Vultures at Twilight

by Charles Atkins

  I could tell she was going to push further, but at that moment, Aaron had breezed past on his way to school.

  ‘Strange, isn’t it?’ she had commented. ‘You’re going to work and I’ve got a teenager at home.’

  ‘It hasn’t hurt you any.’

  ‘I’ve missed Aaron, and I like the company,’ she’d admitted. ‘I hadn’t realized how lonely I could get. If it wasn’t for you, Lil . . .’

  ‘I know.’ I fought the impulse to hug her. I had wanted to say more, to bring up the inconsistency of her feeling lonely and then proposing to go care for her mother in Manhattan. But I’d held my tongue.

  On one point she was right: this was strange. I had always expected to go to work, just not when I was coming up on sixty. As a young woman I had wanted a career. Almost finished with my Bachelor of Arts from Smith, I had fantasized about a career in journalism, possibly working for a newspaper, or even one of the glossy magazines. I had been editor of the school paper my last two years, and one of my professors had told me she could get me an internship at Newsweek. But then, Christmas of my senior year, I met Bradley. I had gone home for the holidays, and was caught up in the seasonal whirlwind of baking and social visits. It was a glorious time, with fresh snow frosting the antique homes and icicles glistening like ornaments. Mother and I, bundled in fur-lined coats, and armed with rum-soaked fruitcakes, and tins of chocolaty bourbon balls, went calling on the neighbors. At every house we’d stop and chat. And then, and I’ve often wondered if mother hadn’t intended this all the time, we’d stopped at Bradley’s house, to pay a visit to the new unmarried young doctor in town. The intent was to leave him with one of Mother’s scandalous batches of bourbon balls.

  Bradley and I would always say that it was love at first sight; I’m not sure that’s true. It was more a knowing that after half an hour’s visit, we fit together.

  Now, as I patrolled the rows of precisely laid-out booths, I realized that was ancient history. It was a slow morning here in the Antique Center and I was free to browse. My eye caught on a pair of Imari platters; one of my particular passions, I carefully examined them. Something about the almost deliberate too-even wear on the bottoms made me suspicious. The prices were reasonable, but I opted to give them a pass, at least for now.

  At the front desk Belle and her rail-thin assistant, a retired engineer called Fred, were focused on the computerized cash register. ‘This thing gets me so flustered.’ Belle’s pudgy hands angrily attempted to thread the paper into the printer. Her approach was too rough and the roll crimped and jammed.

  ‘Let me try,’ said Fred.

  Gratefully, she stepped back. ‘Lil, do you know anything about computers?’

  ‘Some,’ I admitted.

  ‘They are the devil’s own,’ she shot back. ‘Why can’t they just let us have a regular cash register? You know, the type with keys you push?’

  ‘No paradise like a paradise lost,’ Fred remarked, having managed to get the paper on to the roller. He turned on the machine and stared at the small readout box. ‘What do they mean by “feed line jam”?’

  ‘Now what?’ Belle looked at Fred. ‘Can’t we just use paper and pencil today?’

  ‘You’re the boss . . . Wait a minute.’ The machine clicked and whirred. ‘Here we go.’

  ‘It’s working?’

  I left them to their struggles and wandered to the front windows that looked out on High Street. Across from the center stood three of the older antique shops, including the one where Mildred Potts had been murdered. They were all open for business. Apparently Mildred’s daughter wouldn’t, or couldn’t, afford to go on hiatus.

  In the windows of her shop were carefully arranged displays of primitive early country furniture. Not my taste, but the sort of thing that sells. I’ve never understood the charm of overpriced, rickety and worm-eaten ladder-back chairs. It reminded me of Evie’s painted cupboard and how that was the one thing that Mildred had really wanted.

  Staring out, I didn’t notice Fred as he came up behind me. ‘Penny for your thoughts?’ he asked.

  I looked at him and smiled. He was a bit older than me, tall with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and dark-framed glasses. He reminded me of a college professor or scientist. In fact he’d been a social worker at the local hospital for years. Several months back he’d been laid off; working here was a huge pay cut, but at least it was a job. ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I was thinking about Mildred,’ I admitted.

  ‘Right, there’s been a lot of commotion over there. It’s ghoulish to say, but we’ve had a front row seat.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure. We watched the police, all the different folks from the state. It’s interesting. If you think about it, we have over a hundred dealers set up in this shop. People talk.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘Everyone has a theory.’ He looked across the green. ‘It’s a weird sort of crime though, killing antique dealers. What’s the motive?’

  ‘And your theory?’ I asked, feeling both creeped out and interested.

  ‘It’s not very good; but the only thing that connects the victims, other than they were all dealers, is they were all high-volume dealers.’

  ‘How’s that a motive?’

  ‘There are a lot of dealers in town, probably hundreds, but how many of them can cough up six or seven figures to go after large estates? Maybe half a dozen. Most dealers – and pretty much everyone in this shop – are small potatoes. Even the ones that make their livings at it don’t have cash reserves. To buy out a decent-sized estate you need at least a couple hundred grand in ready cash. Or at least have a credit line that big, and right now the banks just aren’t fronting that kind of cash.’

  ‘I’d not thought about it quite that way.’ And I wondered if Mattie had.

  ‘Sure . . . Conroy, Mildred, Carl McElroy, they all had bucks. Maybe, someone wants to get rid of the competition. Of course the other big theory is revenge.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Everyone knew McElroy was a crook, and Mildred was so damn cheap. Conroy I don’t know about.’

  ‘The part I struggle with,’ I said, looking at the display in Mildred’s windows, ‘and maybe this is a good thing, I can’t quite fathom what would be important enough to kill over.’

  Fred grew serious. ‘All people in the right – or maybe it’s the wrong – circumstance can kill. It’s just in Grenville, it seems unlikely. Think about war. I was in ‘Nam; we all went and did what we were told.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said, feeling I’d intruded. ‘It’s the Grenville piece. I’ve lived here my whole life. These things don’t happen here.’

  ‘Not true,’ he said. ‘Over two hundred years ago soldiers came down High Street with muskets. Some of these houses witnessed battles with neighbors and British soldiers dying in their front yards.’

  ‘You’re right.’ He was referring to the ‘Skirmish on Town Plot’, an episode in local history that had been indelibly drilled into me as a schoolgirl, where we’d take field trips to the local cemetery and do charcoal rubbings off the tombstones of the fallen.

  ‘Think about it this way.’ He stared at Mildred’s shop. ‘For whatever reason, two hundred years later someone else has come to Grenville to wage war.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mattie Perez braced herself for a second look at the half-dissolved human remains spilled across the stainless autopsy table. Spending the morning in the morgue with Arvin Storrs, the bald, portly and slightly pervy Medical Examiner was one of her least favorite activities. The smell was overpowering, a fetid mix of sulfur and rotting meat. Even dabbing mentholated Vicks beneath her nostrils couldn’t cover it.

  The body, found in a vat of corrosive fluid outside the Grenville dump, was unrecognizable. Although both she and Hank Morgan had a good guess as to the identity of victim number four. Even now, Hank was hunting down dental records. ‘It shouldn’t be too hard,’ he’d said. ‘Everyone
went to Doc Williams. Give me a couple hours.’

  He’d been eager to get away, she thought as Arvin probed the oily lumps of human remains. Don’t puke. She swallowed hard. Focus, focus.

  ‘Some sort of acid,’ Arvin commented as he peered at Mattie through bifocals smudged with human fat. ‘Probably sulfuric, from the smell. Too strong for muriatic. Did a good job of getting rid of most of the meat. Even the bones are porous; much longer and there wouldn’t have been anything. And this stuff over here –’ and he swirled a surgical probe into a bucket of scum skimmed from the top of the barrel where the body had been found – ‘this floating stuff is dissolved adipose, you know, fat, just like the scum on the top when you make a pot of stew. Hard to tell how heavy this guy was. Now he’s soap.’

  Mattie took small careful breaths through her nostrils. She knew from experience that it was critical to be at the autopsy. But Arvin took too much pleasure in his work, and at some point he’d make a lewd proposition, which she’d laugh off. I’m too old for this, she thought. ‘Will there be enough for a dental match?’

  ‘Should be, most of the fillings have hung in, and there’s a gold bridge that it didn’t touch. That alone should give you the match. If the killer really wanted to hide the identity he would have removed anything traceable, at least chopped off the head.’

  ‘Any ideas on where someone would get the acid?’

  ‘It ain’t hard. I use muriatic or sulfuric acid every year when I hose down my pool. Of course, whoever did this was buying in bulk. You ever seen my pool? It’s great, got a hot tub attached . . . That thing’s seen some action.’

  She ignored his question. ‘So pool supply stores . . . Where else?’

  ‘Hardware stores, chemical supply houses, schools, anywhere there’s a lab. If it is sulfuric it’s a common reagent. You should see my pool, come for a swim, even now I keep it at eighty-five,’ he offered hopefully.

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘You’re no fun. Here,’ he said, and he pointed to the fragile cranium. ‘There’s your exit wound, and my guess is where there used to be a face was the entry wound.’ He worked a stainless-steel probe into the bullet hole. ‘It’s probably a twenty-two; didn’t find the slug, though. But, I’d be willing to bet it’s the same as the others.’

  ‘It’s small.’

  ‘Yeah, dainty. If the bone weren’t so eroded we could get a better identification. But unless you got two maniacs running around in butt-floss Connecticut, I’d say it’s the same gun.’

  ‘Lady’s gun?’

  ‘Not necessarily, but guys go for bigger. Of course –’ he smiled lewdly – ‘it’s not size that counts.’

  ‘Give it a rest, Arvin. Why acid?’ she persisted.

  ‘Dispose of the remains, hide the identity, fertilize the garden, who knows?’

  ‘They certainly weren’t trying to hide anything. It was right in the open.’

  ‘Good thing, too,’ Arvin said. ‘Much longer, and all that would have remained is some yellow fat. And of course the gold bridge.’

  ‘But if someone was trying to obliterate the identity, why leave the teeth?’ Mattie pondered.

  ‘Couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘What can you tell me?’

  ‘Just the basics.’ Arvin tapped the Dictaphone controls with his disposable bootie covered foot and started his dictation. ‘The victim is male, judging by bone, approximately fifty-five to sixty-five years of age. The overall condition of the body is extremely poor and has been subjected to a highly corrosive substance. A strong smell of sulfur is noted, making me suspect –’ he winked at Mattie – ‘sulfuric acid. Accurate assessments of organ weight cannot be obtained.’ He tapped the control to pause the recorder. He poked into the rib cage, peeling back what fragile flesh remained. ‘Nah –’ he stepped back – ‘not much left.’ He tapped the play button. ‘On assessment of the cranium there appears to be a small exit wound on the medial aspect of the right parietal bone, approximately two centimeters above the lambdoid suture. Judging by the walls of the wound, the trajectory was at a slight upward angle, making it likely that the entry wound was in the area of the medial aspect of the right infra-orbital foramen.’ He tapped pause. ‘There going to be any family coming down to view the body? Hank Morgan seemed pretty sure you’d come up with a match.’

  ‘Don’t know yet,’ she admitted, thinking about another of her least favorite tasks: notifying family.

  ‘Hmmm, did I mention my pool is heated?’

  ‘Great, Arvin. You know I got a kid in college?’ Mattie said in a tone that let him know there was no way in hell she’d be stopping by his pool.

  ‘So? You’re just no fun.’ And he proceeded with the autopsy.

  Mattie held her breath for the last few steps as she exited the morgue. Outside, she gulped the sweet morning air. The stars were still faintly visible and the first lazy fingers of dawn had crept up the eastern sky.

  She tried to shake off the sights and smells of the last few hours. She’d be getting a call from headquarters in less than an hour, and, with four connected murders, she needed something. Someone was playing games; all four of them shot, but after the fact, Philip’s finger, Mildred’s jewelry, Carl’s paddle-riddled body, and now, if the records matched, Rudy Caputo’s acid-eaten corpse. And still no word about McElroy’s missing cronies, Rinaldo and Jeffries. At least now, she thought, MacDonald will have to authorize search teams. Already formulating the email she’d send that would make it impossible for him to refuse.

  In the distance, she watched a Grenville patrol car turn down the street. What she needed was a little luck and, hopefully, Hank was bringing it.

  Kevin Simpson was first out of the cruiser, a manila folder with the dental records in his hand.

  ‘You found them?’ she asked.

  ‘Got ’em.’ Hank pointed toward the Medical Examiner’s door. ‘Arvin finished yet?’

  ‘Yeah, slid him back in the drawer a few minutes ago.’

  ‘Never did have a stomach for those things,’ Hank admitted. ‘So what did he find?’

  ‘Same as the others, small-caliber bullet, single shot.’

  ‘In the face?’ Kevin asked.

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘Damn, that’s cold. So he saw it coming.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mattie, slightly peeved that the small-town constable had caught a point that she had missed. All the victims had been shot in the face. She knew that, but Kevin’s implication was an important one. The killer wanted them to see it coming, to know that they were going to die. To face their killer.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Hank asked, eyes narrowing.

  ‘Payback. It’s increasingly obvious, but there’s a sense of something moral with these murders. The killer’s making a point.’

  ‘What’s the message?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but before I go spinning any theories let’s see if we’ve got a match.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Hank turned toward the morgue door. ‘How bad is it?’

  Mattie handed him her jar of Vicks. ‘Put it this way . . .’ She took the envelope from Kevin and headed toward the door. ‘How long can you hold your breath?’

  TWENTY-THREE

  It was Wednesday. I wasn’t scheduled to work and Ada had asked me to help out at Evie’s. It felt odd, and sad, as Tolliver Jacobs and his crew of red-shirted movers from Grenville Antiques dismantled our friend’s home.

  Tolliver seemed drained, his face drawn; he’d lost weight. He pitched in with the packing and the moving, but his polo shirt was wrinkled, his hair uncombed; he seemed distracted and the skin on his face seemed loose, as though he’d lost a considerable amount of weight in the span of a week.

  ‘Careful with the gesso,’ he cautioned as one of the packers measured the frame of the Hassam painting.

  ‘Anyone for tea?’ Ada asked as she buzzed around Evie’s condo with pen and paper, and then entered every item into a spreadsheet on her laptop on the dining room table. She’d poppe
d over late last night, nearly in tears. ‘He accused me of stealing from his mother!’ she had said, following an angry phone call with Evie’s eldest. ‘I told him,’ she’d continued, ‘that if he wanted to be present for the entire liquidation process, I’d have no problems with that. What a little pisher. It would be one thing if he had helped his mother while she was alive but now, the whole bunch of them . . . vultures!’

  We had talked for over an hour and by the end she had calmed down, but today, dressed in denim overalls and turquoise Keds, like some adorable farmer, she was spinning at a furious pace. ‘Maybe I should have gotten another quote,’ she said, her voice low so Tolliver couldn’t hear. ‘Mr Caputo never did get back to me and now he’s dead. At least I have Mildred’s quote, if anyone tries to say anything. I did my due diligence, and it’s not like I’m making anything off this.’

  ‘You did more than most,’ I reassured her. ‘And I’ve known Tolliver forever; I think he’s honest. Plus,’ I went on, my tone low to match hers, ‘there aren’t a lot of dealers who can cut a check for this kind of money . . . especially now.’

  She stopped and smiled, and then impulsively reached up and kissed me on the cheek.

  ‘What?’ I could feel myself blush as I registered how soft and warm her lips felt on my skin.

  ‘I love you Lil, this would be just awful if you weren’t here.’

  And then she was off, trying to see what the man who’d just measured the painting was up to.

  Confused and light-headed, I sank into one of the dining room chairs where I had often played bridge. I watched as Evie’s personal things were boxed and taken out. Her clothes were bagged for distribution to local charities and the family pictures were stacked on the counter alongside the bubble-wrapped china. My anxiety spiked. Too much was running through my head. The kiss was just a friendly gesture, Lil, don’t over-read it. But that was just the tip of things as I compared Evie’s condo with my own and Ada’s. Someday, someone would be doing the same in our homes. A life reduced to boxes and bags, our better things carted off to auction, or distributed among family. From there, my mind twitched to this morning’s hang-up call. I was getting at least two a day. The one last night – after I was already in bed – had made it impossible to fall back asleep. And why aren’t you telling anyone about them? Because they’re just hang-ups, I told myself. You’re on some stupid marketing list and that’s why they’re calling. Then why don’t they try to sell you something?