Exposé: First of the Sally Harrington Mysteries (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 5)

by Laura Van Wormer

  "The cable used in the building of the gym was defective, Mother. It never should have left the plant where it was made."

  Her head slowly turns back to me. "Why did it?"

  "They think Mr. O'Hearn bought it under the table to save money. He had a lot of projects going on and he was overex­tended."

  "Your father would never have had anything to do with that," she tells me.

  "I know," I murmur, patting her hand. "No one thinks he did."

  She nods, looking fearful now.

  "Johnny Boy put the debris on my porch, Mother. He wanted us to have it. He wanted us to know what happened."

  "Where did he get it?"

  "From where his brother hid it, twenty-one years ago."

  "Tony Meyers?" Mother shakes her head. "But why?"

  "We think, Mrs. Harrington," Buddy says, "Tony Meyers had been blackmailing Phillip O'Hearn for quite some time."

  Mother slowly rises to her feet, her face flushing deeply. I rise with her, ready to catch her if she should faint.

  "Are you saying that Phil killed Dodge?"

  "We don't know for sure," I say gently, moving to put my arm around her. "That's why we have to have this discussion, Mother. You're the only one who remembers things." I ease her back down into the chair and walk into the living room to pour a small brandy in a cordial glass. I bring it back into the kitchen and silently hand it to Mother. She needs no push; she takes a sip.

  "We know now, Mrs. Harrington, that several years ago Phil­lip O'Hearn set Tony Meyers up in the hazardous-waste disposal business in Long Island. And we know that Tony called his brother, Johnny Boy, in Florida about a month ago to say he was in trouble. The books on his operation in Long Is­land were a mess and he said he was worried that something might happen to him. He said he wanted to send Johnny Boy a key to a storage unit in Wethersfield. The next thing Johnny knew, he heard Tony had been shot dead here in Castleford, and so he played it safe, sent his family away and went off the radar, sneaking up here to Wethersfield to see what was in that unit."

  "Why didn't he just come to you?" Mother asks Buddy.

  "Because he took one look at that piece of debris and knew where it was from. He had worked on that building himself, re­member, with your husband. Johnny Boy also remembered how, after the accident, O'Hearn's crew came in and razed the whole gym and carted it away before anyone ever even thought of analyzing the debris. Everyone just assumed that, like so many other buildings in Castleford during the flood, the gym had been a casualty of rising water."

  Mother thumps her brandy glass, staring at it. "Hal Fields."

  Buddy nods but I am taken aback. I had forgotten about him. Once a building inspector in Castleford, he was appointed city engineer not too many years ago, went from there to prison for accepting bribes. He's dead now.

  "Hal Fields had to have been in on it," Mother says, her voice gaining strength. She sips the brandy and thumps the glass down again, making me fear it will break.

  A funny light is beginning to shine in my mother's eyes, and I wonder if she is like me, feeling a strange exhilaration because after all these years we are beginning to realize that Daddy might not have been killed by one of his own buildings.

  "So Johnny's Boy been hiding out, Mrs. Harrington, trying to put it all together. Finally he left the debris on Sally's porch to put us on the scent. He's been in the old cow lean-to by the strip-mining operation at Brackleton Farm."

  "He was scared Phil might have him killed, too?"

  Buddy nods. "He still is."

  "I don't blame him," she says, finishing off the brandy. "Phil's the eighth richest man in New Haven county now, you know." She shakes her head. "But to kill Dodge? Over some cheap cable?"

  "Well, that's just it, Mother," I say. "We think it may have been a lot more than the cable in the gym. We think he may have used bad materials in a lot of buildings, and he was scared Daddy was going to turn him in. Because if he did, it would have all been over before he had even started."

  She hangs her head slightly. "Phil." She inhales sharply through her nose and kicks her head back up to face Buddy. "Now what?"

  "Remember when Tranowsky's Auto Body blew up? O'Hearn built it two months after the high school gym."

  "He also built the Preston Roadhouse the same year," I say. "Which has also conveniently blown up recently."

  "He built the bowling alley around that time," Mother says, thinking out loud. She looks at Buddy. "Phil bought it back and tore it down last year and then sold the lot to Home Depot."

  "That's right," Buddy says. "And that's the key. He bought it back, tore it down and carted everything away. Which means, after the auto body and the roadhouse were destroyed, there is nothing left in Castleford that O'Hearn built in 1977."

  "In other words," my mother says dully, "there is no evi­dence."

  None of us say anything.

  Mother looks at me. "Your father would have hung Phil him­self if he knew he was endangering the lives of the children us­ing that gym."

  "The thing is, Mrs. Harrington," Buddy sighs, "we have Tony Meyers's murderer in custody, but that's where the chain of evidence stops. We don't know who hired him. We think Phillip O'Hearn may have deliberately used faulty materials in the four buildings he constructed in 1977—which Hal Fields in­spected and approved—but all we have is this one piece of de­bris from part of one building. And since everything else has ei­ther been destroyed or carted away somewhere, we have nothing to link the buildings."

  "Oh, but that's not true," Mother says. "There is another building still standing. The grocery store in Wallingford. It was the same year, I know it was, because he won all those bids al­most at the same time." She frowns. "Of course he underbid ev­erybody. Now we know why."

  "You mean where the dance club used to be, Mother? In an old A & P? Right off the Merritt?"

  Mother nods.

  "Are you sure, Mrs. Harrington? Because we don't have that building on our list."

  "I know for a fact Phil started that building. I know because he was fired from the project before it was completed. He had spread his crews too thin on too many projects—one of which was the high school gym."

  Cars are backed up all along Silver Avenue near the old A & P, the people inside them wondering what horrendous crime was being investigated by the battalion of police. I am here, too, standing with Buddy, my neck hurting under this stu­pid brace, watching as police techs take apart the walls. Mack is here next to me, standing in for Mother, who is at Bradley Air­port picking up my brother.

  We get word in less than an hour. No sign of faulty cables. No sign of faulty anything. They'll tear more of the wall and ceiling apart, but they're not confident of uncovering anything of importance.

  "I suppose we should have known," Buddy mutters, turning away. "Or O’Hearn would have blown this one up, too."

  "Well," my brother Rob suggests, yawning, "we can put Johnny Boy in a cage in the center of town and see who tries to kill him." It has taken Rob hours and hours to get home from the obscure northwest comer of Colorado where he lives, but there is no way he is going to sleep and miss a minute of this. He was only five when Daddy died, but when I first saw him at Mother's today I could see the same bright light in his eyes that had come into Mother's.

  "Thanks a lot," Johnny Boy tells my brother.

  Rob and Johnny Boy and I are sitting around in a conference room at the Castleford police station while Buddy comes in and out, trying to figure the next move he should make. The FBI doesn't seem very interested in anything but the possible connec­tion between the hit man that killed Tony Meyers and a compet­ing, Mafia-owned-and-operated hazardous-waste disposal oper­ation in Long Island.

  "We could run a front page article about the findings of the debris," I suggest.

  "And admit up front," Buddy nearly growls from the door, "that we have nothing to compare it to, even to confirm that it was a part of the gym?"

  "I think we have to go public,"
I insist. "We need someone to come forward, someone who knows or saw something that night. Or any time since."

  "I agree," Johnny Boy says.

  "Well you certainly can't go public," I say. "You're not sup­posed to even exist."

  Johnny Boy's staying up at Carmella's cabin. Buddy spirited him into the station for a brainstorming session.

  "It's been more than twenty-one years," Rob says. "I mean, is it even a crime anymore? After all this time?"

  "There is no statute of limitations on murder," Buddy says.

  The words hang in the air for several moments. And then I get it. I get an idea. I know who to call. I know who can help.

  47

  Will Rafferty himself, the executive producer of DBS News, arrives with a crew at Mother's at 11:00 a.m. Monday morning. Our family—Mother, Rob and I—sit down around the dining-­room table with them, and we begin laying out the story. At around one, as Mother is trying to push sandwiches and salad on everyone, Abigail furiously begins to bark in the front of the house.

  I walk out to find Alexandra squatting down next to Abigail, getting the side of her face licked. A black limo is wait­ing behind her.

  "Thank you so much," I say as she gives Abigail a final pat and stands up.

  "It's a good story," she says. She winces slightly, looking at my black eyes and the neck brace.

  "You don't want to know," I tell her firmly, ushering her into the house.

  Alexandra introduces herself to my family, sits down and starts right in. At three, a news van from WSCT in New Haven arrives. At five, Mother is serving sandwiches again. At seven-thirty, the group disperses, fanning out over the county.

  I drive home. I walk around to the backyard and find Spencer batting a tennis ball out in the field for Scotty to chase. Spencer's wearing ancient gym shorts and a t-shirt. I am surprised at how at home he seems dressed like this.

  Seela is dozing on a towel Spencer has brought out to the yard from her carrying case. She likes security, he tells me.

  "You're still here."

  "Sally!" He smiles, hurrying over. "How did it go? I wanted to call but I thought I better not."

  We kiss briefly. "It's just as well you didn't," I say, yawning. "It was long and complicated and went on forever. It's like NASA over at my mother's. Of course she and Rob love it. It's something to do, something to try."

  "What do you think?"

  Scotty has pushed his way between us to press the wet tennis ball against Spencer's thigh as a small hint. "You're such a ras­cal, aren't you?" I ask Scotty, bending slightly. "No, don't jump up. That's a good boy." I straighten up and toss the ball.” "If anyone can do something, DBS News can."

  Spencer puts his arm around me and leads me toward the house. "So we just say a prayer."

  "Yes. It's out of our hands." I turn to look at him and wince at the pain in my neck. "So what have you been doing all day?"

  "I glued the leg back on the table in your office," he says. "That's some hardware store down the hill. I kept looking for the pickle barrel to sit around."

  "Cracker barrel."

  "Well, sitting down around some barrel," he says. "One guy was talking and I swear, I could have been right back in Maine. The accent was absolutely on target—aye-yup."

  "A lot of people are from Maine," I say. "They came down after the war, because there were jobs."

  Scotty drops the ball at our feet and barks. I smile. He is fine now. I barely feel like pressing charges against Spiker Fetch anymore. Well, except for this brace and my black eyes.

  "Oh!" Spencer suddenly exclaims. "And I did that." He points to the woodpile.

  Holy smoke. There is about a half cord of newly split wood. "Wow. Who would have ever guessed that executive editors could be so handy?"

  He smiles, turning me to face him so he can hold me around the waist. "I love you."

  "I keep telling you, it's very premature."

  "Okay," he agrees, "I prematurely love you."

  "Our track records are abysmal, Spencer," I remind him, rest­ing my forehead on his shoulder.

  "Yep," he says cheerfully, holding me.

  "And you live in New York."

  "Yep."

  "And I live out here."

  "Yep."

  "So how do you propose to resolve this?"

  "I propose to rent a house around here and come out on weekends."

  "What about your house in Kent?"

  "I won't rent it anymore."

  I look up at him. "I thought you owned it."

  "No. I don't own anything. Well, except Seela."

  "What do you do with all your money?"

  "I spend it living in Manhattan, that's what I do with it."

  "Do you own the Miata?"

  "Nope. Lease it."

  I place my forehead on his shoulder again. "Dam. And I thought you were rich."

  "Nope, not rich," he says. "My parents aren't, either." He thinks a moment. "If I lived somewhere like here, though, I'd be very well off. I could buy a place. And a car."

  "You could probably buy half of Castleford for what you pay in rent."

  "This isn't exactly a booming metropolis, is it?"

  ''It is if you like steamed cheeseburgers and drive-ins."

  Spencer gasps, bouncing me off his shoulder. "You have a drive-in?"

  "Not even a mile away from here."

  "You're kidding!" he says, excited. "Can we go? I haven't been to a drive-in since I was little!"

  "Sure. The movies start at sundown. We can go tonight if you want."

  "And do they have a playground and stuff? And run car­toons?"

  "No," I laugh, "those days are over. But they still have those slides of floating hot dogs and dancing Cokes and stuff during intermission."

  He is so excited that I think, gosh, maybe he would like living out here. At least part of the time. I wonder if maybe...

  Well, as Mother says, time takes time.

  We go inside to shower and change. After feeding the ani­mals, we decide to go to the drive-in in the Miata because there are restrictions about where the Jeep can park, it's so high. We are just getting into the Miata, putting the top down and debat­ing which are better, Dots or Milk Duds, when a cloud of dust appears down the road, signaling the roaring approach of a brand-new Cadillac.

  "Oh, no," I say, because I know who it is and what this is about. And I was so looking forward to forgetting everything at the movies for a couple of hours. "Can you please go inside and get my tape recorder off my desk, Spencer? There's a clean cas­sette in the right-hand drawer. Pop it in, will you, turn it on and bring it out here."

  Spencer unlocks the front door and hurries into the house.

  The Caddie comes to a sliding halt, skidding off the dirt and tearing into my lawn. With the motor still running, the door flies open and Mrs. O'Hearn, red-faced and wild-looking, hauls herself out and points to me over the roof of her car. "How dare you talk about us in this way, Sally Harrington! Your father is turning over in his grave!"

  "I'm sure he is," I say from my seat in the Miata.

  "Who are those people trespassing all over my property!" she demands. "They're down at the offices, they're at the sites, they're at my house!"

  "Looking for Mr. O'Hearn, I presume."

  She glares at me. "Mr. O'Hearn is out of town on business."

  "Then tell them where he is," I suggest. "They'll go there, I know they will, and then they'll leave you alone."

  She comes around the car and starts pointing at me again. "I've known you since the day you were born, Sally. How dare you implicate my husband in the misfortune your family suf­fered—"

  "The gym wall did not fall down and kill my father by itself, Mrs. O'Hearn."

  "The flood waters eroded the foundation!" she yells.

  "The flood waters did not!" I yell back "Someone detonated a building charge and brought the wall down on top of my fa­ther and broke his back!" I scramble out of the car. "And your husband sent his crews in
to knock that building down and cart it away so no one would know."

  "Liar!" she screams at me.

  "I'm not lying!" I shout, coming around the car. "Tony Mey­ers knew about it and he's been blackmailing your husband for years! But now Tony Meyers is dead. So I don't know why you just don't talk to DBS News and be done with it. Take your money and your kids and your grandkids and clear out, Mrs. O'Hearn. If you get out now, at least you'll leave your family with some sense of honor."

  She slaps me and the jolt to my neck makes me cry out. "You have no right," she says, voice cracking. Weeping, she runs to her car, guns it, slams it into reverse, and then swerves over the lawn and around the driveway to speed off.

  "Wow," Spencer finally says as the dust cloud floats over us. He turns off the tape recorder with a click.

  I burst into tears and he comes over. I hide my face in his shoulder. "Somebody has to pay, Spencer," I sob. "Somebody killed my father."

  The telephone's ringing inside the house. I'm too busy sob­bing and being angry to get it. Spencer calms me down and we go inside, bagging the idea of the movies, bagging the idea of everything. I hit the play button on the answering machine.

  "Where are you, Sally?" Buddy's voice says. "We need you down here, Sal. Something—someone—important has come up. I need you. Call me. Come here, do something, but get here. Please."

  "I'll drive you," Spencer says, opening the front door.

  "Hi, who are you?" I hear Rob ask Spencer from behind me in the reception area of the police station.

  "I'm the help," Spencer answers. "You're the brother from Colorado, I take it."

  "And you're the new boyfriend from New York," Rob says.

  "Maine, actually."

  "No kidding," Rob says, interested. He holds out his hand. "Rob Harrington."

  "Spencer Hawes."

  "Sally?" Buddy's head has popped around the corner. We all start toward him, but Buddy says, "Just you, Sal, for right now." ­

  I go ahead, leaving Spencer with Rob. Buddy takes me by the arm to the side of the hallway and whispers, "We've got a wit­ness who knows something. But I need your help. I need you to talk to him." "Sure. What do you want me to say?"