Monica spoke first. “Hey, Chief, we’re looking at—”
“I’ll handle the briefing, Ms Terliger.”
“It’s Terwilliger.”
“It’s irrelevant.”
“Not to me,” I said. “Try to learn people’s names, Carl. It helps foster the useful illusion that you give a shit. Go on, Monica, sorry.”
“I was just going to say…we have signs of a struggle, defensive wounds on the arms, blunt-force injuries to the ribs, lots of mess and chaos—” She waved her arm around the basement floor, which was scattered with old books and magazines, small broken plaster statues, crockery and coins, spilled from boxes when a big metal shelving unit tipped over. “Someone threw someone into that,” Monica said, “and the perpetrator had what I think was probably a bat, judging from the width of the bruising. No sign of struggle upstairs, though, which makes me think the assailant entered freely and came downstairs with no interference.”
“So, a friend.”
“Well, not an enemy at least. And not a stranger. Though Mr. Refn obviously…well, he didn’t know the person quite as well as he thought he did.”
Borelli spoke up, still sullen from my rebuke. “There’s strangulation ligature on the neck, if I may add an observation. Refn was held down in the freezer long enough to get a serious case of frostbite on his face. The freezing is all ante-mortem. He felt it while it was happening. We’re talking about torture. Someone really, really didn’t like this guy.”
I thought of Paula Monaghan’s comment. But this would be taking bureaucratic infighting to a whole new level.
I left them to finish, and went upstairs to find Donald Harcourt.
He was not in a great mood. “Am I under arrest?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then why am I being detained here?”
He was a short, stocky man with an unruly mop of black hair that he obviously colored, despite the token gray streaks he had left at the temples. He wore Nantucket Reds—trousers that turned pink with repeated washings—and a blue blazer over an expensive-looking gray crewneck t-shirt. He looked like he was on his way to a cocktail party, not a meeting with his Artistic Director—but he obviously had further plans for the day. I knew the type. Call it profiling, Nantucket-style. The physical profile was an aristocratic one, if you ignored the spider web of burst blood vessels on his cheeks. The man obviously liked to drink, and my guess was he’d started early today—a shot of vodka in the morning coffee, perhaps. Or a couple of Bloodies with breakfast.
“I need you to tell me what happened this afternoon.”
“I’ve already told twenty different people! And they’re all waiting for me to slip up so they can pounce. ‘You told Deputy Dog that you parked in front of the house but we located your car halfway down the street,’ they say. It’s insulting. I had a senior moment about my car. Does that make me a murderer?”
“You found the body, Mr. Harcourt. They have to ask these questions. And so do I.”
A shudder of resignation. “Fine. Ask away.”
“Shall we sit down?” I knew the conversation would seem less confrontational if we were both settled in Refn’s plush-looking armchairs. And I was right: the tension broke as Harcourt got comfortable. He pushed his hands down his thighs, as if he was working out a cramp.
I began. “So what brought you here today?”
“A text.”
“From?”
“Joey Little—Joseph Little, of Lotus Capital Management? I’m sure you’ve heard of it.”
“No, sorry. I manage my own capital. Which basically comes down to balancing my checkbook.”
He ignored me and pushed on. “Joey married a much younger woman several years ago, a model named Laura Gutterson. Charming girl. You must have seen pictures of them in the Foggy Sheet.”
This was our version of a society page, featured in N Magazine and the Mahon About Town website—over-exposed photographs of overdressed Nantucket gentry under the tent at various cocktail parties and fundraisers, mostly belying the cherished myth that the rich were thinner and better looking than the rest of us. Laura Gutterson-Little would stand out in those crowds. I made a mental note to check the back issues. But I’d need Gene Mahon’s help to make a solid ID. “Those photos are never captioned.”
“Of course not. People in the know, know already. Everyone else can just watch and wonder.”
“So, Little texted you this afternoon. Why?”
“There was an issue that had to be resolved.” I waited. “It was personal.”
“It’s going to come out eventually, Mr. Harcourt. Here or at the station, or during the trial.”
“Trial? What do you mean—trial? I did nothing! I was just trying to help.”
I sat forward a little. “Convince me of that.”
“Apparently there had been some sort of…dalliance. Refn was quite the ladies’ man. There were photographs. Refn was threatening to put them online, unless Joe paid him off. The man was making close to a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year for doing next to nothing. Why did he need to blackmail people?”
“Lots of reasons. A gambling habit. A drug habit. I hear he does a lot of high-end shopping. That stuff adds up.”
“I suppose. It’s privileged information, by the way—about the salary.”
“Don’t you have to post all your financial information? You’re a nonprofit.”
He smiled at my naiveté. “We do as we like, Chief Kennis. We haven’t had an open annual meeting for three years. And no one makes a peep. They say money talks. On Nantucket it talks very loudly indeed.”
I almost said, yeah, and it never shuts up.
But Harcourt was moving on. “Refn said an amusing thing about those bylaws and regulations, a while ago. He was paraphrasing Oscar Wilde. ‘Rules are like hymens—made to be broken.’ I’m sure Refn has broken more than his share of both.”
“So you and Mister Little are close? He confides in you?”
“Well…I wouldn’t go that far. I certainly wouldn’t murder some random extortionist for him, if that’s what you mean! He’s an acquaintance. We’ve been texting each other since I convinced him to double down on his investments after the election. He was shorting the market, preparing his clients for the big crash! But I knew it would be a bonanza for business if the election went to the GOP. So Joe reversed himself and, needless to say, it worked out quite nicely. I became his mentor after that. I told him to sell before things got really crazy, and he did, at the top of the market as it turned out. Hence the text messages. He won’t make a move without me.”
“I’m confused. What were you fighting about?”
“Excuse me?”
“At the charity affair a few weeks ago.”
“Oh, the Sanfords. Nothing is private anymore.”
“Especially a brawl in front of two dozen witnesses.”
He shrugged. “Point taken. It was an awkward moment.”
“What was going on?”
“I told him about my suspicions. I had seen Refn and Laura together at Faregrounds, of all places! They must have assumed that no one who mattered would see them.” Faregrounds was a mid-island working-class sports bar. Little had probably been right. But he hadn’t counted on Harcourt slumming.
“So you confronted him at the fundraiser?”
“I admit it was an inappropriate moment. But I had just been listening to Laura lecture a group of women twice her age about the sanctity of truth in marriage. ‘Lies between a husband and wife are black mold! They spread and they poison the air. They make your home toxic. Scrub the walls with the bleach of honesty, rinse them with the pure water of forgiveness, before it’s too late.’ She calls herself a ‘life coach’! Can you imagine? Preaching that sanctimonious crap while she’s cheating on her husband with…with that despicable creature in the basemen
t.”
“So you decided then and there to tell Little what was really going on.”
“He looked so proud and adoring. Like a one-man cult.”
“And you couldn’t resist a little deprogramming.”
“Something like that. Pointless exercise. He called me a damn liar. I called him a damn fool. He threw a punch and I pushed him. End of story.”
“Until the blackmail letter arrived.”
“Exactly. We both agreed—the time had come for action. He texted me to meet Refn with him—here today, this afternoon. We were going to close Refn down for good, unless he backed off. We could get him fired, contract or no contract. We could tar and feather the little dandy. There have been other incidents—sexual harassment, public drunkenness, even suspected embezzlement. He was hanging from a thin thread and we were more than willing to snip it.”
“Why not do it before?”
“No one wanted the publicity. And Refn could be a charmer—like every other sociopath in the world. Great fund-raiser—he had a knack for tricking money out of tight-fisted matrons. Also, for the record, he happened to be quite a talented director. So I’m told. I don’t go to the plays, I just wanted a handsome figurehead on the cover of N Magazine, and Refn delivered on that score. No one wanted to tarnish the theater’s image.”
“So Little arranged this meeting. But he never showed up?”
“I’m not sure. I heard footsteps on the bulkhead stairs when I went down to the basement.”
“Back it up a little for me. You got here—what time was it?”
“A little after two-thirty. I was running late.”
“Can anyone verify your whereabouts?”
“I was sitting in traffic on Old South Road! Do I really need to verify that? Have you driven anywhere on this island lately?”
I dropped the subject. He had no alibi, but I wasn’t ready to accuse him of murder, and I wanted him on my side. “So…you knocked?”
“The door was open. I went inside but there was no one home. Then I heard noises from the basement, banging and choking, bad noises. I ran down there but whoever it was took off and there was just—Refn, in the freezer. I didn’t even check to see if he was dead. I mean—he looked dead, he wasn’t moving. But that was none of my business. I called 911.”
“You did the right thing.”
He shook his head. “Joe Little, my God.”
“So…Little killed Refn?
“There was no one else here.”
“You didn’t see him, though.”
“No, but—”
“And the text got you here, all alone with the dead body when the police arrived.”
“Are you saying he tried to set me up?”
“It’s possible.”
“But I called the police myself!”
“It often happens that way. The killer calls the police to report the crime. It makes sense. You expect a killer to flee the scene. Reporting it makes you look innocent. It’s what an innocent person would do.”
“But I am innocent! I could never kill anyone! I couldn’t even spank my own children. And my father had no trouble taking the paddle to me.”
I sat back, studying the bewildered plutocrat on the other side of the coffee table. I believed him. “So why would Little want to frame you for murder?”
“I have no idea. Besides, you said it yourself—it could have been anyone down in that basement. All we know for sure is that I didn’t see Joe when I got here. He could have—I don’t know. He could have forgotten the meeting.”
“I don’t think so. Not this meeting.”
“Okay, right, sure. But I don’t know—maybe he got stuck in traffic, too. Maybe he’s still stuck in traffic. Maybe his car broke down.”
“He would have texted you.”
“Unless his phone died. Or—or, he could have left it at home. Everyone does that. He could have had a heart attack! He could be in the hospital right now. Have you seen Joe Little? He’s a coronary waiting to happen. And besides…we have no quarrel with each other anymore. I was helping him with the Refn matter. Not to mention, I probably made him a million dollars this year.”
“I’ll be talking to him soon.” I stood up. “We’re done here, Mr. Harcourt. Sorry to inconvenience you. One of my detectives will be in touch if we have any more questions.”
“So that’s it?” He seemed disappointed. I’ve noticed that reaction many times—a sort of reluctance, often with witnesses and even exonerated suspects. The spotlight is shifting, the investigation is moving on, leaving them behind.
He stood and I shook his hand. “For now, anyway. Thanks for your help.”
I had one more stop to make before heading back to the station—the neighbor on the other side of Refn’s house, Betsy Gosnell.
A dentist’s widow from Scarsdale, she was planning to sell the Naushop place, and move full-time into her Coral Gables condo. She didn’t like what Nantucket was becoming. “And this is a perfect example,” she said as we stood in her doorway. She seemed reluctant to let me in. I could see the messy living room over her shoulder and she had already broken out the wine. She drank her Chardonnay out of a highball glass, with plenty of ice.
“This?” I prompted her. I assumed she meant the murder next door, but I’d followed some productive tangents over the years by setting my assumptions aside.
“People going crazy!”
“Actually—”
“The population is out of control! There’s just too many people. You put ten rats in a cage meant for five? They start eating each other.”
“Mrs. Gosnell—”
“I mean, I expect crime from these…from the immigrant people. I don’t even blame them! Life is tough here. They work like sled dogs. They get treated like dirt. Of course they’re going to do something desperate. But this is different.”
“I’m sorry. Are you saying—?”
“I saw the killer. With my own eyes. A white woman! She was running like her life depended on it, running away from that house, the death house. No one runs around here, Chief Kennis, except little kids and joggers. This woman was no kid, and she wasn’t jogging! You know, I always say if you spend enough time making up scary stories about death and murder, it gets under your skin eventually, like…like fishing something out of a public toilet with a paper cut on your hand. That’s how the MRSA virus gets in. And once it’s there, antibiotics don’t work. And it’s contagious, Chief—that’s what you need to think about.”
“Excuse me?”
“She’s your girlfriend—the mystery writer. The Madeline Clark mysteries! How many people has she killed in those books of hers? More than all the murders since we bought Nantucket from the Indians, put together! That has to affect a person.”
I took a step closer. “What are you saying?”
“Jane Stiles! I recognized her from the dust jacket picture. She’s the one that killed him.”
Chapter Two
Motives and Opportunities
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Jane Stiles said. “Being accused of murder, or someone actually recognizing me from that horrible dust jacket photograph!”
“But they didn’t.” I pointed out. “Since you didn’t actually kill anyone and you weren’t even there.”
She had spent the afternoon in question with her son, Sam, picking low bush blueberries from one of her secret spots near the Miacomet Golf Course. They had a big china bowl of fruit to prove it. “But that doesn’t mean much,” she said. “A suspect’s nine-year-old son is considered unreliable corroboration at best. No one saw us out there. I could have picked these berries any time. And I have a motive for the killing.”
We were standing in the weedy, junk-strewn yard of her ex-husband’s house in the Friendship Lane development, off Bartlett Road. Joe’s Equator Drive house needed a new roof, so
me fresh sod, and a dozen trips to the dump. The top of a 1986 Mercedes 560 SL he had vandalized for parts rested in a tangle of poison ivy and it looked like the car was sinking into the ground. Old lobster traps, torn waders, aluminum ladder sections, and rolls of chicken wire completed the picture of hillbilly squalor.
But Joe Stiles was anything but a redneck squatter. Croatian by descent, his original last name was Vrsaljkjo, pronounced VersaLeeko. He changed it to Stiles when he got married and kept the name after the divorce, partly because he wanted a name people could pronounce (“Everyone was always saying what the hell are those ‘J’s doing there?”) and partly because he thought the name Joe Stiles sounded cool. “Like a private detective in an old movie. Joe Stiles, PI.”
In fact he was a computer savant. He built websites and designed the lighting for local theater productions, along with doing various eccentric car repair jobs for a select clientele. He was currently obsessed with a white Volkswagen Vanagon, and had been trying to unbolt the coil from the engine mount when we pulled up. A gaunt, shambling man with a skimpy beard and an unflattering ponytail, it was hard to imagine him with Jane, but they had stayed married for twelve years—just like Miranda and I had. Genial and placid, mostly living in his own head, Joe perked up when Jane mentioned the murder.
“I have a motive, too,” he said cheerfully, wiping his grimy hands on a rag while Sam hugged his leg.
“Hey, me first!” Jane snapped. “What an attention hog.”
“Okay, okay.” He turned to me. “Janey wrote this book.”
Jane explained, “It was one of the first Maddie Clark books. Refn had just started at the Theater Lab. I hated him instantly and so did Joe.”
Joe nodded. “Oh, yeah. That slimy little punk! He took over and everything from then on they did the cheapest, easiest, crummiest, ugliest way possible. Who needs lights? All he really wanted was a couple of halogens—or maybe just a kid with a flashlight! I had to buy my own gobos when we did Moon for the Misbegotten, which was the last decent production I can remember in this town, and we only did it because Bud Caxton went to the mat and Lucille Waters wanted to play Josie. Then Bud died and Lucille moved to New York. She’s doing real theater now! Strindberg, off-Broadway. Good for her.”
Nantucket Counterfeit Page 3
