by C I Dennis
I stayed in my car and watched them leave. I could have let myself back in the house with my tool bag, but I had already intruded enough into Trish Lussen’s life. Besides, I wanted to revisit Clement Goody’s place, and I try to limit myself to one felony breaking-and-entering per day. For now I would head back into town, walk Chan for a while, find a coffee shop, and connect the dots by phone with John Pallmeister. I would tell him about Falzarano, and Driscoll, and the fact that Matty was the Lussens’ mechanic of choice. Matthew Harmony seemed to be more than casually involved in all of this, and Pallmeister had the resources to help me find out how, and why.
*
“Her phone was at the Comfort Inn for no more than five minutes, according to the carrier log,” John Pallmeister said. The cell reception was weak, making the policeman’s voice reverberate like he was speaking through a metal culvert. “So it wasn’t a quick shack-up.”
“Even I’m not that quick.”
“There goes your theory, Vince.”
“It still feels like they had a thing going,” I said. I took a sip of the coffee and sat back on a plush sofa in the front room of a nineteenth-century house that had been converted into an eatery called the Lovin’ Cup. The waitress had given me a menu, but I had already carbo-loaded at my mother’s before the visit to Matty’s garage.
“How do you know that it was Harmony who drove the phone to Shelburne?” Pallmeister asked. “It could have been the girl you’re looking for, and then she drives it back to her mother’s house.”
“Yes, but Trish Lussen confirmed that he works on her car. I asked him, and he came up with the same thing.”
“Trish Lussen was in Connecticut that Saturday,” Pallmeister said. “She’s been going down to her sister’s. The sister has cancer. We’ve covered this, Vince. You’re rehashing things that we’ve already looked into, and frankly, you’re stretching.”
“Matthew Harmony is involved. I wouldn’t waste your time if I didn’t think he was.”
“So we question him, and maybe get another warrant to go through his house? Because you think he killed Lussen out of jealousy?”
“How did Lussen die? I mean, I know he got shot with a bow, but what are the forensics guys saying?”
“The killer used a compound bow. You could drop a bear with it. The arrows were carbon fiber—the expensive kind, and there weren’t any prints. The medical examiner says the shooter was a man, or a very strong woman. The first arrow was the lung shot, taken from a distance. He finished him off at close range with the headshot. The arrow went right through the skull and pinned his head to the ground.”
My coffee suddenly tasted like battery acid. “Christ.”
“You want to sign up for a badge, I’ll take you on,” the lieutenant said. “But you’re kind of becoming a distraction here, if you don’t mind my saying so. You should have left Trish Lussen to us. We’ve been through the place.”
“I just want to find the girl.”
“I know,” Pallmeister said. His voice was going in and out because of the weak connection. “You stay on that, and we’ll cover the homicide.”
“One favor,” I said.
“What is it?”
“Find out if Matt Harmony ever had a bow-hunting permit.”
“Fair enough,” John Pallmeister said. “And then I want you to drop this.”
“Did your people go to Belvidere Mountain? To Lussen’s cabin?”
“What cabin?”
“You don’t know?”
“Not until now.”
I took a long sip of the coffee and put the cup down. The acid taste had gone away. “Maybe I should be a distraction more often.”
*
Sometimes this P.I. thing is a breeze. A child could do it. Karen Charbonneau’s white Jag passed me going the other way on Hog Back Road, and there were at least two people inside, so the odds were better than even that nobody would be at Clement Goody’s house when I arrived. The gate at the bottom of the driveway was wide open, so I didn’t have to worry about electrocuting myself. I drove right up to the dooryard, parked, rang the bell, and waited. If someone answered, I would use my old standby: sorry, I think I left my cellphone somewhere. But no one came to the door, and I went back to the car to fetch my bag of tools from the trunk.
After ten seconds of working the tumblers I realized that the door had been left unlocked. I opened it and looked into the foyer where I’d had my whiteout-nap. Nobody. Either these people were very unconcerned about their home security, or I’d missed something. Vermonters generally don’t lock their houses, but Goody wasn’t a Vermonter, and his house was full of valuable things. Eric the electrician had told me that Goody was a prepper, and those types aren’t slack on protective measures. I sauntered through the wide-open door, wondering if it was about to slam shut on my fingers.
The answer to that worry was simple: be quick. One by one, I opened the doors to the first-floor rooms and checked everything out, including the closets. I went through the bathroom cabinets looking for pills. I pawed through a recycling bucket and read Goody’s mail, which was mostly junk. He probably had a shredder for the important things. I found what looked like a master bedroom and opened every drawer and closet. The room was clearly Goody’s because the clothes were men’s attire and all his size. Most of it was what you might expect a seventy-year-old man to wear, but there were also several performance outfits in a rainbow of primary colors.
The second floor held bedrooms, bathrooms, and a sitting room over the addition. This section was where Cindy and Karen stayed, again judging from the clothes in two of the bedrooms. I hadn’t discovered Lila’s quarters yet, but I opened a door above the original area of the house and—wow. The entire space had been turned into one room, which resembled a honeymoon suite in a high-end Vegas hotel: a huge circular bed in the center, with fluffy, garish furnishings surrounding it. On the wall next to me was a panel of electrical switches, which I tried out, one by one. One switch made the bed rotate clockwise like a gigantic lazy Susan. Others controlled lights that swiveled, changed color, and might have made you seasick if you’d had one too many Armagnacs before bedtime. The closets along the walls held not only Lila’s clothes but also a number of costumes: chambermaid, nurse, soldier, schoolteacher, and a selection devoted to leather straps, spikes, and gear that would have made a Hell’s Angel feel underdressed.
Lila’s bedroom was also wired for video and sound. I found a closet full of camera equipment, microphones, and boom stands. Perhaps this was where Clement Goody recorded his Sunday morning sermons?
Nah. If any worshipping was done in this room, it was at the temple of Eros. This was the center of Clement Goody’s kinky universe. It made me wonder if the preacher was serious about his religion or if it was simply a conduit to self-glorification and easy cash from his followers. The slick, telegenic types never struck me as people you would seek out for spiritual guidance. Give me the priest of my childhood who showed up every Sunday to lead his ever-dwindling congregation in a drafty church under a leaky roof. His homilies may have put us to sleep, but he was always there to lend an ear when someone was in a bad way. The true saints among us are the listeners, not the talkers.
I made my way downstairs, and then down a further set of stairs to the basement where I had been entertained on Thursday night. The theater space was dark. A passageway led in the other direction, and I checked the doors one by one as I advanced down the hall.
The first room held an oil burner, a water heater, and an electrical panel. Nothing out of the ordinary. The next two rooms contained canned food, five-gallon jugs of water, and other supplies. If Clement Goody was a prepper, he and his friends could survive for a while, but I agreed with Eric the electrician: what was the point?
Next down the hall was a windowless office with a wall of books. Goody was a fiction buff with tastes that tended toward the erotic. Barbara owned a few of those things and I had tried to get through them, but if I want to be aroused I’m
better off with food magazines.
The next room was locked. I appreciate locks for two reasons: one, it usually means that there’s something worthwhile inside, and two, I can pick most of them, given enough time and the right tools. I still had my bag with me, and I got to work.
I hadn’t even inserted the pick when I heard an electrical hum and a loud click. Goddamn. Somebody had opened it remotely, or, from the inside. I jumped back, but I didn’t have a place to conceal myself quickly enough. If they were coming out, I’d be caught flat-footed.
No one came out. I gave it fifteen seconds and turned the handle to open the door.
No wonder it had been securely locked. Inside was a cache of weapons, and I’ve seen lots of them, but this one was different because it was so neatly organized. Ammunition in drawers, arranged by caliber. A highly illegal box of homemade pipe bombs, tucked under a shelf. Armaments displayed on the walls, segregated by type: hunting, target, and personal weaponry. It was more than a collector’s gun closet, although except for the pipe bombs it didn’t reach the level of paranoia that I’d seen on display in other basements.
I carefully closed the door to the room. I wondered what had triggered the lock to open, but I couldn’t figure it out. Perhaps it was on a timer? A motion detector? You would think that it would lock, and not unlock the door if a sensor had picked up my movement. It didn’t make sense, but I was still glad to get into the room so easily.
One more door remained at the end of the hall. If the basement were true to the house’s footprint, the room beyond it would be a big one.
The double door swung open before I reached it. Inside was a gym with an array of exercise machines, a basketball half-court, parallel bars, a pommel horse, rings suspended from the ceiling, and a balance beam. The sole occupant was a woman dressed in black tights, a sport bra, and sneakers, pulling hard on a rowing machine. Cindy Charbonneau was working out while watching the screen of a tablet computer on a stand in front of her. She stopped and turned to me.
“Took you long enough,” she said. “You’re a nosy one.”
“I—left my cellphone here,” I said. I almost didn’t bother attempting to use my alibi because I realized why my B&E had been such a picnic: I’d been played from the start.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Your phone. That would be the phone that I’ve been tracking since Thursday? If you’re looking for it, it’s in your pocket.”
“You saw me?”
“Come here.” She was clearly enjoying this. Not only had she beat me at my own game, she’d roped me in like a calf, and I was about to get my ass branded. “Check it out. I’ll put it on fast-forward. It’s funnier that way.”
I took the computer from her and watched while she got up from the rowing machine and grabbed a towel. The screen was replaying video taken from the numerous security cameras that Clement Goody had installed on his premises, cameras that I had missed. The software was sophisticated enough to keep the lenses trained on me in every room that I had passed through. I hadn’t noticed a single one of them.
“Whoa, kinky,” Cindy said as the video showed me rummaging through Lila Morton’s underwear drawer. She stood next to me, laughing and toweling off sweat. I viewed myself wandering around like a street punk robbing a Seven Eleven.
“You control all that from the tablet?”
“Yup,” she said. “And don’t feel bad. The cameras are embedded into the sheetrock. That’s how the CIA does it. Clement’s like, seventy, but he appreciates technology.”
“And you’re his tech guru.”
“Yes,” she said. “Like your friend Roberto.”
Cindy Charbonneau knew about Roberto? She was a far better researcher than I’d thought, and it was an uncomfortable feeling to suddenly be on the other side of an investigation.
“He’s a kid,” I said. “Leave him alone.”
“I’m not going after you, Vince,” she said. “I just want to know what you’re up to, and if it poses any kind of threat to Clement, because I won’t let that happen. His work is very important to a lot of people.”
I was looking at a bright, resourceful woman. Cindy may have been the less-refined sister, but she had the same intelligent, deep-green eyes as her twin, minus the mascara. “I’m here to find Grace,” I said. “That’s all.”
She and I did a visual Mexican standoff that lasted long enough for each of us to understand that the other was serious. “If you find her, what will you do?”
“Get her out of here,” I said. “I’d put her into a real rehab program.”
“Clement can’t control himself around that girl,” she said. “Maybe we’re on the same side.”
“Maybe we are.”
“I—might help you.” Her look had softened slightly, for the first time since I had seen her at Clement Goody’s front gate.
“I would really appreciate it if you did.”
“Just so you know,” she said, “I won’t go to bed with you unless Clement tells me to. You’re not my type.”
“That shouldn’t be an issue.”
“Go upstairs and wait in the foyer,” she said. “And don’t fall asleep.”
*
Cindy had changed into a black T-shirt and gray sweatpants. Her hair was wet from taking a shower, and she combed it out as we sat across from each other on the leather furniture in the foyer and talked. She had surprised me by wanting to talk shop, and had quizzed me on the various devices and techniques that I had used over the years. The investigating business fascinates some people, although most novices quickly get bored with it, because it’s slow. Solving a case takes time. You don’t just waltz into someone’s house and romp through all their stuff—that only happens in the movies, or, when you were being had. Fortunately, Chan was still in the car and had witnessed none of this, because I could only imagine his reaction. I was certain that I’d be hearing about it later.
Ms. Charbonneau confessed that she had taken my phone while I’d been asleep on Thursday, and had installed a tracking app. I have used the exact same one, several times. So Cindy knew about my trip to talk with her sister at the college, the drive to Carmela’s house, the morning visit to Matty’s shop, and my stopover at Trish Lussen’s. I could have been annoyed, but I was only getting a dose of my own medicine.
Cindy hadn’t seen Grace Hebert since the young woman had bolted down the driveway in the Hummer. She asked me why the police hadn’t yet located such an obvious vehicle. Good question. I asked her about Don Lussen, and she confirmed that he was smitten with Grace, and that Clement Goody had intentionally kept them separated for the last two weeks, partly because Lussen was making an ass of himself, but also because that was when the death threats had started.
“How did they arrive?” I asked her. “Emails?”
She grimaced as she pulled the brush through a tangle of hair. “Regular mail, sent to her college P.O. box. Just a single sheet of computer paper with a printed message.”
“What did it say?”
“Quotes from the Bible, that kind of stuff.”
“Do you still have the letter?”
“Clement tossed it in the fireplace. He told Grace she had to stay with us.”
“Were there other threats?”
“I guess so, but Clement wouldn’t discuss it.”
“Nobody told the police?”
“He doesn’t like to attract attention,” she said. “Some people don’t understand what we do here.”
Like me, for example, but that didn’t matter at the moment. “So—where would Grace run to, if she’s not here, or at her mother’s, or at the college?”
“Grace is beautiful, and men will do anything for her. She’s probably far away by now. London, or somewhere like that. Sorry, Vince. My guess is that you’ve lost her.”
If Grace had left the country, John Pallmeister could find out through customs. I was already making up another mental list of favors to ask him. Meanwhile, I peppered Cindy Charbonneau with more questions.
“Karen told me that Trish Lussen might have known that Donald was fooling around.”
“It wasn’t just fooling around,” she said. She looked exasperated, and I sensed that her willingness to answer my questions was coming to an end. “Donald was a big part of everything.”
“I understand,” I said. Sort of. “Do you think that his wife could have—”
“No. She’s like, Ms. Politically Correct, you know? Owns the perfect farm, drives an old Saab, makes her own bread, volunteers at the elementary school, all that shit. No wonder Donald was bored.”
“Understood,” I said, but once again, I didn’t quite. Both Charbonneau sisters had now told me that Donald Lussen’s wife might have known about his extracurricular love life, and that wasn’t good. I added Trish Driscoll Lussen to my list—in pencil, and well below Matty Harmony’s name, but it would be a mistake to not include her. Each of them could have acted from the same motivation: jealousy. Jealous people could do things that no one dreamed them capable of, like launching two arrows from a high-powered bow into the body of a cheating husband.
*
Chan reacted, all right. I let him out of the car for a whiz, and I even tried to bribe him with some hamburger that I’d purloined from the Goody house fridge after Cindy had gone into the bathroom with a hair dryer, but it was no use. He wouldn’t touch the meat, and he was looking at me like I was the most pathetic thing he had ever seen.
Is there such thing as a rescue program for humans?
“Look,” I said, “I’m making progress. I just need a little luck.”
If you need a little luck, then you’ve already lost. He was right, of course.
We were at the bottom of the driveway where I had parked next to one of the bible camp buildings. The clapboard structures didn’t seem like innocuous places of worship anymore; they looked foreboding. Maybe Grace was hiding in one of them?
No—Cindy Charbonneau was right: Grace Hebert was long gone. My skills were no longer needed here, unless I was willing to get out my passport and chase her around the globe. How was I going to explain all of this to Mrs. Tomaselli?
