by C I Dennis
“I need a study break. Maybe I should get on a plane.”
“If you were up here in this weather you’d get right back on the plane and go home,” I said. “It’s insanely cold.”
“I could warm you up.”
“Don’t get all horny on me,” I said. “Not fair.”
“Where are you?”
“On the way to see my brother,” I said. “He’s in jail. I guess I’m going to bail him out.”
“What did he do?”
“Bar fight,” I said. “He does that.”
“Is everything OK?”
“It’s turning out to be more complicated than I thought,” I said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“You haven’t run into your old high school girlfriend or anything?”
“No, not that. It’s my father. He was murdered.”
“Oh my God.”
“It’s all right. I’m just going to look into it a little.”
“Be careful,” she said.
“It shouldn’t take long,” I said. “I have to make sure to leave enough time to look up all those old girlfriends.”
“I’m not jealous,” she said. “But just so you’re aware, if you screw around on me, I’ll kill you.”
“Duly noted,” I said. She and I had only known each other for a few months, but the emotional cement was already starting to set, and I was ready for that. I think.
*
I called John Pallmeister a few miles before the South Burlington turnoff. He answered on the first ring. “Pallmeister.”
“Tanzi.”
“Mr. Tanzi. You didn’t make any friends on the Border Patrol today.”
“What was that all about? Don’t tell me it’s the insurance policy.”
“It’s not. But that’s all I can say.”
“Was my father involved in something?”
“Like I said—”
“Yeah, right, you can’t talk,” I interrupted. “Dude—you and I go back a long time.”
“I see,” he said. “When it’s something you want, suddenly we’re old pals.”
“This is my father we’re talking about, John.”
“You told me you didn’t give a rat’s ass about your father.”
“Christ,” I said. “The cold must be getting to everybody. You need to move to Florida where people are actually fucking civil to each other.”
“Tanzi—”
“Forget I asked,” I said. “One question and I’ll let you go. What time did he die?”
“Between six and six thirty. They fed him just before six, and his friend, I forget the name—”
“Sheila.”
“That’s right. She found him a half hour later. The other bed in the room was empty, and nobody heard anything. Like Patton said, it looked like a pro job.”
“Why would anyone order a hit on an old man?”
“I intend to find that out,” he said.
“I’d like to help,” I said.
“Patton wants you to steer clear. He’ll be watching you to make sure you do.”
“I don’t know if I can agree to that.”
“You don’t have a choice,” he said. “By the way, I have a question for you. Where are your brother and sister? I need to interview them. I can’t find either one.”
“I’m going to see my brother today. I’ll have him call you.”
“Where’s Carla?”
“That’s kind of like where’s Waldo. You remember her, right?”
“She and I were in the same class in high school. Sort of a free spirit.”
“Sort of a flake,” I said. “She moves around a lot. I have no idea where she is.”
“OK,” he said. “Vince, a word to the wise. Don’t piss off Robert Patton. He thinks he’s on a mission. You know the type.”
“Which is exactly the type I like to piss off,” I said.
“They can lock you up for no reason,” he said.
“I’m good with locks.”
“I remember,” he said, and we hung up.
*
Visitors to the Chittenden County Regional Correctional Facility are not encouraged to wear guns, so I left my Glock in the car. I don’t even know why I carry it while I’m in Vermont. I’m not on a case, there’s little chance of meeting some perp I put away who just got out, and bullets don’t go zinging by randomly as they do in some of my old beats in Florida. It’s a cop habit, and probably a bad one, but it makes me feel secure, just like some guys like to carry a fat wad of hundreds, or some women like to maintain the entire Estée Lauder line of makeup in their purse. I signed in, and a chubby, humorless guy in a bright floral tie showed me to the Foxtrot Room where I waited for Junie.
They had exchanged his hospital scrubs for prison scrubs that were several sizes too large, and he looked lost in them. I hadn’t seen James Junior in a couple of years, but he didn’t look any better or worse than the last time. His face was sallow, and I wondered if he had strayed back into his smack habit.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said, as he sat down across the table from me. He didn’t smile, and neither did I. Junie and I mostly kept our distance—we had chosen different paths and they seldom intersected.
“You heard about the old man,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Where were you on Sunday?”
“Ask my lawyer,” he said.
“You want to get bailed out of here or not?”
“I don’t want to owe you anything.”
“Did you go to the hospital?”
“I was home. Playing guitar in my apartment.”
“In hospital scrubs?”
“I like wearing them, they’re from when I worked at Fletcher Allen.”
“And you wore them to a bar and then beat somebody up?”
“That’s right,” he said.
I noticed the scratches, going up his left arm. They were just starting to scab over. Pretty soon the police would know if the coroner had found anything other than dirt under my father’s fingernails.
“The cops think it was a pro,” I said. “A hit, like in the movies. But you still need an alibi.”
“I can get someone to say I was home,” he said.
“They have security cameras at the hospital.”
“I know that,” he said. His face darkened like our father’s used to. “I’m not a total fucking idiot, Vin. Just because you’re a cop doesn’t mean you’re any smarter than me.”
“I’m not a cop anymore.”
“Yeah, ʼcause you fucked up.”
“Maybe I should just let you rot here.”
“Suit yourself,” he said. “The food’s good.”
“The wake is on Friday. Mom wants us to go.”
“I’d rather poke my eyes out.”
“Are you playing out much?”
“Tonight and tomorrow at the Marriott. Guess I’ll get a sub, unless you bail me out.”
“Maybe I’ll come hear you play,” I said. “I’ll be back in a few. I’m going to drop over to the court and pay your hotel bill.”
“Thanks, man,” he said. “But I’m still not going to the wake. And just so you know, I didn’t kill him.”
“But you were there that day? At the hospital?”
“I can’t talk,” he said.
“They don’t record you here,” I said.
“I know,” he said. He gave me a look as if he was pleading. “Vin, you should stay out of this.”
Jeezum crow, as they say up here. Everyone I met was telling me to get lost. That wasn’t going to happen—telling me to mind my own business was like telling Junie not to play his guitar. Finding things out is what I do.
*
I stopped the car on the street in front of Junie’s apartment. He had shivered all the way from the jail to his shabby, turn of the century walk-up on Pine Street, near where the city of Burlington meets Lake Champlain. The heat was on full blast in the Subaru, but the wind had come up and was blowing
from the west, across the icy water. This part of the lake didn’t usually freeze over until February, despite the extreme cold of January, the cruelest month.
We hadn’t spoken much on the ride over. He turned to me before he got out.
“I can’t pay you back, man.”
“You won’t have to unless you jump bail.”
“I’m not going anywhere. But I hate this fucking weather.”
“So don’t I,” I said.
“How long you here for?”
“Through the weekend. I’ll probably go to the wake with Mom.”
“Have fun,” he said.
“You’re supposed to call this cop,” I said. I wrote down John Pallmeister’s number on a Post-It.
“No way.”
“Call him,” I said. “I don’t think they know about the scrubs or the scratches on your arm. With any luck they’ll miss them. If you don’t talk to Pallmeister, he’ll come find you. You’re better off if you can keep it to a phone call.”
Junie shut the door of the Subaru and walked across the street to his building. I decided to make another stop while I was in town. Rodney Quesnel had an insurance agency on Cherry Street. He was a flinty old Vermonter, but he knew everything there was to know about the dry and stultifying world of life insurance, and I had some questions.
He had also been Carla’s boyfriend, a long time ago, before she’d discovered girlfriends.
*
I parked in the public garage and braved the wind, which was now howling up Cherry Street from the lake towards Church Street. The temperature had warmed up some but was still below zero, and the morning shoppers dashed between storefronts, swaddled and quilted in Gore-Tex and goose down with the smallest possible opening for breathing and seeing. In the summertime this was a pedestrian paradise, and you could stroll along Church Street with your dish of Ben & Jerry’s and listen to the street musicians. In mid-January, shopping was an extreme endurance event, limited to the hard core of addicted consumers who would still go out, even if they had to get there by dogsled.
Quesnel’s office was warm, and I removed a few outer layers of clothing so that I could speak to the receptionist. “Is Rodney available? I don’t have an appointment.”
“And you are?” a skinny, raven-haired young woman asked.
“Vince Tanzi.”
“Oh,” she said. Apparently, she recognized my name. “I’ll get him.”
Rodney Quesnel was the son of a dairy farmer from the Lake Champlain islands. He still had the ruddy cheeks that farmers get from being outdoors in the Vermont climate. His hair was a wispy tangle of white strands, ineffectively combed over his shiny pink scalp. He stood about five feet tall; if he’d been any shorter he could have passed for an elf.
“How are you, Rod?”
“Good ʼn’ you? Come on back,” he said, and led me into his office. It was a stately affair, like a men’s club without the spittoons—all dark leather and mahogany with framed photographs of Rodney shaking the hands of dead Republicans.
“Thanks for seeing me,” I said.
“Thirty years?”
“That’s about right,” I said. “Actually, I think Carla brought you home for Thanksgiving when you were dating.”
“That makes it about twenty, then,” he said. “I still wish she, you know…”
“Liked men?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I keep thinking I was responsible.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“I know,” he said. “But it’s not exactly a confidence builder.”
“Forget about it, Rodney. You’ve moved on, right?”
“I’m still single,” he said. “I see her on the street every now and then, and I blush myself pink.”
I couldn’t imagine Rodney being any pinker than he already was. “Have you seen her lately?”
“Not in a while. I heard she went out west, but then someone said she’s living way up by the border in Swanton, house-sitting somebody’s place on the lake.”
“That sounds like Carla,” I said.
“You here about your father’s policy?”
“How did you know that?”
“We wrote it,” he said. “The Feds are going to hold it up. We can’t pay it out yet. Although your mother really ought to consider an annuity. I have some great—”
“Thanks, but no,” I said, and his face fell. “She’ll just take the payout, if there is one.”
“You really ought to consider—”
“Rodney, no,” I said. “No as in no.”
“Man, you’re a hard-ass.”
“I heard the payments came from Canada? Is that legal?”
“Sure it is. The insuring company vets these things. They have big anti-money laundering departments. It was a trust, and it was set up right. I’m sure she’ll be able to explain it, once the cops find her.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Carla,” he said. “She was the trustee.”
“What? Carla never had any money.”
“She had enough to write the checks,” he said.
“He had to pass a physical, right?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “For a million-dollar policy at his age he had to be perfect.”
“What about the liver? He had cirrhosis.”
“It wasn’t diagnosed until after the policy was written.”
“He drank himself silly every day. Didn’t they ask about that?”
“He’d been on the wagon for a year. Apart from the liver, he was in excellent health. It was one of those things that just slipped through the underwriting. Basically, he beat the system.”
“Did he say why he was doing this?”
Rodney ran his fingers through his thinning white hair. He looked uncomfortable.
“It’s none of my business,” he said. “I know you had problems with him, Vince. But in his last years he mellowed. He would even smile and tell jokes. He wanted to do something for your mother. He felt a lot of remorse about the things he’d done.”
“It sounds like you two were friends.”
“People open up to me sometimes,” he said. “When they’re talking about insurance—and dying—you’d be surprised what comes out.”
“I still don’t get where the money for the premiums was coming from,” I said. “Certainly not from Carla.”
“You know he was working for Brooks Burleigh, right?”
“That’s what the police said.”
“Money is all around Brooks Burleigh. It’s like snow. It falls out of the sky.”
“Do you know the guy?”
“I wish,” he said. “That’s a client I’d like to have. Even a tiny piece of his business would be more than the rest of my book.”
“How would I find him?”
“You’re in Vermont, Vince,” he said. “He’s in the phone book.”
*
The Stowe exit is about midway down the interstate between Burlington and Barre. You get a spectacular view of the Green Mountains from I-89, which winds through river valleys and farmland, flanked by gentle hills on either side. The Greens have been sculpted and smoothed over time by weather and glacial ice, and from a distance they resemble women lying down.
Brooks Burleigh was in the phone book, but no one had answered. Perhaps they were in Gstaad or Thailand or wherever rich people jetted off to these days. The address was also in the book, and I typed it into my smartphone’s GPS. All my P.I. gear was in Florida, and if this got complicated I might have to call someone to box it up and overnight it. Snooping without my tech toys was like knitting with my eyes closed, and this case (at least it felt like a case, even if I didn’t have a client) was beginning to look like an Argyle sweater. I thought about calling Roberto, my 14-year-old Cuban American neighbor and computer whiz, but he would be in school, and I didn’t want to bug him. I would just proceed the old-fashioned way for now; I was a pretty good investigator long before smartphones and the Internet, and there was a lot that y
ou could accomplish just by knocking on doors and asking blunt questions.
The GPS pointed me up Edson Hill Road, high up a slope across the valley from Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak and the location of the Stowe ski area. I pulled the car over for a moment to take in the spectacular view. The top of the mountain poked into a thin layer of clouds, and I could see the chairlifts running in the distance. Whoever was brave enough to ski in this weather would need some extra insulation and frequent breaks for hot cocoa—you could get frostbite in minutes if you left any skin exposed.
I was in a residential area, and this was definitely the right side of the tracks. Many of the houses weren’t even visible from the road; they were surrounded by enough land to keep out the curious. After another mile the GPS told me I had arrived, and I stopped at a metal gate between two tall stone columns topped by security cameras. I was next to a speaker with a call button, and I lowered the window, letting in the frigid air. Before I could press the button, the gates opened.
Apparently I was being invited in.
The driveway was neatly plowed and sanded, and must have been half a mile long. I wondered if I was going to end up in Morrisville, the next village to the east. Finally, I came to a hilltop where the land flattened, and I found myself in the middle of a quintessential New England farm with barns, stables, snow-covered pasture and a classic Vermont farmhouse.
I parked the Subaru and walked across the packed snow to the farmhouse, which could have been out of a Currier and Ives print except for the security cameras, rooftop antennas, floodlights and wired windows. I wouldn’t want to have to break into this place—I’m very experienced in that area, but this little spread was about as bucolic as Camp David. Somebody was rich, or paranoid, or both.
The door opened before I could knock. “Vince Tanzi?”
“Um…yes,” I said. I was looking at a woman who belonged on the cover of a magazine. She was nearly as tall as me and had thick, black hair that was tied back and hung to her waist. She wore no makeup; she didn’t need to—her dark eyes glowed, her perfect complexion beckoned. She wore sweats, but they looked expensive, and they didn’t obscure her slender figure. I considered collapsing at her feet in hopes that she would take me as her love slave.
“You know the car?” I said.
