Poisoned Dreams

by A. W. Gray

  “I got to tell you there are a lot of problems here,” Ortega said. “It seems like a lot of red tape, I know, but we can’t even say right now that Mrs. Lyon died from poison. That’s what the medical examiner’s for.”

  Big Daddy raised a hand, palm out. “I know you have your rules. But if somebody doesn’t do something, he’s going to have time to cover things.”

  Ortega sighed. He wished there weren’t so many details himself. His job could be so much simpler. But building a murder case against someone is about ten percent action and ninety percent attending to details. “Mr. Dillard, we know the longer this hangs fire, the less chance there is of finding what we’re looking for. Most cases if you got no answer within a few days, the trail gets cold. But I can’t help it. To look for anything on Mr. Lyon’s property, we got to have a warrant. To get the warrant we got to have probable cause to conduct a search, and without a finding that a murder’s happened we’re helpless.” The detective sadly shook his head. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “He was having an affair,” Bill Sr. said. “We know he bought poison.”

  Ortega’s interest picked up. “How do you know that?”

  “We have canceled checks.”

  Ortega frowned and leaned back in his chair. “His personal checks?”

  “Drawn on a joint account,” Bill Sr. said. “His and Nancy’s.”

  “I got to tell you, sir. A man planning something like that, it’s not likely he’d give a check. Especially not a check that his wife’s going to see.” Skepticism is what makes Ortega a good detective; someone has to show him.

  Big Daddy’s expression was drawn, his eyes red from lack of sleep. “It’s what we have to go on. And this other woman—”

  “Mr. Dillard. Look, I know this is killing your family. If it was my daughter … well, I’m not sure what I’d do. But a lot of men have affairs. It’s not that much to build a case on, not these days.”

  “What about the wine and pills, the things he left on her doorstep?”

  “We can analyze those,” Ortega said. “Since they’re at the hospital, we need no warrant. But how do we know Mr. Lyon’s the one that left them? Anybody see him?”

  Big Daddy lowered his gaze. “No.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. Even if the stuff is loaded with poison—”

  Big Daddy clenched his hands into fists. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

  Ortega studied the older man. Homicide cops see grief on a regular basis, but Big Daddy’s was tempered with a steely determination. Noting the thrust of the smooth-skinned jaw and the slight trembling of the thin upper lip, Ortega thought that if Nancy’s husband had in fact murdered his wife, then Ortega would hate to be in his shoes. Big Daddy was the type not to give up. “From the beginning,” Ortega said. “And take your time, sir. Detail for detail, tell me why you think your son-in-law did this.”

  Big Daddy thought for a long time. Finally he said, “He’s always depended on her, ever since they were married.”

  “And how long is that?” Ortega said. “Please. Don’t leave anything out. Any detail can be important.”

  Big Daddy’s gaze shifted slightly upward. He was remembering. Finally he said, “Well, they met at Harvard, when they were both in graduate school. Is that too far back?”

  Ortega smiled. “It might be and it might not be. You never know. Whatever, it’s a start. Yeah, why don’t you begin with that?”

  7

  If there is an ideal place in this land of ours for a couple of future yups to meet and fall in love, it’s a half-hour hop on the T northwest of downtown Boston. The Park Street station is within easy walking distance from Central Boston hotels, and tourists who fail to spend the buck to ride the T out to Cambridge are missing one of the cheaper treats in the birthplace of freedom. The train runs underground for a time, then emerges to cross over the majestic River Charles, clicks softly through pleasant New England countryside dotted with homes like American history textbook prints, and eventually deposits the passenger in Cambridge near the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street. From there it’s a two-block stroll past delicious-smelling bakeries, a couple of ice cream shops, and a bookstore with the intriguing name of Wordsworth’s—which displays copies of Spenser mystery novels by Boston’s own Robert B. Parker in its windows—to the main entrance at Harvard. There’s a well-kept Revolutionary War graveyard at the campus entry, surrounded by a low iron fence (just as there is a Revolutionary War graveyard every block or so in the rest of the Boston area), and to the first-time visitor who’s only heard of the place, the university itself is somewhat of a surprise.

  The legacy of Harvard conjures up images of ancient red brick walls choked with twisting English ivy, scowling bearded professors whose expressions look as though a smile would shatter their faces, and harried students laboring through the night by kerosene lanterns in Oliver Twist cubbyholes. The reality of the campus is quite, quite different from the myth. There are wide expanses of perfectly clipped and sculpted lawn, straight tall trees overlooking the classroom buildings and dorms like watchful palace guards. Handsome young men and lovely young women wrinkle cheerful noses at one another as they pass on the sidewalks. Students dress down; there are pea coats, hiking boots, khaki pants, castoff army shirts. In sunny weather, joggers exhibit long and muscular legs in drab gray running shorts as they loosen up on the campus trails, and bluebirds hop and twit among well-pruned branches. From nearby courts echo the muted k-pop’s of tennis games. There are a few old fuddy-duddies left at modern Harvard to be sure, but they are only statues, and even the stone faces of the Oliver Wendell Holmeses and such scattered about display a kinder set to their mouths than one would imagine. Such was the scene in the warm early fall of 1979.

  A bonus to students at schools like Harvard—and a good excuse for college recruiters to use in explaining tuition rates that would drive a Rockefeller into shock—is that classes are small. As opposed to state universities, where professors lecture in auditoriums with audiences the size of crowds at Broadway hits, Harvard classes are quite intimate. Twenty students, twenty-five at the most is the norm. With Harvard’s limited enrollment, professors are easily accessible for out-of-class coaching, and the students get to know one another. At a larger college Nancy and Richard might never have met. As it was, the dark-eyed brownette from Texas caught the studious Connecticut boy’s eye on the very first day of school, in their very first class together. Before the opening lecture was halfway done, the soon-to-fall-in-love young couple were shooting furtive glances at each other across the classroom.

  Richard Allan (for his father) Abood (his mother’s Lebanese maiden name) Lyon had traveled a far different road to Harvard than had Nancy Dillard. Richard was from rural northeastern Connecticut, having alternated the years of his upbringing between the towns of Willimantic and Mansfield, honest little burgs that lie a stone’s throw apart across cleared farmland and heavily wooded areas. Allan Lyon sold life insurance to support his family of five (Richard is the eldest; he has a younger brother and sister). Although the Lyons never wanted for much, in order to meet ends it was necessary for Rosemary Lyon to work as well, as a teacher’s aide. Prosperity was to come to Allan Lyon later on, after he’d opened a nursing home called Lyon Manor, but as Richard sat in 1979 classes at Harvard, any sort of wealth in store for his father was still some time in the future.

  In highly publicized criminal cases, book writers and TV movie scripters generally have field days delving into the defendant’s deep, dark past to show reason for sociopathic behavior. Mother domineered while Father lay around drunk all the time. Aunt Lucy took the murderer to bed during his formative years, after which Uncle Herman beat the youngster senseless with fists and coat hangers. Those in search of such things to explain Richard Lyon had best look elsewhere than his childhood.

  Richard was an adventuresome kid of
sorts. There were some dark and spooky woods near the Lyon home where he and a neighborhood boy named Jeff Cariglia used to roam, hiding behind trees and jumping out to scare the tomfool out of each other, and through the forest a wildly rushing river flowed. Mansfield Hollow Dam was actually little more than a mud-and-mortar fence that spanned the river, and the two lively little boys used to dare each other to crawl across the dam in springtime while the river rapids frothed swiftly below in a raging, eardrum-shattering torrent. Often Jeff would chicken out. Richard never did.

  The oldest Lyon boy isn’t and never has been much of a jokester. He was brought up to be self-sufficient, and from the age of twelve and on through high school was the best lawn-mower-for-hire in the Mansfield area, using his profits to buy his own clothes, pay for what few dates he had, and stash the balance away for rainy days. While Big Daddy generously financed Nancy’s education—and supplemented her various detours from same—Richard made use of savings, grants, scholarships, and the government loan program to make it through college.

  In a community the size of Mansfield-Willimantic—Richard’s 1975 graduating class from E. O. Smith High, which is in Storrs, a nearby town whose high school services the entire community, was a shade under two hundred strong—just about everybody knows everybody else, and while still in his early teens Richard gained a reputation as a talented artist. And talented he was. He liked to do caricatures, and his cartoonish drawings of friends and neighbors were of newspaper politico-satire quality. He became a fair to middling guitarist as well; as opposed to the belting rock ’n’ roll that most of his generation preferred, Richard liked to strum and sing ballads. The Lyons were Sunday regulars at St. Joseph’s Episcopal, where Richard played guitar accompaniment for the choir.

  Like many with rural backgrounds, Richard was brought up as a sexual conservative. Ultra-conservative, some might think; he’s become a whole lot more tolerant of gays in recent years, but the truth is that anything he views as a sexual perversion sends shudders up and down his spine. It’s an ingrained attitude. Of all the traits that he developed growing up, his sexual conservatism is probably the most important thing to remember about him. His rigidity in matters of sex would someday cause many problems.

  But most of all, Richard liked to tinker and invent. He took small engines apart and put them back together; confronted with anything mechanical, he wanted to know exactly what made the thingamajig tick. Once he’d learned how the gadget worked, he’d make alterations to improve its operation. And as jurors and spectators in a packed Texas courtroom were to learn years later, Richard loved to tell about his findings.

  After high school he took his sterling transcript and upper-nineties-percentile SAT scores and packed off to UMass, a three-hour drive from Mansfield in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is about as close to Richard’s hometown as in-state UConn. There was another kid from E. O. Smith High at UMass, a classmate of Richard’s named Peter Reynolds, and the two small-town boys roomed together. Peter, later to become a successful lawyer down in Hartford, found that he had a lot in common with Richard. The two played chess—at which Richard can beat the pants off of most people—organized pickup soccer games—a sport at which Richard is only fair as a player, but as a strategist is the equal of most professional coaches—and became bench-press and sit-up partners in the weight room. Richard has a propensity to go to fat if he doesn’t exercise and watch his diet, so he does so with rigid discipline. His close friendship with Peter Reynolds was to last until near the end of their sophomore year, when first true love entered the life of Richard Lyon.

  Where women were concerned, Richard was never a field player. For his first two years of college he didn’t date much at all, spending most of his out-of-class time hitting the books, and a three-point-plus grade average was the result. In the spring of his second year at UMass he met a beautiful Hawaiian girl named Dawn Minai, and before the school year was out romance was in full bloom.

  That Richard didn’t go out with many girls before he met Dawn certainly wasn’t for lack of opportunity. He was a strikingly handsome young man, polite to a fault with perfect manners, and just the type that coeds’ mothers are wild for their daughters to meet. But Richard’s studiousness and outward lack of interest where most girls were concerned masked a certain shyness. The truth was that he was painfully timid with the forward, if-you-don’t-call-me-I’ll-call-you breed of young woman that developed through the seventies, which made Dawn Minai’s quiet allure all the more attractive to him.

  Dawn has a wealth of glistening hair the color of dark mahogany, and soft, flawless, Brandy Alexander skin. Her gentle almond eyes are tilted just so, as though she is perpetually about to ask a question. She is soft-spoken and intelligent, and in a male-female relationship never the type to take the lead. Dawn was brought up to be the pursued and not the pursuer, and whatever the strength of her technique, it worked perfectly where Richard was concerned. From near the end of his sophomore year at UMass on through his graduation, there was no other woman for him.

  During the next two and a half years, Dawn and Richard had separate addresses for appearance’s sake—particularly for the occasions when Richard’s folks would drop in from Mansfield—but for all practical purposes they lived together. Though they never made official wedding plans, during the time they were together they both considered their eventual marriage a given.

  When Richard learned of his acceptance to the Harvard School of Design just before his spring 1979 graduation, he and Dawn thought that his pursuit of a master’s degree in Cambridge would fit their future plans perfectly. Dawn had another two semesters left at UMass, and although the thought of being separated for any time at all saddened the young couple, Boston-Cambridge was just a three-hour drive from Amherst and they could easily spend their weekends together. They continued to see each other throughout that summer, and once September rolled around, bade each other a sweet but temporary farewell. So as Richard sat in his first day of class at Harvard and admired the comely Texas girl Nancy Dillard from afar, his interest was merely to look and not to touch. Richard was, after all, spoken for.

  For Nancy’s part, she didn’t come to Harvard looking for love. She certainly was taken with Richard’s looks—as many women are—but on the warm fall day when she first gazed on him, romance was the last thing on her mind. Nancy came to school in Cambridge to pursue her ambition, and for no other reason. Just what fueled Nancy Dillard’s desire to succeed is something she herself likely didn’t know. In the year before she died, Nancy may have come to suspect the origin of her driving force, but in 1979 she knew only that her ambition was there.

  The younger Dillard girl first saw the light of day in New York, as did Susan and Bill Jr., before Big Daddy migrated to Dallas. William Wooldridge Dillard Sr. lived in a number of places before settling down in Highland Park. He is originally from Memphis and was born into wealth, and as a young man lived all over. He met Sue Stubbs on an airplane. She was a stewardess in the days before flight attendants’ rights, back when a stew was considered over the hill at thirty and marriage signaled instant termination of an airline hostess’ job. Even today Bill Jr. will jokingly chide his mother, “Mom, you’re still someplace up in the air.” After Big Daddy wooed and married Sue, the couple settled in New York for long enough to spawn their three eldest children, and finally joined Big Daddy’s brother down in Texas. In 1957, when the family of five took up residence on Highland Park’s Normandy Street, about a mile south of their current Rheims Place home, Nancy was four years old.

  The Dillard children were no more nor no less spoiled than the rest of the Highland Park neighborhood kids, each having their own car as soon as they were old enough to drive, spending their summers lounging by the pool at Dallas Country Club or going on long vacations with Sue and Big Daddy. All attended John S. Bradfield Elementary School and Highland Park Junior High School. As was common in Park Cities, from the time the Dillard kids were toddlers on
through early adolescence, they reported to a series of nannies while Sue and Big Daddy attended to business and social commitments. Highland Park nannies came with the highest of references, of course, but no matter how earnestly children’s clothes are washed and ironed, and no matter how promptly their meals are prepared, a nanny-for-hire generally regards children as only part of the job. More than one Park Cities family whose child has become delinquent or near so has learned that the relationship that places domestics between parents and their kids is missing an important ingredient. Left for the large part to their own devices, the Dillard offspring became quite close. In some ways, perhaps, they were too close, too dependent on one another for love.

  Nancy’s emergence as the family’s restless and ambitious Maggie the Cat didn’t come to pass until after she’d graduated from high school. Throughout her adolescent years she was quiet and reserved. She had good grades and spent a lot of time by herself, and although her quiet beauty attracted a number of boys, she didn’t show much interest in relationships. She wasn’t particularly shy; most of her high school friends remember her as the outgoing, take-charge type. For a girl as attractive as Nancy not to want to date was considered unusual by some. Maybe even downright strange.

  Nancy’s college plans were rather limited in scope, since only certain universities meet acceptable standards for educating Park Cities children. In order for the college of choice to receive cocktail-party approval, the Highland Park High School grad must be discerning indeed. The University of Texas is the only public school to receive consideration—though attendance at any UT branch other than the Austin campus is thought a bit pedestrian in Highland Park—and even the approved private colleges are limited in number. SMU is adequate, though since it’s located right in Park Cities it’s considered more of an extension of high school; Stanford is all right if one can’t be accepted in the Ivy League. For young ladies there are several DC-area–Virginia institutions that pass muster: Randolph-Macon, Washington & Lee, Holyoke, Hollins. Nancy chose Hollins, and enrolled in the classy girls’ school in the fall of 1971.