I’m told.
Now Walt was watching my hotel room from his car and glancing from Ben—the man sharing that room, whose circumstances Walt knew nothing about—to me. I couldn’t read his expression. For all I knew, Walt was a cop groupie and had designs on Ben, but I didn’t think so.
“But you’re sure they were married?” Ben asked, and Walt’s eyes turned to him and held on his face.
He shrugged. “That was what I heard, and I had no reason to think it wasn’t true. Why?”
“From whom did you hear that Michelle and Damien were married?” Duffy asked. He wasn’t going to answer Walt’s question, which was wise. Duffy is, if I might say so myself, a really intelligent investigator.
Walt waited while our drinks were distributed at the table and asked about his turkey club, which the waitress assured him would be just a minute in arriving. Then he looked at Duffy. “I think Damien told me, but I don’t really remember,” he said. “Why?”
“Were you present when Damien proposed marriage to Michelle?” Duffy asked. Again Walt’s question was going unacknowledged, but he showed no amount of upset about it.
“Well, sort of,” Walt replied, and he looked at Duffy with an expression that practically begged for a straight line.
But Duffy didn’t pick up on it, so I decided to move the conversation along. “What do you mean, sort of?” I asked.
“There was this one time Damien actually proposed to Michelle at the bowling alley, and she said no,” Walt answered, now fixing his gaze squarely on me. “But I think that was kind of a joke, you know? Like a way to show her he was serious, but not a real proposal. I mean, who proposes when he’s sitting on a one/seven split?”
“So if Michelle said no in front of you, why are you so sure they were really married?” Ben asked.
Walt looked surprised by the question, as if the answer was obvious. “Damien told me,” he said.
Okay, that was something. I didn’t know what, but it was something. I hoped Ben and Duffy had better thoughts than that.
Ben leaned in and lowered his voice, maybe for effect. “Damien Mosley told you that he and Michelle Testaverde were married?” he asked.
Again, Walt seemed puzzled that the question had even been asked. “Yeah. Maybe two weeks after that bowling alley thing. He said they’d gotten blood tests and gotten married in Connecticut or someplace. Not here in town, I know that. And he said Michelle wanted to leave town and was going to his apartment in Jersey. Said he’d follow her there. They quit the bowling team, so I had no reason to see them after that, and it took a while before I realized anybody thought they were missing.” He caught himself and gestured with his right hand in a “well, sort of” movement. “Actually, that anybody thought Damien had left or vanished or something. The idea was that Michelle had moved already.”
That sounded wrong to me. “She just left? She didn’t say good-bye to anybody? Just one day here and one day there?”
Walt nodded as the waitress brought his sandwich, overwhelmed on the plate by sweet potato fries. You could tell sweet potatoes and cooking oil were cheap, whereas turkey, bacon, and tomatoes might have been a little pricier. The club sandwich was pretty thin. The Plaza Diner at home did a much better job.
I’d only been gone since yesterday, and I was getting homesick for Adamstown.
As soon as the waitress left, Walt took a bite and then gestured with one of his fries in his right hand. “I don’t know if she told any of her other friends,” he said. “I don’t know if she had any other friends. I just know that nobody on the bowling team or at Rapscallion’s ever heard from her. Word was she thought she was better than us and didn’t have to mingle with the riffraff anymore.”
But Duffy had other concerns; he was already thinking ahead to verifying Walt’s statements. “Do you know where in Connecticut they were married?” he asked. A license and a marriage certificate would make him feel so much more comfortable. I’ve known people like that.
Walt shrugged. “I’m not even sure it was Connecticut,” he said. “It was five years ago. Might have been Maryland. Isn’t that where people used to go to get married? I know it wasn’t Vegas.”
“What time of year was it?” Ben asked. No doubt he was thinking it would be easier to search marriage records for the year if we had a general time period to limit the inquiry.
“Fall,” Walt said after he’d swallowed his latest bite. “I remember that. It was just starting to get cold out at night, you know, like now.”
He didn’t seem to have any more useful knowledge to share on the two dead people. But since the conversation was winding down and I didn’t see any reason for pretense, I looked Walt dead in the face.
“How come you were watching the window of my hotel room last night?” I asked.
Walt was so stunned, he stopped eating. Ben and Duffy stared at me, I assume because they were appalled that I had breached the protocol of talking to Walt only about the two murders. But call me crazy, I don’t like it when some guy spends his evenings watching where I sleep unless I invite him to do so.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he attempted.
“Yes, you do,” I said. “If you want us to believe one word of what you’ve told us so far in the past few days, you’d better make sure you tell the truth now. Otherwise I’m going to assume you just like telling people lies and having the spotlight whether you deserve it or not. So spill. Now. Why were you outside the hotel watching my room?”
Duffy’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times. But I think Ben looked at me with a different kind of respect than I’d seen from him before. When we first met, I was a potential victim in need of protection. I was making a step away from that role and into that of a formidable colleague.
Hey, I make up stuff for a living. I can assume things with a guy I’m sort of dating.
Walt actually put down the quarter of the sandwich he’d been working on and seemed to think the situation over carefully. After a moment of contemplation, he shook his head slowly.
“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”
That didn’t answer my question. “We saw you,” I said.
“No you didn’t, because I wasn’t there. I don’t even have a car at the moment. Mine was stolen.”
I looked at Ben, who shrugged and started pushing buttons on his phone.
“What kind of car?” I asked Walt.
“A 1972 MG. I can’t imagine why somebody would want to steal it; the thing is falling apart. I mean, it’s wicked cool, but I can’t afford to keep it up. I parked it in the lot next to my apartment last night when I got home from work yesterday, and when I came out this morning, it was gone, and no, I didn’t report it to my insurance company, but I did call the cops. What’s my insurance company going to do? The car’s not worth more than what they could get for scrap metal.”
“But you called me last night right when I got to my hotel,” I said, trying to convince Walt it would be better to own up to his infraction. “You were trying to figure out what I was doing in the hotel.”
“I heard from a friend in the police department that they had a suspect in Michelle’s murder, and I hadn’t even known Michelle had been murdered,” Walt said, staring at his food not because he was desperate for another bite but because he wanted to avoid eye contact. “I figured that meant you and Duffy were coming back, and I wanted to be ready to help you. Honest.”
“How’d you find my car to follow me?” I said.
Now Walt did look up and meet my gaze, in surprise. “I didn’t,” he said. “I don’t know who was following you, but if you saw my car, it was whoever stole it.”
“Why were you asking about who was in the room with me?” I asked.
“It’s embarrassing.”
For him or me? I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, but Ben pressed on. “That’s not really the priority right now,” he said.
Walt, still looking down, nodded. “Okay. I wanted to s
ee if you were in the room alone, and if not, whether Duffy was there with you. I wanted to see if you two were a thing.” Walt had devolved into a fourteen-year-old girl in front of my eyes. It was actually a sad thing to see.
So he’d been right. It was embarrassing. For all of us.
There was a sort of stunned silence, which was actually a blessing because in my writer’s ear, I heard Duffy saying in a huff, “No, we are not a thing.” But he didn’t. Instead, I spoke to Walt as I would to a child who liked to watch people in hotel rooms through binoculars. Because I wasn’t sure I believed him about that.
“You can’t do that anymore,” I told him. “That’s not okay. I get that you really enjoy my books, and I’m very honored, but my private life is, you know, private. You understand?”
Walt broke his gaze and looked down as he nodded guiltily. “Yeah. I do. It felt weird when I was asking, even, but for some reason, it was really important for me to know that. I’m very sorry, and I hope you’ll forgive me.”
It was important to make a strong impression about how serious an infraction Walt had committed, so I decided not to let him off the hook immediately. “I’ll think about it, but I need to see that you really do get what I’m saying, Walt. For now, let’s leave it at the point where I’m grateful for you enjoying the books, and that’s as far as we go, okay?”
I didn’t glance at Ben, but peripherally I saw his head nod. Duffy was to Walt’s left in the booth, so I could see him even when fixing my focus on Walt. Duffy didn’t move. He was probably trying to decide whether his own interest in the hotel room Ben had rented for us had violated some trust. Duffy is mostly an introvert. Except when he’s not.
“Okay, Ms. Goldman,” Walt said, taking us back to the beginning of our relationship. He was the dedicated fan, and I was the revered (by him) author. I’d let him dangle for a while and then indicate he was forgiven, assuming there was no one outside my hotel room window tonight. “I really am sorry.”
So that said, we concluded our business. Walt had the remainder of his sandwich packed to take home, and Ben, Duffy, and I paid our part of the tab and got up to leave. I realized I’d never even gotten my muffin, which was just as well.
On the way to the door, Ben said, “I checked with the Poughkeepsie police website. It’s a matter of public record. Walt did not report a stolen car.”
Then we went outside, and the police arrested Duffy.
Chapter 26
“This is bogus,” said Nelson Sanders. “They get one piece of physical evidence that’s been sitting around for five years, and they think they can make a case with that? Something else is going on, and it’s not pretty.”
I could agree that what was happening here was not an attractive thing to see. Duffy had been handcuffed and placed in the back of a police cruiser, while a uniformed officer named Crawford (according to his nameplate) recited his Miranda rights. (Just as an aside: As a writer, I find the Miranda rights much less wordy and difficult to understand than any other legal document I can recall. It’s not great, catchy writing, but the key is be easily comprehended, and the words accomplish that. End of rant.)
“I don’t get it,” Ben said. “They told you they have the murder weapon, that it’s that gun they dug out of Damien Mosley’s ceiling, and that ties Michelle’s shooting to Duffy? How does that work?”
Duffy, off being further “processed” like a slice of Kraft American cheese, was nowhere to be seen. We were standing in a waiting area in the police station outside the bullpen, and our conversation was being conducted at a low volume. Because maybe someone would hear us and . . . I’m not actually sure why we were being so quiet.
“They say the gun has Duffy’s fingerprints on it,” Sanders added. “Which makes pretty much no sense at all. Nobody on this planet can put him in Dutchess County on the night Michelle died. We’re not even sure if the two of them ever met. The idea that this weapon has been sitting around for more than a whole presidential term and they find his prints on there, clear enough to be positively identified after all that time, is pretty suspicious.”
And that was just the beginning. “What happens now?” I asked.
“Now we wait for him to be arraigned, which should happen today because it’s early enough,” Sanders told us. “The judge will set bail, and we’ll have to see how high that’s going to be. If Duffy can pay it, there won’t be a problem. Do you know anything about his finances?”
Ben and I glanced at each other. “Not really,” Ben said.
“I’ll talk to Duffy about it when we get to court,” Sanders said. “I can’t imagine they’ll see him as a flight risk, but you never know in cases when the defendant is from out of state. Look, there’s nothing you two can do here until the arraignment. I’ll call you as soon as I know when that’s going to be.” He nodded at us and headed back toward the desk to pester the sergeant some more. The man was worth every penny Duffy was paying him. However he was doing that.
“What do you think?” Ben said after Sanders left.
“I think my stomach is tied up in knots, and I feel utterly powerless. How about you?”
“I want to go talk to Louise Refsnyder,” he exhaled.
I figured the day couldn’t go a whole lot worse, so I agreed, although the idea that “worse” might actually be a possibility was a sobering thought. I called Paula through my Prius c’s Bluetooth while I was driving to Louise’s place, which I actually could find without GPS now.
After getting her up to speed on the events of the day, which began with seeing Duffy out of jail and led to seeing Duffy back in jail, Paula filled me in on what she’d been able to find out from Adamstown, a place for which I was becoming ever more nostalgic by the minute.
“I still don’t know if there was a Duffy Madison at Poughkeepsie High School during the years we need,” she reported. “There’s a space for him in the yearbook, but school records don’t show him as registered. Now there are some areas I can’t look because I’m not in the system, so it’s possible he was homeschooled and registered in the high school for clerical reasons. It’s possible he had some kind of disability and couldn’t attend. It’s also possible there is no such person as Duffy Madison, and the two of us are being played for fools.” This was the most hysterical I’d ever heard Paula sound, which corresponded neatly to my most calm and rational moment.
“What about other Madisons?” I asked. “Siblings? Cousins? Dolleys?”
“That’s interesting,” Paula answered, ignoring my feeble first lady/ice cream maker joke. “There was a Susannah Madison two years before Duffy’s supposed graduation date. She is currently living in Lake Tahoe under the married name Susannah Hong. I’ve left a message but haven’t heard back yet.”
Ben looked at me somewhat askance. He still wasn’t used to the idea of digging into Duffy’s past to discover whether he was real. To Ben, Duffy was still that guy he’d been working with.
“That’s good,” I told Paula. “Keep on that as it comes, but for the moment, our priority is finding a way to get Duffy out of jail. Have you come up with anything new on Louise or the others we’ve met up here?”
“I looked into that Walt Kendig you were telling me about,” Paula answered. “His story is not exactly thrill-packed. He’s never been out of Poughkeepsie for more than a week at a time, unmarried, no children. Works as a CPA for a firm that prepares taxes for locals and some walk-ins. Bought himself a condo, an apartment in a converted school building, and pays his mortgage on time. Spends most of his money on books and birding as far as I can tell.”
At least he didn’t have any incredibly expensive high-tech surveillance equipment, I thought. “What about Louise and Rob?” I asked.
“We already knew much of Louise’s past,” Paula said. I could hear her flipping through a notebook she keeps on her desk; Paula is skittish about leaving her research strictly on a computer or in the cloud. She lives under the assumption that the whole Internet is constantly on the brink of colla
pse, and the only reason she cares is that her work would be lost. “Right now she’s working as a supervisor at a FedEx plant from five in the afternoon to one in the morning. You’ve seen her house, so you could tell me more about it than I can tell you.”
“I doubt that,” I said.
I could hear the smile on Paula’s face. “Thank you. But the fact is, since the time of her pregnancy and divorce, Louise has lived a fairly mundane life. She does have a thing for men, though. From what I can tell, she’s had a lot of boyfriends. They don’t seem to last very long, but Facebook and other sources would indicate she stays friendly with a number of them.”
“Any married ones?” Ben asked.
Paula took a moment. I’d told her Ben was in the car with me, but that was the first time he’d spoken since we’d started the call. She recovered quickly. “It’s hard to tell because those would usually not be broadcast all over social media,” she said. “It’s possible, but I don’t know that I can say certainly it’s happened.”
Paula hates it when she doesn’t have a definitive answer.
“That’s fine,” I told her. “We’re going to see Louise right now. What do you think we should ask her?” Paula has great insight in such matters, and I’ll often ask her advice when I’m stuck on a plot point but never a character moment. Those are all mine.
“From what you’ve told me, I’d ask her about the Poughkeepsie Police Department,” she answered. “If there’s a gun with Duffy’s fingerprints on it, somebody planted it there. Who in the department would want to do that, and why? A local like Louise, especially one whose social media shows she has definitely dated a cop or two, might have some idea.”
Ben nodded. I wasn’t looking directly at him because we were pulling up in front of Louise’s house, but I was willing to bet he looked impressed with Paula and sheepish that he hadn’t thought of that himself.
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