Caught Dead

by Andrew Lanh

  “Loyalty.”

  “It seems to be a novelty in my family,” he said grimly.

  My phone rang. “Where are you?” From Liz.

  “With Hank, back from Cindy and Tommy’s.”

  “Family reunion?”

  “Of course.”

  “I just got back from Bank of America.” Humor in her voice.

  “Holding it up?”

  “No, just protecting my cherished assets. No, I wanted to take a look at your boy, Danny Trinh.”

  “Why?”

  “My being a world famous Farmington psychologist and all. I asked for information on my statement, an answer I had all along, being a financial whiz. I had to wait until he was free of the swooning women who encircled him like he’s the last cupcake at the church bazaar.”

  “And?”

  “Well, I hoped he’d topple the inkwell so I could get hints to his psyche, a la Rorschach—just what do you see, Banker Trinh? A dead rabbit? A coiled snake? But no, all I could manage was a good moment of chitchat.”

  “And?”

  “You keep saying that word with such expectation. And I was very taken with him. He’s quite the looker. And the way he looked at me, it was clear he liked what he saw.” She waited.

  “I didn’t ask you to date him.”

  “A smooth talker, he is. Quite the work of art. Those dark brooding looks, Heathcliff meets Saigon. My, my, my. But the line of his female acolytes was bustling behind me, and you know how such women are. Full-force tsunami love. I had to thank him for ending my abysmal ignorance, and he flashed those brilliant ornaments the rest of us simply call teeth.”

  “Liz, for God’s sake. Isn’t there a car wash nearby you can walk through?” She laughed. “So what do you think?”

  “I think that Danny could get a woman to do almost anything he wants.”

  “I hope you’re not one of them.”

  “Alas, no.” She sighed melodramatically. “I was once married to a good-looking guy. Hot actually. I’ve forgotten his name though. Sounded foreign. He had one of those smiles, too. Made a simple city girl like me dizzy. But that was a long time ago, in a faraway kingdom by the Rivers Hudson and East. That girl is no more. Once, to disappoint Jacqueline Susann, is definitely enough.”

  When I hung up the phone, I found myself smiling.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Jon Torcelli had moved back into his apartment in New Haven, getting ready for Yale grad school. When he answered the door, he didn’t seem surprised to see Hank and me. This was not exactly typical student housing, I realized, one of those familiar, tumbledown apartments that looked used and thrown together, no matter how hard the new tenants tried to decorate it. True, it was a second-floor walk-up on Chapel Street, near the art gallery, but these rooms were nicely furnished, very tasteful, I thought, some cookie-cutter assembly out of Architectural Digest. He may have moved in the day before, but there wasn’t a cardboard box in sight.

  “It doesn’t look like you just moved in.”

  “Yes and no. Yes, I moved in yesterday. No, because I’ve had this apartment since undergrad school and never gave it up.” His hand swept the room. “This is my real world. My music, my games, my books, my sofa. My world.”

  “Why do you go home during the summer?”

  “I go back and forth. But my mother insisted I come home for the summer. Be part of the family, dysfunctional though it might be.”

  “And your father pays for this apartment?”

  He smiled. “Why do you think I have to spend time at home? But when Mom was alive, we talked. I was happy to talk to her. Dad never came home until late. Mom got lonely. And Kristen is, well, not that good at conversation.”

  Inside the living room we sat on IKEA furniture, and sipped iced tea in the ice-cold room. “I like it cold.” He smiled. “I’m not paying for it.”

  “Great apartment.”

  “Women like it.”

  Hank probed, “You got a girlfriend?”

  “Is that why Batman and his Robin have flown down I-91? To question my sexuality?”

  “No,” I said, “but I want to ask you some questions.”

  “About what? I don’t know a fucking thing.”

  “We were talking to Cindy and Tommy yesterday, and the talk was all about Danny—and drugs.” His eyebrows went up in a here-we-go-again look. “I wanted to hear what you have to say about that.”

  “About drugs?”

  “Well, it seems to have been a big deal with your Mom and your aunt.”

  “Big deal? They were consumed by it. I always assumed the tale of the cousin’s opium death was the only Vietnamese folk tale carried over on the plane.”

  “But why lately?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I really think it’s generational—and a little ethnic maybe. Old school. Fresh off the boat. I don’t know. They watch too much TV maybe. A hundred years ago Nancy Reagan was their homeland security goddess.”

  “You’re being flippant.”

  “It’s what I like doing.”

  “It’s a way of avoiding answering questions.”

  “Or, in fact, answering those questions in an interesting manner.”

  “What does that mean?” From Hank.

  Jon looked at him. “Figure it out. You’re a college grad. You went to that bastion of intellectuality called Farmington College.”

  Hank shut up, but I could see he was fuming.

  I went on. “In their last days, Molly and Mary were afraid Tommy and Danny were back to using.”

  “Back? Like they ever left?”

  “But they didn’t know that. They were in the dark for years.”

  “But what’s the big deal? It was nickel-and-dime level pot. They weren’t importing brick kilos from Colombia, for heaven’s sake.”

  “But how did it come up?” I asked.

  “What come up?”

  “How did drugs suddenly become an obsession with the sisters?”

  “How am I supposed to know?”

  I leaned in. “Frankly, I think you’re the one who started to poison the well. You poisoned your mother against Danny…”

  “That happened years back.”

  “But you made it a big deal now, to use your words.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Did your mother tell you she found a joint in Kristen’s room?”

  He waited a second. “Actually, yes.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  He laughed. “She thought Kristen was a goddamned drug addict. Because of one joint.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  “I told her Danny gave it to her. How could I resist the moment?”

  “Why connect Danny with drugs in your mother’s mind?”

  “Well, the idea was already there from years back. And Asians, like elephants, have long and simple memories. It was the perfect opportunity to, well, campaign against Danny, my nemesis. The other dark meat. One afternoon he was sitting in the driveway, waiting for Susie to come out. He picked her up on days she worked late. He was on his cell phone, yapping away, and I think I surprised him, coming around the side. Danny was saying something about profit or percentage or some banker lingo, but he jumped when he saw me, hung up the phone, and looked guilty. I chided him, ‘You breaking some federal laws?’ He didn’t laugh. So I thought—wouldn’t it be nice to get him in trouble?”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “He’s too squeaky clean, that puppy, let me tell you. But then I bumped into Kristen inside, and she’s all a-titter, with that giddy I’ve-been-fucked glow, and I think she’s just made it with Lover Man, probably in the back seat of the Mercedes. Real classy.”

  “Where are you going with this?” Hank asked.

  “She was high, giggly and stupi
d, and I followed her into the kitchen and asked her. She never said no, but when she went to the bathroom I looked through her purse and found that joint.”

  “You found it?” Hank asked.

  “True confessions, I’m afraid.”

  I understood. “And you planted it where your mother could…”

  “Horribly, painfully, dramatically, mournfully—find it! Voila!”

  “And that’s how you got the ball rolling.”

  “I’m good.” He sat back, smug.

  “A little evil,” Hank said.

  “It wasn’t like I was making anything up.” Jon locked eyes with me. “I started to tell Dad that Danny was feeding Kristen drugs, but I got no further than, ‘Hello, Dad.’ We don’t talk much. He looks right through me, in fact. I am the other son. So I knew he couldn’t be shaken from his ivory-tower view of Danny. But Mom was a different story. She went nuts finding the joint. I told her Danny was to blame, and all hell broke out.”

  “She called Mary.”

  “To warn her to look out for Tommy. To watch Tommy and Danny. To check for needle tracks in the arms, for excessive sweating, for hallucinations, for whatever. Unfortunately it got back to Danny.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I heard him protesting his innocence to his mother and Dad in the kitchen, My mother blamed him, and so Dad asked him. Danny lied, saying Kristen got the pot from Tommy. Tommy! I’m sure Daddy told Mommy who then told Mary, who then started a twenty-four-seven surveillance on poor Tommy.”

  “You knew it would get back to Mary.”

  “Hell, Mary was a busybody, crazy in her own simple way. I knew she’d fuck up Danny.”

  “But it backfired, didn’t it?” Hank said.

  “Sort of. Mary flipped out, Mom flipped out, Tommy got blamed, and Danny, as usual, gets off like a knight in shining armor. Dad actually told me how heroic—that was his word—Danny was, trying to straighten things out. I almost hit him.”

  “Who? Your dad?”

  “Actually either one would do,” he said. “So now you know. I was the joint-bearer in this medieval chanson.”

  “All because you don’t like Danny.”

  His voice hardened. “Dad was talking of bringing him into some family business. That’s a no no.”

  “And your father doesn’t want you to be a part of the business.”

  “Dad prefers that I smile and keep out of the way. I don’t really like the man. Mom—she I liked. Well…loved.”

  “But the incident of the joint blew over, no?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  I caught his eye. “So you must have done something…”

  He held up his hand. “Clever, you are. A few words in Mom’s ear—like ‘Search her room!’ It did wonders. It seems Kristen squirreled away an envelope of stolen joy—doubtless taken from Lover Boy Danny. Mom lost it—ran to me. Wept out of control. I had to calm her down. ‘I’ll talk to Kristen,’ I promised her.” He laughed. “I actually said to Mom, ‘Kristen may already be an addict. Check her Facebook, her e-mails.’ But that went nowhere with Mom, of course. And then I mentioned Danny. Inspired. Truly inspired.”

  “Fiendish.” From Hank.

  “It is what it is.” He shrugged. “She ran to call Mary. Another day of opium nightmares.”

  “Did she tell your father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I leaned back, watching him, realizing he was a little bit nervous. A line of sweat beaded on his forehead.

  “What do you remember the night of Mary’s murder?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “Humor me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t home that afternoon. In fact, I was in this apartment, but I drove home later. I called to see if there was going to be dinner, but no one answered. I got back about seven, and the house was empty. Later on I heard Mom’s car in the driveway. Anyway, she comes flying in, and she’s rattled. I asked her where she’d been, and she said she got lost at West Farms Mall. Okay, I said, what does that mean? She kept saying, ‘I was rushing around because I was late.’ For some reason, she blamed it on Kristen. Anyway, I’m trying to talk to her, and she wants to know if I want dinner.” Jon paused. “You know what she said? ‘I’ve been to the mall a thousand times, and I got lost.’ She went on and on, and I walked away.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I went to watch the news on the set in the kitchen. And she came into the kitchen and started taking stuff out of the freezer.”

  “What did she say?”

  “‘I hate making mistakes,’ she said. I remember that. ‘I was late.’ Then she looked nervous. ‘Has Kristen come back yet? Just like her to mix things up.’ I remember because I said Kristen wasn’t home and asked what was typical. ‘She’s spacey. I’m worried about her,’ she said. I figured it had to do with the drug nonsense…you know, tracking her down.”

  “And then?”

  “And then the two of us made dinner together. I poured her a glass of wine and she relaxed. When I was clearing the dishes, I noticed her reading a slip of paper she took from her pocket.”

  “What did it say?”

  “I didn’t pay attention. She tore it up into little bits and threw them into the trash.”

  “She didn’t add anything?”

  She said she needed a good social secretary. And she laughed. ‘I ended up in the wrong place. So I came home.’ She said she wasted her time.”

  “That’s it.”

  “I was on my computer and heard the phone ring. The news that Aunt Mary was dead. And Mom collapsed in my arms. And that took care of the rest of that evening.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “What was Molly late for?” I said to Hank as we drove back to Farmington.

  “She was going somewhere at the mall. Some store? Maybe to meet someone? Kristen, perhaps. She’d written down an address, but she was late.“

  “But could Molly going to the mall have anything to do with Mary’s murder?”

  “Well,” Hank said, “it got her out of the house.”

  I dialed the Torcelli home. No answer. I reached for a folder on the back seat. “Hank,” I slid him the folder, “look up Susie’s home number.”

  Susie, it turned out, was home, her day off. Her voice was cool and guarded. “What do you want?”

  I mentioned how Molly had gone to the mall the day Mary was murdered. She seemed to have an appointment, but somehow things got mixed up.

  “Yes,” Susie said. “I remember. She told me the next day. She was running late, and then she blamed herself for going to the wrong place.”

  “Where was she going?”

  “She’d gone to pick up Kristen somewhere, then do some shopping for a dress, but they got their signals crossed. Miss Molly went to the wrong place, I think. Or, I don’t know, she was late. I can’t remember.”

  I thanked her and hung up. “She was going to pick up Kristen, but…”

  The phone rang, Jimmy calling.

  “I got the stuff I promised you. I got financial information. The money-talks information. I don’t know if it means anything, but you gotta hear it.”

  I told him that Hank and I were headed back to the area, planning to meet Liz for lunch in West Hartford center, at the Blue Back Café. He could join us.

  “Isn’t that place pricey?”

  “I’ll treat.”

  “You better.”

  Hank spoke when I hung up the phone. “What if that note Molly tore up was left for her? What if she didn’t write it herself?”

  I nodded. “That’s a possibility. There may have been wrong information on that note.”

  “And she tore it up.”

  “In frustration.”

  ***

  Hank and I sat on the roof garden of the Blue Back Café, tucked
under spacious, cooling umbrellas and munching on bread sticks. We stared down at the sidewalk shoppers. Liz arrived, and then Jimmy, who wasn’t happy. “I don’t like eating outdoors.”

  “And why is that?” Liz asked.

  “Reminds me of Vietnam. In battle, in trenches, flies all over you, bullets whizzing, wet food, dysentery.”

  Hank grunted, “They don’t allow flies in West Hartford.”

  Jimmy glared. “No, just pests.”

  Hank and I summed up our conversations with Tommy and Cindy and earlier that morning with Jon. I told Jimmy, “Liz went to Bank of America to look at Danny.”

  “He’s gorgeous.” She fanned herself.

  Jimmy frowned. “Studies have shown that women never believe a man is guilty of anything if he’s good looking.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Liz agreed. “If you’re good looking, you don’t need to commit a crime.”

  “Hey,” Jimmy grunted. “I’m wasting my time here. Sex has nothing to do with this case. I came with information.”

  While the waiter hovered and we gave our sandwich orders, Jimmy pulled out a wrinkled stack of sheets from his back pocket. Jimmy believed in taking notes the old-fashioned way, sitting in the business section of the Hartford Public Library, hours at a time, digesting year-end reports, news clippings, sheets of statistics, stock indices. In the process he’d made enviable contacts in metropolitan Hartford over the years, a man whom people gladly talked to. I can whiz through computer search engines, but Jimmy can still find stuff I miss. His practiced eye can sift through pages and pages of aimless jargon and corporate dreck, culling the nugget of wisdom buried deep inside.

  We waited, sipping sodas, while he took his sweet time, organizing the papers. Jimmy had to perform on his own stage with his own rhythm.

  “I checked whatever financial histories I could find, believing, as I do, that money…”

  I interrupted. “Is the source of all crime.”

  He smiled. “You learn well. Anyway, I had to call in a few favors because some of this ain’t public information. It helps to know people.”

  “So you’re saying you got this information illegally,” Hank wondered.