by C I Dennis
I had also called Patton, who caught me up on Angus Driscoll. The financier had booked a first-class seat home, cutting short his Florida vacation. I put Driscoll on the calendar for a visit in the morning: his brokerage office was in downtown Burlington, half an hour away. Rose could chauffeur me in the Stealth Bomber, and we would see if we could get past the secretaries and rile him up a little. Was he married? I didn’t know, but I would research that tonight.
“Vince,” Mrs. Tomaselli said, putting down her fork. “You said that this priest told you that Matty was in love with Grace?”
“He’s Baptist, not Catholic,” I said. “They don’t call them priests. And yes, he insinuated that Matty and Grace were lovers. That’s what the police believe, too. I’m not so sure.”
“Why do the police think that?”
“Their theory is that Grace was in a relationship with the professor up at the college. Matty got jealous, he killed the guy, and then he committed suicide.”
“When you say in a relationship, you mean sex?”
“Yes.”
“Oh dear, dear, dear,” Mrs. T said, shaking her head. “This is all my fault and no one else’s.”
“You’re being ridiculous, Donna,” my mother said. “Every woman makes these choices on her own.”
“I used to brag to Grace about my boyfriends,” Mrs. Tomaselli said. “That was nothing but foolish, sinful pride on my part. It was ancient history, of course, but it must have made her think that it was acceptable. Her own grandmother was a flirt, not to mention her mother. Oh dear god, I’m such a useless old wretch.” She removed the napkin from her lap and dabbed at her eyes.
“Rubbish,” my mom said. “You had nothing to do with it. You’ve always been there for Grace. Have some more of this nice wine and pipe down.”
Both of them had a point. People think of their elders as role models. Sometimes that’s good, because it can open a whole world of life experience to a shy teenager. And sometimes it backfires. I wasn’t always a perfect role model with Roberto, or even with Royal, but it seemed to balance out over time. Parenting is more about being there than being any good at it.
I excused myself from the table because my phone was buzzing in my pocket, and I had sneaked a look: Karen. I took the call in the bathroom. “Hello?”
“Where are you?”
“My mother’s house,” I said. “We got into Burlington this afternoon, and we went up to see if Grace was at Goody’s, but no one was too helpful.”
“We?”
“I’m with a U.S. Customs agent. She’s helping me out.”
“Customs? Why are they involved?”
“Rose is an old friend, and I needed a driver.”
“Are you all right?”
“I had a little setback. I’m not supposed to drive.”
“And so, this Rose. Your old friend. She’s not young and good-looking, right?”
“Hold on—”
“Forget it,” Karen said. “I’ll pick you up in an hour. We’re going to Sweet Melissa’s, in Montpelier. They have the best beer.”
“Karen, I’d really like to see you, but—”
“This isn’t about us, Vince,” she said. “This is about Cindy. I’m about to betray my twin sister, and I’m going to need a drink.”
*
Karen was on her second beer and I was still nursing my first one when the band started up. Sweet Melissa’s was one of those hole-in-the-wall joints where the music, the liquor, and the small, noisy crowd made it seem like you had just been let off of the bus at honkytonk heaven. A guitar player in a cowboy hat was growling out a Lefty Frizzell tune called “That’s the Way Love Goes” from the dimly lit stage. He was accompanied by drums, bass, and a pedal steel guitar, and the music was as smooth as Clement Goody’s bourbon.
“You were going to tell me about Cindy,” I said. Karen was dressed in jeans and a light-blue sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. She wore makeup, and her eyes were smeared around the edges.
“Cindy and I were like one person,” she said. “Our mother dressed us the same, and our parents always got off when we’d do the same things. They thought it was cute. So we learned how to be carbon copies of each other, because we wanted their approval.”
“Including going to bed with the same man.”
“They never knew about that,” Karen said. “But it came from the same place.”
“You said you were going to confess something.”
“I don’t know what to call it. I’m afraid for Cindy. This has gone too far.”
“How?”
“What happened to you, Vince? How come you aren’t driving? And who’s the woman? You told me that she wasn’t pretty, but she is. I don’t think she liked me.”
Karen and Rose had been in each other’s company for a total of thirty seconds in the doorway of my mother’s house. Neither of them had said a word, but that hadn’t stopped them from sizing up each other. “You’re dodging my question,” I said.
She began to draw circles on the polished wooden table with her fingertip. “My sister and I aren’t the same person anymore. It’s been going on for some time. I have a career, and she’s floundering. She got into drugs, and I allowed myself to get sucked into it with her. The worst part was that she fell for Clement. All the way.”
“She’s in love with him?”
“It’s more of an obsession. I have some of it, too. Clement knows how to exploit people’s weaknesses. He’s a very charismatic person. Don’t ask me to explain love, Vince. The older I get, the more I realize that nobody has a clue.”
“Amen,” I said.
“My sister and I grew up west of here. That’s the part of Vermont that used to be all dairy farms, but a lot of the land has gone back to woods. Everybody hunts there. Our dad took us hunting when we were kids, but I cried the whole time, and he finally gave up and left me home. But he always took Cindy.”
“She learned how to hunt?”
“Yes.”
“Rifle? Or bow?”
“Both,” Karen said. The band finished the song, and we clapped politely while the other people in the bar whooped and whistled. The guitar player lifted the brim of his cowboy hat, nodded to the audience, and smiled. His face was deeply lined, as if he had lived the lyrics of the songs he sang.
“Do you think that your sister killed Donald Lussen?”
“She still holds the county record for the biggest buck shot by a teenager. She and my dad had a tree stand in the woods, way up a hill beyond our house. They went there afternoons, in the fall. I played on the field hockey team and got black and blue marks on my legs while they shot deer and filled up our freezer.”
“Is Cindy capable of killing someone? A person, not a deer?”
Karen stopped drawing circles and looked up at me. The musicians began a slow waltz that matched her expression. “If Clement told her to, she might.”
“Damn,” I said.
Karen said nothing, but the tears were welling up in her eyes.
“You’re doing the right thing,” I said.
“Betraying my sister? That’s doing the right thing?”
“We should go,” I said. “You can stay with me. We’ll figure this out in the morning.”
“I don’t want to think about the morning,” she said. “And no, I’m not going to stay at your mother’s house with that customs lady.”
“She’s just a friend.”
“It’s too late to drive home,” she said. “You and I are getting a room.”
“Karen, that’s crazy.”
“You’re turning me down?”
More than a year had passed since I’d slept with anyone but myself. Two failed marriages and a bullet in the head had left me thinking that I should be labeled with one of those propeller-shaped orange signs that said: radioactive. I wasn’t fit for a relationship. I couldn’t drive a car, I could barely manage a beer, and I didn’t want to think about whether or not I would be of any use in a motel bed. Plus,
I had a full day ahead of me tomorrow. No way.
“Vince?” she said. “You don’t want this?”
The pedal steel player began a solo in a minor key. The slow, mournful music brought to mind the many things that I had done wrong in my life, and the inevitability of doing them wrong all over again. But Karen Charbonneau was looking at me like none of that mattered.
“Do you know how to waltz?” I asked her.
“No.”
I took her hand, led her to the dance floor, and put my arm around her waist. We shuffled back and forth until she pulled me closer and rested her head against my shoulder. After a while we got into a rhythm, far back in a darkened corner where we wouldn’t collide with the other dancers. It wasn’t really waltzing, but we didn’t care.
THURSDAY
Karen dropped me off at the bottom of my mother’s driveway just as the sky was starting to lighten in the east. I didn’t think that anyone would witness my Walk of Shame between her Jaguar and the house. I was wrong.
Mrs. Tomaselli opened the door for me as I fumbled for my key. She was dressed in a black terrycloth bathrobe that she kept at my mother’s for the nights when she slept on the couch. Her hair was down. I hadn’t ever seen it like that. It was beautiful.
“You have very nice hair, Mrs. T,” I said.
“Aren’t you full of compliments, Mr. Just Got Lucky,” she said. She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I’m pleased that you had a good time, Vinny. But you have some fences to mend.”
“What fences?” I whispered back.
“Your girlfriend,” she said. “She hardly slept at all.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.”
“You’d better straighten her out then. She’s sweet on you.”
I made my way into the kitchen where Rose DiNapoli was removing a sheet of biscuits from the oven. My mother was at the stove, stirring a pot.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Biscuits and gravy, right Mom?”
“I didn’t make enough for four people,” my mother said. “You didn’t tell us when you’d be back.”
“You’re kidding?”
She wasn’t. She was scowling, and Rose wouldn’t even look at me. They had closed ranks. I might as well slink off to McDonalds and get an Egg McSawdust or whatever they sold there, because I wasn’t going to be offered any sustenance in my mother’s house.
“No problem,” I said. “I’ll just starve to death.” I smiled my most winning grin, but it was lost on them. Chan was in the corner of the kitchen with one eye open.
I sure hope that was worth it.
“It was,” I said, but nobody seemed to hear. I had prepared myself for some explaining, but the truth was that the last few hours I’d spent with Karen had been a blissful escape. All of the crap that I’d been dealing with had vanished the moment she turned off the bedside light and pulled the sweatshirt over her head. She had made me feel like someone could still find me attractive despite all of my afflictions. She had surprised me with her tenderness, and I had surprised us both with my stamina.
“I’ll just hop in the shower,” I said to the room. “I’ll get something on the way to Burlington. Rose and I are going to drop in on Angus Driscoll.”
“You must have been too preoccupied to answer your phone,” Rose said. It was the first time that she had acknowledged me.
“I left it here. It’s in the bedroom.”
“Then you don’t know?”
“Know what?”
“Angus Driscoll is in the ICU at Fletcher Allen Hospital. Somebody lobbed a pipe bomb into his car window. It killed his driver, and Driscoll is on life support. Pallmeister has been trying to reach you, and so have I. But you were too busy for silly little things like that.”
*
The Middlesex State Police barracks is a squat, no-frills building with low ceilings that would be more suited to elementary schoolers than big, hulking cops filling out reports and bustling around the halls with coffee cups. John Pallmeister’s office was at the far corner. It had one small window and all the charm of a holding cell. Rose and I took the two wooden visitor’s chairs while Pallmeister sat ramrod-straight behind his veneer desk. “Clement Goody has a box of pipe bombs in his cellar,” I said to him.
“You waited to tell me this?”
“You weren’t interested,” I said. “You had it all figured out. And now that Driscoll’s in the hospital, you’re suddenly interested again.”
“Meaning?”
“You said you weren’t in Driscoll’s pocket—”
“And I’m not,” the lieutenant said. “You can just leave that right there.”
Rose must have felt my blood pressure rising, and she tried to intervene. “Vince, what are you trying to accomplish here?”
“I’d like to see the State Police get their heads out of their asses,” I said. “That’s what I’d like to accomplish.”
Pallmeister glared at me from behind the desk. “We can get a warrant, if you’re telling me that he has explosives in the house. Maybe we’ll find your runaway in the process.”
“She’s not a runaway,” I said. “She was kidnapped by Clement Goody. He’s holding her somewhere.”
“This is a guess? Or do you know something else that you’re not telling me?”
“It’s an educated guess,” I said. “You have three murders now, and the girl is connected to each of them. You need to focus on helping me find her. We find her, and you solve all three homicides.”
“Where do you think she is?”
“No idea, unfortunately. Every time I get close, she’s gone.”
Rose DiNapoli was finishing the coffee that she had served herself while we’d waited to see the lieutenant. She had been quiet for the last few minutes, but I could see that something was on her mind.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“It could be her,” she said.
“Who? You mean Grace?”
“You’re the one who brought it up,” Rose said. “She’s connected to all these guys. Matty had a thing for her, and he’s dead. She was screwing Lussen, and he’s dead. Fish Falzarano chauffeured her back and forth to her sugar daddy, and he’s dead. And Driscoll might not survive, either, so that’s four. The girl’s a black widow.”
“No way.”
“Why not? She’s a junkie, her mother is trailer trash, and frankly, everything that you’ve told me has reinforced the case against her. I only spoke with her a few times while we were at the hotel, but I can tell you that she’s shrewd. She has you conned.”
“Impossible,” I said. “Her grandmother is a close friend of mine. I know the family. Grace isn’t a murderer.”
“That would be the easy assumption, wouldn’t it?” John Pallmeister said. He had risen from his chair and was putting on his jacket.
“You agree with her?”
“Vince, you’re the one who took me to task for accepting the murder-suicide theory,” the lieutenant said. He had donned his Smokey the Bear hat and was adjusting the leather strap to fit around the back of his head. “Rose has a point. You told me earlier that the girl was the one who attacked you on the mountain.”
“But she didn’t kill me,” I said.
“Not yet,” Pallmeister said. “Listen, you’ve accomplished what you came here for. I’ll put more resources on finding Grace Hebert. Just don’t be disappointed if you can’t save her.”
“She needs rehab,” I said.
John Pallmeister opened the door to his office, indicating that the meeting was over. “If she’s behind any of this, she won’t need rehab,” he said. “She’ll need a very good lawyer.”
*
I would just as soon forget about what happened on the ride up Interstate 89 to Burlington, because it reinforces my worst failings as a man, and even as a friend. Rose and I had a fight. I hadn’t meant for it to happen—in fact, I was in a pretty good mood since I had finally secured John Pallmeister’s full cooperation, not to mention that Karen Charbonneau
had buzzed me with a saucy text that I’d snuck a look at and had made me smile.
Rose was convinced of Grace Hebert’s guilt, and she had tried to make her case as we drove north. I defended Grace, even though I still barely knew her. It might have been a rational, give-and-take argument, but there were complications. Rose was sweet on me, as Mrs. T had put it, and I had shown up early in the morning with a post-coital grin on my face. So what had begun as a discussion among peers had degenerated into pass-the-grenade.
“You’re pussy-blind, Tanzi. Grace Hebert can do no wrong because she’s young and hot. You’re no different from the rest of them.”
“That’s completely unfair,” I’d responded, but she was on a roll. We were on the Bolton Flats, and she had the Marquis up to about eighty with her hands gripping the wheel so tightly that her knuckles glowed pink in the slanted morning sun.
“I didn’t get five fucking minutes of sleep last night. I thought you were passed out somewhere in a ditch. But noooo, you were getting your bean waxed by a potential witness.”
“And that’s none of your business, is it?” I had to shout, partly because the noise from the car was so loud, but mostly because I was pissed.
“I fly all the way up here from Florida to help you out, and what do you do? You take off the minute some bimbo college professor gets all clingy.”
“Who’s getting clingy?” I said, which was a mistake.
Rose held up her hand like a traffic cop. “Excuse me? What did you just say? You’re calling me clingy? Like I give two shits about you?”
I tried to answer, but she was talking as fast as she was driving.
“You could never be happy with a normal woman, could you? You’re one of those guys. Addicted to the drama queens. Men need to save somebody, like in a play. I have to admit it, Vince; your theater professor hottie might be perfect for you. You two can stage your little love scenes, and you’ll be happy because you can’t handle a real relationship.”
