by Justin Scott
A gentle nuking in the microwave warmed my plate. I sat to it with a cold glass of Vouvray, took a sip and reached for my fork. Someone started knocking on the front door. Very odd, so late; a friend would have tried the kitchen door; a real estate client would wait til morning. I hurried through the house and opened the door. It was Al Vetere. A beat-to-death Crown Victoria that he must have bought at a used police car auction was parked at the curb.
“Hey, Ben, Dude, can you tell me someplace to stay around here? I was just at that Yankee Drive place, and they want a fortune for a room.”
“It’s kind of a honeymoon suite,” I explained. “They assume the guests are pooling resources.”
“Any idea where else I find a room at this hour?”
The nearest motel was a long drive and a rat hole, so I said, “Come on in, you can crash in the guest room.”
He lumbered after me through the living room and dining room—“Hey, Dude, some digs.”—and into the kitchen. “Oh man, that smells good.”
“Have you eaten, Al?”
“Kitchen was closed at that Drive place.”
“Welcome to the boonies. Here, have some of this.”
Al sat. I went to get another plate. The phone rang. “Excuse me a second.”
Rick Bowland wanted to talk. He said he knew that it was one in the morning, but he had heard there was a police raid at the Kantor farm and wondered had they arrested Charlie Cubrero. I told him no and good night and hurried back to the kitchen where Al removed a tooth pick from his mouth to say, “Hmmmm, hmmm, that was good. Got any more?”
With murder on my mind it was easy to say,“In return for a place to sleep tonight, and in return for me not killing you for eating my dinner—no, no, not to worry, a straight answer will hold me ’til breakfast—what did you mean when you said, ‘I heard somebody saw Charlie Cubrero’s car on Route 7’. Who? Where? Why did you come here?”
“Well, Ben, I’m not sure I can flip a source.”
“The only motel that might still be open tonight is frequented by deer hunters. The beds are crawling with deer ticks that give you Lyme Disease.” It wasn’t deer season, but I doubted Al knew that. “I’m not taking anything away from you, Al. I’m not moving in on your case. I just want some help. Tell me who, where, why? Or sleep in your car.”
“Okay, okay. I ran into a priest.”
“A priest? What kind of priest?”
“A priest priest. You know like a Catholic?”
“What’s his name.”
“Gave my word I wouldn’t rat him out.”
“God forbid.”
“The priest is doing an outreach—for the illegals? Lot of ’em do that. They got a lot of Latinos. Replacing Italians like me who stop going when our mother dies. The Irish, too, same problem. Nobody goes to mass except Latinos. So anyhow, he’s outreaching these dumb illegals and we got to talking.”
“But you’re on the other side, catching illegals.”
“Well he don’t know that. I give him a card that says I’m a social worker.”
“And the priest bought that?”
“Damned straight he bought it. I can be very convincing.”
“How did you get to talking to the priest in the first place?”
Al lowered his voice and looked around my kitchen. The cat was out. We were alone. “I got a tip a wheelman was at this diner, in Bridgeport?”
“A wheelman?” Where did Al get his words, I wondered. Hundred year old TV movies.
“Yeah, you know. A guy who drives the car when you do a drive-by hit.”
“Oh, a modern wheelman.”
“Yeah, what do you think? Anyhow, this drive-by dude told me about a guy who drove for him. Best driver he ever saw. They did a couple of shootings down in Norwalk.”
“Why is a hitman talking to you, Al? I think you’re jerking me around.”
“No, man. I took a page from your book. I helped a guy get away and he figured I was his pal. Like you did with those illegals when you slugged me.”
I looked at him in disbelief, but Al was not kidding. Without even trying, just by setting an example, I had become mentor to a half-assed bounty hunter who wanted to become a PI.
“You saved a hitman from the police?”
“No. Some guys were chasing him with baseball bats. I gave him a hand. Sure, enough, he’s my buddy. Just like you did.”
The short of it was that Al’s new best friend, a supposed drive-by shooter who I suspected was inflating his resumé, turned Al onto an Ecuadorian driver who sounded very much like Charlie Cubrero who was expected to show up in a diner where Al met an Ecuadorian outreach priest instead. Father Bobby did get around.
“And the priest sent you to Newbury.”
“Said somebody told him they saw his car heading that way. Orange ‘sucker. You couldn’t miss it.”
“Presumably a different vehicle than the one he used for drive-by shootings?”
***
I was finishing my first cup of coffee early the next morning, when I heard giggles, and grunts and heavy breathing in front of the house. I looked out the window and saw Dennis and Albert Chevalley carrying a blue Smart Car around Big Al’s fake police cruiser and up my front walk. It was the size of a mature Blue Angel Hosta in Aunt Connie’s garden, big for a Hosta, small for a car. Albert held the front end. Dennis the back. Their cousin Anton, who had married into the felonious Jervis clan and was rarely seen in daylight, was holding up the middle.
I opened the front door.
“Uh oh,” said Albert. “We’re in jail.”
“If you put that car on my front step I will tell Pink I saw you do it.”
Anton let go the middle to scratch his nose and the brothers staggered under the additional weight of what was, while a very small automobile, still an automobile. Itch satisfied, Anton lit a cigarette and grabbed the middle again.
“What do you think Pink will do to you?” I asked.
“We was just kidding, Ben.”
“Put it in my driveway and go tell Pink that tomorrow I need something bigger and faster.”
They huffed and puffed across the lawn, stomped through a lily bed before I could stop them, and dropped it in my driveway.
Al came down, inquiring about breakfast.
I was recommending the Frenchtown Diner, while steering him out the kitchen door, when the phone rang. I reminded him quickly that I would pay cash for Charlie Cubrero, no waiting, no paperwork, no hassles.
We shook hands goodbye. I picked up the phone. It was Aunt Connie. “After you bid good morning to your overnight guest, could come you over for a moment?”
“Before you get your hopes up, my guest was a gentleman—a term I use in the loosest sense—who was in town on business.”
“I am so sorry. I thought I recognized a prowl car belonging to a state police detective with lovely gray eyes.”
“He drives a similar looking car so that he can appear to be a policeman without actually impersonating one. And his eyes are beady. Anyhow, he just left. I’ll be right over.”
The phone rang again. Actual house business. I chatted up the client, a not unattractive divorced lawyer from New York who was seriously considering my advice that she was better off sinking her considerable disposable income into an antique house instead of another husband. She wondered aloud what she would do on the weekends in a house alone. I suggested she make friends with the locals, and we made an appointment to see a couple of properties tomorrow, right after I walked Connie home from church.
Then I hurried across the street and found Connie outside in the old-fashioned perennial border behind her house, deadheading spent blossoms into an English trug. She was dressed for gardening in a cotton dress, a stand of pearls, and a broad brim hat. Despite our kidding around on the phone, she wore a troubled expression, one I had come to recognize as set off by a memory problem.
“Good morning.”
“
Good morning, Ben.”
“I thought I would just stop over,” I lied.
“Benjamin Abbott, what are you talking about? Didn’t we just get off the telephone?”
“Sorry, yeah, got distracted, had another call.” Good, she remembered telephoning me. Sometimes she didn’t. I hoped she would correct me with, “Yes, not Yeah.” Instead she glanced into the arborvitae hedge that bordered the back of the place, and her gaze locked there.
Finally, I broke the silence. “What is it?” I asked.
“Strange,” she murmured. “Ever since we talked about Mr. Grose’s assignations.”
“Gossibles included Cynthia Little, Georgia Bowland, Lorraine Renner, and Priscilla Adams if I recall.”
“Not Lorraine.”
“Right. That’s what you said. Only blondes. Anyway, minus Lorraine, the blondes and their husbands are coming by for drinks this evening.”
“Yes, yes, I know that. Everything is taken care of. Mrs. Mealy will bring hors d’oeuvres. But we don’t need her to serve.”
“Six guests, no need.”
“But ever since we talked about Mr. Grose’s relationships I’ve had all sorts of strange words running in my head.”
“What words?”
“Honor. Mercy. Kindness. Charity.”
“Strange?” I asked. “They sound more like good causes. Except that contributing to Newbury Forest instead of getting sued is the only good cause I’ve heard in the same breath with Brian Grose.”
“Constance…”
“Your name,” I said. And when she didn’t answer right away I started getting scared.
Finally, she said, “I think I know my own name, Ben. It’s the other names I wonder about. I mean, there was a time when names that conferred qualities were common. Honor. Charity. Faith. Hope. Constance. My friend Bishop Marsh’s daughters were named Patience and Prudence. We used to joke that he’d name a third Perspicacity. And a fourth, Purposeful.” She smiled, but her smile faded quickly and she looked up at me and raised both hands as if extending a tangled skein of yarn. Help me, please untangle strands of Honor, Charity, Faith, Hope, Patience, Prudence, Perspicacity, Purpose and Constance.
“Grace?” I asked.
Connie’s face clouded.
“Three wives of Association Trustees and the daughter of the president?”
“Oh good lord, Ben, what a thing to think. She’s twenty years his senior.”
“More like fifteen.”
“But if there was ever a constant woman, it was Grace Botsford.”
“Grace isn’t married. Neither was Brian. What was unconstant?”
“But the age. Not to mention background. I mean, really Ben. Grace is…and Grose was…Well, you know what I mean.”
She meant, although she would never permit intuitive distinctions to sink so low as bigotry, that Grace was “Grace Botsford of Newbury,” while Brian was “Brian Grose of God-knew-where.” In the democratic republic of New England, “of Newbury” was not quite translatable to a German “von Newburgh” or a French “de Newbrie,” shall we say, but it carried more weight on Constance Abbott’s Main Street than “of, von, or de God-knew-where.”
“Actually, I found out he’s from farm people. Grew up down in Arkansas. Cotton farmers.”
“Ah, the long arm of the Department of Agriculture. The ugliest house in Newbury paid for by Federal cotton subsidies.”
“No. Small family operation. Just working farmers. Salt of the earth.”
“Well, he certainly put on airs.”
“Do you recall gossip about him and Grace?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, I don’t.”
“But, then what do you suppose prompted this connection? If there is a connection.”
Connie sighed. “I suppose that I have eyes as well as ears. Perhaps I noticed something. Something different than the ordinary. After all, I’ve known Grace since Gerard used to bring her along when she was a little girl. Maybe I saw….God knows what. A blush where there’d been no blush?”
She shook her head. “Pretty girl, when she was younger. Lovely posture—all the Botsfords have that…Sad, Mr. Grose’s passing, when you consider that with Gerard gone Grace is free to marry at last.” She looked at me, suddenly, head cocked like a blue jay. “How do you feel about asking Grace to join us this evening?”
Chapter Thirteen
From Connie’s, I hurried up Main Street and knocked on Lorraine Renner’s door, hoping nine-thirty in the morning wasn’t too early.
“In here,” she called through the screen. She was in the birth/editing room, working in a fuzzy bathrobe.
“Is this too early? Should I come back later?”
“No, I haven’t gone to bed. Didn’t get back from New York until one. I was wired from the drive, so I just went to work.”
“Did the baby walk?”
“His parents think so. I got great footage of a dangling infant. How you doing? I heard the fire trucks coming back late. Was that you?”
“Fred and Joyce’s dormitory. Huge immigration raid. It ended up like the Branch Davidians. Miracle nobody got killed.”
“So what’s up?”
“Tell me to go to hell if it seems I’m too nosy. But I am asking for a reason.”
“Asking what?”
“The thing is you’re the only person I know who spent a lot of time with Brian Grose.”
“It happens with the subject of your film.”
“Did Brian ever put any moves on you?”
“Just the typical.”
“Typical?”
“Typical ‘I’m a guy, you’re a woman, we’re alone,’ syndrome.” She re-tied the belt around her robe and said. “No big deal. It’s just a guy impulse. Like you looking down the front of my robe—Don’t apologize—It’s hormones and genes and chromosomes. Most men grow out of it when they turn ninety-five.”
“I’m not looking forward to that.”
“Most men, not all. I don’t think you have to worry.”
“Could I ask your reaction? I mean to Brian. Like was he really smooth?”
Lorraine gave me a look. “To somebody else, maybe. Not my type.”
“So you wouldn’t call him a Don Juan?”
“Are you wondering if he got shot by a pissed off girl friend?”
“Yes. Which I would appreciate your keeping between us.”
“Like I say, he wasn’t my Don Juan type. But everybody’s got their type, right?”
***
I was back in my office failing to imagine Brian Grose successfully seducing four women linked to the Cemetery Association to erect his mausoleum when I got a call from Sherman Chevalley. A blatting noise in the background indicated he was on his motorcycle.
“Hey, Ben?” He sounded as if he were asking for something.
“What’s up?”
“Why don’t we go have a beer?” It was almost noon.
I wondered if he was going to come clean about who was trying to kill him and if that someone had something to do with Brian Grose getting shot, so I said, “Sure, where are you?”
“Right outside your house.”
I parted the sheer that covered the window. On the sidewalk, mothers walking their children to the library for Saturday Story Hour gripped small hands and quickened their pace as the scarecrow in boots, jeans, and mottled tee shirt that was Sherman Chevalley swooped his Harley into my drive. Stringy hair trailed from the do rag and cell phone headset that he wore in lieu of a helmet.
“Come on in. I got some Rhode Island Red in the fridge.”
“That’s okay. I’m little greasy. Let’s go out.”
I was too busy to waste the afternoon in a bar. “I’ll cover the floor with newspaper.”
“Naw, why don’t we hit a joint.”
“White Birch?”
“I was thinking somewhere more private?”
Mo
re private than the White Birch? As far as I knew, the popular line about what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas was originally coined in Wide Greg’s establishment.
Sherman said, “They re-opened the Hitching Post.”
“You’re kidding. They get a new bar?”
“Naw, they nailed the old one back together. So you’ll follow me up there, right? I might have to see a guy. Won’t take long.”
“Hang on one sec, I got another call coming in,” I lied, put the phone down, walked into the kitchen and dialed Chevalley Enterprises on my cell. “It’s Ben, Betty. Pink in yet? (Not a money bet Saturday before noon as the name “Pinkerton Chevalley,” the time “Friday night,” and the phrase “riotous debauch” could easily be imagined in the same sentence.)…. Pink, got a question for you. Did Sherman just ask you to go drinking?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Cause the weasel was banging me.”
“Did he want to go to the Hitching Post?
“That’s how I knew he was banging me.”
“You mean you think he’s meeting somebody and wants backup?”
“You going deaf, Ben? Listen, I don’t mind going along as a guy’s hitter if a guy is straight with me. I’ll back up any man who asks. Ever turn you down? But if he’s weaseling me—like surprise, Pink, look at all them dudes with baseball bats, wonder where they came from—I’m not interested.”
“Thanks, Pink.”
“Watch your behind. He’s probably buying meth.”
“Sherman is not stupid enough to do meth—oh, you mean stupid enough to sell it?”
Pink said, “You shouldn’t be allowed out,” and hung up.
I went back to the office phone and told Sherman, “Hitching Post it is.” My gut told me this was not about meth. If it was, I was outta there so fast they would hear me whiz.
“You want to ride on back?”
I weighed for a moment of fleeting youth the pleasure of blasting north on a summer day on a back road on the back of very fast Harley versus wearing a seatbelt surrounded by Smart Car steel and plastic. I leaned to the former, until I imagined walking twenty miles home from the Hitching Post after Sherman rolled off without me for what seemed to him like a good reason at the time.
