Murder Scene

by Richard Montanari

  Detta considered him for a few suspicious seconds. She stole another glance at her watch. ‘I’m out of here.’ She kissed him on the cheek. ‘Good luck with the inspector,’ she said. ‘Try not to sweat.’

  Will laughed. ‘Thanks, honey.’

  As she stepped out the back door, she stopped, poked her head back inside.

  ‘And Dad?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I love my room.’

  While waiting for the inspector, Will paced the first floor. He felt the way he felt when Amanda went into labor a few days early with Detta. Granted, the stakes were a bit higher on that day, but that didn’t stop the feeling. The worst that could happen was that the inspector would cite some reasons they couldn’t get an occupancy permit, and they would stay at Red Oak a while longer.

  A few minutes after noon Will saw someone approaching the front walk. Will tried to fashion a look of honesty and competence, and opened the door.

  ‘Hello,’ Will said.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

  The first thing Will noticed about the housing inspector was that the man was younger than expected. He was around Will’s age. The few inspectors Will had dealt with in the city had been into their fifties and sixties; city-hardened, day-weary men who took in all your connivances and corner cutting in one glance. This man had about him an openness which Will guessed was a small-town thing.

  ‘Please,’ Will said. ‘Come in.’

  The man stepped over the threshold. ‘Godwin Hall,’ the man said. After a few moments he added, ‘You’ve done a lot of work.’

  ‘I had a lot of help. But yeah. It took some doing.’

  ‘It looks marvelous.’

  Instead of poking around the electrical outlets, fuse boxes, plumbing fixtures, and gas lines, the inspector walked through each room taking in the spaces in total.

  Will found himself following the man around, which was probably bad form. He excused himself, and tried to make himself busy in the kitchen. Now that they had a new refrigerator and a working stove they would be preparing meals, and Will made out a shopping list. He wanted the first dinner for himself and Detta at Godwin Hall to be special.

  He heard the man moving about the attic, the old ceiling joists creaking under his weight.

  Before long he heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. He went out into the parlor to get the bad news.

  ‘I used to come here as a child,’ the man said. ‘It was a special place to run around and play. So many rooms. I can honestly say that I have the same feeling today. Godwin Hall is in good hands.’

  Will didn’t know what to say. The possibility of a rather large and expensive ‘but’ might still be on the way. He said, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘On behalf of no one but myself let me extend a warm welcome to Abbeville, Ohio,’ he said. ‘I know that you and your daughter will be quite happy here, and that Godwin Hall will surely return to its former splendor and prominence.’

  Will was taken aback a bit by the warm wishes from this total stranger. But in a good way. It also struck him as a bit odd that the man knew he had a daughter. Perhaps he had read the piece in The Villager.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Will said. ‘I didn’t catch your name.’

  The man extended his hand. Will took it.

  ‘I am Jakob van Laar.’

  48

  Ivy had worked on the photograph of Delia most of the night, and half of the morning. She caught two hours’ sleep total, both of them sitting up.

  When she stood back from Delia’s photo, she found that an image was beginning to take shape in the trees over Delia’s left shoulder, a smudge of white near the lowest branch of a maple. It was one of the last areas that Ivy had to restore before she was finished.

  At three o’clock she received a call from Dispatch.

  When Ivy and Walt Barnstable arrived at the trailer park there was a crowd of a dozen or so people gathered near the entrance. Edson Estates was a small common of a dozen or so single-wide mobile homes, located just outside Abbeville in neighboring Inglewood.

  Ivy and Walt both got out of the SUV, held their badges up so the people could see them. The gathering was a mix of older people in their sixties and seventies, with a few smaller children; retirees and kids too young for school.

  ‘Who made the call?’ Ivy asked of the crowd in general.

  A man standing off to the side lifted a hand. He was hitting a cigarette hard. He seemed to be shivering, even though it was a warm day.

  The man was around thirty, with close-cropped brown hair and a long mustache. He wore a clean uniform from Aqualine, identical to the jumpsuit they had seen on Chevy Deacon.

  Ivy and Walt approached him.

  ‘Your name, sir?’ Ivy asked.

  ‘Bensicker,’ he said. ‘Tom Bensicker.’

  ‘And you work with Mr Deacon?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How did you come to be here today?’

  ‘I was supposed to pick Chevy up for work today. We do that sometimes on half-shift days. Carpool like that. Every other time like.’

  ‘When you got here did you see anyone hanging around this house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did you do when you arrived?’

  He nodded at his truck. ‘I just sat there. Honked the horn a few times. When Chevy didn’t come out I went to the door and knocked.’

  ‘Did you hear anything coming from inside the house?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like a radio, TV? Maybe somebody talking?’

  Again the man shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. It was quiet.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘When he didn’t answer the door, I opened it.’

  ‘So the door was closed and latched, but not locked.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What did you see when you opened the door?’

  Ivy watched the man closely. He began to blanch at this. He raised his hand absently, touched the left side of his head.

  ‘I seen him. I could tell right away something was wrong. He was all bloodied up.’

  ‘This is Mr Deacon we’re talking about, correct?’

  The man nodded.

  Ivy caught Walt’s eye. Walt would continue to interview the man, while Ivy entered the mobile home.

  Ivy stepped to the SUV, reached into the back seat, took out a fresh pair of latex gloves, put them on. She could see some of the people in the gathering whispering to each other, considering her with some suspicion and distrust.

  Ivy braced herself, walked up the two steps to the front door. She stepped into the trailer, a twelve by sixty with a dry-walled front end. The interior walls were painted lime green. To the right was the small kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. To the left was the living room area.

  The table in the eating area was a bit grimy, and the tile by the front door was streaked with dried mud, but it wasn’t the jumble that she expected, or quite what they’d found at Lonnie Comb’s place.

  Chevy Deacon sat slumped on a dining room chair in the middle of the living room. At his feet were two empty fifths of whiskey. His arms and hands dangled at his sides. Like Lonnie Combs he was dressed only in white briefs that were now soaked in blood.

  Ivy did not need to look too closely for cause of death.

  A twelve-inch drill bit was pushed in all the way to the hilt in Chevy Deacon’s left temple. The tip of the bit protruded an inch or so from his right temple. The bit was still attached to the small cordless drill, which angled downward from the weight of the tool. The dead man’s face was purplish and distended from the trauma. In his lap, and down the front of his bare chest, were gobbets of flesh and bone, along with a thick trail of vomit. His left eye was all but destroyed.

  What do you see, Ivy Lee?

  Ivy had seen a number of suicides in her time on the job. There were differences between men and women as regards suicide. Women made more attempts than men; men completed the act with higher frequency.
Men tended toward carbon monoxide poising, firearms and hanging. Women reached for pills.

  Ivy was all but certain that when they completed the search of Chevy Deacon’s home they would find a handgun, probably more than one.

  So why not use a gun?

  Ivy looked down at the coffee table. The newspaper there had the name Josie written on it at least a hundred times in black magic marker.

  As EMS paramedics prepared to remove the body from the trailer, Ivy and Walt interviewed some of the people gathered around the entrance to the trailer park. Ivy had not been mistaken. There was indeed an air of hostility in their attitudes. Apparently, the fact that Chevy Deacon had recently been braced by law enforcement didn’t sit well with them. Ivy wondered how the man’s proclivity for beating up the women in his life sat with them, but didn’t ask.

  In short order they had what they expected. Nobody saw anything. According to the folks at Edson Estates, this was a tragic suicide.

  But Ivy knew better.

  As she was just about to step back into the trailer she was hit hard with a fist on the left side of her face. Ivy saw stars for a moment, stumbled a few feet, but kept her balance. She turned.

  It was Terry Deacon.

  ‘You fuckin’ bitch!’ Terry screamed.

  The woman’s eyes were red, her fists tightly clenched. She charged Ivy again, but this time Ivy was ready for her. She stepped to the side and Terry Deacon’s forward momentum caused her to fall to the ground. She scrambled to her feet, got ready to charge again.

  ‘Hold it right there, Terry. Just stop.’

  The woman hyperventilated. Before she could lunge forward Walt stepped behind her and got her in a tight bear hug. The woman kicked and screamed at the top of her lungs. She tried to slam the back of her head into Walt’s face but he was able to lean out her range.

  ‘You fucking killed him!’

  Walt held on tight until the woman began to run out of steam. Her face was still inflamed with rage.

  ‘Listen to me, Terry,’ Ivy said. ‘Just listen to me for a minute.’

  The woman spit as far as she could. It did not reach Ivy.

  ‘Walt is going to let you go, but you’re going to have to calm down. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise you.’

  Terry Deacon showed no sign of calming down.

  ‘Terry? Do you hear what I’m saying?’

  Walt looked over Ivy’s shoulder, back into her eyes. Ivy could hear people coming up behind her. She reached down and unsnapped her holster, put her hand on the grip of her weapon, but didn’t turn around. She saw in Walt’s expression that the people had halted their approach.

  ‘I know you’re in hell right now, Terry,’ Ivy said. ‘I can only imagine what you’re feeling. But going to jail is not going to make things better. You’ve got your family to think of. They need you right now.’

  Ivy watched the woman’s eyes dart from side to side, considering her next move. Then, in an instant, it was over. Ivy saw the woman’s shoulders drop, saw the fury leave her body. She slumped in Walt’s grasp. When he did not immediately let her go she said, quietly:

  ‘Get . . . your fucking hands . . . off me.’

  Walt slowly released the woman, but did not step back.

  Ivy stood in front of Theresa Deacon, watched the woman sob, watched as she began to ebb from anger into grief. There was nothing Ivy could do but stand there, ready to catch Theresa Deacon if she fell.

  Ivy had tried to reason with herself on the way to this new horror, had advocated on the side of bad luck and odd coincidence and the grim happenstance of fate.

  But, in her heart, she knew there was no longer room for debate.

  A darkness had descended on her town.

  49

  ‘You must come and visit Veldhoeve,’ Jakob said.

  They sat in the parlor on the only two available chairs. Will suddenly felt self-conscious about the furnishings, or lack thereof, in the presence of this man.

  The man was not, of course, the building inspector. He was the owner of Zeven Farms.

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘At the risk of sounding falsely modest, the history of Veldhoeve is the history of Abbeville. Godwin Hall, as well. These two houses have faced each other for two hundred years. I could not be more pleased to see the Hall returning to its glory.’

  As they chatted Will learned that Jakob van Laar’s house, Veldhoeve, was even older than Godwin Hall. He learned that it had at one time been an orphanage of sorts. He learned the first apple trees had been planted in the 1800s.

  Will also learned that Jakob’s ancestors and his own had been neighbors and friends, and that Will’s Dutch forebears, his mother’s lineage, named the boarding house after a fermented brew made by Jakob’s ancestors. They called the drink ‘God’s wijn’ and thus: Godwin.

  ‘Although I was very small, I remember the Hall and its grandeur,’ Jakob said. ‘My father would tell stories of the famous people who stayed here. Some of them infamous.’

  Will was intrigued. Jakob went on to give him a brief history of the village, its days as a logging station.

  ‘Tell me how you came to the decision to take up this family tradition,’ Jakob said. ‘That is, if I’m not being too busy.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Will gave Jakob a brief précis of his life, of the events leading to the day Patrick Richmond had called him with the strange news. Jakob seemed to take it all with interest and compassion.

  ‘And you never met Camilla?’

  ‘No,’ Will said. ‘My mother never really talked much about her family.’

  ‘I remember Camilla well,’ Jakob said. ‘Even when the Hall had fallen on hard times, she was kind and courteous. I always felt welcome here.’

  ‘I hope you feel the same way now.’

  Jakob smiled. ‘How has your daughter taken to the move?’

  ‘She’s adjusting,’ Will said. ‘Needless to say, Abbeville is quite a culture shock from New York.’

  ‘I would imagine so. I think she will find the schools here quite rigorous. They are among the top tier in the state.’

  ‘That’s what I understand.’

  ‘What does she hope to do?’

  ‘Not really sure,’ Will said. ‘She is an amazing artist. Mostly charcoal, some watercolors. I can’t draw a circle with a compass, but she is really talented.’

  ‘My family has been collecting art for many years. Bernadette would be more than welcome to view the pieces at Veldhoeve. Perhaps she would be inspired.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Will said. ‘I’m sure she’d be thrilled. When we lived in New York she would be at the museums all the time. The other kids would be at the mall, and she would be at the Whitney or the Guggenheim.’

  Jakob glanced at his watch. ‘I fear I’ve kept you from your day.’

  He stood up, reached into his pocket and removed a silver card case. He extracted a single card, placed it on the mantel. He then took out a beautiful fountain pen, flipped the card over and wrote on the back. He gently waved the card, drying the ink. He handed the card to Will.

  ‘If you need any assistance with any of the bureaucracies associated with the purveyors and inspectors with whom you will be dealing, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am on just about every board that matters in Holland County.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Will said. ‘I might take you up on that.’

  ‘Zeven Farms receives many visitors from all over the world. I would be more than happy to include Godwin Hall in all our promotional and business correspondence.’

  Will looked at the ivory vellum card. On one side it read, simply, J van Laar. No business name, no email or website. On the other side was written a phone number.

  ‘At the risk of imposing on our new acquaintance, would it be all right if I continued to look around for a few more moments?’ Jakob asked. ‘It has been quite a while since I’ve been inside and, as I said, I have many fond memories.’

  ‘Take all the
time you like.’

  ‘Perhaps I can repay your kindness with a gift basket from Zeven Farms.’

  ‘That would be great.’ Will pointed over his shoulder. ‘I’ll be out back. Just finishing up painting the garage. Give a shout if you need anything.’

  ‘Spoken like a true innkeeper,’ Jakob said. ‘And not to worry. I will let myself out.’

  50

  As she prepared to leave Edson Estates Ivy received a call from Sister Della Marie at Calvary House. The nun said that she did not know Josefina’s last name. Mostly this was because Josie was a volunteer at the shelter, and there were no W-2 forms to fill out.

  She did tell Ivy that Josie had mentioned her home life in a small village in the eastern end of Holland County called Ashdale.

  Ivy spent the next hour on the phone with the school administrators from the three schools that Josie might have attended. Before long she received a .jpeg of a student that fit Josie’s description.

  It was confirmed.

  The dead girl’s name was Josefina Mollo.

  A follow-up call to the girl’s school told Ivy that Josie had lived with her grandfather in a remote house near the Iron River.

  Her pulse racing, Ivy got back in her SUV.

  On the way to make notification she decided to stop by Godwin Hall.

  51

  As Jakob ascended the stairs to the second floor at Godwin Hall he felt many sensations flower within him. For years – indeed, all his life – he had anticipated and planned for these days.

  He approached the doorway with heady anticipation. It was as close as he had ever been to her, having only watched her from afar these many years.

  He glanced out the bedroom window to see that Will Hardy had taken up his brush and was painting the side of the garage.

  Jakob stood at the foot of the bed. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift to thoughts of his mother, a woman he had never met. As all the women in his family, she was a Dutch farm girl of modest means and religious upbringing. To Jakob’s knowledge she had never breached the boundaries of her hometown. Sébastien van Laar, Jakob’s father, had returned to Holland when he was of an age, combing the countryside for a girl of good health and sweet nature. Sébastien met a girl in Naarden, a pretty girl named Jeltje, the daughter of a trawler captain.