Quick Pivot

by Brenda Buchanan

  “Big Leo went down to the basement of the Saccarappa and personally created a hole large enough to shove the corpse through. When Preble came to inspect he said they needed to build something airtight or it would smell. So Big Leo came up with the idea of bricking off both ends before closing up the corridor wall. He knew the man for the job, Mike Thibodeau, the guy you tracked down at his place in Scarborough.”

  “Thibodeau acted so squirrelly that day, I knew he had something to do with it.”

  “He and Big Leo grew up together on Munjoy Hill. Thibodeau was a bricklayer by day and a minor league tough on nights and weekends. He agreed to do the brickwork and keep his mouth shut for five grand. Working through the night Saturday and all day Sunday, he built those two narrow end walls. Late Sunday night he went outside for a cigarette break while Big Leo carried in the frozen corpse, deposited it in the tomb and dumped two bags of lime on top. When Thibodeau came back in from his smoke he patched the corridor wall, collected his cash and vamoosed.”

  “Wasn’t the whole brick wall thing awfully complicated? Why didn’t they load Desmond’s body on Harding’s father’s boat and dump it a couple miles out to sea?”

  MacMahon rolled his chair back to the table, looking at me over his glasses. “Because criminals are stupid. Even criminals with fancy business degrees from Harvard.”

  “So all these years, both Coatesworth and Harding knew Preble had killed Desmond, but only Harding knew the details about where the body was buried?”

  “If everyone’s telling the truth, that’s correct. Of course Thibodeau had to have figured out the tomb he’d built was for the mill guy who went missing, but he was paid not to think too hard or ask questions so he didn’t.”

  “Did he know who’d committed the murder?”

  “He said no and I believe that,” MacMahon said. “Thibodeau’s an old-school kind of thug. Doesn’t want to know what he doesn’t need to know.”

  * * *

  “I’m surprised Coatesworth and Harding kept their mouths shut since 1968. Human nature being what it is, you’d think one of them would have had a weak moment.”

  “Preble must have thought of that too, because he reinforced their silence with money. When he turned thirty-five, Preble came into a substantial trust fund. He paid Coatesworth and Harding five large on the first of May every year since. Talk about a perverse business proposition.”

  “He paid ten grand a year in hush money for forty-six years? That’s almost a half a million bucks.”

  “And that wasn’t the whole of it.” MacMahon reached for one of his notebooks. “Remember the men in dark suits who visited Coatesworth on the afternoon Desmond disappeared? That was a little courtesy visit from his Boston relations, letting him know his pal Preble was late on a payment. A week or so later, when the FBI was dissecting the Saccarappa’s books, Coatesworth sent a message to his uncles asking them to call off the dogs, explaining that Preble’s source of cash had dried up. The collection visits stopped, but they must have put someone to work investigating the Preble family fortune. The day Preble turned thirty-five he got a phone call. Wound up paying his old poker mates a grand a month for nearly twenty years until his father died and they lost their leverage.”

  “That puts a whole new slant on his anti-gambling work, doesn’t it?” Unsurprisingly, the tale Preble told Paulie about Coatesworth being an FBI informant was unadulterated bullshit. Nobody could verify Coatesworth’s denial with Wellington because it turned out he was dead, killed in a car crash in 1984. But when the arrogant fibbie’s former top assistant heard on the Boston news that the case had been resolved, he’d tracked MacMahon down to congratulate him.

  “Told me he secretly agreed with me at the time that Desmond’s disappearance was too neat, that the clues were too obvious. I thanked him for his congratulations and said that didn’t make up for him and Wellington shutting down an investigation that should have been resolved in 1968. Desmond’s family and friends suffered all these years, and the man who killed him lived high on the hog when he should have been in prison.”

  “This guy, Wellington’s assistant, he also denied Coatesworth was an informant?”

  “Flat out. He’s been retired for decades. Got no reason to lie to me.”

  “Did you happen to ask why Wellington felt the need to call the Chronicle to complain about Paulie dating Joan Slater?”

  “Didn’t need to. Coatesworth already told me that wasn’t Wellington. It was Preble who’d made sure Paulie’s bosses knew about that.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  MacMahon’s face told me he wasn’t. “Another attempt to save his sorry ass. Put together an anonymous letter, enclosed a couple of photos of Paulie and Joan holding hands as they were leaving a restaurant, dropped it in the mailbox. Presto, the reporter working hardest on the story was on the hot seat.”

  Stunned by the revelation, I picked up my sweating glass of water and took a gulp.

  “Later, when Paulie kept working on the story on his own time, Preble concocted the story about Coatesworth being an FBI mole,” MacMahon said. “Paulie knew Coatesworth was in my sights. He made the mistake of telling Preble, who not only shot down that theory but supplied a plausible reason why the FBI seemed to be bailing on the case. Paulie must have wondered why the bigger story Preble hinted at—that the theft from the mill was tied to organized crime—never materialized.”

  We sat in silence for a moment. I thought about Paulie and Joan Slater, and the child she carried and gave up for adoption without his knowledge. Three lives might have taken a different course if Jay Preble hadn’t thrown a grenade into their romance.

  “Earl St. Pierre’s doing better,” I said after a while. “He’s home now. Starts rehab next week.”

  “Glad to hear it. You did a good job taking care of him out on the golf course that day.”

  “Preble, Coatesworth and Harding spent their adulthood thinking Earl had the dirt on them,” I said. “Turns out Desmond never named any names when he told Earl there were problems with the mill’s books. Still, if Earl had dropped a dime after Desmond disappeared, it might have made a difference.”

  Earl and I had talked about that the previous afternoon on his back porch. I’d sipped a beer, he stuck with iced tea. His hands shaking, he’d said he didn’t plan to return to his job at the Mill Stream.

  “He was scared in 1968,” I told MacMahon, remembering the tears leaking from Earl’s eyes as we spoke. “He had a wife and young children. He didn’t want to ‘disappear’ himself. He didn’t call you but he did tell Paulie what he knew because he trusted Paulie to keep the conversation confidential. Not understanding the conventions of journalism, he figured that was a way to get information to you without his name being attached.”

  MacMahon stopped flipping pages in his notebooks. “Paulie never told me about his conversations with Earl. If he had, it might’ve given us a toehold.”

  “He might have traded information with you for his own purposes, but Paulie was a reporter, not a police informant,” I said. “There were lines he couldn’t cross.”

  Leaning back in his chair, MacMahon studied my face. “As good as Paulie was, it’s surprising he got spun by Jay Preble.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He bought Preble’s bullshit and eventually stopped working the story.”

  “Sounds to me like he stopped working the story when you and the other investigators stopped working the case.”

  The friction between us seemed to suck the air out of the room.

  After a moment MacMahon shrugged his big shoulders. “I know you looked up to Paulie. That he taught you how to be a reporter. But like I told you the first time we met, he doesn’t belong on a pedestal.”

  I went over to the window and looked out at the shimmering heat. I knew Paulie wasn’t perfect, but he’
d dug at the Desmond story till his fingers bled. It was hard for me to fault him. I walked back to the table and sat across from the big man who never stopped being a cop.

  “Paulie Finnegan was a hell of a reporter,” he said, the tone in his voice softer, like when he was comforting Joan Slater. “You were lucky to have him as a mentor. But he was human. He made mistakes. You will too. And that’s okay.”

  * * *

  On a perfect Maine afternoon in mid-August, a freshening breeze blowing from the south, George Desmond’s remains were scattered at sea in a private gathering on the back shore of Peaks Island. Helena wrote out invitations by hand. Mine was on a notecard with a painting of brown-eyed Susans exploding across the front.

  It is important to me that you be present for this event, she wrote. If you can come as a friend rather than as a reporter, I would be especially grateful.

  I had no problem with that. Neither did Leah, who respected Helena’s wish for privacy. “Our readers don’t need every last detail,” my boss said. “You gave them plenty.”

  With Helena’s blessing I brought Christie along. We took the two-fifteen ferry, lugging a big cooler with food I’d helped Christie prepare. Jimmy met us in his truck, dressed up for the event in long pants and a pressed Hawaiian shirt. He kissed his cousin and shook my hand.

  “Joe Gale, you journalistic rock star.”

  “Don’t be asking for an autograph. The answer is no, even if you beg.”

  We jammed ourselves into the front seat of his pickup.

  “How’s Helena today?” I asked.

  “If I had to pick one word, I’d say serene. She’s over the shock of hearing all the details. Pissed that Preble killed himself rather than stand trial. Relieved to at least know what happened to her brother. She told me this morning she’s looking forward to releasing his ashes into the ocean. It’ll be a welcome contrast to the thought of him entombed in that damned mill.”

  Jimmy’s description was accurate. Helena met us at the top of her driveway, back straight, eyes clear, appearing thinner but stronger than when I’d last seen her. She hugged me tight for a long moment before greeting Christie and Jimmy.

  An hour later, an elegantly dressed and clearly nervous Joan Slater stepped off the three-fifteen boat, eyes focused on the transfer bridge instead of the dock where Jimmy and I waited. Behind the crush of disembarking passengers, Earl walked slowly alongside Barb Wyatt, who was wheeling MacMahon up the ramp.

  Using a borrowed minivan, we drove everyone around to a secluded spot on the back shore where Christie, Helena, a few of her cousins and some of her island friends waited. In less than ten minutes George Desmond’s cremated remains were dancing in the breeze and his sister was smiling and crying at the same time.

  We sat in Helena’s backyard through the afternoon and into the evening, surrounded by her flower gardens, sheltered from the eyes of passersby by a ruff of spruce trees. Those of us who didn’t know George Desmond listened while those who did told stories about him.

  When the platters of food were laid on the picnic table, Helena offered a toast.

  “To the truth coming out and justice being done,” she said. “I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of you, especially Joe, for exposing that damned mill’s secrets.”

  Helena and Joan sat together, one drinking a bit too much wine, the other smoking altogether too many cigarettes. Before the end of the evening I heard them making plans to get together again.

  Christie and I stayed to clean up, making us the last to leave. As we stood on the porch preparing to run for the nine-fifteen boat back to Portland, Helena took my face in both her hands.

  “You done good,” she said, kissing me on both cheeks.

  A canopy of stars over our heads, Christie took my arm as we walked down the grassy driveway to where Jimmy was waiting in his truck. A meteor shot to earth before we got there, its long tail streaking across the sky.

  “That damned Paulie Finnegan,” I said. “Always had to have the last word.”

  * * * * *

  Watch for COVER STORY by Brenda Buchanan,

  the second JOE GALE MYSTERY,

  coming from Carina Press in Fall 2015.

  To learn more about the JOE GALE MYSTERY SERIES and Brenda Buchanan, please visit her website here.

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  ISBN-13: 9781426899751

  Quick Pivot

  Copyright © 2015 by Brenda Buchanan

  Edited by Deborah Nemeth

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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