From Away

by David Carkeet

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, get on it or she’ll blame me.” Nick sighed. “I’m here about Marge. Can you tell me again—”

  “Did you find that guy in town yesterday?”

  “Nah. And I don’t trust the sighting.” Nick suddenly seemed more relaxed. “Why would he stay here? Besides, the street guy who spotted him said it was a different guy from the one in the photo we showed him. But we know that’s a picture of Dennis Braintree. I hate contradictions like that. I hate the whole job. I’m not cut out for it, Homer. Lance is always complaining that I’m too slow to suspect people of bad behavior—and he’s right. Even when I’m arresting someone, I’m thinking, ‘I bet he didn’t do it.’ How can a cop think like that?”

  Denny didn’t know what to say to this. “Are there any other suspects?”

  Nick made a strained face. “Sort of. Mainly because we haven’t gotten very far with Braintree. His aunt turned up dead, which means he’s got no living relatives, no friends, no job—he was just fired, apparently. He’s a loner. He could be anywhere. I’m talking to all his coworkers at this magazine, past and present. Landlords too. I’m tracking down old circus chums of his parents. I want him to be the one, mainly because of where Lance is going with his latest theory.” Nick reached his hands up and mussed his own hair, then patted it back down. “Exactly when did you come back to Vermont, Homer? When did you land in Burlington?”

  Denny tried to remember what he had told him earlier. “Two days before I saw you there.” Nick was about to speak, so Denny added, “Maybe three days. Two or three.”

  “We saw you at the airport on Monday. That means you came in on Friday or Saturday.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where did you fly in from?”

  “Fort Lauderdale.” Denny tried to remember if he had identified an airline. Delta? “Through Atlanta.”

  Nick nodded. “Lance checked the records for Friday and for several days on each side of it, to be sure. Your name wasn’t on any of the flights coming into Burlington.”

  “I flew standby from Atlanta. Could that be why?”

  “Your name would still be on the manifest.”

  “Unless they made a mistake. They’d be more likely to do that with a standby.”

  “Yeah, but there’s another problem. Where did you say you stayed those two nights, or three nights?”

  “The Econolodge.”

  “That’s what I thought. On Northfield?”

  “Right. But I used a different name—an alias, I guess you’d call it. I was nervous about being back and didn’t want the word to get out.”

  Nick stared at him. “That’s a little strange. You’re not exactly a rock star, Homer. What alias did you use?”

  “I have no idea. Just some name that popped into my head. Then it popped out.”

  Nick screwed his face up, then made it relax. “You said your bags were lost. There’s no record of lost bags in your name at the Delta baggage office in Burlington.”

  “Wow. That means they lost the bags and the report of the lost bags.”

  “There’s also no Delta office of any kind in Barre. You said that there was.”

  Denny whistled. “This is getting a little Twilight Zoney. I was sure they told me that. Maybe I got it wrong.”

  “Did you try to go there? Did you try to call them?”

  “I’ve been swamped. I haven’t even thought about it.”

  Nick looked as if he wanted to jump on that, but he didn’t. He drummed his fingers on the wooden armrest. “Lance is looking into all of this pretty closely.”

  “Oh?”

  “I won’t mince words, Homer. He likes you as Marge’s killer.”

  “He likes me? Oh, I see what you mean.” Denny tried to absorb this development. Lance now suspected Homer? “It’s nice to be liked, I guess.”

  “He’s really got a hard-on for you after what the Macalesters said.”

  Denny wondered who these people might be. Were they the father-son duo who gave him a ride to the hotel after his accident? No, now he had it: the Macalesters were the brothers Sparky had negotiated with at the Ethan Allen on the night Marge had fallen into the truck. Denny knew what was coming next.

  “You said you drove Sparky to the hotel that night. But the Macalesters say they saw Sparky drive up alone. In fact he almost hit them when he pulled in. They said you weren’t driving. You weren’t even in his rig.”

  “But I was.”

  “They said you weren’t. Just Sparky.”

  Denny threw his hands up. “I don’t get it.”

  Nick looked disappointed. “Now I know you’re lying, Homer. We went back to Sparky after we talked with the Macalesters. He caved. We know all about your little cover story because of his suspended license.”

  Denny tried to look sheepish. “Sorry.” Thanks for the heads-up, Sparky.

  “Jesus, Homer,” Nick said, his voice tight. “You lied to the police.”

  “But not in a big way. The lie has no bearing on the Marge case.”

  “How can you know that? Lance certainly thinks it does.”

  “What are his thoughts? I mean what are the details?”

  Nick looked away from Denny. “It would be highly irregular for me to share Lance’s theory of the crime with you.”

  “I know. Go ahead.”

  Nick shook his head. He laughed softly and shook it again. “There’s a woman who works at the Ethan Allen, a housekeeper who knows you, at least by sight. She’s from Latvia or something. You know who I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  “She insists she saw you at the hotel on the day Marge died. She saw you get into the elevator. Now, I know what you’re going to say.” This was good because Denny didn’t. “You’re going to say Betsy could confirm or deny the housekeeper’s story. But Betsy knows you only from your voice, and your voice is different. Hell, it’s unrecognizable. Lance thinks you checked in under the name of Dennis Braintree, and you ended up in Mort Shuler’s room, and Marge came looking for Mort but found you instead, and if all that’s true, I guess you can tell us what happened from there.” He looked hard at Denny.

  “I can’t. Because it’s not.”

  “And yet you and Sparky cooked up a story that’s a perfect alibi for you. If you were with Sparky in the truck, you couldn’t have been up in the room with Marge.”

  “But it was an alibi for Sparky, not for me. Besides, do you think I would fool Aunt Betsy like that—check in under a false name and not tell her it was me?”

  “That seems cruel, yes. But so does not visiting her. Why haven’t you gone to see her since you got back?”

  “It’s personal,” Denny said.

  Nick laughed. “Somehow I can’t imagine that answer satisfying Lance. He’ll say you haven’t visited Betsy because she would recognize you from your voice as the guy who checked in as Dennis Braintree.” He looked hard at Denny. “It is a weird voice, Homer. It’s hard as hell to get used to. You’ve changed in other ways, too. I didn’t really appreciate it until Millie got home after seeing you yesterday. She was freaked.”

  “Really? I enjoyed seeing her again.”

  “Freaked.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Denny tried to look wounded.

  “Listen, it’s a crazy theory, Nick. What would possess me to travel under a false name?”

  “You just said you used one at the Econolodge.”

  Denny hurried along. “Didn’t this guy Braintree have an accident? Was that me, too?”

  “According to Lance.”

  “But the trooper—” Denny stopped and proceeded more slowly. “Wasn’t a trooper on the scene? Wouldn’t he have looked at the guy’s license?”

  “It gets complicated, that’s for sure.”

  “Under Lance’s theory, did I just make up the name Dennis Braintree?”

  “No. We know he was traveling in the area. You met him, and you borrowed his name. That’s his theory.”

  “I di
d meet him, like I said before. But that was after his accident.”

  “You could have met him before the accident.”

  “And fabricated a perfect driver’s license with his name on it? Lance must think I’m very resourceful.”

  Nick smiled. “Yeah. It pissed him off when I brought that up. One for the good guys. But it is weird that your paths crossed.”

  “It’s just a series of oddities, Nick. I’ll take a lie detector test. I’ll be happy to do that.”

  Nick raised a hand, palm out. “I’m only telling you what Lance thinks.”

  “But not you, I hope.”

  “I’m looking for an explanation for what happened to Marge—not just because it’s my job but also to get Lance off your ass. I’m looking at Braintree. And I’m looking at Mort Shuler. He and Marge had a history, it turns out. There’s a chance he came back to the room and found her in a compromising position with Braintree.”

  “Or Braintree might not even have been in the room at the time,” Denny said excitedly. “Maybe he was out on an errand buying condoms.”

  Nick raised his eyebrows. “That’s a somewhat over-specified alternative, but sure, it’s possible.” He gave Denny a funny look. “So you’re arguing that Braintree’s innocent? Be careful—Lance will use that against you. He’ll say it’s because you’re Braintree. He’s going to come after you, Homer. I’ve seen him at work. If you take all his bad qualities and put them in concentrated form, that’s the face he shows in the interrogation room, that’s all he is, everything you can’t stand about him.”

  Denny tried to imagine himself under Lance’s assault. Did they let suspects eat during interrogation? A German chocolate cake would be good.

  “He’s high on himself right now,” Nick said. “Just humming with smugness.”

  “Top dog?”

  Nick reached up as if he were going to muss his own hair again, but then he lowered his hands. Denny imagined someone pointing out the habit to him and asking him to stop it. “People think police interrogation is some sort of Q and A. It’s not that at all. It’s a calculated invitation to confess. We have all sorts of tricks—we let the guy blame others besides himself, we encourage rationalization, we offer extenuation. We make this stuff up, and then we take it all away after he confesses. I hate it, Lance loves it. He’s a genius at it. Think of the worst thing you’ve ever done, Homer, and he’d get you to confess to it in a half hour. Go ahead. Think of the—” Nick suddenly stopped. He stared at the floor and cleared his throat.

  Denny waited. Why had he stopped like that?

  “Anyway,” Nick went on more slowly, “you can expect a call from him pretty soon. I’ll do what I can to help. Probably already did too much. Sure you’ve changed, but three years is a long time, and everybody changes. I liked you before, and I like you this way, too.” He slapped his knees and stood up. “I’ll see you around. Actually, I’ll see you for sure at John and Rodrigo’s party. You’d better be there. I can’t do artsy-fartsy without you.”

  SIXTEEN

  AFTER NICK LEFT, DENNY WONDERED WHAT HE HAD SAID IN response to his comment about this party—an event he knew nothing about. He wasn’t sure if he had said anything at all. He was too stunned.

  I like you this way, too.

  Denny knew that he had come to Nick pre-approved because he was taken for Homer. He also expected—from cruel experience—that his friend’s goodwill would have an expiration date. But I like you this way, too. It was as if a thousand people were waving at him.

  The words meant that Nick liked Denny as Denny, because for all his intention to adopt Homer’s behavior, he was not succeeding. He was fooling people, yes, but not because of successful imitation—how could he imitate a log? With Nick he was Denny, and yet—could it be?—he was not repellent. Take that, Lance. Denny leaned back in his seat, clasped his hands behind his head, and smiled.

  Some guy, Lance. His feelings were pretty clear: he couldn’t stand Denny in any incarnation, neither as the unseen fugitive Dennis Braintree nor as the large entity personally known to him as Homer Dumpling. Denny tried to reinterpret his entire history in Vermont with himself as Homer pretending to be Denny instead of the reverse, but he couldn’t sustain the idea. It was like trying to write by watching your hand in a mirror.

  Denny had found it a struggle to invent alibis for one suspect. Now, thanks to Lance’s bonehead interpretation, would he have to invent them for two? No, better to neutralize Lance, to make him irrelevant, and that meant solving Marge himself. He was actually in a better position to do that than either of the detectives because he wasn’t distracted by pointless dead ends, like trying to find his sad, long-dead Aunt Norma. He also had information that they didn’t have. He had met Marge, for one thing, and he knew some things about her that the police might not know.

  She was a drinker for sure. Overweight and attractive. Well-known but not exactly popular. Calamity Jane, according to Betsy. Fun, according to . . . Mort? No, Mort hadn’t said it. That word had come from the guy down the hall when he had asked Mort to join them for dinner. Mort would be easy to track down, and Nick and Lance had certainly done that already. The other guy was more promising. He, after all, had been with Marge earlier in the evening. She had even said she was hiding from him when she had dashed into Denny’s room. Hadn’t she said his name? “I like Ike.” No—“I don’t like Ike.”

  “Ike,” Denny said aloud. There he stalled. A common Internet slave, he felt he could go no further in the Ike investigation—could not entertain another single thought about it—without going online first. But Sarah probably occupied the dial-up line now, considering that among her screams this morning was one for him to get off. He would have to wait until she had left.

  Denny looked at the sander, lying on its side like a stricken animal. In its leap from the stage it had pulled the plug on itself, but Denny saw another outlet in front of him on the stage wall. He tried it and fiddled with the switch. The sander was a goner. He pulled Sarah’s list from his pocket. Number eleven was a task he was pretty sure he could perform: “Gum under seats.” He set out for the workshop. Surely he would find something suitable for gum removal among Homer’s exotic instrument-repairing tools.

  He did, and he also found a contraption he could roll around on as he scooted from seat to seat—a mechanic’s dolly that Homer must have used to work on the underside of the Rambler. He attacked the seats and, scooting from row to row, was surprised at the quantity of gum he found. But then he remembered from an article hanging in the foyer that Sarah’s series appealed to all types of people—“all classes,” she had said, and that tactless word had surprised him. Now that he knew Sarah, though, it made sense. He remembered her strong reaction to hearing Sparky’s name in front of the bank, as well as her “I hope not” when Lance said he saw no resemblance between her and her cousin. What kind of snob was she—a born one or a self-cultivated one who had scrambled up out of her class?

  Another word of hers that surprised him was “coward.” This was one of many names she had slapped him with after the sander incident. At the time, in the heat of her words, he had assigned a quick meaning to it—he was a coward for not going up on the roof to repair it—but that hadn’t felt right at the time and it felt even less likely now. She hadn’t known he had skipped that chore out of fear. What could she have meant?

  He heard a noise that made him cease his scraping labors for a moment—yes, it was her car engine starting. She liked to race it violently to tell it who was boss. He had worked through all but the last two rows and was proud of the collected wads in his small plastic bucket—so proud that he completed the job before going back to the house. He dropped off Homer’s instrument tool on his workbench and put the bucket of gum wads on Sarah’s desk before going to Homer’s computer.

  He dialed up. “Ike,” he said when he heard the modem squawk, and he said it again several times while he navigated to the roster of state legislators. He was disappointed to see no Eisenhow
ers in either the Vermont House or Senate, but another possibility leaped out at him: State Representative Russ Eichelberger (R.) of Killington. Contacting the man would be easy enough. Vermont was such a participatory democracy that next to each legislator’s name was both a home and office phone number.

  Denny stared at the wall and gathered his thoughts. Then he dialed Ike’s work number. Somewhere along the line, he had picked up Lance’s last name—Londo, memorable for its stupidity (“Kids, let’s give a big welcome to Londo the Balloon Man!”)—and he identified himself as “Detective Londo” to the woman who answered the phone. A few minutes later, a huffy voice came on.

  “Is this necessary?” the man said without ceremony. “I’ve got three numbed mouths waiting for me.”

  Denny did not like Ike. “Just a few questions.”

  “You said you didn’t want to interview me by phone again. Can’t it wait until tonight?”

  Tonight? “They’re preliminary questions, really. Preliminary to tonight.”

  “You’ve got thirty seconds.”

  “Like Jimmy Doolittle!” Denny said. Then he reined himself in. He led with a question that he hoped would avoid ground already covered and also yield good information. “What kind of mood was Marge in when you had dinner with her?”

  “I already told you. She was flying high.”

  “Like Jimmy Doolittle! Was she drunk?”

  “That too. But she was flying high on her future.”

  “Her future.” Denny said this with the deliberate air of a deep thinker.

  “Quitting her job? Moving to Brandon? Being with Mort? That was her plan.”

  “Was it Mort’s plan?”

  Dr. Ike made a strange noise. “He’s happily married. Married, anyway. I tried to tell her that, but she was flying. That’s what happens when you win the lottery, I guess.”

  “The lottery. That’s important.”

  Dr. Ike laughed. “No shit, Sherlock. Didn’t you take notes?”

  “I’m just thinking out loud. Like Jimmy Doolittle!” Denny didn’t actually know this to be the case. He heard another voice in the background and Dr. Ike’s response to it.