High Country Fall dk-10

by Margaret Maron

  “Damn it all,” he said, glaring at the men who’d first worked this spot. “How many times you gotta be told to look up when you’re searching a wooded area? It ain’t enough to cover the ground. You gotta look in the fuckin’ trees, too.”

  Underwood agreed, and yet, with so many limbs and trunks and the bushes that crowded all the spaces between, even knowing the body was here, the eye didn’t automatically home in on it.

  Osborne hung across a limb like the first dead buck of hunting season. His head was nearly even with his feet and there was a deep laceration on the back of his head.

  “Careful, Sheriff,” said Underwood. He put his hand on Horton’s arm to keep him from walking closer and pointed to the ground where ants and flies were busily feeding on the gore that had puddled on the brown leaves.

  “Poor bastard must’ve bled out,” Horton said.

  Underwood nodded. “Just like Ledwig.”

  “Oh, shit!” said Horton as he and Lucius Burke shared a startled glance.

  “Hey, now, wait just a damn minute here,” said Burke.

  Underwood shrugged. “Two men going off decks? Friends? Both with head wounds?”

  “Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re related,” Burke argued.

  “Don’t it?” Sheriff Horton gave a cynical, seen-it-all snort. “I wanna be there when you try telling that to the Freeman kid’s lawyer.”

  CHAPTER 15

  As Mary Kay had warned me, the Three Sisters Tea Room was jammed when I got there a little past noon, but I quietly worked my way through the vestibule, where at least six people waited to be seated in a room that could accommodate about three dozen.

  When people glared at me, I smiled politely and murmured, “I have a reservation.”

  “They take reservations?” a woman asked indignantly. “I was told they didn’t.”

  “I’m a relative,” I said.

  The young hostess who approached with a frown for my pushiness was wearing a long black skirt, white ruffled blouse, and a retro black velvet and cameo choker, a costume meant to conjure up a more gracious era, no doubt, and appropriate for a tea room decorated in pink and white with fresh flowers at every small table. I remembered her from my courtroom yesterday where she had sat immediately behind Danny Freeman.

  “I’m sorry—” she began.

  “Carla Ledwig?” I asked, eyeing her trim waistline. Her pregnancy wasn’t yet showing.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Judge Knott. I believe my cousins are here? May and June Pittman?”

  Her annoyance turned to alarm as she recognized me.

  “Well, yes, but they’re really sort of busy right now.”

  I drew myself up to look as official as possible. “Never-theless, I’d like to see them. Now.”

  “I’ll tell them you’re here.”

  “Why don’t I tell them myself?” I said pleasantly and pointed to a set of double doors at the rear. “Through there?”

  She nodded.

  From my own waitressing days I knew to enter through the right door, so that I didn’t collide with the young Asian woman who came through the left one carrying a large tray filled with luscious-looking open-faced cucumber and watercress sandwiches. Like Carla Ledwig, she also wore ruffles, long skirt, and a ribbon choker.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as we met in the short hallway. “This is the kitchen. Restrooms are around the corner.”

  I smiled, nodded, and continued through the door.

  At the long central counter in the kitchen, the twins seemed to have an assembly line going, the same sort of assembly line as when they put together sandwiches for our midnight snack last night.

  May spotted me first and groaned.

  “What?” said June and looked up. “Oh, shit!”

  “You guys are so busted,” I said, shaking my head. “The food here stinks? You thought that would keep me away after my clerk keeps telling me how good it is? When were you planning to tell your mom and dad that you’ve dropped out of school? Oh, wait! Bet I know. Parents’ Day, right?”

  June shook her head. “Wrong.”

  “We were going to fake it that weekend,” said May. “Keep it going till Christmas, when they won’t get our grade cards.”

  “I thought Tanser-MacLeod was a small school. How’re the professors not going to notice a pair of twins who aren’t regis— Ah! So that’s why you cut and dyed your hair. To change your looks for Parents’ Day.”

  “It would’ve worked, too,” May said.

  “It still can.” June looked at me with pleading eyes. “They don’t have to know yet.”

  “They don’t? You’re going to wait till they drop another bundle on tuition and board you aren’t using?”

  “They haven’t dropped a bundle. We didn’t register this semester.”

  “Your dad’s a CPA. He didn’t notice that the check was never cashed?”

  “Well … actually it was.”

  They had gone back to work as two waitresses scurried in and out. The menu seemed to be limited to a couple of salads and three or four sandwiches, which were served on unmatched luncheon plates decorated in cabbage roses, daisies, or other floral patterns. Rather attractive little plates, now that I looked. Unasked, May slid one my way.

  I started to tell them I couldn’t be bribed, but egg salad on a bed of crisp watercress? With cracked grain toast points drenched in butter?

  When it was lunchtime?

  I perched on a nearby stool and said, “So how did you manage about the check? Know someone in the bursar’s office?”

  “We’d never ask anyone to steal for us,” June said reprovingly.

  “We told Mom and Dad we wanted to manage the money ourselves—”

  “—write our own checks for the various fees—”

  “—get an appreciation for how much our education was costing them.”

  “And they bought it?”

  “Yep. Deposited the money directly in our personal accounts.”

  “But why not just tell them you don’t want to go to school anymore?” I asked.

  “Look,” said May. “Mom and Dad love us, but they don’t think we’re real bright.”

  “And we aren’t,” said June. “Not about book stuff anyhow.”

  “But we know food, right?”

  Since my mouth was full of their delicious argument at the moment, I merely nodded.

  “They knew we’d never make it through dental school like Phil or accounting like Dad, but they thought we could maybe teach kindergarten.”

  I watched a shared shudder run through both of them.

  “And instead you talked your way in here as chefs? Not bad.” I looked at the two older women, who stayed busy in the back bringing them fresh supplies. “Which one’s the owner?”

  June giggled. “We are.”

  “What?”

  “Well, we own fifty percent, and Carla, she’s the third ‘sister’ here at Three Sisters. She owns the other fifty percent. Our tuition and her trust fund.”

  “We’re not making enough yet to be totally self-supporting here, so we waitress evenings at the Laurel for extra cash to pay our living expenses for when the condo’s rented and we can’t crash there.”

  Now that their secret was blown, the twins seemed happy to be able to tell someone new exactly what they had accomplished: how they’d talked the owner into leasing them this space, the remodeling and how expensive it was to furnish a kitchen, how they’d talked some antique dealers into supplying them with tables and chairs, which their customers could then buy if they wanted—“you wouldn’t believe how many do”—how they’d scoured flea markets for dishes and glasses and flatware, and how scared they’d been that no one would come back a second time since they didn’t even serve soup yet.

  “We vary the salads and sandwich fillings, still there’re never more than four or five choices on our menu. We’re only open for lunch and early tea—noon till four—but our breads and desserts seem to keep people com
ing through the door.”

  I learned that Carla was an accounting student. Since she was still going to school full-time, her sweat equity consisted of keeping the books and making sure the proper taxes were paid, both for the restaurant and for their workers and themselves.

  “Finding reliable help’s been the biggest problem,” said June.

  As if on cue, the door swung open and a pimply-faced college student skidded in.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” he said. “The leaf people held me up. I swear I’ll leave earlier tomorrow.”

  No ribbon choker for him. No ruffles either. Instead, he grabbed a plain apron from a nearby hook, tied it around his waist, picked up a large empty tray, and went out to begin busing the tables.

  “Please say you won’t tell Mom and Dad,” May begged.

  I had a feeling that Beverly and Fred might not be as angry or disappointed as the twins feared. They probably wouldn’t be thrilled to learn that they’d bankrolled a restaurant instead of a college education, but once they got over that, they might even be proud of this entrepreneurial venture.

  I said as much, but they still urged me to keep their secret, and after a serving of warm apple pie topped with clotted cream, I finally agreed. But I didn’t let them off that easily. I scored a couple of cinnamon rolls to take back to the courthouse to share with my clerk at the afternoon break.

  There was still a line at the front door when I left, and the sidewalks were as full of tourists today as they’d been on Sunday. Who knew leaves were such a draw? I mean, our trees down in Colleton County turn colors every bit as glorious as these up here, but you don’t see tons of out-of-state license plates parked at every vista, and our towns aren’t overrun with leaf lovers. I guess the hills really do make a difference.

  As I neared the courthouse, I saw a patrol car come screaming out of the exit, siren blaring, lights flashing. And further up the street I saw an ambulance, its emergency lights flashing, too. It waited for the patrol car to thread a way through the slow-moving traffic, then it turned onto Main Street and both vehicles sped up the hill to disappear through the trees.

  My first thought was that a couple of tourists had carelessly driven into each other. My second thought was of Norman Osborne, who had walked out of Joyce and Bobby Ashe’s party and disappeared. I hoped that this meant they’d found him and that he wasn’t too badly hurt.

  CHAPTER 16

  Afternoon court gave me a type of case I’d never had before when Gerald Tuzzolino, a retired Miami dentist, and his wife, Elizabeth, a tax attorney in a private Miami practice, took their seats at the defense table. Both wore beautifully tailored suits. I don’t know Armani from Anderson, but his didn’t look as if it’d been found on a rack at Sears, and hers was definitely high-end, too—a bronze raw silk that flattered her brunette coloring. They were charged with four separate counts of receiving stolen property. The actual thief was currently serving a sentence in the county jail, a short sentence because the Tuzzolinos might never have been caught had he not voluntarily come forward and informed on them.

  Although the four counts could have been combined and tried in superior court, I was guessing that Lucius Burke wanted to avoid letting a jury decide whether to believe a known felon or the respectable-looking Tuzzolinos.

  As laid out by the prosecution, Mr. and Mrs. Tuzzolino, who were fifty-one and forty-four, respectively, had bought a $900,000 house last year in High Windy, one of the first gated communities built in Lafayette County when it was still legal to put houses on the very top of ridges. I remembered that it was one of the Osborne properties that Joyce Ashe had spoken of with awe, so I looked at the Tuzzolinos with renewed interest. Nine hundred thousand for a summer home?

  As alleged by the State, Mrs. Tuzzolino had met Ross Watson, a convicted thief, when he was doing his community service at the public library in Howards Ford this past May. She had stopped to ask him about the flowers he was tending and, impressed by his knowledge of local horticulture, had hired him to jazz up the borders at her place in Windy Ridge.

  “Did you tell her about your criminal record?” asked William Deeck, who was prosecuting that afternoon.

  “Yes, sir,” said the unsavory-looking Watson. His nose appeared to have been broken several times and two of his front teeth were missing. “She said it didn’t matter. She just wanted nicer flowers than the management company provided.”

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Tuzzolino’s taste for nicer things did not stop with summer flowers. She had seen a six-hundred-dollar raku vase at an art gallery here in Cedar Gap that would look wonderful on the hearth in her bedroom. There was an eight-hundred-dollar handstitched quilt in a crafts store over in Justin that would be the perfect accent to hang from the railing of an upper landing overlooking their great room. And on one of their bargain hunting forays, Dr. Tuzzolino’s fancy had been caught by a bronze statuette of a black bear fishing for trout in a mountain stream. The antiques store called it a steal at seven hundred.

  So Watson stole it for him.

  He also stole the quilt and vase she wanted.

  According to Watson, their falling-out had come when Mrs. Tuzzolino tried to jerk him around on paying him what they’d agreed to. When he balked, she threatened to put the items in her garage and tell the police that he’d stashed them there without her knowledge.

  “She said, ‘Who do you think they’re going to believe? A convicted thief or an attorney with a platinum American Express card?’”

  Despite many objections from Mrs. Tuzzolino, who was acting as attorney for herself and her husband, Watson testified that he’d been told that if he’d bring her the nicely weathered teak bench that sat in the garden at the Mountain Laurel Restaurant, a bench that originally retailed for over a thousand dollars, she would pay him in full and they’d call it quits.

  “That’s when I decided to talk to my parole officer, and she took me to talk to Mr. Burke and Captain Underwood.”

  “That’s Captain George Underwood from the sheriff’s department here?” asked Deeck.

  “Yessir.”

  With the Mountain Laurel’s cooperation, they had loaded the bench into Watson’s pickup and the Tuzzolinos were arrested when they paid for the bench after Watson gleefully described to them how he and his good buddy George here had managed to get it out of the Mountain Laurel’s garden without being seen.

  “And I was right,” Watson said, the empty spaces between his teeth flashing triumphantly. “They didn’t give me but half what was owing.”

  “Your Honor,” said the assistant DA, “it was my intention to call Captain George Underwood at this point, but I’ve been told—”

  At that moment, Underwood entered the side door, so he was immediately called to the stand, sworn in, and his testimony confirmed Watson’s. Underwood further testified that upon his securing a search warrant, the quilt, the vase, and the statuette had been identified as stolen goods by their respective owners, who had all filed reports earlier. “There were other suspicious items of value in the house that the Tuzzolinos couldn’t provide receipts for, but since we couldn’t identify the original owners, we had to leave them.”

  “Objection!” cried Mrs. Tuzzolino. “That’s an unwarranted allegation.”

  “Sustained,” I agreed.

  She dragged out the cross-examination for ten more minutes, then, when the State rested its case, she took the stand herself and asserted that she hadn’t known the goods were stolen. She had bought them in good faith and in utter trust, and no, she had no idea that Watson had ever served time for felony theft. As for the teak bench, Underwood’s actions amounted to entrapment.

  I had heard enough.

  I found the Tuzzolinos guilty as charged. “What is the State asking, Mr. Deeck?”

  Deeck stood and looked at me over the top of those rimless glasses. In his dry monotone, he said, “Your Honor, these are people who could afford to buy everything that they asked Mr. Watson to steal for them. As Mrs. Tuzzolino herself was
so quick to say, she carries platinum charge cards in her wallet. Given the ongoing nature of their criminal enterprise, the State would like to see a fine commensurate to the crime, over and above restitution, and it would not be overkill to require supervision beyond the presumptive period of incarceration.”

  Mrs. Tuzzolino was clearly appalled. “Your Honor—!”

  I motioned for her to stand. “Before I pass sentence, Mrs. Tuzzolino, do you or your husband have anything you would like to say to this court?”

  Throughout the entire proceedings, Dr. Tuzzolino had sat at the defense table looking interested but not terribly involved, so I was not surprised that he just gazed at me blankly and that it was his wife who rose to speak for both of them.

  With tears in her eyes, she explained that her husband was suffering from Parkinson’s, which is why he had been forced to take early retirement. “A dentist has to have steady hands.”

  I glanced over at Dr. Tuzzolino, and now that I looked more closely at his hands as they lay on the table in front of him, I could see that he did indeed seem to have a slight tremor.

  “Medication is keeping it under control for now, but when he was diagnosed last year he went into a deep depression.” Earnestly she explained that after buying a second home up here in these cool and beautiful hills, away from the heat and bustle of Miami, he was almost his old self.

  “He’ll never get better, but his downhill progress has slowed,” she said. “I discovered that nice things lift his spirit, help him not feel so depressed. That’s why I was so ready to buy from Mr. Watson without asking a lot of questions. Since my husband’s retirement, it’s gotten harder and harder to make ends meet, and Mr. Watson seemed to offer a solution.”

  “You have a home in Miami?”

  She nodded.

  “Palm Beach?” I hazarded.

  “No.” A suggestion of disdain passed across her face. “The Gables.”

  “The Gables?”

  “Coral Gables,” she admitted reluctantly. “That’s where my practice is.”