The Bright Silver Star bam-3

by David Handler

  “Then again,” she went on, “it’s not as if her killer brought a weapon along. He had to use a drawer to beat on her.”

  “Meaning we could be looking at a spontaneous crime of passion,” Soave said, nodding.

  Yolie came charging across the courtyard from the office now. She took a look inside the bungalow at Donna, then reemerged, grim-faced.

  “Rico, we’d better notify Will,” Des said.

  “Would you mind delivering the news?”

  “Not a problem. I can try to feel him out while I’m there, if you’d like. He might know who her boyfriend is.”

  “Go for it,” he urged her.

  Yolie joined them now, hugging herself tightly with her big arms. She was either cold or freaked by the sight of Donna. Both, maybe. “Check it out, are we thinking it was a man who did her?”

  Soave shot a blank look at Des, then turned back to Yolie, and said, “Why, where are you going with this?”

  “That bed wasn’t slept in,” Yolie replied. “Her nightie was never worn. They can’t say for sure until they swab her, but it sure doesn’t look like she had sex before she died.”

  “So he killed her before the two of them got busy.” An impatient edge crept into Soave’s voice. “So what?”

  “So if there’s no evidence she had sex with him then there’s no evidence it was a him,” Yolie answered, her own voice getting sharp.

  “She’s right, Rico,” Des agreed. “A reasonably strong woman could have done this.”

  “Maybe Donna was waiting for her boyfriend to show,” Yolie continued, encouraged by Des’s backing. “Maybe her boyfriend’s jealous woman showed up first and decided to take care of business.”

  “All possible,” Soave conceded. “But how would she know that Donna was shacked up here?”

  “Easy,” Des said. “She listened in on another phone extension when they made the date. Or intercepted their e-mail. Or maybe she just followed her here.”

  “Or how about if the woman and the boyfriend were in on it together?” Yolie offered eagerly. “What if it’s a couple we’re after-a jealous, desperate woman and her boy toy? Esme and Jeff. First they killed Tito, now Donna.”

  Soave immediately let loose with an exasperated groan.

  Yolie lowered her eyes, pawing at the gravel with her boot. “Well, what do you think, Des?”

  “Yolie, it’s not totally out of left field,” Des answered guardedly, not wanting to get caught in between them. “Esme doesn’t come across as a major-league schemer, but she is an actress and great beauty. For the sake of argument, let’s say she could manipulate Jeff into killing Tito for her. It still comes back around to this: What’s so damned special about Donna Durslag?”

  “Okay, I’m not hearing you,” Yolie said, frowning at her.

  “Then you need to take a deep breath, count to ten, and listen up,” Des explained. “When it came to Tito and other women it wasstrictly take a number, the line forms on the right. That boy slept with everyone. Esme knew this. In fact, she was plenty busy herself. So say he and Donna were sleeping together-why would Esme suddenly care?”

  “Maybe Tito wanted to divorce her and marry Donna.”

  “Get outta here!” Soave erupted. “He’s going to dump one of the world’s top hotties for that butterball in there? No way!”

  “Life is not a P. Diddy video, Rico,” snapped Des, who was immediately sorry. Right away, she was caught in their crossfire.

  “Now, what’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, flexing his shoulders defensively.

  “It means,” Yolie shot back, “that love is about more than a tight butt, dawg.”

  “Hey, I know that, Yolie.”

  “Sure didn’t sound like it, dawg.”

  “Can we please move on?” Soave said angrily. “Because I’m about solving these murders, not arguing sexual politics with you all morning, okay?”

  “Cool by me,” Yolie huffed. “I’m not about arguing. That’s not what I’m standing here doing.”

  “Have you got anything local for us?” he asked Des abruptly, clearly desperate to scramble his way back to safer ground.

  Des fed them what she’d learned from Mitch about Dodge Crockett walking on the beach with Becca Peck when Tito went over the falls, thereby putting Martine in the same apparent category as Chrissie Huberman: without an alibi. “You might also look into the whereabouts that night of another Chrissie Huberman client, Abby Kaminsky, who happens to be Jeff Wachtell’s estranged wife.”

  Yolie perked right up at the mention of Jeff’s name. “What about her?”

  “She had a fling with Tito.”

  “Shut up!” Yolie clapped her hands together excitedly. “I am loving this.”

  “That’s good work, Des,” Soave echoed. “Anything else we should know?”

  “Not that I can think of,” she said tonelessly, twirling her big Smokey the Bear hat in her fingers.

  “Okay…” Soave narrowed his red-rimmed eyes at her, sensing that she was holding on to something else. They knew each other too damned well. Plus she was not the world’s greatest liar.

  “Any idea where this Abby is?” Yolie asked.

  “Boston, I think. Chrissie will have her exact itinerary. I can check with her if you’d like.”

  “I want you to do more than that, Des,” Soave said. “I want you to go interview her.”

  “Whoa, Rico, I’m resident trooper, remember? I don’t do road trips.”

  “I know that, but me and Yolie are going to be buried here all day, and I don’t have time to run all of this by somebody new. And, look, I’m really up against it, okay? They’re going to muscle me out of the way if I don’t score in the next twenty-four.” So he was feeling the hot breath of the bosses on the back of his neck, Brass City family ties or not. “I need you on this one, Des. You know the players. You’ve got the game skills. Will you come off of the bench for me?” he pleaded, his voice catching slightly. “I’d be unbelievably grateful. I really, really would. Honestly, I don’t know what I’ll do if you say no…”

  “Damn, Rico, pull on over to the curb and park it, will you?” Des said, flashing a grin at him. “All you had to say was please.”

  Will Durslag’s mother had left him a farmhouse up on Kelton City Road, a bumpy dirt road that forked off Route 156 just past Winston Farms. Des piloted her cruiser along it slowly, realizing that Mitch had been totally right last night.

  I am a Dorseteer now.

  When put to the test, she had put the interests of the locals ahead of Meriden. She’d seen no vital need for Soave to know that Dodge had sexually abused Esme and so she hadn’t shared it. And this was something entirely new for her. She’d heard plenty of shocking news on the job before. But hearing it about people who she knew-this was fresh. So was withholding it from a colleague. Not that any ofthis should have surprised her. She was well aware now that being resident trooper required a whole lot more moral dexterity than she’d realized going in. Nothing about her new job was black or white. Each day brought a brand-new shade of gray.

  The Durslag place was at the very end of Kelton City Road, down a rutted, muddy driveway. It was a rundown circa 1920 two-story farmhouse on three acres of stony ground. The porch sagged. The roof sagged. Everything sagged. There was a jack under one corner of the foundation, and a blue tarp was stretched over a section of the roof that needed replacing. Numerous windowpanes were cracked, the glazing crumbling or missing entirely.

  Will and Donna had started paving the driveway at some point, but after they’d done the stretch between the house and the woodshed they’d stopped. A portable basketball hoop was set up there, and their catering van was parked alongside of it. Will hadn’t left yet-for his morning beach walk or work or anywhere else.

  Des pulled up behind the van and got out, smelling tangy wood smoke in the chill morning air.

  At the sound of her cruiser Will came out the door onto the rotting porch. “Do you know something, Des?” he called o
ut anxiously, running his hands through his lanky hair. Dressed in a sweatshirt and cutoffs, he looked like a college kid home for the summer. “Where is she? I’ve been up all night worried sick.”

  “Let’s go inside and talk, Will,” she said, starting her way up the steps.

  “Why, what do you know?”

  The front parlor was small, dingy, and damp. There was a Victorian loveseat upholstered in purple silk brocade shot so full of holes that the stuffing was spilling out. There was an armchair with a blanket thrown over it. There were stacks of old magazines and newspapers. There was dust and there were cobwebs. Whatever they were, the Durslags were not tidy housekeepers. Will had a fire going in the old potbellied Franklin stove, which gave off some welcome warmth against the chill in the room.

  “I’ve been calling everywhere,” he said fretfully. “I even callednine-one-one to see if there’d been an accident on the highway. Where is she, damn it?”

  Des smelled coffee in the kitchen. “How do you take your coffee, Will?”

  “Black, why?”

  The kitchen was a whole different scene-bright and sunny and cared for. It was a spacious farmhouse kitchen equipped with a commercial Viking range, Subzero refrigerator, and a massive butcher block island. Well-used copper pots hung from a rack overhead. A paint-splattered dining table was set before sliding glass doors that overlooked the woods. Clearly, this was the room where they spent their time. Des found a cup in the cupboard, filled it from the cof-feemaker and came back to the parlor with it, hating what she was about to do to this man.

  Will had lifted the lid of the stove and was feeding the fire with stubby logs, his movements edgy and urgent. “I’m sorry it’s so cold in here this morning. This house has absolutely no insulation, and this wood’s kind of damp. It’s been so humid out.”

  “You’d better sit down, Will.”

  “How come?” he asked, looking at her warily.

  “It’s bad news about Donna. I’m sorry to tell you that she’s been found murdered.”

  Will sank slowly down onto the loveseat. “Oh no, this can’t be.. . It can’t.”

  “Here, drink this,” she said, holding the coffee out to him.

  He didn’t reach for it. Just sat there, dazed.

  “Will?…”

  Again, he didn’t respond. Just sat there goggle-eyed, his breathing quick and shallow. He was a big strapping guy but size meant nothing when it came to shock. At West Point, Des had seen rock-hard specimens of fearless fighting manhood faint dead away over a flu shot.

  She darted into the kitchen and rummaged under the sink for some ammonia. Came back, uncapped it and waved it under his nose.

  Will barely reacted to the first two whiffs. After the third whiff he recoiled from her, his eyes starting to clear. Then the recognitionof the news set back in. “Oh, God,” he gulped. “She was my soul mate, my everything. What am I going to do?”

  “You’re going to drink your coffee, and we’re going to talk. Come on, take this. The caffeine will help.”

  Obediently, he reached for it and took a sip, his chest rising and falling. “How did it happen?”

  She sat in the armchair facing him and crossed her long legs. “The details aren’t pretty.”

  “I don’t care,” he said, his eyes searching her face. “Tell me everything. I need to know.”

  “She was found at the Yankee Doodle.”

  Will’s eyes widened in surprise. “The motel?”

  “She checked in there last night at about ten o’clock. She was meeting somebody, Will. Whoever he was, he knocked her unconscious and he…”

  “And he what?” Will demanded.

  “Drowned her in the bathtub.”

  “No, this can’t be,” Will groaned, rocking back and forth on the sofa. “You’ve made a mistake. Take another look. It’s got to be somebody else, not Donna.”

  “It’s Donna. I saw her with my own two eyes.”

  He drank some more coffee, clutching the mug tightly in both hands. “Will they have to cut her open? Please tell me they’re not going to do that.”

  “I don’t believe that’s called for,” Des replied. “Have you got someone who can stay with you, Will? You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”

  “I have no one,” he replied woodenly. “Just Donna-and now she’s gone.”

  “May I use your phone?”

  He didn’t respond. Barely seemed to hear her.

  Des went in the kitchen and called Mitch, who promised he’d be right over. Then she returned to Will and sat back down. “Mitch is going to hang out here for a little while, okay?”

  “Who did this to her, Des?” Will demanded suddenly. His shockhad given way to raw anger. It often happened this way. “Who murdered my Donna?”

  “We don’t know yet. You can help us out. If you’re up to it, I mean.”

  “Of course, but how?”

  “By answering some questions. I have to warn you, this might be rough.”

  “You can ask me anything. I don’t give a damn. I’ve spent the whole night going crazy. She didn’t come home. She never, ever did that before.”

  Des took out her notepad and pen. “Do you have any idea where else she was last night?”

  “She had her meeting of the Dorset Merchants Association. They get together for dinner twice a month.”

  Will’s mention of the Merchants Association set off a faint flicker of recognition in the back of Des’s mind. “Where do they usually meet?”

  “At the Clam House. There’s a back room for club meetings.” The Clam House was a seafood restaurant adjacent to the Dorset Marina, popular with boaters and tourists. “It usually runs from seven until about nine.”

  “Did she typically go without you?”

  “Yeah, the association was her deal. We’ve always divided up the workload according to our strengths. Donna was good at working the room. She liked it, even. Me, I’m a cooker. I belong in the kitchen with my pots and pans.”

  “Were you expecting her home after that?”

  “Not directly, no. She had to meet somebody about a catering gig on her way back.”

  “Any idea who that was?”

  Will furrowed his brow in thought. “She may have told me their name, but I’m drawing a total blank. Things are always just so hectic. It was a cocktail party. A bon voyage thing. That’s all I remember.”

  “Where did she keep track of her appointments? Could she have input it somewhere?”

  Will smiled very faintly. “No, no, she hates… she hated computers. But it ought to be written down in her date book. It’s black leather.”

  “This would be in her shoulder bag?”

  Will nodded his head, swallowing.

  “Okay, good,” Des said, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be written down. That there was no catering gig. It was simply the little white lie she’d told Will to buy herself enough time to stop off and screw her boyfriend. “What time did you get home last night, Will?”

  “I rolled in about nine-thirty. I was expecting her by ten, ten-thirty. We always stayed in touch by cell phone. If she knew she was going to be later than that she would have called. I tried calling her about eleven. When she didn’t answer I started to worry. I phoned our late man, Rich Graybill, to see if she’d stopped by The Works. Rich is usually there until about midnight, cleaning up and getting things set up for the morning. But he said he hadn’t seen her.”

  “Tell me more about him. What’s his story?”

  “Who, Rich? He’s a young guy, good guy. Lives with his girlfriend, Kimberly. She’s one of our pastry chefs.”

  “Her last name?”

  “Fiore.”

  “What did you do after that, Will?”

  “Paced around a whole lot,” he confessed. “Kept calling her cell phone. Kept getting more and more worried. Like I said, I called the state police to see if there had been any accidents. I can’t even remember what time I did that…”

  “Not important
.” And even if it were they would have logged his call.

  “At one point I actually decided to go look for her at The Works. I thought maybe she’d decided to get an early start on tomorrow’s baking. Which makes no sense, because if that’s where she was she would have called me. But I was just so desperate. I couldn’t just sit here, you know?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I left her a note on the kitchen counter in case she got home whileI was out.” He loped into the kitchen and returned with it, gazing down at it as if it were the last piece of concrete evidence that Donna and their marriage and their life had ever existed. Gently, he placed it on the coffee table for Des to see. He’d scrawled it in pencil on a piece of lined yellow paper: “Don-Don-I’m out looking for you. Where are you? Be home soon. Love, Willie Boy”

  “When I got back here, she still wasn’t home,” he added quietly. “And I’ve been sitting up ever since.”

  “Will, there are some things I need to ask that might seem pretty cold and hurtful. But I need to ask them, and you need to answer them. If you can, that is.”

  “I understand.” He sighed, flopping back down on the loveseat. “Fire away.”

  “Was Donna involved with someone else?”

  Will glared at her, his jaw clenching. For a second, he looked like a vengeful Viking warrior. Then he relaxed, his gaze dropping to the worn rag rug at Des’s feet. “We had our troubles,” he admitted. “All couples do. Especially when they’re together twenty-four hours a day. But I swear to you, I wasn’t sneaking around on Donna with another woman. That’s the God’s honest truth.”

  “I understand.” Des was patient with him. The man was blown away. “And what about Donna? Was she seeing someone?”

  He looked up at her miserably. “You want to know if she had a boyfriend-the short answer is yes.”

  “Who is he, Will?”

  “No idea. She never told me. In fact, we never so much as discussed him. But I knew. There were these hang-ups on the phone all the time when I’d answer it. There were the errands she’d run during the afternoon-she’d be gone for an extra hour without any explanation, and be real anxious to take a shower as soon as she got home. I’d notice scratches and bruises on her body that she wasn’t real specific about explaining. She… she acted different, smelled different, was different. I don’t know what else to say, except that when you’ve been married to someone for a while you can just tell.”