Perfectly Criminal

by Celeste Marsella

“And you advised him to plead?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. I was just listening, Vince. Saying enough so he'd keep talking but giving him nothing. But in the end he maintained his innocence.”

  “Sure, because Boardman was feeling you out the same way Esterman was feeling me out. They're just trying to find out what we have.”

  I agreed with Vince, and once again I felt duped by Scott Boardman. I had never been with a man who could outthink and outsmart me—and I didn't like it one bit. The lovey-dovey hand-holding, and the charmed words “don't leave me” and “forever,” were like the sprinkling of love potions on an ass's sleeping head. And like a stupid fairy princess, I kept falling for it.

  “You're going to drop those ashes on the rug!” Vince yelled.

  A precarious two inches of ash was teetering on the end of my half-smoked cigarette. I brought it gingerly to Vince's ashtray, stubbed it out, and then backpedaled my chair into its original spot. “You're right. I'm an asshole. I'll stay away from him from now on. I promise.”

  “Do us both a favor and don't make promises you aren't gonna keep. You'll be after Boardman now even more than before. Because, bottom line, Lynch? The fact that he broke your heart doesn't hurt half as much as the fact that he broke your balls. Am I right?”

  I nodded. “And the fact that you've been right twice in one day just proves beyond a doubt that I'm losing my edge.”

  “Get the fuck out of here before I start breaking your balls too.”

  “You already have.”

  When I left Vince's office, Andy was sitting at his desk bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. “Hey, gorgeous, why so glum?”

  “Andy? Vince said he fired you.”

  “Silly girl. Vince loves me. Underneath? He's a real man's man—if you get my drift.”

  “I wouldn't doubt it, Andy. Homophobes usually are.”

  IT WAS CLOSE ENOUGH TO CLOSING TIME FOR ME to cash out. I went for a solo drink near my loft and then went home, where I found Jake Weller skulking in his car next to my spot in the parking garage. I zipped into my space and got out. As I was walking to his driver's side window, he rolled it down and immediately began apologizing.

  “Hey, I don't want to hear it,” I said. “Unless you're going to confess to the murders, just stop stalking me.”

  “Why would you believe my confession and not Scott Boardman's? Because I'm not a pretty senator from Connecticut who was running for president until he shot his wife?”

  “You could have stopped at ‘pretty’ And I told you, I don't think your own mother believes a word you say.”

  His eyes looked heavy, like he'd been drinking all afternoon.

  “When we left you in Newport, you said you were on your way back to Connecticut. What are you doing back in Providence?”

  “Something you said made me change my mind.”

  “And what was that?”

  “That I could help you with the investigation. So I'm offering my help.”

  “I never said that, Mr. Weller. You told me you were free to sleuth. But frankly I don't need your help. It looks like Scott Boardman's going to get away with murder and there's nothing any of us can do about it.”

  He rolled up his window and removed the key from the ignition, ready to exit the car. I moved out of the way so he could open the door and get out. Facing me, he said, “I can help. Where do you want to talk?”

  I jerked my head toward the street where a block away was the bar I'd just left. He locked his car and we walked in silence to the Century Lounge.

  “Great name,” Weller said as he pulled on the solid wood door. “What's the significance?”

  “I have no clue, unless it's the fact that it's probably been here for a hundred years and keeps opening and closing but retaining its name.”

  The air turned rancid and stale as soon as the door swooped closed behind us and took with it the meager pocket of air that had stowed away in our clothes on the journey in. Local bands played here every weekend, so the few windows in the place were blacked over and sealed to enlighten the makeshift corner stage just outside the kitchen. It was the kind of place you never wanted to see in daylight, and since none of the bulbs exceeded forty watts, one presumed that even if the broken ones were replaced, the shock of the built-up muck of Fry-O-Lator grease, body oils, and spilled foods would still meld warmly into the background of chipped black walls and taupe gray commercial carpeting.

  “It smells funky in here,” Jake Weller said.

  I had stopped just inside the door, staking my claim to the place like a cowboy waiting for a showdown. “We'll sit at the bar. I never sit at the tables. Too much dried food glued under the tops, and my ass always sticks to the seats.” I proceeded on ahead and waited to see if he'd follow me. I purposely hadn't looked at his face, but I assumed he was grimacing. My taking him there was like a baptism. Either he really wanted to talk to me, or he'd bolt out the door and never look back.

  I slid onto a bar stool, and sure enough, he'd trailed me. I was hopeful something useful would be gleaned from this meeting, because everything he'd said before now was just so much diarrhea dressed up to look like bullshit.

  I ordered a beer from the bartender. “Heineken in the bottle, please, and hold the glass.” I looked at Weller. “If I were you, I wouldn't trust the mugs here. They don't have a dishwasher—and I mean they really have no one to wash the dishes.”

  “Make that two,” he said to the bartender. To me he said, “You come here often?”

  “When I feel like being alone, which is now, so hurry up and talk.”

  “You already know I think Scott did it, or knows who did. It's just a matter of putting all the pieces together. I figure you've got some of the pieces, I've got some, and the rest we can find out between us.”

  “The cops have a job. They find killers. I have a job. I prosecute them. What's your job? Public relations. Why do you care so much who killed Scott Boardman's wife?”

  “Because I knew she was going to die and I should have done something to prevent it.”

  No napkins and no coasters, the bartender slammed two glass bottles of Heineken on the bar in front of us. I waited for Weller to pick his up and take his first swig. Then I waited for him to lay it down on the bar. Then I waited for him to look at me, pick up the bottle, and gulp again.

  “Don't you want to know why I thought she'd be murdered?” he asked, putting the bottle down on the bar and staring at it like it held the answer to his question. “Because she told me. Because Pat Boardman was afraid she wouldn't live through the November election.”

  “And you're now going to tell me she was afraid of Scott? She was afraid her own husband would kill her? Absurd.” I finished my beer and ordered a Talisker neat, the only single malt scotch on hand.

  “I thought you said you don't drink from the glasses here,” he said.

  “I said you shouldn't. My frequency in this place acts like a vaccine.”

  He drank the last of his beer and ordered another— in a bottle. He kept talking because he knew his time with me was like waiting for microwave popcorn—after one or two seconds of silence, I'd consider him done.

  “Scott was furious over the lesbian thing. He had just recently found out—told all of us on the team. He thought she picked crappy timing to be ‘coming out.’ He thought she should have waited until after the election. I guess her girlfriend—the Booth woman who died with her—was pressuring her to leave him. And then there was the money—the trust that Muffie Booth was fighting with her mother over. The court battle was going to come out in the papers sooner or later, and Pat would be implicated in that too. The whole thing was a campaign nightmare.”

  “So Pat Boardman thought Scott was going to kill her over it? Bullshit.”

  “They weren't living together for the past few months.

  Did you know that? She'd moved out and was living in Newport with Muffie Booth, who'd just divorced her own husband.”

  I must have raised my eyebrows�
��a mistake for a trial lawyer—because he nodded. “I told you I had information you didn't have. Now do you have any for me?”

  “Who said anything about sharing?”

  “I did, but I guess I didn't hear you agree to it.”

  “Smart man. What do you know about Virginia Booth?”

  “She's a vulture. Actually, she's worse than a vulture. They only attack what's already dead. Virginia Booth is like those fish who eat their young as soon as they spring from the womb.”

  “How do you know her so well? You aren't even from her part of town.”

  “From Scott and Pat. That's how Pat met Muffie. Contributions from the Booth family to Scott's campaign. You see how it all gets tidy in a neat little package?”

  “And you're opening this gift for me out of guilt over Pat Boardman? Because you should have prevented her death?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “Shit, Weller. You better be more than guessing.”

  “Pat was a real person, unlike Scott. Don't get me wrong. I think Scott would've made a great president. He's a good senator. But Pat was too human for him. He's an automaton. He sets a path and goes toward it, and if he needs to show some tears along the way to meet his goals, he'll cry for you on command. Pat was crying all the time. He cheated on her. He ignored her. And in the end, when he found out about Muffie Booth, he treated her like a piece of garbage, telling her he never should have married her, that she only damaged him politically. He told her that rather than her being an asset to him politically, he'd achieved what he had in spite of her. That's how much he belittled her. He's a mean man, Miss Lynch. He may be okay for someone like you, but for Pat Boardman, he was a lethal virus. And now she's dead.”

  I didn't bother delving into his definition of “someone like me.” I was hoping I knew what he meant. I was hoping he meant that I was made of tougher stuff than Pat Boardman. But on the chance that he meant something else—on the chance he meant I was as virulent and ugly as he thought Scott Boardman was—I didn't question him further. Because maybe he was right, and I had no defense.

  “I think you're a snitch, Jake Weller. I think you're a man who fucks a woman and then brags about it in the morning. And I think you're a man who rats out his friends.”

  “I know what you think. And nothing I do is going to change your mind, because the more I defend myself to you, the slimier I look. So I'm not going to get on my knees and beg you to believe me. Take it or leave it.” He dug his hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. “How much do I owe you? Here.” He threw a fifty on the bar. “That should cover it all. Call me when you hit a brick wall with all this.” He stood from his stool and pushed his remaining cash back into his pocket. “Or just let Scott Boardman go free. Pat's dead. Doesn't matter to me anymore what you do.”

  “Hey, Weller,” I called after him. He stopped but didn't turn. “Are you married?”

  He swung his head around, questioning me with his eyes.

  I shrugged, because honestly I didn't know why I'd asked him.

  He walked slowly back to me, hesitating like he was uncertain he wanted to impart any more information. “I wasn't going to tell you this, because you don't believe me anyway, and because I didn't want to besmirch her name any more than it has been, but Pat Boardman was with me before Muffie. If you want my opinion, I think Pat's whole affair with Muffie Booth was experimentation from a woman who'd been emotionally abused by men her whole life. First her alcoholic father, and then Scott Boardman, whose ego is so big it even suffocates him.”

  Jake Weller looked up at me, because the next words needed eye contact for believability, and if nothing else, Jake Weller was a good PR man. “I loved Pat Boardman,” he said to me. “And I think in time she would have come back to me. But she wasn't given that time. And that's why I'm here with you now, drinking bottled beer in this ptomaine-infected dump, letting you talk to me like I'm some lowlife who doesn't deserve to lick your shoes.”

  He walked out and I let him go in peace, because for the first time since I'd known him, he'd earned some of my respect.

  NO ROOM AT THE INN

  AGAINST ALL NATURAL INSTINCTS, I KNEW MY next call should be to Chief Charles Sewell. What was his relationship with Jake Weller? How far back did they go? I decided to go with an unnatural instinct and call Mike McCoy first. I liked the fact that I could run things by him without any flak. He was the objective observer, the sounding board with no ax to grind, and, because of his loyalty to Marianna, I could be certain of his loyalty to me.

  Mike and I agreed to meet at the Dial-up Modem Diner the next morning, where I found him with Marianna and Laurie, having the Heart-i-Man special— an egg-white omelet with dry whole wheat toast.

  “What the frig are you doing to this man?” I said to Marianna. “You deep-sixed his egg yolks along with his balls?”

  Mike spit his coffee over Laurie, who gritted her teeth and wiped herself off with a few hundred napkins from the chrome table dispenser.

  “He'll be forty-five next year,” Marianna said. “He has cholesterol issues.”

  Mike pointed his fork at Marianna. “Hey, you have issues with my cholesterol. I don't have any issues with it.” He took the salt shaker and gave his omelet a heavy dose. “You gonna start with my blood pressure now?”

  “No, Mike,” Marianna said. “Because your blood pressure issues have nothing to do with salt. They have to do with your jaunts to Daytona Beach and the NASCAR races where you gamble half your salary away every month.”

  “Oh, fuck me,” Laurie muttered. “Am I really needed here?”

  “You might as well stay,” I said, motioning for the waitress. “That way you won't have to listen to Mari complain about it later.”

  She held up both hands in surrender. “I'm comfortable with my ignorance, Shannon. Sometimes I'm really okay with it.”

  I ordered a cheese omelet, bacon, and home fries from the waiting waitress, and then burst into the song of my latest woes. “Mike, you look like you could use some cheering up.”

  He poured the entire pitcher of cream into his coffee and then looked at me with narrowed eyes, ready for one of my typical over-the-top, under-the-table onslaughts.

  “No, hey, I think I agree with you, Mike,” I said. “I think Scott Boardman might be guilty.”

  He grunted in approval and looked at Marianna, who was holding her cup in midair waiting for the rest of what she thought would be my punch line.

  “Nope,” I said to their collective expectant stare. “I'm serious. I think he did it.”

  “Hallelujah,” Laurie said. “She sees the light.”

  “Why this sudden change of heart?” Marianna asked. “He stinks in the sack, right?”

  I shook my head. “I'm dead serious. He's the only one with motive. Jealousy, rage, a political career that would be ruined… all motives. And for the life of me, I can't think of anyone else except a random killer—but there didn't seem to be anything really stolen. And Muffie Booth had no apparent enemies except her mother, and mothers don't kill kids over bucks.”

  “They might if it's a few billion,” Laurie said.

  “Or if it was an accident,” Marianna added. “Maybe there was a fight. Virginia Booth has to cover it up and ends up shooting Pat Boardman, the only witness?” Mari shook her head in disagreement with herself. “But then what about Leo Safer? Why shoot him?”

  “Maybe he was blackmailing someone,” I answered. Then I shook my head. “Nah, too many loose ends and not enough hard evidence. It feels like the Cohen case all over again.”

  The waitress brought my eggs and bacon, glistening with the golden sheen of melted animal fat and sweet cream butter. Mike was staring at my plate like it was a Playboy centerfold. I snapped my fingers in front of his mesmerized eyes. “What do you know about the relationship between Jake Weller and Chief Sewell?” I asked him.

  His dreamy stare rose slowly to my eyes and he reared his head back to break the spell. “Ah, yeah…I
don't know, Shannon. I didn't even know they knew each other.”

  “Crap, that means I've got to eat crow and call that black buzzard myself.” I ventured another question to Mike, though I was getting the feeling that Marianna had so castrated him that he was becoming useless as anything other than a deflated punching bag in need of a good blow. “How's he doing anyway?” I asked him.

  “The chief?” Mike said. “Matter of fact, I had lunch with him yesterday.” He looked at my plate. “Can I have a piece of that bacon?”

  “Go for it, Mike,” I said.

  He grabbed the fattiest slice and gave Marianna a sidelong glance, daring her to open her mouth. Then he rolled the slice into a loose ball and popped the whole thing into his mouth. “Not too good,” he said.

  I assumed he was talking about Chuck and not the bacon. “Are you going to tell me why? Or are you boys sticking together like the good little scouts you are?”

  “You figure it out,” Mike said to me, suddenly tough again. “You're a real smart girl… until recently.”

  “I hope that bacon gives you gas, McCoy,” I said.

  “The chief is bereft and lonely without you,” Marianna said. “Mike told me last night. He's not doing well.”

  Mike slapped the table. “That's it! I've put up with this long enough.”

  “Oh, what's the harm, Mike?” Marianna said. “If she feels bad for him, maybe they'll get back together.”

  Laurie threw some cash down on the table and stood.

  “Why the hell do you want them back together, Mari? The man is married. Let him stay home with his wife or move the hell out. What gives him the right to a double shot? What? Just because he's the friggin' chief of police?”

  “Oh, look,” I said, “thanks for the thought, Laur, but far be it from me to start moralizing over someone's sex life. I didn't cash out on him because of that anyway. He just has double standards—if you'll excuse the pun. If he can keep Marjory, why can't I have Scott Boardman on the side?”

  “I'm out of here,” Laurie said. “But before you quit the game altogether, do you think maybe he was just worried about you sleeping with a murder suspect, who—by your own admission—might be guilty?”