When I’d phoned her that morning I’d said simply that I’d gotten her name from Detective Cullen and could I ask her some questions concerning the Pierre Dewatre murder case. She’d agreed but said she was uncomfortable discussing it over the phone and could we meet in person. Hence the day trip.
“Um, I guess I wasn’t very clear,” I said. “I’m not with the police department.”
Her eyes widened fractionally. “I don’t understand. What’s your connection to the case?”
I took a deep breath. “Well, the victim was a friend of mine, and another, um, friend was the initial suspect, and I, well, I don’t have the utmost confidence in the investigation, so… I decided to see what I could find out on my own.” Please don’t kick me out of your house.
I watched her expression morph from suspicious to comprehending. She nodded. “Please. Have a seat.” She indicated the pale-green sofa crowded with pretty throw pillows, and with relief, I obeyed. “Can I get you that drink?” she added. “A sandwich? You must be hungry.”
“I had a soda and some snacks in the car,” I said. “I’m fine for now.”
Meredith sat facing me on an upholstered swivel chair. “I spoke with Cullen twice. I couldn’t seem to get through his thick skull. Oh, he claimed he looked into it. Yeah, right. Probably made one phone call to the cops up here and concluded I was just some hysterical female. What?”
“It’s nothing.” I chewed back a grin, thinking of Cullen’s description of her. “You called him the day Swing died, after watching Ramrod News?”
She nodded. “And again after that second show. Nothing had been done! They have a killer on the loose, someone who’s done it before, and it’s like nobody gives a damn.”
I’d had plenty of time during that long drive to ponder Cullen’s cryptic jottings and what they might signify. I thought I had at least part of it figured out. But…
Someone who’s done it before?
I said, “Are you telling me you think you saw this person, this killer, on both of those Ramrod episodes?”
“Yes!” She sat forward. An angry flush suffused her face. “What do I have to do to get someone to take action?”
“So he’s killed before?”
“What?” She frowned. “Who?”
“Romulus Tooley. The SEAR spokesman. You said he’s done it before.” Tooley had appeared on both episodes.
As I watched her take in my words, a tremor coursed through me. I said, “You don’t mean…” Could Meredith Dorn indeed be the hysterical nutcase Cullen had called her?
“Chloe Sleeper,” Meredith spoke slowly and clearly, her gaze fixed on mine. “Chloe Sleeper murdered my husband eight years ago. She got away with it and now she’s murdered again.”
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry, wishing I’d accepted a glass of water. “Can you… Can you tell me what happened? With your husband?”
“Tony was a professor at UConn,” she said, meaning the nearby University of Connecticut. “English literature. Chloe was one of his students, a senior at the time. She fell in love with Tony. She was obsessed with him.”
“I hate to ask, but were the two of them—”
“No. They weren’t having an affair.” Meredith’s eyes glistened. “I thought they were, though. I mean, she visited me.”
“Chloe did?” I asked.
She nodded. “She came over one day when Tony was at the campus and told me the two of them were lovers, that it had been going on for months. She said he was going to divorce me and that it would be best for everyone, including our kids, if I let him go without a fuss.”
“How did you know she was lying?”
“I didn’t at first,” she said. “I’d never suspected him of cheating before, but you have to understand. Chloe was so sincere, so believable. Later, after everything, I realized it was because she actually believed her lies. She believed Tony was in love with her and that he was going to leave me and marry her.”
My pulse whooshed in my ears. I took a deep, calming breath. “Let me ask you, what kind of man was Tony? I mean, was he introverted? Physically unassuming?” I pictured a literature professor from Central Casting.
“No, quite the opposite,” Meredith said. “Tony was tall, handsome, outgoing. His students described him as charismatic.”
Like a certain celebrity chef of my acquaintance. “Did you confront your husband? About what Chloe claimed?”
“Of course. He denied it. I wanted to believe him, but… well, I guess I’d been waiting for something like this to happen. His female students were always developing crushes on him. We joked about it. But Chloe… you would have had to be here. Listening to her. She’d convinced herself this mad love affair was real and not a figment of her sick mind, and to my shame, she convinced me too.”
Gently I asked, “What happened then?”
A tear streaked down her face. She swiped it away. “I was going to divorce him. I tried to get him to move out. We had some ugly scenes. But a little part of me still thought… this is Tony. This is the man I love, the man I’ve always trusted. He insisted Chloe was mentally unhinged. What did I really know about her? He was determined to get her to admit the truth. He wasn’t going to let this ‘deranged freak’—his words—break up our family.”
“What did he do?” I asked.
“He… He went over there. To Chloe’s place. She lived in this house with a bunch of other students, but none of her housemates were there that day—it was just her. I’m assuming they argued. At some point they both left the house and she got into her car. She ran him over in her driveway. Killed him.”
“Oh no… that’s horrible.” I shook my head. “How was she able to get away with a thing like that?”
“It was officially declared an accident.” Meredith’s eyes closed briefly. “She told the cops she was trying to get away from him and he leapt in front of her car. She said she was trying to break up with him, that they’d had an affair and her conscience bothered her. He was a married man with a family, after all. But he wouldn’t let her go, she said. He was obsessed with her, she said.”
“Did you tell the police about her visit to you?” I asked.
“Of course. She said she came to see me, but only out of desperation. She claims she tried to get me to help rein him in, to make him leave her alone.”
“Kind of the opposite of what she really told you,” I said. “And they just believed her?”
“When you’ve managed to convince yourself that you had this torrid relationship with one of your profs,” she said, “then you’re not really lying, are you? Others view you as credible. Including the authorities.”
“Didn’t the police interview her housemates?” I asked. “I mean, if they never saw Tony at the house, that has to count for something.”
“Chloe told them she snuck him in and out of the house. She didn’t want the others knowing about the affair.”
I sighed. “Unfortunately, that sounds perfectly reasonable.”
“That’s the problem,” Meredith said. “She always sounds perfectly reasonable, like the skilled little psycho she is.”
“Let me ask you something. Did the police find any belongings of Tony’s at her house?”
She hadn’t been expecting the question, I could tell. But she said, “Yes, as a matter of fact. There was a comb of his, a toothbrush, that sort of thing.”
“Stuff like that can belong to anyone—short of DNA testing, anyway.”
“There were other things,” Meredith said, “things that were definitely Tony’s. A monogrammed shirt. An engraved watched that had belonged to his dad. I remember him telling me they’d gone missing from his office on campus. The shirt was the spare he kept there.”
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“A couple of weeks before he died. She must have snuck into his office and made off with them.”
I thought of Swing’s silk robe at Chloe’s. His razor and prescription bottle. I’d felt in my gut that something was wrong w
hen Victor and I had failed to find anything of hers in his home, but what about the rest of it? The stack of bride magazines. The framed picture of her and Swing. The ring.
Good grief, the ring! If she and Swing had not in fact been engaged, how had she gotten hold of his great-grandmother’s ring? Had she swiped it from his home, along with his toiletries? They were all small, concealable items. Even the silk robe could have been rolled into a compact bundle and shoved into a handbag.
I gave myself a mental shake. The thought of soft-spoken, levelheaded Chloe Sleeper shoving her client’s personal belongings into her purse, then offing him and cooking up a fake engagement, was too bizarre to contemplate. Just like the story Meredith Dorn was selling about her husband and Chloe.
I’d just met this woman. She could very well be the nutcase Cullen had called her. Was I supposed to trust her word over Chloe’s?
“What?” Meredith said, watching me closely. “What are you thinking?”
“It’s just… a lot to take in,” I said.
“Tony died thinking I believed Chloe.” Meredith’s chin wobbled. “Thinking I believed the worst about him. And everyone else, his friends and colleagues, they did believe the worst. I mean, the official verdict was that it was an accident following a lover’s spat, that he was obsessed with her and caused his own death. They still think that.”
“I assume that’s what Detective Cullen was told when he followed up on your tip,” I said.
“I tell you,” Meredith said, “the first time I saw Chloe on Ramrod News, I almost had a heart attack. I knew right away that she’d done it again. And there she was, blaming it on that SEAR fellow.”
16
One Big, Happy Ex-Family
BY THE TIME I got back from Connecticut, the parking lot of the Harbor Room was full to overflowing, forcing me to park on a side road two blocks away and walk back to the restaurant. Every year in late September the venerable eatery hosted the annual Friends of the Waterfront goods and services auction, and today was the day. Townspeople donated items to the cause, and the bidding was always lively.
My contribution was weekly flower delivery to a loved one’s grave at Whispering Willows Cemetery for six months. My Death Diva duties regularly took me to the boneyard anyway, and it was no trouble making an extra stop. I collaborated with Russell Appell, a local florist, who donated the actual arrangements. The high bidder was always Celia Colvin, a snowbird who would be taking off for sunny Palm Beach in a few weeks and returning to Crystal Harbor in the spring. My texted photos of the lovely winter arrangements and wreaths I placed on her late husband’s grave each week were a comfort to her.
I’d almost made it to the restaurant entrance when I heard my name being called. I looked around and spied a trio of girls leaning on the dock pilings, waving. As they sprinted toward me I recognized the teenage fan girls who’d fawned over Victor at Janey’s Place last week. Compared with the weirdos who were sending lingerie to the house and pornographic texts to Victor’s phone, these kids were refreshingly tame if a tad obsessed. Haven’t you ever heard of hobbies?
“They won’t let us in.” Ariel shoved her glasses up her nose.
“’Cause we don’t have tickets.” Mandy rolled her eyes.
Phoebe said, “We just want to, like, help the, um, whales.”
“Friends of the Waterfront,” I corrected her. “Not the same thing. And that’s not why you’re here. You want to see Victor again.” He was inside the restaurant. I’d texted him earlier saying I didn’t think I’d make it to the auction but to save me a seat just in case. I was eager to share what I’d learned from Meredith Dorn. Together we’d decide what to do with the information.
“Can you help us get in?” Ariel pleaded.
“Sorry, you really do need tickets,” I said, “but I’ll tell Victor you said hi.”
“We’re gonna wait out here,” Phoebe said. “Maybe we can catch him when he leaves.”
“Suit yourselves.” I pulled open the door. “But this thing won’t wind down for a few hours.”
A volunteer traded my ticket for a printed program. I squeezed into the back of the spacious dining room and surveyed the scene. The room was crammed with about two hundred people—far more than the legal maximum, I was certain. It didn’t seem to bother Sergeant Howie Werker, who shared a nearby table with his wife and a bunch of their friends. I glimpsed many familiar faces, including Sophie and Martin, who shared a table with Porter and Lacey Vargas, a local couple who’d been at the center of some excitement a couple of months ago.
A wall of windows offered a view of the bay and the restaurant’s marina, now jammed with boats. Depending on the season, almost as many patrons arrived by water as by car. Today the tables were laden with pitchers of soda and beer, carafes of wine, and bowls of nuts and chips.
“I have seventy-five, do I hear a hundred?” Kyle Kenneally, holding forth from a podium at the front of the room, displayed an old-fashioned fedora so everyone in the packed restaurant could see it. Never one to shun the limelight, he obviously relished his role as auctioneer.
Kyle, a self-important twit in his late twenties with red hair and a ruddy complexion, was the current owner of the Harbor Room. He’d hired me a few months earlier to find a place for his dead giant tortoise, Romeo, in a prominent museum. Romeo had lived to 180 and had an impressive history that included a Darwin connection, and in the end I’d found him a forever home at the Smithsonian, complete with a nice brass plaque bearing Kyle’s name. Easiest five grand I ever made.
Few people seemed interested in the fedora, which had been donated to the auction by Nina Wallace. As I’d informed Victor, Nina’s great-grandpa had been a legendary gangster. She was so proud of Hokum Hannigan, she’d created a Prohibition Museum in the basement of the Crystal Harbor Historical Society, of which she was the president. A onetime speakeasy, the space now housed a good portion of Nina’s family heirlooms, including such questionable relics as a banged-up whiskey still and a Tommy gun.
Hokum had frequently held court in the room where I now stood. The Harbor Room restaurant dated from the 1840s and had played a significant role in the local economy during Prohibition, when Hokum’s rumrunners bought booze from picket ships sitting three miles offshore in international waters. The crates entered the restaurant through a secret trapdoor behind the bar. Some was served there, but most found its way to New York City.
“A hundred?” Kyle repeated. He placed the fedora on his head and tilted it at what I suppose was meant to mimic a gangsterly style. “Come on, people, this is irreplaceable Crystal Harbor history here!”
“Irreplaceable” might not have been the best choice of words since this was the fourth Hokum fedora to be auctioned off in as many years. Not that I suspected Nina of donating fakes. Hokum had probably owned a bunch of them. I pictured a trunkful of her infamous great-granddad’s chapeaux taking up space in her attic. Nina, sitting at a table up front with her husband and teenage daughters, looked none too happy at the anemic bidding.
Finally Kyle announced, “Sold for seventy-five bucks! Congratulations, Norman.”
Norman Butterwick appeared enormously pleased with his win. Well into his nineties, with a full head of white hair, dapper duds dating from the Nixon administration, and a faulty short-term memory, Norman was no doubt blissfully unaware that he’d been the high bidder on this particular item the past three years as well. He could add this Hokum fedora to his growing collection.
The drive back to Long Island had seemed much quicker than the drive up to Connecticut, too quick to make sense of everything I’d heard and come to any logical conclusion.
No doubt Cullen had phoned the local authorities up there in Connecticut and been told Meredith was in denial about her husband’s extramarital affair and ignoble death, that the widow was out to make trouble for an innocent woman. Was it possible the cops were right? After all, they’d investigated Tony’s death. Certainly they were privy to a lot more information than I had a
t my disposal. I knew nothing more than what the grieving widow had told me.
So let’s say Tony and Chloe had indeed been engaged in a torrid affair. Let’s say Chloe had tried to break it off and he wouldn’t let her go. And let’s say Meredith was either lying about the details or simply deluded, having spent the past eight years fixated on, and mentally massaging, the circumstances of her husband’s death. She’d claimed Chloe believed her own lies. Perhaps she was describing herself.
Meredith’s story was undeniably intriguing given the parallels with Swing’s case, but what could I do with it? I knew what I couldn’t do with it: take it to the detective in charge of Swing’s murder investigation. Not only had Cullen already “followed up” on Meredith’s phone tips, he would demand to know how I’d found out about them. So he was out.
Ditto for Chief Larsen, Cullen’s fishing buddy and the subject himself of a corruption investigation.
As for Detective Bonnie Hernandez, she’d made it excruciatingly clear I was never to mention the purloined notebook page to her or even, I don’t know, think about it in her presence. That woman was without a doubt too tightly wound for my good-natured, laid-back ex. This train of thought led to speculation about what kind of woman he did need, which led to speculation about what kind of woman needed him, which led to me administering a mental bitch slap and ordering myself to focus on where I was and what I was doing there.
As I scanned the auction program, I saw that I’d already missed a lot of it, including the auctioning of items donated by caterer Maia Armstrong (a dinner party for twelve), pub owner Maxine Baumgartner (one pitcher of beer per week for a year, with curly Cajun fries), bakery owner Susanne Travert (six dozen hand-decorated Halloween or Christmas cookies), and lawyer Sten Jakobsen (a pair of wills).
My breath caught when I came to item seven: a multi-course dinner for ten at Dewatre, including three kinds of wine, donated by Chef Pierre Dewatre. Clearly the program had been printed before his death.
I peered around the crowded room, looking for Victor, as Kyle auctioned off one hundred hours of personal training for next year’s New York City marathon, donated by Howie Werker. Bidding was brisk on this one. Everyone in town knew that Howie routinely finished in the top ten percent of the pack. The winner was Porter Vargas, who owned a chain of sporting goods stores and could easily afford the three grand he’d just promised to shell out.
Perforating Pierre (Jane Delaney Mysteries Book 3) Page 21