Sketch a Falling Star

by Sharon Pape

  “Maybe a bit too naïve for his age? He’s no Easter Bunny, you know.”

  “I think you mean ‘spring chicken’,” Rory said, trying to keep a straight face. “I suppose that’s possible. On one hand, you wouldn’t expect doctors to be naïve, what with all the miseries they see. But on the other hand, some of them are so wrapped up in the medical world that their social skills aren’t what they should be.”

  “Just don’t you forget these people are actors, darlin’. The doc might not actually be a nice guy. He might have just learned how to act like one.”

  She considered that possibility for a minute but found it hard to accept. “Are you saying you think he’s guilty?”

  “Nope, I’m sayin’ you can’t be gettin’ bamboozled by a snappy accent. I imagine the redcoats we fought gettin’ our independence sounded every bit as charmin’ as this fella.”

  Rory was about to protest that she would never be taken in by such a superficial trait when it struck her that he might be right. Had she been judging Richard more favorably because he sounded so polished and civilized?

  “I can tell you about the time we arrested two cattle rustlers,” Zeke went on, falling into his ‘good old days’ voice. “Same evidence on both of them. One had a fancy French accent, and the other never had a day’s schoolin’. The jury let Frenchie go and hanged the other man. Turned out Frenchie was the brains behind the whole thing. The man they hanged had hooked up with him that very day just to earn a dollar so he could eat.”

  “Point taken,” Rory said, not interested in being regaled with more stories. “Getting back to Brian, though—it’s obvious that he dabbled in a variety of unethical, and possibly illegal, enterprises.”

  “Love and money—it’ll be interestin’ to see what we turn up next.”

  “Then you should go tuck yourself into whatever passes for bed and get some rest.”

  “My thought exactly,” Zeke said, apparently pleased that they were of the same mind. “I surely did enjoy this outin’ with you.”

  Rory was about to warn him not to vanish while there was a car in the lane to their right, but he left before she could open her mouth. When she stole a peek at the other driver, the light from his dashboard was just enough to illuminate the look of horror on his face.

  Four days after the funeral, Clarissa called Rory. She wanted to finish the conversation that had been interrupted when Jessica and Brett arrived at the wake to pay their respects. Rory had been prepared to give her a week to tie up whatever loose ends Brian had left behind before calling her. Clarissa was definitely a “taking care of business” kind of gal. She suggested they continue their talk right then and there over the phone, but Rory had found that being face-to-face with an individual almost always provided helpful and often unexpected insights. In deference to what should have been Clarissa’s period of mourning, Rory offered to drive out to her home in New Hyde Park.

  Zeke was still away restoring and refreshing himself, and since Clarissa wasn’t a suspect, there didn’t seem to be any point in trying to contact him even if she’d known how to go about it.

  She’d never brought up the subject, because he generally seemed to be there when she needed him, as well as plenty of times when she didn’t. But since it seemed like something she should know in case of an emergency, she made a mental note to find out.

  She arrived at Clarissa’s home at nine o’clock the next morning, having braved the morning rush hour, when a thirty-minute trip could take a leisurely hour or two. The house was in a cookie-cutter development, a trend that started on Long Island with the building of Levittown, after World War II. Clarissa’s house sat in the middle of the block, a cute Cape Cod with gable dormers like all of its neighbors. What made it stand out from the rest was the meticulous, updated landscaping. The overgrown bushes from the fifties had been ripped out and replaced by newer, dwarf varieties that were in proper proportion to the dimensions of the house. It reminded Rory of a man with a well-trimmed beard standing in a row of ZZ Top wannabes.

  Inside, the house had the polished look of a model home or designer showcase, everything in its proper place, right down to the perfectly spaced fringe on the Persian rug in the living room. Rory found it all strangely sad. It was as if no one lived there, no one to leave a stack of newspapers on the table or an unwashed glass in the sink. No pet to leave hair on the couch or drip water across the floor from its bowl. It was beautiful in a sterile sort of way, but it didn’t feel much like a home.

  Clarissa seemed inordinately pleased that Rory was on time. She invited her into the kitchen, where a carafe of coffee waited on the sparkling granite countertop alongside a plate of crumb cake. Rory politely declined both; she’d already had breakfast, and given the impeccable state of the house, she suspected her client might be distracted by the possibility of a crumb or spill.

  Clarissa set the cake on the table in case Rory changed her mind. Once they were both seated, Rory opened her notepad to a fresh page.

  “Okay,” Clarissa said. “Here’s the Bad and the Ugly. Unfortunately, there isn’t any Good.”

  There was nothing Rory could say after such a remark, so she simply waited with what she hoped was a neutral and understanding expression until the older woman continued.

  “Ten years ago Brian hit what I consider a personal low when he was convicted of mail fraud and had to do time in prison.”

  “Was that his only conviction?” Rory asked.

  “The only one I know about. Brian was always a quick learner, and he seemed to become more careful in his dealings after that. He moved around a lot and kept changing his name. The only communication we had was by cell phone, but he changed that number frequently too. Months would go by when I wouldn’t hear from him, and then out of the blue, he’d start calling again. I have to admit,” she added, “that I gave up trying to stay in touch with him in the last few years. It became too painful. It’s hard enough to lose someone you love once; I lost Brian over and over again.” Those words coming from someone else’s mouth would likely have been fraught with emotion. But Clarissa’s voice was as stoic and steady as if she were discussing a set of keys she’d misplaced and given up on ever finding.

  Rory wondered how far down one would have to dig to reach the wellspring of the real Clarissa, the young mother buried for decades now beneath the crushing mound of disappointment and hopelessness. Although Brian’s sudden death had caused a crack in the bulwark, the bleeding had been brief and quickly stanched. Everything back in its proper place.

  “How did he make a living?” Rory asked.

  “I have no idea. He never brought it up, and on the few occasions when I asked him outright, his stock answer was always ‘finances—it’s too complicated; you wouldn’t understand.’ After his conviction, I decided I’d be better off not knowing.”

  “Did he ever go for counseling?”

  Clarissa had cut a small wedge from the crumb cake and was nibbling on it, one hand cupped under the other to catch any wayward crumbs. “I took him to at least a half dozen therapists over the years,” she said, abandoning the cake to a napkin as if she’d already lost interest in it. “Thousands of dollars and about as useful as putting the money through a paper shredder. By the time he reached his teens, he refused to go at all. How do you help someone who doesn’t believe he needs help?”

  Since the question was purely rhetorical, Rory wagged her head in empathy and waited a suitable few moments before pressing on with her own questions. “I’m having trouble reconciling Brian’s efforts to avoid more jail time with the risk he took every time he appeared on stage. What if someone in the audience had recognized him from an earlier scam?”

  “I know it seems counterintuitive, but from what the therapists told me, it actually fit right in with my son’s diagnosis.”

  “May I ask what that diagnosis was?”

  “He was a classic psychopath,” Clarissa said grimly. “Bright and charming, but without a conscience. He didn’t know g
uilt or remorse. You’d be horrified if I told you some of the things he did as a child.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as if trying to exorcise those memories. “Anyway,” she went on, “he needed to be the center of attention, and appearing onstage seemed to feed that need. So he convinced himself it didn’t put him in jeopardy. After he got out of prison, he told me the police would never catch him again, because he was onto their game, whatever that was supposed to mean.”

  Listening to her, Rory felt as if she’d unearthed something slimy and foul in her garden and was deeply relieved to find that it was dead. Distressed by the intensity of her reaction, she tried to shake it off. Whatever else Brian Carpenter may have been, he was Clarissa’s son, and she shouldn’t have to deal with Rory’s emotions on top of everything else.

  “When was the last time you spoke to Brian?” she asked, once she trusted her voice to sound normal.

  “Two days before he left on the trip to Arizona,” Clarissa said, a little frown pinching the skin between her eyes. “It actually struck me as strange. After all the years of moving from place to place and living under different aliases, he suddenly wanted to let me know he was going to be away for a week.”

  “Did he say he was concerned something might happen to him? Did he seem nervous or agitated?”

  Clarissa shook her head. “He didn’t say anything like that, and to be honest, I don’t think Brian knew what it meant to feel nervous. It was part of what was missing in him.”

  “So nothing else about that conversation set off flares?”

  “Well, I don’t know if this is in any way connected or relevant, but he did say he was thinking of moving off the Island.”

  Taken together, the two remarks made Brian sound like a man who’d sensed a shift in the wind and wasn’t planning to wait around until the hurricane blew ashore. For the first time since hearing about his death, Rory began to believe in the crazy possibility that Clarissa and Zeke might actually be right—that the flash flood provided a would-be murderer with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

  “He didn’t say anything about a business deal or romance gone sour?” she asked, hoping to jog something loose in Clarissa’s memory.

  She laughed as if to say “you’ve got to be kidding.” “Those were two subjects he never discussed with me.”

  “Did you ask him why he was thinking of moving away again?”

  “Why bother?” She shrugged. “I’d played his games long enough to know he wasn’t going to tell me the truth.” She glanced at her watch, then back at Rory. “I think I’ve told you everything I know that might help the investigation. If you have no other questions…” she said, rising from her chair. “As you can imagine, my schedule’s all backlogged, what with everything that’s happened.”

  Rory had a mental image of Clarissa checking items off a list: buy cake—check; conversation with PI—check; mourning—check. She immediately chided herself for being judgmental. The woman had clearly done her mourning long before her son’s physical death.

  Clarissa was walking her to the door when she came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the living room. “I almost forgot—tomorrow morning I’m going over to Brian’s apartment to clear out his belongings. I thought you might want to meet me there. Maybe you’ll find something useful to the case.”

  “Absolutely,” Rory said, buoyed by the prospect of an actual clue.

  Clarissa gave her the address, and they agreed to meet at the apartment at nine thirty the next day. Rory had just reached her car when her cell phone signaled that she had a new e-mail. It had come from her home computer and was only two words long: “COME HOME.”

  Chapter 12

  The sender of that message had to be Zeke, unless Hobo had recently acquired a new skill. She considered writing him back, but that was always more frustrating than it was worth. If he wasn’t at the computer, he wouldn’t receive the message. And even if he was still there, it was never a quick process. He’d proven to be obtuse when it came to learning the abbreviations that were common in that form of communication, although she suspected it was the principle of the thing more than any real inability on his part. He often complained that the present generation was murdering the English language and that he refused to help dig its grave. Rory had come close to pointing out that he was often guilty of the same crime. In any case, she wasn’t in the mood to listen to another of his lectures about the deficiencies of the modern age.

  The trip home took a quarter of the time it had taken during rush hour, which was still more than enough time for Rory to imagine several terrible reasons for the marshal’s abrupt message. When she arrived home, she found out she’d been wrong on every count.

  Hobo met her at the door with all of his normal, fur-flying enthusiasm. He jumped up in his version of an embrace, with his front paws on her shoulders, and started lapping her face. At least nothing was wrong on the canine front. With Hobo still up on his hind legs, she did a little sidestep dance with him to the keypad to turn off the alarm.

  Zeke popped in while she was trying to convince the dog that four legs on the floor were preferable to two. She threw in a promise of ear scratches to seal the deal. With Hobo back on the ground, she turned to face the marshal.

  “Okay, I’m here—what’s the big emergency?”

  Zeke’s expression was grim. “We’ve got trouble.”

  “Could you narrow that down a bit?” she asked, walking over to the bench beneath the stairs to kick off her shoes. Being home meant being barefoot.

  “Someone broke in while you were gone.”

  “But the door was locked. I had to use my key to open it,” she said, trying to make sense of this information. “And the alarm was set.”

  “I wasn’t here at the time so I can’t tell you how he got in. I heard the mutt carryin’ on somethin’ awful, but I didn’t pay it no mind ’cause he does that with the mailman, the paperboy and every squirrel he sees trespassin’. But then he got quiet too suddenly. None of the easin’ down like he usually does. You know, what you call his grumblin’. That’s when I dropped in to see if he was okay.”

  Rory tried to push away the memory that sprang to mind of Hobo nearly dying from the poisoned meat someone had thrown into her yard back in the fall. “And?”

  “He was merrily chewing away on one of those stuffed toys he loves.”

  “He does that all the time.” Exasperation was seeping into her voice.

  “Not with a frog. You never bought him a frog, did you?”

  “No,” she said, her brows bunching together with a mixture of concern and confusion. “So someone broke in here to give Hobo a present?”

  “I never said it made a lick of sense.”

  “I guess I should be grateful that the intruder likes dogs.”

  “It’s sure a heap of a lot better than the last time.”

  “But why break in at all?” she murmured thinking out loud.

  “I’ve been rollin’ that around in my head. I think the intruder’s tryin’ to tell you that you’re bein’ watched. That he can get to you if he wants to.”

  “That’s pretty damn creepy. Sort of sounds like a stalker.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I can’t say for sure, but the timin’ leads me to think this has to do with Brian’s death. Could be he wants you to stop your investigatin’.”

  “Then why be so vague about it? Why not just throw a brick through my window threatening to kill me if I don’t drop the case?”

  “Who knows how any of these guys think. Maybe he’s just playin’ a game in your brain.”

  “I think you mean ‘playing mind games’.”

  Zeke scowled at her. “This is serious, darlin’. He’s probably been stakin’ out the house to get a handle on your schedule so he could break in when you weren’t home. That tells me that he’s not lookin’ for a confrontation just yet.”

  “And you’re sure he didn’t leave a threatening note or maybe a bomb somewhere?” she asked, only half k
idding.

  “No, ma’am, I went through this house from stem to stern, and far as I can tell, he didn’t take anythin’ or leave anythin’ except the frog.”

  “Did you—”

  “Course I did. I checked that toy every which way as soon as I saw the mutt chewin’ on it.”

  Rory had run out of questions, with no answers in sight. It was bad enough that someone had broken into the house and managed to turn off the alarm in less than a minute, but how on earth had he or she reset the alarm without knowing the code and then relocked the front door without the key? She felt as frustrated as when she watched a highly skilled magician. There had to be a trick to it, but she couldn’t figure out what it was, and that drove her a little crazy.

  She padded into the kitchen with Hobo at her heels, the frog still stuffed in his mouth. Zeke was already sitting at the table waiting for her. “What’s goin’ on in that pretty head of yours?” he asked warily.

  Rory opened the freezer and rummaged around until she found a pint of strawberry ice cream hidden behind a frozen pizza. “There’s got to be a way to find out who broke in here, but I’m coming up empty.” She popped the lid off, and grabbing a spoon, she joined him at the table. Hobo dropped the frog and settled down next to her waiting for a handout.

  “I guess I could dust the house for fingerprints,” she said, digging into the container, which was only a quarter full, “but whoever did this was way too professional to make such a rookie mistake.”

  “You’re overlookin’ a bigger concern,” Zeke said. “How are we goin’ to keep you and the mutt safe from someone who ain’t stopped by locks and alarms? I don’t mind standin’ guard for you, but I can’t keep that up without rest.”

  “Maybe I should buy a junkyard dog to protect us,” she said without humor.

  “Now hold on there; one dog’s my absolute limit.”

  “Just kidding.”

  “I think maybe you should stay with your folks until we get this sorted out.”