Like right now.
I set my mind to the task. “It was something your boss only needed for a little while, something Judge Galassi probably wouldn’t miss while it was gone.”
“Good, good!”
“So, something small.”
“Yes. You are warming.”
“A credit card?”
“No, no—town too small for a fake credit card.”
“I use Jane’s sometimes.”
“Yes—at grocery store or gas station. This would have to be big purchase. People would check. Ask for ID.”
“Okay. Good point. How about the alternate head for one of those sonic care toothbrushes?”
“Why steal that?”
“DNA sample?”
“You think we steal DNA sample? Besides, you could get from a hair on his hairbrush, or tissue in trash. No need to steal anything.”
“Right, right. How about a tie clip?”
“Crazy.”
“No, it would be a perfect place to install a bug, if you wanted to wire him for sound.”
“You would need duplicate, in case he sees.”
“He probably wears a Yacht Club tie pin. That wouldn’t be hard to find.”
“Very good. This is possible. But sorry, not true.”
“How about jewelry? Steal a brooch or a necklace, replace it with a fake later.”
He barked out a laugh. “Yah! And all you have to do is find great jewelry fake-maker on island of Nantucket, where even the real jewelry is bad. But you are warming again.”
I had to cut this short. It occurred to me that the three of us, two hulking immigrants and a middle-aged man in jeans and a long-sleeved Eddie Bauer t-shirt, huddled off the street together, looked like nothing so much as a drug deal in progress. In any case, the less we were all seen together, the better. I could have bullied Dimo into giving up the information, but that was a last resort.
I wanted to win the game.
I inventoried the small, interchangeable useful household items, items you’d find in drawers, closets, pockets. I actually thought, “The key is figuring out why, not what.”
And that was my answer, from an accidental term of art struck off a stray thought.
“It’s a key,” I said.
Dimo clapped me on the shoulder. “Yes! Genius!” His eyes narrowed. “But what kind of key?”
House key? It was impossible to distinguish one from the other on a ring. Car key? The mileage would give you away if you took the vehicle for a joyride, and a missing car was a hell of a lot more noticeable than a missing key. Padlock key? Where did you still see padlocks? Storage lockers—did they want to take something from Sun Island? But those facilities had surveillance cameras running twenty-four/seven. I left it as a possibility. But there was a much more likely one.
“It was a safe-deposit key.”
Dimo looked glum. “Damn it. No soup for me today.”
Boiko laughed. “Match with Inspector Kennis? You lose!”
“So what did you take out of the judge’s box?”
“We take nothing! We leave key. We come back. Key in envelope with money for us. We go back, replace key, talk to you.”
“End of story,” Boiko added.
“We don’t even spend money.”
“We send back to Bulgaria. We are buying property. One apartment building and two laundry-mats. Big profits in the laundry-mats. People don’t realize.”
“Now you have cash for us?”
I gave them each a hundred-dollar bill—a Nantucket sawbuck, as the rich locals called them. Sawbuck was old school slang for a ten-dollar bill, and the idea was that a hundred dollars bought you ten dollars’ worth of stuff on rip-off island. Rich people loved to complain about how expensive everything was.
The Tabachev brothers were a bargain, and they were happy to take the cash. As they pushed the hinged cast-iron gate open on its squealing hinges and started down the narrow cement corridor that led to Main Street, I said, “Boys, just one thing. Next time someone asks you to commit a crime while you’re on my payroll, talk to me first.”
Dimo looked chastened—or was he just faking it for his own amusement? “Yes, boss,” he said.
“No more unauthorized breakings and enterings!” Boiko added.
“That’s what I like to hear. Now get out of my sight and prove you’re worth the trouble.”
When I was alone I called Judge Galassi and asked him to meet me at the bank.
“I’ll miss my tee time,” he complained.
For a crazy second I conjured an image of silver trays and Darjeeling, cream and sugar in matching salvers, little sandwiches with the crusts off—and the judge, tipping a cup to his lips with an extended pinky. But it was golf, obviously. I was tired of rich people and their golf games.
“I’ll make it as quick as I can. Someone may have robbed your safe-deposit box.”
The tone changed instantly. “Ten minutes.”
Daryl Swain, Vice President of Customer Relations at the bank’s downtown branch, met us on the circular steps that looked down the length of cobblestoned Main Street. “Paradise,” he said expansively taking the whole vista—the giant cars inching their way along, hunting the precious slant parking spaces slotted against the curb beside the packed sidewalks—tourists window-shopping, inevitable ice cream cones in hand, kids tangling their legs in the leashes of a dozen different breeds of dog taking their afternoon constitutionals. Conversations took place into cell phones or Bluetooth units—packs of twenty-something kids organizing the next trip to the Brewery, businessmen snapping orders to city-bound minions. A sharp-eyed observer could pick out a couple of B-list network newspeople strutting along, trying to ignore the stares (“Wow, he’s much shorter than he looks on TV”), or pretending to. The usual crowd surrounded the Bartlett’s Farm truck, though neither the first corn nor the first tomatoes of the season had ripened yet. I saw a few people reading actual printed books on the benches and someone working a busy book-signing at a table set out in front of Mitchell’s.
All in all, a typical summer afternoon on the Grey Lady, at ease under a peerless blue sky, posing the same old question: why aren’t these people at the beach? I would have been, but I was working. And my job, for this moment at least, was striding up the cobblestones toward me. He was short and solid and furry, with thick graying hair, a dense silver-flecked beard, bushy eyebrows and coarse bristle that started at his knuckles and no doubt sleeved his arms all the way to the elbow. He resembled an Ewok, with all their superficial cuddly charm and merciless guerilla warfare skills. I suppose that made me an Imperial Storm Trooper, a role I hadn’t played since I left Los Angeles.
“Judge Galassi!” Swain called out, almost tripping over his own feet, and scampering down to greet his prized customer.
Galassi stumped up the steps, ignoring him. “What’s going on, Kennis?”
“I’d like you to take a look in your safe-deposit box, and let me know if anything’s missing.”
He stared at me. “How could anything be missing?”
“I think someone may have stolen your box key, used it, and replaced it.”
“The two break-ins.”
“That’s right.”
“And how did you arrive at this theory?”
“Process of elimination?”
“Really. And what exactly did you eliminate?”
“Every other small inconspicuous item you might possess, that someone might find useful for a very short period of time.”
“Don’t you have any real work to do? A murder was committed on this island last week.”
I took a breath and ignored his tone. “This may be related to our investigation.”
“How?”
“We’ll know more when we find out what’s missing from your box.”
He shuddered out a sigh of impatient disgust. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
Swain led us inside and we waited while the judge went into the safe-deposit area and checked his box.
“I hope there’s nothing to worry about,” Swain fussed at me.
Galassi was out again before I had to answer.
“It’s fine.”
“Nothing missing?”
“Not a thing.”
“You’re sure?”
“I think I know the contents of my own safe-deposit box.”
That was meant to be the end of our talk, but I couldn’t quite let it go. “Nothing tampered with?”
I saw a swift twist of concern contract his features. “Tampered with how?”
“You tell me.” We stood staring. Who would blink first? He obviously wasn’t going to tell me anything. These games were much more fun with Dimo Tabachev. “If you have papers, someone could have replaced them with similar-looking pages.”
“How would anyone know what pages in my box look like?”
A rhetorical question, clearly. “Or forged documents?”
“It’s not that easy to forge documents, Kennis. And downright impossible standing in a bank with no tools or equipment and less than five minutes to get the job done. I mean, seriously.”
“How about sealed files? Someone could have opened and resealed them.”
“I think I’d notice.”
“Maybe someone was counting on that.”
“This is absurd. My box and its contents are intact. Thank you for your concern. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
But he didn’t wait to be excused. He pushed past me and strode across the lobby, and out the door.
I turned to Swain. “Could you let me know if he comes back to check his box again in the next twenty-four hours?”
Swain’s nose and mouth pinched together, as if there was a bad smell in the air. “Not really, Chief Kennis. Our customers are entitled to their privacy.”
“How about a list of all the people who rent boxes here? If someone tampered with Galassi’s box—”
“But he just assured us—”
“—they’d need to have access to the safe-deposit room. And that means a box holder.”
“Ummm, perhaps, but that would be quite problematical. We’re not allowed to give out that kind of information, unless you could procure a warrant. But as no crime has been committed, and Judge Galassi has lodged no complaint, I’m not sure how you could arrange that. Besides, confidentially? A list like that wouldn’t help you much. You might as well just check out the Foggy Sheet. It’s a who’s who of Nantucket society. Anyone who’s anyone has a box here.”
“And no one who’s no one?”
He gave me a formal little laugh. “Oh, we have plenty of ‘no ones,’ too, Chief Kennis. We don’t discriminate at the Bank of America.”
I thanked him and left. By the time I was out on the street again I had the station on the phone. When Haden Krakauer came on the line I told him to find someone who knew Judge Galassi by sight and assign them to stake out the bank for the next day or two, in plainclothes.
“Ham Tyler pulled the judge over for a DUI last year,” Haden said.
“Good, he can redeem himself. Tell him to bring a bag lunch. No slipping away for takeout. He can sit on the bench in front of the bookstore, and have eyes on both entrances from eight-thirty to three-thirty, solid.”
“Yes, boss. Shall I have someone watching Ham, to be sure?”
“No, but let him know we’ll be checking up on him. Scare him a little.”
“Will do.”
I slipped the phone in my pocket as I started strolling down Main Street to my cruiser. I knew what Ham Tyler would report. Galassi would be back. I had poked him with that comment about tampering, and he curled up like a snake. He’d be checking his box as soon as he knew he could do it without the Chief of Police waiting for him. I’d interrogated, interviewed, and even just chatted with thousands of suspects and witnesses and persons of interest in my career and I could generally tell when they had something to hide. The overplayed unwavering stare, the sincere smile whose spark never quite ignited the eyes, the trembling hands—and the shuffling feet, as if they were trying to tell the rest of the body to run. Judge Galassi had presented the full inventory of tells and twitches. But the question remained—what was he hiding, and what did it have to do with Refn’s murder? I’d know so much more if I could find out who had opened his box. I thought of the security cameras, but once again I’d need a warrant and the request itself might alert my suspect. It was a small town and the Foggy Sheet crowd stuck together. Besides, there was no camera on the side door to the bank, which led into a private entrance for the safe-deposit room. The bank surveillance was prioritized for the hoi polloi. The cameras would show me nothing.
Best to wait, for now. I wasn’t absolutely sure the key burglary was related to the Refn case. If Hollister was in fact the killer, what could he possibly want in Galassi’s safe-deposit box? Did he have one of his own? Was it worth trying to force the bank to give me that information? The whole mental construction seemed flimsier and more unlikely by the second.
I was still working the problem later that day, frustrated and distracted, seeing suspects behind the wheel of every overpriced SUV—including, as Tim gleefully pointed out, a Maserati Levante and a Cadillac Escalade ESV—when I drove my kids to Stop & Shop, and they pulled me into another game of Grocery Gumshoes.
It started with cart shots, as we called them—snap guesses based on a quick glimpse as people passed us in the aisles. Carrie caught a sad bachelor (frozen burritos, Hungry Man TV dinners, quarts of juice and milk, single-serving chicken pot pies, microwave popcorn, and breakfast sandwiches), then a sleep-over cookout and pajama party (giant bags of chips and jugs of soda, packs of hot dogs and buns, cake mix, and a jug of frosting). There were two people on line ahead of us at the register. Tim nailed a healthy foodie family (tofu, bagged vegetables including the big hairy brown ones none of us recognized, fruits, boneless chicken, bags of dry black beans and chickpeas) with one lonely holdout (small frozen pizza).
And then I noticed, right in front of us but buried in her cell phone, NTL board member Judith Barsch. I was surprised, but I have to admit I liked her a little for doing her own shopping. Most of her crowd left chores like that to the servants.
That being said, she was buying an odd load of stuff: dried soup and powdered milk, shrimp cocktail pre-mixed with the sauce, plain yogurt, unsweetened Jello, a twelve-pack of Fresca, and a plastic tub of fresh chicken livers. Before the kids could start to speculate on this austere catalogue, she requested a plastic spoon and was told there were bags of them in aisle three. But she only wanted one. The pleasant Jamaican woman shrugged at the impossibility—and probably at the absurdity—of the request, and that got Barsch going.
“You’re supposed to have all the ingredients. That’s the Stop & Shop slogan. That’s your claim to fame.”
“Excuse me…I—is a spoon an ingredient?”
“I’m not talking about spoons! There’s no gherkin juice in the pickle section and no pork spleens anywhere. You can get them fresh at any real market in the city.”
“Pork spleens, ma’am? What do you use them for?”
Carrie jumped in. “They used them for balloons in Little House on the Prairie.”
Barsch turned to her. They stood exactly eye-to-eye. “A little girl who reads!”
“I read too,” Tim said. “I just finished The Sun Also Rises.”
This seemed to amuse her. “Really! And do you have any idea what it was about?”
“Sure. Cool stuff, like—sitting around in French cafés and drinking Pernod, and fishing in the mountains with your cool friends and…other stuff. Bullfights, and sending off cables from your office and being in love with Lady Brett
Ashley. Stuff like that.”
Barsch favored him with a faint smile. “‘Oh, Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together.’ But it didn’t really work out, did it?”
“Uh…no…not really.”
“And do you have any idea why?”
“I, uh…the war?”
“World War One! Close enough. You’ll read it again. That’s all that matters.”
Later, as we were packing our own grocery bags into the car, the lead gumshoe gave her verdict. “That lady was weird!”
“I thought she was nice,” Tim protested.
“Are you kidding? She wanted that spoon so she could eat raw liver in her car!”
“Maybe she wanted to eat the yogurt. Did you ever think of that?”
“Who eats plain yogurt? In their car?”
“Impatient people,” I said. “Hungry people who like healthy food. And don’t care how it tastes.”
“Well, she eats pork spleens, and there’s nothing you can say about that.”
Halfway home, after chastising Tim for his ongoing lack of courage in the surf (“Billy says you can’t hesitate and back-off, and that’s exactly what Debbie hates about you”), Carrie asked me what I was doing to solve Hector’s case.
“There’s not much I can do, right now,” I admitted.
That wasn’t good enough. “Do you even believe us?”
“Of course I do. Just give me a little time. I’ll figure it out.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Mom says you should never promise if you’re not sure.”
“I’m sure.”
But of course I wasn’t. I felt sure Hector could help me, but so far he was refusing. The other path, figuring out who had lifted his device, came with its own complications. Carrie wanted me to put the situation to rest with complete secrecy, but that was hard when you were interrogating high school students about who stole their sacred cell phone.
I wondered if the thief had cloned it, like my adult unsub. It was possible, but unlikely—Hector could account for every other call and text on his phone and I couldn’t see the point of taking the time for such a technically complicated trick for a one-off prank.
Nantucket Counterfeit Page 19
