by Brad Smith
What he didn’t see was the part he would come to regret. He knew that Comstock was infatuated with Kirstie and of course she knew it too. But she was convinced she could keep him at bay. “Takes two to tango,” she had told Virgil. All she was focused on was finishing the album, which probably meant she ignored the signs that things were out of control. That Com-stock was out of control. Guns and alcohol and drugs were a bad recipe, and Comstock was a walking mix of all three. Toss in a dash of the spurned and delusional would-be lover and somebody was sure to end up dead. How the shooting actually happened was something Virgil would never know. On a certain level, it didn’t matter. Only the result mattered and it was something he couldn’t change. It was simply a case of one thing leading to another.
And sonofabitch, look where he was now.
He could hire a lawyer and go along for the ride, put his faith in the system, in the belief that innocent people don’t get convicted. It wasn’t much of a plan. First of all, he had no money for a lawyer. And second, innocent people get convicted all the time. The ones who do usually have no money for a lawyer.
In the end, it all came down to money. That had been the case back home in Quebec too. Virgil had laid a shit-kicking on a crooked lawyer named Frank Finley, beat him up badly enough to put him in the hospital, because the Quebec courts were not going to punish the man, due in part to Finley’s being rich enough to cover his swindling ass, at least where the law was concerned.
Now, like Yogi said, it was déjà vu all over again. The money always won. Comstock had walked because he was wealthy enough to pay Mickey Dupree to represent him. Unfortunately, that made it appear that Virgil had a motive for killing Dupree; in fact, he had frequently entertained thoughts of doing bodily harm to the lawyer. During the trial Dupree had, day after day, engaged in a character assassination of Kirstie, suggesting she was a drug addict, a liar, a mental case. Kirstie had been none of those things. Kirstie had been a dreamer but that was hardly a crime. Mickey Dupree was an arrogant creep who couldn’t have cared less about the memory of a nice girl with the capacity to dream. He probably didn’t care about Alan Comstock either, except that Comstock could meet his price. So again it was the money. Virgil was the only one involved who didn’t have any, and he was the only one sitting in a jail cell.
The motive was there, as was his past, and the prosecution would tie the two nicely together and present them to a jury. It was becoming clear to Virgil that what he needed wasn’t a good defense. What he needed was somebody who would try to find out who killed Mickey Dupree.
He pulled his cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one, tossing the Zippo on the table. As he smoked he watched the sky outside. Still cloudless. Perfect haying weather. Funny how everything revolved around the weather when you were a farmer. You thought about it even when you weren’t thinking about it. Even when you had things of a more urgent nature to consider.
Looking out the window, his eyes shifted to the steel mesh that covered it. It was fastened to the frame with lag bolts, and the bolts appeared to be brand-new, of some brass alloy. Virgil realized that the mesh would have been removed for the recent repainting. Eight bolts held the screen in place, and the bolt heads, he guessed, were roughly three-eighths of an inch. He picked up the Zippo, flipped the top open, and studied it for a moment. He walked over to the window for a closer inspection. Then, with a twist, he broke the top off the lighter and pulled the guts from inside, placing both in his pocket. He pushed the lighter casing over the head of the lag bolt and found it fit snugly, like a socket. He applied pressure on the bolt.
And it turned.
Outside the window, the sun burned brightly on the tall corn, and the hardwood forest, and the rolling Hudson beyond.
TEN
Suzanne Boddington called to invite Jane to lunch. Jane declined, citing recent events, but then immediately thought better of it and called back to accept. She could use a dose of Suzanne. She drove the twenty minutes to the Boddington Stables and parked in the lot beneath the towering structure that was the main house. The place was built entirely of western cedar and local fieldstone and had actually been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright during his middle period, a bit of architectural trivia that Miller Boddington managed to insert into all conversations that involved the house, and quite a number that didn’t. The place was all angles and no curves, and while it was not one of the master’s better-known designs, it was still a unique building, a quirky, geometrical box dropped into the bucolic landscape a few miles west of the Hudson River, south of Albany.
When Jane walked up, Suzanne was on the terrace, a Bloody Mary in her hand, her long legs encased in Lee jeans, stretched out on the chair next to her. She squinted up at Jane, then picked up her sunglasses from the glass-topped table and put them on. Jane had no idea how old Suzanne was, and she was quite certain Suzanne wouldn’t tell her if she asked. Or, if she did, Jane wouldn’t know if she was hearing the truth. Still, Suzanne was one of the few people Jane had ever met who was truly at home in her own skin. She was a genuine voluptuary, maybe a few pounds overweight, a little rough around the edges, especially when she chose to be, but a purely sexual being. She had about her a no-bullshit quality that wasn’t affected in the least. Today she was stretched out like a cat in the sun, wearing rope-soled sandals and a black V-neck that showed her impressive cleavage.
“Drink?” she asked as Jane sat down, indicating the half-full pitcher.
“Little early for me.”
“Christ, it’s one o’clock.”
Jane looked at the mixture in the glass pitcher. “Maybe a glass of wine.”
Henri, Suzanne’s latest live-in chef, appeared thirty seconds later with a bottle of Chablis, so quickly that Jane assumed he must have been hovering just inside the French doors. Henri was thin and efficient and somewhat inscrutable. On the days that Jane didn’t wonder if he was gay, she was convinced he was sleeping with Suzanne.
It was warm on the terrace and the two women sat partially in the shade of an awning attached to the rough cedar siding of the house. They could have stayed inside in the air conditioning, but Suzanne preferred the outdoors. She wasn’t afraid of the sun; she didn’t subscribe to anyone’s global warming theories, or, more to the point, didn’t care about them. She once told Jane there were all kinds of things out there that would kill a person and that avoiding them might be as dangerous as not.
“You dodge one and you just might jump in the path of another,” she’d said.
Jane had been apprehensive that Miller might be joining them but it wasn’t the case.
“He’s in California,” Suzanne said.
“Horse business?”
“He’s buying wineries,” Suzanne replied as she poured another Bloody Mary.
They talked a bit about Mickey Dupree’s murder, and then about a play they were going to see in the city later that week, and then Jane steered the conversation toward politics. Jane was hosting a fund-raiser for Congresswoman Edie Bryant at the end of the month. Suzanne wasn’t particularly political but she had volunteered Henri to help with the meal, and Jane wanted to go over the menu. For five thousand dollars a plate, people expected something on the exotic side. She was thinking New Zealand lamb.
“Grass fed,” she added.
Suzanne snorted. “Right. Because New Zealand grass is far superior to the stuff we grow here.”
“Edie wants a band too,” Jane said. “She wants to dance.”
“Christ, she’s the Energizer Bunny,” Suzanne said. “She ever going to stop?”
“I think she’s getting close,” Jane said. “She’s made a couple of comments lately.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Jane started to say something else but then let it go, instead announcing that she was going to attempt the New York City Marathon that fall.
“Wow,” Suzanne said. “Maybe I’ll do it too.” She took a drink and laughed. “In my Mercedes.”
Jane had a sip of
wine. “One of these days you’re going to get the fitness bug. Everybody does.”
Suzanne made a point of reaching for a cigarette. “Yeah, that’ll happen,” she said as she lit up.
Henri brought lunch, seared salmon fillets and roasted potatoes and a green salad. Jane had more wine with the meal but Suzanne stayed with the Bloody Marys. Apparently the pitcher was not going to go to waste. Suzanne had grown up dirt-poor in the Midwest and still carried the effects of that with her. She wore ten-year-old jeans and T-shirts she’d bought at rock concerts a couple of decades earlier. Jane suspected that it was this element of bohemian behavior that had attracted Miller to her in the first place. Of course, it would have taken more than that to hold his attention. Three other women had tried and failed before Suzanne came along. She doubted any of the three possessed a fraction of Suzanne’s subtle diplomatic skills, or her innate gift for self-preservation. And she’d be very surprised if any of them could match Suzanne in pure animal sensuality.
“So it’s wineries now?” Jane said as they finished eating. Without being asked, Henri had cleared the table and brought out coffee, pouring cups for both women. Suzanne stayed with the vodka and tomato juice.
“Yeah,” Suzanne said. “The shiny object du jour.” She had a drink and looked out over the property. A half-dozen brood-mares grazed in the field on the hill. “I can say one thing for the wine business. Nobody’s going to take you to court for mistreating a grape.”
“I suspect not,” Jane said, pouring a little cream in her coffee. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t Mickey Dupree your lawyer on that thing?”
“Miller’s lawyer. I haven’t been charged with anything.”
“Miller’s lawyer. Either way, Mickey’s off the case.”
Suzanne smiled. “Mickey’s off the case all right. Which means Miller has to find somebody else. Which means another delay. This thing has already dragged on for two years. Shit, the first district attorney got voted out, some kid is handling it now.”
“Why is it taking so long?”
Suzanne laughed. “The fact that Miller doesn’t want to go to trial? Mickey didn’t either, I’m guessing. He was used to defending murderers, and I don’t think he knew what to do with this thing. Other than send Miller a sizable fucking bill every month.” Suzanne took a drink; the pitcher was nearly gone. “It’s a funny thing—under the right circumstances you can elicit sympathy for almost anybody, even a killer. Maybe not O. J., but your garden-variety killer. Tell sad stories about his wretched life, his social background, his emotional state. Who done him wrong, all that shit. It can be done.” She smiled at Jane. “But I defy you to find somebody sympathetic to a man who has mistreated a horse. Or a dog. Look at Michael Vick.”
Jane drank her coffee, frowning.
“You doubt me?” Suzanne said. “Look at you—you’re like Gandhi’s kid sister. But what would you do if you caught somebody hurting your dogs?”
“I’d kill them,” Jane said. “But I’d feel badly about it for months afterward.”
Suzanne laughed again, her throat thick from the liquor.
“Anyway, I don’t know where it’s going. All this happened at the other farm, you should know. I’ve never seen anything. And I wouldn’t allow it. But it never ends. There was a guy here yesterday, some skinny geek from the SPCA, saying they found one of Miller’s horses on a farm near Woodstock, starving. But that’s not necessarily his doing. If a horse doesn’t perform on the track, he gets rid of it. That’s the way he is. Now that I think about it, that’s probably why he got rid of the other wives.”
“They couldn’t run fast enough?”
“They didn’t deliver down the stretch.”
“Aha,” Jane said smiling. “So how will it end?”
“Oh, eventually Miller will plead guilty to something. And they’ll hit him with a fine big enough for the public to think justice has been served. And Miller will go on as he always has. Blind to any and all consequences.”
Jane nodded. “He’s going to have to find another lawyer.”
“Like that will be a problem. Kingston’s full of them. You can’t walk down Wall Street without stepping on a couple dozen of the slippery bastards.”
Jane regarded the broodmares on the hill. “But Miller never personally abused a horse. He wouldn’t do that.”
“Oh?”
“Are you saying he would?”
“I have no idea.”
“Did you ever ask him?”
“Hell, no. I’ve been married to him for seventeen years. I quit asking questions I didn’t want to know the answer to a long time ago. For instance, I know Miller owed Mickey Dupree a lot of money at the time of Mickey’s death. Is the estate going to see a nickel of it? I would be very surprised. But it’s not my business.”
Now Jane looked again at the mares, grazing in the summer sun. They were sleek and healthy looking.
“Did you ask Alan what happened in the studio that night?” Suzanne asked.
The question caught Jane unawares. “No,” she said after a moment.
“Well, there you go,” Suzanne said.
Henri came out of the house to ask if they needed anything else. He was going to the market. He was very quiet today. There seemed to be something going on between him and Suzanne. Maybe he was sleeping with her, and if that was true, perhaps he chafed at being her servant to boot—even though it was his job. Jane waited until he went back inside.
“Speaking of Alan and that whole . . . situation,” she began. “I need to ask you . . . well, this is going to sound strange. I want you to tell me, how are we perceived out there?”
Suzanne was lighting a cigarette, and she exhaled before answering. “You want to know what people think of you?”
“Well . . . yes.”
“Why the hell would you want to know that?”
“Because Edie Bryant is stepping down next year and she wants me to go after her seat in Washington.”
If Jane thought she would surprise Suzanne, she was mistaken. “What about this fund-raiser we’re planning?”
“Well,” Jane said slowly, “the money would go to whoever runs in Edie’s place.”
Suzanne smiled. “Well, not to blow smoke up your skirt, but people think you’re great. You’re civic-minded, you’re suitably liberal, you respect the arts. You clean up nicely.”
“What about Alan?”
“What about Alan?” Suzanne repeated slowly, considering it. “Well, I can tell you this much. It sure as hell didn’t hurt that he was acquitted.”
“I suppose not.”
Suzanne was still smiling.
“What’s funny?” Jane asked.
“I was just thinking. I was a little surprised when you told me you intended to run a marathon. Now it’s beginning to make sense.”
“Oh?”
“Sure,” Suzanne said. “It’s a cool image. A congresswoman from upstate who runs marathons. Works on a number of levels.”
“One has nothing to do with the other,” Jane said. “I’m not that calculating.”
Suzanne laughed. “Hey, there’s nothing wrong with calculating.”
Jane smiled and poured more coffee for herself. “I wish you wouldn’t go to California. I’ll miss you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“But what about the wineries? Won’t Miller want to move out there?”
“Miller can do what he wants,” Suzanne said emphatically.
“This place is all I’ve ever wanted.” She finished the last of her Bloody Mary and set the glass noisily on the table. “I’m not fucking going anywhere.”
ELEVEN
Mrs. Tom Walker and her daughter, Pamela, lived next to the courthouse in Kesselberg. Pamela worked at the bank in town and Mrs. Walker passed most days at home, watching her stories or reading romance novels or talking on the telephone. The downstairs phone was by the bay window in the room that had been called the parlor, back when Mr. Walker had come calling. While she talked
, she could watch the river in the distance, and the fields and the bush lot in between, and, of course, the courthouse. There had been a time when the courthouse had been an entertaining place—better than television even before television got so bad—with police coming and going, escorting criminals to and from the various trials being held. In those days Mrs. Walker would take careful note of the men wearing the handcuffs and then later would try to match the faces with the police report in the weekly paper.
But that was no more. They had stopped holding court in Kesselberg seven years earlier. Now the only people she ever saw in and around the building were Sheriff Bumpy Jones and the people who came to cut the grass and tend to the grounds.
Late Friday afternoon, she turned off the TV after watching ten minutes of a talk show hosted by a shrill black woman with orange hair, and she looked out the window to see a worker on the roof of the large garage attached to the courthouse. The garage had once been a carriage house, and Mrs. Walker could remember the large chestnut horses that were stabled there when she was a little girl.
The man on the roof wore jeans and a faded brown shirt. Mrs. Walker assumed he was doing some sort of repair. She couldn’t see a ladder anywhere and decided it must have been on the other side of the building. But then the worker did a strange thing. He slipped over the edge of the roof, hung there by the rain gutter for a moment, and then dropped to the ground. When he stood up, he turned and it seemed that he looked directly at her. Mrs. Walker, not wishing to appear like a snoop, pulled back from the window a bit.
The man then walked casually over to a wheelbarrow that was sitting by the flower bed alongside the garage. He picked up a shovel and a hoe from the grass, put them in the wheel-barrow, and started off, heading in the direction of the river. Mrs. Walker watched him as he made his way down the sloping lawn. When he was gone she went into the kitchen and made herself some tea.
Virgil left the wheelbarrow at the edge of the cornfield, slipped between the rows of corn, and began to run. He had seen a woman watching him from the window of a house next to the courthouse and had no idea who else might have seen him jump down from the roof. He was hoping that the two cops would be gone for a couple of hours at least, and maybe longer than that, if he was lucky. But there was always the chance that the rotund little sheriff might decide to check on him.
