by Thomas Kies
He took a minute and looked at the ground. Then he looked up into my eyes. “This time it gave me the willies. But it was only for a minute or two and then it stopped. I wasn’t sure what I heard and I couldn’t say for sure where it had come from. Could have come from a boat out on the water, for all I knew.”
“About what time was that?”
“Sometime after midnight, twelve-thirty, maybe.”
That was the estimated time of the murders. And then the bodies weren’t found for another seventeen hours. Nobody even knew they were dead, not until someone called the cops. Who, the killer? Did he have an attack of conscience? Who else would have called?
“You tell the cops this?”
He nodded to the affirmative.
“Did the cops ask you why you didn’t call them when you heard the screaming?”
“Told them that I wasn’t sure what I heard. And it only lasted just a real short time.”
I looked back at the bridge again. It was low tide and the space between the mainland and the small island was little more than a tidal mud flat. Pointing, I asked, “Could somebody walk across that? Maybe cross over without you seeing them?”
“During low tide? It’s possible, but you’d sink into the mud and silt right up to your waist. I’ve seen clammers out there in their hip boots. They come out of there a right old mess.”
“But it’s possible?”
“Yeah, it’s possible,” he shrugged. “But Wednesday night? When the police say those folks were killed? It was high tide. And the only way onto Connor’s Landing at high tide is over this bridge or by boat.”
By boat? I don’t know why, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the killer might have come in on a boat.
“Did you hear any boats that night?”
“Tell you the same thing I told the cops,” he said slowly, his eyes looking a little sad. “I just can’t recall. This here’s an island. You hear boats all the damned time. It’s like living near an airport. You kind of tune out the jets when they take off and land. With me, it’s the same with the boats. I don’t hear ’em anymore. “
I sighed with disappointment.
“Anyways, if somebody’s rowing in, nobody’s gonna hear ’em.”
I was pretty much out of questions so I thanked him, said my good-byes, shook his hand, and walked back around the guard’s station. As I crawled back into the passenger’s seat of the pickup, Kevin turned to me. “So did you find out anything?”
“Not really. Mind if we drive by the Chadwick place?”
Connor’s Landing has maybe thirty homes on it. Smuggler’s Road ran around the perimeter of the island with the most expensive houses being on the waterfront. Out close to the point, probably the most beautiful spot on the island, where the harbor met the Sound, was where the Chadwicks had lived.
I recalled the house from a few nights ago when I’d stood outside waiting for a quote from Mike Dillon. Even in the dark, it was magnificent. But now, in the golden warmth of the summer sunlight, it was breathtaking.
I’d done homework on its history for a sidebar to the murder piece. Built in 1898, it originally belonged to Jonathan Hoyt, owner of Sheffield Shipping and Receiving, a cargo company that moved goods from New York and Boston to London.
In 1903, at nearly seventy years old, Hoyt died at sea during a hurricane off the coast of Cuba.
I chalked it up to wanting to make one more trip to a sunny location and being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was also the beginning of long string of bad luck for the owners of that house.
Bartholomew Gault, a New York banker, bought the home in 1910 when Hoyt’s family went bankrupt. After installing plumbing and electricity, he and his family lived comfortably on Connor’s Landing until the Great Depression wiped out Gault’s fortune. He drowned while fishing about six months after the stock market crash. Rumors hinted at suicide.
Penniless, Gault’s family left town, the bank took the over the estate and the house remained empty for nearly ten years, a home to raccoons, rats, and hobos.
In 1939 Carl Holden, the Broadway producer, bought the house and spent over a million dollars restoring it to its original grandeur.
Holden, best known for the musical Paris Romance, split his time between Manhattan and Connor’s Landing until he died of a stroke in 1970. His grandson then lived in the house until George Chadwick purchased it ten years ago.
Holden’s grandson was cursed with a lack of talent but was obsessed with Broadway. Many of the rooms were decorated with the actual props from famous plays and musicals: 42nd Street, Oklahoma, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, Streetcar Named Desire, and of course Paris Romance. After he sold the house, it’s said the grandson gave away all of his money to the Actor’s Retirement Home and, ironically, died homeless during a particularly harsh winter a few years later.
And then George Chadwick bought it. Shortly after that, Chadwick’s first wife, Brenda got fed up with George’s unusual sexual predilections and filed for divorce and set up residence in the Virgin Islands. Okay, honestly, all I know for sure is the date of the divorce and where Brenda ended up.
The reason for the divorce, however, I’m guessing at. Not everyone likes the kinky life.
Two years after his divorce, George married Lynette. From a source that I can no longer locate, I was told that a few times a month, they’re swingers.
The rest of the time, George Chadwick was a vice president of marketing and business development for Connecticut Sun Bank, the largest financial institution in the state. Even with that kind of position, George couldn’t have afforded a house like this on Connor’s Landing. His ten-million-dollar inheritance turned the trick.
Such a beautiful home. You have to wonder if George knew the house was cursed when he bought it, that he’d be one among a pile of bodies in a place that the cops called a slaughterhouse.
***
As we drove by, I saw the house looming majestically behind the weathered stone wall that protected it from the rest of the world. Like last Thursday night, the wrought iron gate was open and I could see the perimeter of yellow police tape around the house, hanging limp in the heavy air. Two cop cars and an unmarked state police cruiser were easily visible in the driveway.
I’d heard from Phil Gilmartin that the forensic investigation wouldn’t be completed until sometime on Monday. They were even draining the pool, looking for clues.
Kevin peered out of the driver’s side window of his truck as we drove by. “Kind of creepy.”
“Multiple murders are hell on property values.”
He drove on. The address we wanted was only a couple of houses down the road.
While the Chadwick home was rich in history, the Elroy place was just the opposite. Hidden behind a ten-foot tall, wooden fence the two-story combination of contemporary and traditional was a stylish amalgamation of angles, redwood beams, and glass. A recent construction, it opened indoor and outdoor spaces to a southern exposure and the sweeping vista of the horizon, the water, and of small boats cruising over Long Island Sound.
Not much history here but there was new money.
Becky Elroy answered the door. She was dressed in what I call shabby chic—a light green, extra-large tee shirt that hung rakishly off one shoulder and a pair of denim shorts. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She welcomed Kevin with enthusiasm and led us into the kitchen that, to my amazement, was nearly the size of my entire apartment. Sub-Zero, stainless steel appliances that were large enough to serve a good-sized restaurant, dominated the room. A young Hispanic woman in black shorts and white shirt ignored us, intent on chopping vegetables and mixing a sauce for barbeque chicken.
Mrs. Elroy and Kevin left me on my own and the two of them slowly strolled off to review his written estimate and timeline for the project. Knocking out a wall for a breakfast nook over here, hanging trac
k lighting up there, installing eco-friendly recycled-glass countertops right over here, laying down Italian marble for the floors right there, and don’t forget the custom backsplash, complete with genuine fossil imprints from the Jurassic era behind the sinks.
While they talked, I soaked in the view through the sliding glass door. The backyard embraced a half-acre of green shrubs and an eye-popping array of flowers, along with a koi pond, natural rock waterfall, and swimming pool. Beyond that, tethered to a long wooden dock, was a forty-two-foot powerboat floating lazily on the smooth, sparkling surface of Long Island Sound.
A half- dozen young men in swimming trunks and an equal number of anorexic young ladies in tiny bikinis played in the pool, tossing a soccer ball around, splashing and laughing. A dozen beer cans lined the edge of the pool. On the tables, under wide beach umbrellas, there was a wide selection of bottles and half-filled glasses.
I glanced at my watch. It was about three in the afternoon. Not quite happy hour, but obviously close enough for this crowd.
“Hi,” said a voice behind me.
I turned to meet a man in his early fifties, with luminescent green eyes and light brown hair starting to turn gray around his temples. He was dressed in a red polo shirt and gray shorts. He was smiling at me and holding a plate of steaks. “I’m Pete,” he announced quietly.
“Genie Chase, I’m with the contractor over there.” I jerked my thumb in the direction of Kevin and Mrs. Elroy.
He’d noticed that I was watching the party outside. “Makes you want to be young and carefree again, doesn’t it?”
“I’d settle for young and wearing one of those bikinis. Who are they?” I tipped my head in the direction of the pool.
“My boys and their friends. The one getting out of the pool over there? That’s my oldest, Lance. He’s a sophomore at Yale this year.”
“Good looking kid.” I wasn’t kidding. He was about nineteen, a spitting image of dad, and didn’t look to have a single ounce of fat on a body that was lean, tight, and solid muscle.
“And that young man playing video games under the cabana, that’s Drew. He’s a senior at the Handley Academy.”
“I’m not sure I’m familiar with that.” I picked the boy out of the crowd. Drew was as tall as his brother but larger, more muscular. He was broad-shouldered and from the looks of his chest and biceps, spent some time working out in the gym. His hair was cut short and he wasn’t as handsome as his brother. Drew’s face was a little too flat and his eyes too far apart. But that didn’t seem to matter. Even though women in tiny thongs were cavorting mere feet from where he sat, his concentration was exclusively on the laptop on the table in front of him.
“Handley’s a private school over in Greenwich,” Pete Elroy announced proudly. “Graduating from Handley is guaranteed to make your kid an Ivy League candidate. Lance graduated from Handley two years ago. He was accepted by Harvard and Princeton before finally deciding on pre-law at Yale.”
“Looks like quite a party.”
“The boys have earned it. They both have summer jobs working as deck hands on the Sheffield Harbor Association ferry boat. Doesn’t pay a lot, but it’s honest work and that’s the important thing, isn’t it? It’s a learning experience.”
I looked around this spread. The beauty, the opulence, the excess, the carefree atmosphere—it was like something out of The Great Gatsby.
And just up the street? The Chadwick mansion stood as a testament that death can bring it all down in a sickening heartbeat.
Pete moved past me and slid open the glass door out to the deck. I could feel the hot, humid air from outside sneaking in around the air conditioning.
“Were you home Wednesday night?” I asked, too abruptly perhaps, but I didn’t want to lose the opportunity.
He stopped dead and avoided looking at me, staring out at the pool instead. “Why do you ask?”
“Just nosy.” I wasn’t going to tell him that I’m a reporter. It’s not good ethics, but what the hell. “It’s a scary thing. Six people murdered in a house just down the street. Did you know the owners?”
He looked at me curiously. “We didn’t know them at all. I wouldn’t recognize either one of them if I saw them on the street. They never came to any of the Home Owners’ Association meetings and, frankly, this isn’t the kind of neighborhood where you stop by for a cup of coffee and trade gossip over the fence.”
“Kind of spooky that nobody saw or heard anything.”
He smiled now, filled with condescension, like he was explaining something to an idiot. “Lance and Drew were at a party that night, a friend’s house in Greenwich. Becky and I stayed up until they got home around eleven. We had a late night snack and we were all in bed by midnight. We didn’t hear a thing.”
I nodded as if I understood.
“That’s why we live out here on Connor’s Landing. We mind our own business,” he stated with finality, then walked outside and slid the glass door closed behind him.
It was Pete Elroy’s way of telling me to do the same thing.
Chapter Fourteen
After Becky Elroy gave Kevin the deposit check, she politely offered us a cocktail before we left. The implication, of course, was that we’d have one drink and then be on our way. Don’t stay for dinner, don’t stay for a second helping of booze, and for God’s sake, don’t stay and talk to the guests. After all, now that she’d given Kevin money, we were paid help.
She told us, in addition to rewarding the Elroy brothers for getting summer jobs, they were preparing for a small party in honor of one of the partners in Pete’s law firm. The partner had been appointed by the White House to be a legal advisor to the Environmental Protection Agency. They needed another high-powered, overpaid legal eagle to help them suck oil and drag the last of the trees out of our national wildlife refuges. You can’t have too many lawyers or too few environmentalists for that sort of thing.
Indeed, as Kevin and I poured ourselves drinks in the backyard bar, three couples about our age came out of the house and onto to the back lawn. Dressed in khakis, polo shirts, designer shorts, expensive jeans and deck shoes, they were all trying hard to appear casually chic as well as “barbeque-comfortable.” Pete Elroy greeted them warmly, inviting them to take a look at his brand new, stainless steel gas grill, a shiny monster large enough to charbroil filet mignon for most of the Third World, should Pete decide to do so.
Seeing that their space was being invaded, Lance, Drew, and their nearly naked coterie of young friends quickly quieted down and clustered around several tables in the far corner of the pool area. They broke out a couple of decks of cards and started playing a little Texas Hold ’Em.
I’m guessing that all they wanted to do was stay out of the way of mom and dad’s friends, get quietly drunk, smoke a little grass, and then leave to have mind-blowing sex someplace where the old folks weren’t drinking martinis.
Kevin and I silently agreed that we should have our drinks and stay inconspicuous. We wandered out to the dock to look over the forty-two-foot powerboat and enjoy the unobstructed view of Long Island Sound.
“So how much did you get?” I crassly wondered about the size of his deposit check.
“Twenty thousand.” With a big smile, he patted the pocket of his ubiquitous work shirt.
My eyebrows shot up in appreciation. “How much is the whole job costing them?”
“About eight times that.” Then before I had a chance to say anything, he stepped up close, swept me up into his strong arms, and kissed me.
It might have been the sound of the water licking at the edges of the dock, it might have been the salty, pungent scent of the sea air, or it might have been the sweet, slow reggae song that Pete had just put on the CD player. It might have been the warm sunlight sparkling like diamonds on the surface of the Sound. Or it might have been that phenomenal kiss. All I know is that I melted into his
body like a pat of warm butter left out in the summer sunshine. My hand reached behind his head to hold him closer, my breasts pressed hard against his chest, my hips tight against his. Right at that moment, I wanted to be so close to him that we’d never come apart.
When we finally broke for air, I heard him take a slow breath, clear his throat and say, “You know…I might be falling in love with you.”
You know…I might be falling in love with you.
I kept repeating the words over and over in my head.
I’m not a kid anymore. This shouldn’t happen to me, but my heart was beating so hard against my ribcage that I thought he’d feel it. All I could say was, “What?”
Oh, I’d heard him all right. I wanted him to say it again.
And he did. “Look, I know we’ve only been together a couple of days but I’ve known you all of my life, ever since we were kids. I’ve always loved you. I just didn’t know it for sure until now.”
Every woman wants to find her “soul mate.” Every woman wants to find her hero. After three failed marriages and a long string of miserable relationships, I’m not completely stupid. I know what love really means. It means convenience, compatibility, an element of trust, good conversation, fun, and sex, if you can get it.
Not necessarily in that order or all at the same time with the same person.
I learned a long time ago that love doesn’t mean a knight on a white charger, a lifetime with Prince Charming, or fairy tale magic. Sometimes the best love comes from a close friend. It comes from someone you truly like.
And I liked Kevin a lot.
I looked into his eyes. They were smiling at me.
I put my hand on his cheek and quietly replied, “I love you too.”
Then we celebrated by kissing once more, this time with unbridled passion.
When we broke apart again I felt myself breathing hard. He placed his forehead against mine. “So what do we do now?” he whispered.
“Is it too early to go to bed?”
“That wasn’t what I was thinking about.”
