to see Virginia Booth under a wide-brimmed straw hat, standing erect on the sidewalk below. She was dressed in a beige twinset and straight skirt fitted tightly over full hips. Wearing reasonably heeled pumps and pearls the size of eggs at her throat, she looked as if she might be ready for an afternoon at the Newport Horticultural Society annual luncheon under the Rosecliff arbor—if there was such an event—I'd have to ask Beth….

  She waited for me to go to her. Of course. I walked back down.

  “Is there somewhere we could go… ?” She'd already looked away from me toward the street. Providence wasn't her town. She bristled stiffly and grimaced as a sooty breeze from a passing truck blew a ragged part through her hair.

  I lifted my cell phone from my bag and dialed the office. As I watched her watch the cars whiz by, I told Andy I would be in a few minutes late. Personal business. Then, after dropping the phone back in my bag, I touched her elbow. Her head whipped toward me and I nodded to the sidewalk stretching ahead. Wordlessly she followed at my side to a Starbucks near the Biltmore Hotel. I would have tortured her with the Dial-up Modem Diner, but I knew she didn't want to be seen with me, nor I with her. At the Starbucks in downtown Providence, no one would know her, and, preferring Dunkin' Donuts, I'd never been there.

  We nestled into a table in the corner in front of a fireplace with a perpetual fake flame. “You want a coffee? I'm getting one to pay the rent on this table. Otherwise, this stuff tastes like home heating oil to me.”

  She shook her head, declining. I guess she felt Starbucks should be honored to have her as their guest and felt no compunction about taking up a space without paying dues.

  Five minutes later I slid back into my seat holding a steamed-milk concoction. From the feather-light weight of the cup, I was hoping it was mostly air.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Booth? They don't pay me to loll in coffee bars.”

  The woman had been focusing on everything but me. She cleared her throat, staring out the window as she spoke. “Your office sent police to my house the other day.

  Distressing, to say the least.” Now she looked me full in the eyes. “I'd like to know what they found.”

  “I'm more interested in what they didn't find.”

  “I suppose that answers my question. But if they found nothing, it is simply because there was nothing there of any value to their investigation. Isn't that right, Miss Lynch? Someone would have been in touch with me if they'd found something of interest.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  She cranked her neck to the side as if relieving a knot. “Miss Lynch,” she said with an edge in her voice, “you are being deliberately contrary.”

  I reared my head back. The sharp pain between my eyes was either Virginia Booth getting on my nerves, or a caffeine punch from the Starbucks sludge I was drinking.

  “Uncage the spiders, Mrs. Booth. I'm not Miss Muffet.”

  “I surmised as much.”

  “I don't think you have Scott Boardman's best interest at heart—”

  “Has he mine?”

  “Scott Boardman is no different from the rest of us. He's just trying to save himself. But then again, you must know him better than I do. Your families have a long history. I'm guessing that history includes Brooke Stanford too.”

  “Brooke Stanford is a very pretty red herring. Gone are the romantic days of yore when men killed over pretty virgins. Not that Brooke qualifies for the part, of course…”

  She clamped her eyes shut in self-reprobation for her coarse remark. “This is not about love, Miss Lynch. It's about money. These days it always is, isn't it? About money?”

  “Not if you're a Muslim extremist.”

  She gracefully ignored my comment and continued.

  “Before he died, my husband and I disagreed over… well… let's just say over Martha's private life—or ‘Muffie,’ as we called her. To insure that I didn't punish her by strangling her financially, my husband before he died transferred a majority control of the family trust to her. Under his plan, I'd been awarded a stipend only. With a minimum of effort your office will eventually uncover the lawsuit I'd instituted before Muffle's death to regain control. In retaliation Muffie had begun to protect herself. She had begun to transfer joint control of the trusts to Pat Boardman, before I had a temporary restraining order placed on them.”

  Virginia Booth looked at me for some reaction. But so far nothing she'd told me gave anyone—other than Virginia Booth herself—a motive for killing Pat Boardman or Muffie Booth. I raised my eyebrows in response. I was still waiting for some link to Scott Boardman as killer. She nodded and continued.

  “Pat was leaving Scott—for whatever reasons—I don't concern myself with dirty rumors. Scott was trying to get Pat to stay in the marriage just through the campaign. Keep up the happy marriage front. And that's where my knowledge ends. After I instituted the suit against my husband's estate to wrest control from Muffie, I was cut out of the informational loop. Muffie no longer confided in me. Consequently I was no longer privy to information about Pat and Scott. I'm assuming Pat refused Scott's pleas to remain in the marriage and she was going ahead with the divorce. Something happened between them that night. I'm assuming a meeting was held among the three of them that ended with Pat and Muffle's deaths.”

  I sat before her, unconvinced. Was I thickheaded and blinded by my lust for Scott Boardman? I didn't think so. But Virginia Booth disagreed.

  “Ultimately we all try to save ourselves,” she said. “We'd be fools if we didn't. But why do I think Scott has you on his side now? Am I right? Has he added another horse to his stable?”

  I don't know why, but saying “Fuck you” to someone like Virginia Booth felt like it would damage me more than her, so I stifled the urge and remained stone-faced.

  “Of course he has,” she said, her mouth twisted into a smile without mirth. She straightened her back, pulling away from me and looking ready to dismiss me by simply walking away. But then she sighed and gave me another look. “Odd I misjudged you. I didn't take you for a fool. Now, Brooke I would expect it from—”

  “Fuck you!”

  This time she smiled in earnest, knowing she'd finally penetrated the protective shield of my pride. “I know you're dating him. I'm surprised you still have a job, considering the obvious conflicts. But Scott will take that from you too. You'll lose your job over this. He doesn't take prisoners.”

  She pushed her chair back and looked toward the door.

  “Don't you move a muscle,” I said. “I'm not finished.”

  She looked back at me with heavy-lidded eyes struggling against a current of hate to focus on mine.

  “What has Scott done to you?” I asked. “This isn't just about a love affair between your daughter and his wife. And it isn't just about money. It's about Scott himself. This is personal.”

  She blinked her eyes as if they were stuck with glue. A cataract haze covered the sea blue of them like a dense fog obscuring the horizon.

  “I guess I'll just have to ask him myself during our little weekend sail,” I said. “I'll untangle this little mystery between you and Scott. Because I'm not so sure you aren't capable of murder. I'm not so sure at all.”

  She smiled at me. “You're like an ignorant child afraid of ghosts, Miss Lynch.” And like a sudden unexpected gust of air, she whirled up from her chair and blew out the door.

  I WALKED BACK TO MY OFFICE, MY MIND
WORKING at the puzzle of Virginia Booth's informational resources. Of course, my actions with Scott hadn't been discreet. Discretion was never one of my priorities. But still, how could my personal affairs in Providence have reached the rarefied world of Newport high society without some kind of special delivery? Brooke was my first guess.

  I walked in on Vince as he was uncharacteristically hovering over his desk with his shirtsleeved arms resting over a sea of legal documents.

  “Playing lawyer today, Vince?” I said as I whipped through his door and sat before him.

  He didn't look up but his balled fists clenched and released in response.

  “How do I get hold of Brooke?”

  Slowly his glance rose to me. The soft flesh of his face was puckered like punched dough into a grimace of anger and fatigue. The hardened marbles of his eyes were ridged in red.

  “Working hard, huh?” I said.

  “I got a real mess here, Lynch. And you aren't carrying your weight in this office.”

  “That's exactly what I'm trying to do. But I need to reach Brooke. She was handling some interrogatories for me and I can't find them,” I lied.

  He buried his face back into the pile of papers on his desk. “Put Beth on it and leave Brooke alone. And that includes phone, e-mail, text messaging, and smoke signals.”

  “Why, Vince? Is Brooke too delicate a flower for my thorny ways?”

  “I'm on top of Brooke Stanford.”

  “Everyone seems to be in line for that privilege.”

  He ignored me, so I flounced out his door mumbling under my breath, “Okay, I'll just ask Scott Boardman what I need to know.”

  He bolted up and came to his door, following me out into the corridor. “What the goddamn hell did you say to me?” he hollered.

  Andy's head snapped up. The book he was reading under his desk crashed to the floor.

  Wide-eyed and innocent, I turned to Vince. “I said, ‘Good luck with the Scott Boardman case.’ Are you going deaf on top of all your other shortcomings?”

  Vince's sausage of a thumb pointed back over his shoulder. “Get back in here.”

  Back I trod to Vince's office and plopped into a chair facing his desk. He followed me, slamming his door behind him.

  “Blindfolded, with two hands behind your back and wearing a ball and chain, you should have aced that Cohen case against Jeff Kendall. What the fuck went on there? Huh? What exactly the goddamn-fucking-hell went on in that courtroom that you couldn't get a simple-assed conviction against a guy who blew his wife's head off right after he opened her lawyer's letter suing him for divorce on the grounds that he sucks dick on bowling nights?”

  “All circumstantial,” I mumbled to his windows and the view outside.

  “You've won with less. It's never the evidence with you. It's what's in your gut. Once you decide someone's guilty, the trial's over.”

  Vince sat silently behind his desk again. Still looking at me, he waited in pin-drop silence for my response, not even chancing the click of a lighter for the Merit that he had removed from its pack and now hung limply between his yellowed fingers.

  “That's the answer, then, isn't it?” I said. “I doubted he was guilty.”

  He nodded. “If you didn't think he was guilty, you should have handed him over to someone else. But you didn't do that either. It's almost like you wanted that case… and you wanted to lose it.”

  “He wasn't guilty, Vince. Why send an innocent man to jail?”

  He threw the unlit cigarette down on his desk. It bounced softly to the edge and rolled off.

  “Yeah,” I said softly, “okay, maybe I should have given the case to Laurie. Yeah, Laurie would have been a good choice. A nice Jewish girl prosecuting a Jewish murderer. No charge of anti-Semitism there, huh?” I was talking to the cigarette on the floor in front of Vince's desk. I didn't dare look up at him, because I knew he wasn't anywhere near laughing. His silence was a scary omen. I got this weird feeling that pity for me was keeping him quiet, but I kept babbling.

  “I had already started the trial before I realized I didn't think Cohen was guilty. After the defense rested and I got up to begin my closing argument… something happened to my resolve. I don't know… It was almost as if Jeff's clicking pen was a message… I kept hearing the click of a shotgun trigger like dry practice before you load the ammo. Like trying to get up the nerve…”

  Finally he spoke. “And you were in that bedroom with the Cohen women, watching her practice with the gun, before she loaded it up and blew her brains out. Is that what you're telling me? You had a goddamn vision?”

  Vince was actually pretty calm, considering I was telling him I blew a case on purpose, even though my intent was subliminal. But when I looked up at his face, it was cherry red and as shiny as an overblown balloon.

  “You're burning out on me, Lynch. I may have to bench you for a while. Go get a brain-shrink cure. I'll give you some names. Better yet, go ask Melone. She's probably test-driven every head doctor reachable by Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor.”

  “A nervous breakdown? Just because I suddenly think a few of the suspects we send to prison for the rest of their miserable lives might be innocent? Just because I think sometimes even we can make mistakes—in this office—where you sit like some overblown Buddha declaring people innocent or guilty based on how much trial-worthy evidence we can gather against them?”

  “Lynch, you're entitled to your opinion. But when you have these touchy-feely moments about the scum we prosecute, then do me a fucking favor and pass the perp on to someone else in the office, and most important— and this is really important now, so listen carefully—don't jump into fucking bed with them.”

  “Sure, Vince, no problem,” I assured him, while I was thinking about what I should pack for my weekend cruise with perp d'amour Scott Boardman, with whom I had every intention of jumping into a fucking bed that very weekend. “Just promise me you'll do the same.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “I got a feeling you're fluffing up your pillows for Brooke Stanford.”

  No point waiting for the denial. I walked out, sincerely hoping I was wrong.

  OFF TO THE POUND

  I KEPT MY STARBUCKS CHAT WITH VIRGINIA Booth stashed in the safe house of my mind. I wanted to cross-examine Scott first about what I'd learned. About the few billion clams on their way to his wife's name from the Booth trust accounts. Then tell him his trusted public relations man Jake Weller thought he was guilty as charged. Then I would take the whole package to Vince Monday morning and let the pieces of my heart fall where they may. After all, what did love have to do with the bubbling chemistry between Scott Boardman and me? Not a damn thing. I could always visit him in prison and get us a private room by signing in as his lawyer. No one would bother asking me what side I was on. And sex on a conference table? Why not? The Mile High Club is so last year anyway.

  My next decision—to go solo and not tell the girls I was taking off for the weekend with a murder suspect-was giving me a queasy feeling. But I considered guilt the illegitimate second cousin of fear and remorse, so the feeling in my stomach was probably just acid reflux from the Starbucks mud I had drunk. Furthermore, since I'd gone AWOL in the Boardman affaire d'amour, I'd suddenly become number one on the endangered species list, and the girls wouldn't go twenty-eight hours without tracking me down to have me spayed.

  So Friday morning I was lying to Laurie when I told her I was going up to Beantown for the weekend to visit a dying second cousin thrice removed on my stepfather's side. (I don't have a stepfather and I can't count to thrice.) Laurie tried to trip me up by asking me the remote relative's name. That half second it took me to manufacture the pseudonym almost busted me. Fallon or Fiona or something, I said. So when Marianna called me five minutes after I hung up with Laurie to verify my Irish jig of a tale, I just got angry and used the old offense-as-defense device. I began howling expletives at Marianna, starting at the A's and getting only to the F's before I ga
ve up and started sprinkling cherries on the cake of my assault by reminding her that at least I wasn't teaching the alphabet to serial killers while they were carving their initials on the bodies of young coeds.

  “That's wearing thin, Shannon,” she answered. “And just because I've been stupid in the past doesn't mean you should be. We're all close enough now that we should be learning from each other's mistakes. That's what friends are for, right?”

  “Are we done?”

  “Keep your phone on at all times.”

  “Sure thing. No problem, buddy. See ya Monday morning.” And then I promptly switched off my phone.

  I was breathing a sigh of relief as I drove into the Newport Shipyard. I'd lied like a pro and they'd believed me. I felt like I was getting my old swing back. Depression turned out to be nothing as virile as the flu. I'd managed to dab out sad's last sniffle as I deftly swung my Suburban into an empty spot in the lot next to the now familiar Sebring and looked up at the sky, where it looked like a contented God was blowing smoke rings from his fat Cohiba. Giant puffs of fog were blowing off the ocean, breaking into chunks so solid they dispersed over the land like a brood of Casper's suddenly hatched offspring. Nice. It was a perfect day to get lost at sea in the smoky throes of love—or more precisely, the buzz of that super-fresh sexual tension going on between the Board-man and me.

  The last time I saw him at his suite at the Biltmore, we were so hot that Scott said he was leaving a damage deposit for the scorched couch. Of course, we never got to the finale before my phone started vibrating me back to work and reality. A half hour later, hearing the Cohen verdict hadn't even bothered me, I was still so buzzed from foreplay. So as I was driving into the marina lot and spotted Scott's parked car, my temperature started to rise again like the apex of a fever at midnight before it breaks. I could feel my heart speed up, hairs tickling the back of my neck.

  Scott was standing on the bow of the boat, removing tarps and loosening ropes, bending over, reaching up. His skin, taut from freshly pumped muscles, had bronzed since last we met. Golden hairs on his legs and arms sparkled in the early morning sun. His hair, too, had gilded at the tips. The sun loved him, even heating up the chilly gray of his eyes.