Pulling into my uncle’s driveway, my childhood memories quickly melted into reality with one unsettling thought emerging—everything is at the mercy of time, everything.
Fortress Indomitable included.
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CHAPTER 3
Maneuvering through the swarm of police cars and emergency vehicles, Peterson slowly pulled up to the front of the old gatehouse and stopped. Oblivious to our presence, knots of folks in uniforms and reflecting vests went busily about their business. Wisps of breaths from indecipherable conversations lingered in the air while colored flashing lights pierced the stillness of the night. Amid a chorus of squawking voices from unseen radios, a whiff of coffee and fresh doughnuts tickled my nose as I opened my door.
I spotted my brother, Kyle, dressed in his full sheriff’s regalia. He was aimlessly kicking the gravel in the driveway as he leaned against one of the front-step cement balustrades. He waved to me, straightened up into a more professional-looking posture, and waddled quickly toward our car.
“Boy, I’m glad you’re here, Rich,” said Kyle as he grabbed my hand with both of his. They felt cold and damp liked the night.
“No problem,” I said. “Thanks for sending Peterson. Is Uncle—”
“He isn’t here,” said Kyle, “the medical examiner took him a few minutes ago.”
“Oh,” I said while inwardly thanking my lucky stars. I hadn’t any desire to see Uncle Raymond sprawled out on the floor, dead.
“Who found him, Claire?” I asked.
“That’s one way to put it. She surprised the bastards in the act.” Kyle’s eyes narrowed; his lips went tight.
“What!”
“When she entered the house, according to Claire, she was jumped from behind by somebody wearing a ski mask who put a handgun to the side of her face. Before she knew it, she was in the dining room, being tied to a chair.”
“My God.”
“She reported that there were at least two assailants; both were masked. And they were looking for something.”
“What was that?”
“A fish, she says.”
“A fish? What sort of fish?”
“Some kind of small fish that Uncle had, or these guys thought he had.”
“And Uncle Raymond, what happened to—”
“From the dining room, Claire said that she saw the second intruder in the kitchen. The guy was standing over Uncle Raymond, who was lying face down on the floor . . .”
Kyle paused, swallowed hard, and gave me a look that was brimming with both sorrow and anger.
“She said that the bastard pulled Uncle up a few feet up from the floor by the back of his collar. And as he shook him, he yelled, ‘Where is it? Where is the little fish . . . or something like that?’”
“What did Uncle say?”
“Stubborn old Uncle Raymond didn’t say anything, according to Claire. So, not getting an answer, this thug slams Uncle in the back of the head with some sort of handgun. Then he yells at him again about this damn fish. Uncle didn’t answer again. So after a few more shakes and several more whacks, the assailant drops the old man to the floor. Claire thinks that Uncle may have been dead by then. His body was limp, lifeless.”
“Dear God, what . . . why . . .” At that point, words failed me. The disturbing picture that my brother painted for my imagination stymied my ability to speak.
“After the guy dropped Uncle to the floor, he then goes to Claire and starts questioning her about who she was, why she was at Uncle’s place, and where Uncle kept his valuable papers. And, of course, he asked her about the fish.”
“What fish!”
“That’s the damnedest thing, Rich, no one knows. Claire was in fear for her life and would have told bastards to protect the old man. But she didn’t know what these two guys were talking about.” Kyle took a breath shaking his head. “Poor thing, she’s pretty broken up about it.”
It was hard for me to imagine this six-foot-tall African-American woman being intimidated by anyone. I have seen her in action confronting doctors, cab drivers, and bureaucrats advocating for Uncle Raymond’s interests. She has a heart of gold, but no one ever crosses Claire and gets away lightly. But guns do change the equation.
“She was scared out of her wits,” continued Kyle. “She’s been a visiting nurse in town for over twenty years and experienced some crazy stuff. But she says that nothing like this ever happened to her before.”
“Nor should it ever, to anyone.”
“Physically, she’s okay, but she is taking this very hard. She was very fond of Uncle.”
“I know, I know. Uncle liked her too. How did she . . . eh, get away?”
“She didn’t. The bastards just left.”
“What do you mean, left?”
“Claire said as the intruders were about to rough her up for information, they all heard someone yelling from somewhere outside. That was followed, according to Clair, by what sounded like gunshots. The intruders panicked, packed up, and skedaddled. When Claire heard them drive away, she promptly freed herself from the chair and called 911.”
“Did she have any idea who these masked intruders were; what car they drove; who was yelling?”
“No,” said Kyle.
“But,” interjected Peterson as he took a step closer to my brother and me, “I hear that Claire Ciel is a person of special interest.”
“What!” I exclaimed.
“No, not Claire,” declared Kyle, most emphatically. “Charlie Cranshaw of the Branch River Taxi said that he dropped her off here at the house.”
“There would still be time enough,” interrupted Peterson, “between her being dropped off and her calling to report the incident. Ms. Claire Ciel could have killed your uncle and staged the whole thing.”
Kyle and I gave the deputy a disapproving stare.
“Well, that is the scuttlebutt,” said Peterson in defense.
“What motive could Claire have in killing our Uncle?” proposed Kyle. “She would lose a paying client. There is nothing in the house of value to steal.”
“I’m just reporting what I overheard, Sheriff, from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”
“Are you sure that it was a horse, Peterson, and not an ass named Thomas? And are you positive that what you heard was from the animal’s mouth and not the other end? Thomas is an arrogant idiot,” snapped Kyle. “And Claire Ciel did not kill Uncle Raymond.”
“No argument here on either score,” I concurred. “To even think that Claire could have . . . Well, I don’t want to think about it. It’s stupid.”
“The stupidest thing I ever heard,” added Kyle. It was easy to see that my brother was upset—who could blame him. I was also fighting back waves of anger.
“Kyle,” I asked, trying to keep my composure, “are there any real possible suspects on the horizon?”
“No, not yet, but everyone is working on it.” My brother’s lips went tight again.
“Is there anything missing from the house?”
“Can’t tell yet.”
“So typical of Uncle Raymond,” I grunted, “to leave this world cloaked in mystery.”
“Very much like the way he lived,” remarked Kyle, as he, Peterson, and I walked to the house. A jumble of questions, memories, and feelings swirled in my mind. My eccentric, lovable old uncle was dead. Murdered, it appeared. But who would want to kill Uncle Raymond? And why? There were so many troubling questions. But contrary to my natural instinct to let my mouth lead the way, I thought it best at that time to be silent and to observe. There will be time enough, I said to myself, to ask questions and sort things out.
We slowly ascended the house’s front steps, passing the familiar stone lions that stood guard on either side of the stairway. I remembered our mother commenting to my uncle about them. “These damned things make the house look like the New York City Public Library.” He responded with a smile and said that the lions reminded him of her.
I don’t know how many times Kyle and
I straddled those statues like they were ponies when we were boys—to the dismay of our mother. She feared that her little Kyle would topple off and crack his head open or something. It’s funny, in hindsight, that he wasn’t the one who fell off.
In my mother’s opinion, the great stone lions were a silly waste of money. To my uncle, they were a beautiful tribute to the nobility of nature. She also could never understand that Uncle Raymond was an animal lover and that he had a special thing for cats—of all kinds. Though he didn’t ‘officially’ own any cats, he had taken on the responsibility to care for any feral feline that happened to drop by his house.
Often he would leave dry cat food and water in bowls near the driveway’s entrance for his homeless, soft-footed friends during harsh weather. I thought his charitable actions were misguided because they were, in fact, inviting raccoons, or worse—wood rats and skunks to his house. I even told him what I thought on several occasions. But he would have none of it. He said that I was either blind or unsympathetic to God’s less-fortunates or, even worse, that I was too much like his sister. “Don’t be like your mother; show some empathy for your fellow creatures,” he would say, countering my protests. This was a very clever maneuver on his part. He knew that any comparison between my mother and myself would stop me from pursuing the matter any further.
As the three of us entered the house, I immediately sensed that something was very wrong.
“Lord, it’s sweltering in here,” I declared, unzipping my jacket. “It must be over eighty degrees. Who turned up the heat?”
“I noticed that too when I first arrived,” concurred Kyle as he also opened his jacket. “Kind of surprising since the old guy liked it on the chilly side. He never put the thermostat higher than sixty-five or so.”
“I prefer it on the chilly side myself,” I said. “But Uncle Raymond, well, when it came to heating his house, he was really—”
“—very thrifty,” said Kyle.
“No, cheap would be the more accurate word,” I countered.
My remark earned a dirty look from Peterson, who had just taken time to read the nearby thermostat.
“Though he wasn’t cheap with everything,” I said continued. “He was at times very generous. But he very rarely spent money on his own comfort.”
“Sheriff,” interrupted Peterson, “the heat is set at eighty-five.”
“Eighty-five?” I said. “I didn’t think that his thermostat could go above seventy.”
“Remember Rich, he was ill,” Kyle said in resignation, “maybe he couldn’t take the cold anymore. I remember Grandpa Richie complaining about feeling cold and couldn’t get warm on that last Thanksgiving of his.”
“Yeah, Grandpa died a week after. But Uncle Raymond’s solution to being cold was to put on an extra sweater or two and not to jack up the heat. Hey, I visited him here just yesterday. He was wearing a pullover sweater and a quilted vest. The thermostat was set for sixty-five degrees. I pushed it up to sixty-eight, and he pushed it back down to sixty-five, saying, ‘I’m not made of money, you know.’”
“Uncle Raymond was definitely quirky,” concluded Kyle.
“That entire side of our family was quirky. Mom was no exception.” As I spoke, I saw two state policemen approaching from the kitchen. One was a uniformed state trooper, James (Jimmy) Cobourne. The other man, in plainclothes, was Detective Timothy Thomas.
From my previous encounters with Detective Thomas, I have found this short, balding man to be rude, narrow-minded, and unimaginative. He also had it in for Kyle. A couple of years back, he was after my brother’s county sheriff job. To Thomas’ surprise, and quite frankly to mine, this twenty-five-year law-enforcement professional lost the election in a resounding defeat to my brother, a part-time electrician. Since then, Thomas and we, MacKenzies, have had a sort of truce to stay out of each other’s way. Yet, to give the devil his due, Thomas was an honest and tenacious cop. He was just not someone with whom you would want to share a beer or to attend a funeral—except, of course, if it were his.
“Ah, Richard MacKenzie, the brains of the clan has arrived. I’m sorry about your uncle,” snarled the detective.
“Thank you,” I said, ignoring that my skin was trying to crawl away.
“You’ve just missed him. The meat wagon took him.”
“So I was told.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way”—Thomas cold piggy eyes stared into mine—“but why are you here? This is a crime scene. Evidence is still being collected.” With obvious contempt, he looked at my brother and answered his own question. “The Sheriff called you, didn’t he?”
“He did,” I said.
“For back up?” The detective’s sarcasm was duly noted.
“I called him,” countered Kyle, “because our uncle was found dead.”
“Hum . . . so, Doctor MacKenzie, Ph.D.,” said Thomas, mockingly, “where were you today between the hours of 4PM and 7 PM?”
“With my wife,” I said, noticing Cobourne busily taking notes.
“I didn’t ask who you were with. I asked where you were.”
“Morgana and I caught the 3:45 PM movie at the Country Globe multiplex in Bennington, the film Larmes De Mon Passé.”
Thomas responded with a blank stare.
“Tears From My Past . . . It’s a French film,” I said with a snobby zing.
“Any good?” asked Kyle.
“Not really, but Morgana liked it. So, did Mary Parker, Judge Parker’s wife. Morgana and I met her outside of the theatre.” Thomas took a step back from me. “Eh, anyway, the movie ended at 5:30 or so. We had dinner reservations at The Village Green Restaurant for 6:15. We arrived there early, at 6.” Before Thomas could question me about the time, I added, “. . .because the Six O’Clock News was on the radio as we rolled into the parking lot. The lead story was about the lingering effects of last year’s horrific storm.”
Kyle went a little pale when I mentioned the storm—too many bad memories, I assume.
“How long were you at the restaurant?” asked Thomas.
“We were there until about 8:30 PM or so. Our waitress will remember us; I tipped generously. Then Morgana and I went home. Then Kyle reached me there a little while ago, eh . . .”
“At 9:40 PM,” Kyle piped.
“Thank you, Kyle. That was at 9:40. . . PM. Trooper Cobourne, did you get that?”
“Got it,” answered Jimmy with a knowing smile. “Thanks.”
“Any more questions, detective?”
“When was the last time that you saw or heard from your uncle?”
“I briefly spoke to him on the phone this morning, around 8 AM. He sounded okay . . . no complaints. And yesterday, I came around here, ah, about noontime. I brought him lunch. I left about 1:30. Health-wise, he was well as could be expected, I suppose, considering he was old and recovering from a stroke. He was in good spirits. He thoroughly enjoyed his lunch . . . probably because I paid for it.”
“What did you bring him?” asked Kyle.
“We shared a pizza.”
“Pizza?” said Thomas. “An old man recovering from a stroke, and you bring him pizza?”
“He liked it. And I thought, considering his condition, how much more time did he have left to enjoy one of his favorite foods? As it turned out, it was his last pizza pie.”
“Was the pizza from Chantelli’s? Their pies are two for one this week.” My brother gave me a sly wink. “Uncle Raymond always liked Chantelli’s pizza dinner specials. They come with a tossed salad and garlic knots.”
“No,” I said—playing along. “I got the pie from Marco’s. I think his pies are the best around.”
“Ayup, there is no comparison. Marco’s pizzas are definitely the best in town. I’m sure Uncle Raymond liked it.”
“Oh, he did. He ate three slices.”
“Marco’s pies may be expensive,” appraised Kyle in a knowing tone, “but quality is not cheap.”
“It’s said,” innocently chimed in Peterson, �
�that Marco, himself, drives down to New York City every seven days and gets jugs of water just to use in his pizza dough. I think it’s true. The man is never in town on Sundays.”
“That is what people say, but Marco will never admit to it,” said Kyle. “It is probably his trade secret. In any case, part of what makes a great pizza is a really good crust. And the secret to a good crust, from my understanding, is the water. As pure and as fine as Vermont spring water is, it doesn’t make a good pizza dough crust.”
“It must be the mineral content in the water,” I said. “It does something to the pizza dough or maybe more precisely to the yeast.”
“New York City isn’t the only place to get a good pizza, you know,” remarked Peterson, fully joining in the conversation. “There are good pizzerias in the Boston area.”
“True, last year my brother took me to a pizza joint in Boston,” said Trooper Cobourne, now adding his two cents. “I don’t recall the name of the place, but the pizza was excellent.”
“True, there are some good pizza places around Boston,” said Kyle, “but you would be very hard-pressed to find a bad pizza anywhere in New York City. While in Boston, your chances are—”
“Enough about pizza!” blurted Thomas. “This is a murder investigation, not a junk food jamboree.”
“I take exception with you calling pizza junk food,” calmly countered Kyle.
“And I also take umbrage,” I said, with feigned indignation, “with you questioning me so soon after my uncle’s death as if I were a suspect.”
“And I don’t care what you take or which end of your body you take it in,” growled Thomas. “You, Monsieur MacKenzie, are a person of interest in this investigation, and so is your rotund brother of a sheriff.”
“What? How could you even suspect Kyle or me—”
“For the simple reason that the two of you are the first to gain by your uncle’s death. The two of you are his closest living relations.”
The Hotspur Affair: A Richard & Morgana MacKenzie Mystery Page 3
