“So did I.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re the one who got miffy and uncooperative.”
“When did I…”
“You told me I couldn’t look at your father’s personal papers without a judge’s order.”
“I’m a lawyer. What did you expect me to say?”
“That we’ve got ourselves a situation here and you’d do anything you could to help out.”
Glynis softened slightly. “Okay, maybe I could have been a bit more accommodating.”
“You think?”
“But I’ll have to review them before I can let you have a look.”
“Fair enough. How long will that take?”
“Two or three days.”
“I haven’t got two or three days.”
The lady’s eyes narrowed at her. “What’s really going on, Des? I keep checking the Connecticut TV stations, the New London Day, Hartford Courant. All that they have is the same old story you people gave out yesterday about unidentified remains, possibly human. I deserve to know what’s going on. My ass is in a sling here.”
“I know it is.”
“My project is a disaster. The entire historic district is one big ditch. Would you like to know how many angry voice mails I had when I got in this morning? Fifty-seven. I’ve got merchants, teachers, parents, everyone screaming at me. The only way this can get any worse is if it starts to rain. Then our kids will need kayaks to get to school.”
Now that Glynis mentioned it the clouds overhead did seem to be getting grayer by the minute. Des glanced down at the weather app on her cell phone and said, “Actually, there’s a 40 percent chance of widely scattered showers this afternoon—whatever that means.”
Glynis sat there fuming. “My mother tells me that Buzzy Shaver spent the night up at Middlesex Hospital. It seems he tried to shoot himself yesterday, and might have succeeded if you hadn’t managed to stop him. Des, please tell me what is happening.”
“Fine. But this is just between us, hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“We’ve confirmed that those are Lance Paffin’s remains. The ME’s preliminary findings are that he suffered a fatal wound to his skull from a spike-like object.”
Glynis blinked at her. “Lance Paffin was murdered?”
“And buried under Dorset Street, which was undergoing regrading at the time. Then someone took the Monster out and wrecked her to make it look like he was lost at sea. His disappearance was a carefully hatched scheme. Your mother and father were among the last people to see him alive, along with the Paffins and Congressmen Cahoon. Exactly what has your mother told you about that night?”
“Very little,” she said with a shake of her head. “Just that Lance was headstrong and foolish. Took his boat out when he shouldn’t have and paid the price.”
“How about your father? Did he ever talk about that night?”
“My father never talked about anything.”
“Has your mother ever said anything else to you about Lance?”
“Such as what?”
“Whether she liked him, disliked him…”
“I’ve always had the impression that she was fond of everyone in the old gang. I know she’s fond of Buzzy. He’s not a strong person physically or emotionally. She worries about him.” Glynis sat there in tightly coiled silence for a moment before she took a deep breath and said, “Okay, what am I missing here?”
“You won’t enjoy hearing what I have to say.”
“I don’t care. Please tell me what you know.”
“Lance Paffin was a major, major womanizer. I know that he slept with Delia before she married Bob. And with Buzzy’s sister, Frances, who killed herself when Lance dumped her. Buzzy despised Lance for that, as did Luke Cahoon, who was engaged to marry Frances. I know that Lance slept with Helen Weidler and that he—”
“Wait, my Helen Weidler? I always thought Helen was a lifelong virgin.”
“Think again.” Des shoved her heavy horn-rimmed glasses up her nose and added, “I also know that he slept with your mother.”
Glynis looked at her in disbelief. “My mother slept with Lance Paffin?”
“Yes.”
“Was this before she married my father?”
“Well, yeah. Lance was dead and buried by then, remember?”
“Des, I-I don’t…” All of the color had drained from Glynis’s face. “I don’t feel so good.”
“If you’re going to start blowing chunks please take it outside.”
She reached for the door handle, then stopped, her hand wavering in midair. “No, I’m okay now. I had no idea that she … other than my father, you know?”
“I know,” said Des, who felt no need to tell Glynis about her mother’s trip to Barbados during spring break of her senior year at Wellesley. That was something for them to talk about between themselves. Or not. That was for Beryl to decide. “I’ve been trying, quietly and discreetly, to figure out what really happened to Lance that night.”
Glynis looked at her searchingly. “And…”
“No one’s talking. Not your mother. Not Buzzy. Not the Paffins. Not the congressman. Not anyone.”
“So what happens next?”
“Quietly and discreetly go out the window and normal procedure takes over. And I don’t just mean the Major Crime Squad. Lance was a naval officer. That means the feds will muscle in. And with the congressman in the middle of this it’ll get huge.”
Glynis considered this, her legal wheels starting to turn. “Maybe I should have a serious conversation with my mother.”
Des’s cell phone vibrated. It was the Deacon. She excused herself, stepped out of the vehicle and said, “What can I do for you, Daddy?”
“You can tell me what the congressman said to you this morning,” he barked at her.
Instantly, she felt her stomach knot up. “Why are you asking me that?”
“Just answer the question, young lady.”
“He said that he intends to announce his retirement from the US Congress later today, effective immediately.” On the Deacon’s chilly silence she said, “Okay, what’s going on?”
“Not two minutes after you left him at the Fairburn Senior Center Congressman Cahoon ditched his staff and our escort cruiser and took off by himself in his Chevy Suburban.”
“Took off for where?”
“I was hoping you’d tell me. How was he behaving?”
“He was defiant. Also quite bitter. He hates the idea that Frances Shaver’s name will get dragged through the mud after all of these years. He never got over losing her. Or blaming Lance for it. He’s hoping that if he resigns it’ll take the media spotlight off of our investigation. He also told me he’s sick of all of the partisan bickering in Washington, although I’m not sure I totally bought that.” On the Deacon’s continued chilly silence she added, “I was polite and respectful, if that’s any comfort.”
“It’s not. Desiree, if you hear anything…”
“Not to worry. I’ll Al Green you.”
“You’ll what?”
“I’ll call you.”
“Why didn’t you just say so?” he muttered as rang off.
Des was just about to get back inside of her cruiser with Glynis when her cell phone vibrated again. This time the caller was Mitch. She took it. “What have you got for me? And please God make it good.”
He said, “Listen, um, do you know the old Cahoon family cemetery at the top of Johnny Cake?…”
“I do,” she replied, not liking the way his voice sounded. “What about it?”
“Bart Shaver asked me to meet him up here. And I just got here and he’s lying f-face down in the grass. Somebody shot him in the back, Des. He’s dead. Bart’s dead.”
* * *
The top of Johnny Cake Hill was the highest spot in the historic district and the site of Dorset’s very first meetinghouse, according to the bronze plaque that had been installed there in 1949 by
the historical society to commemorate its three hundredth anniversary. Johnny Cake Hill Road, which was steep and twisting, dead-ended at the oldest existing home in Dorset—the Thomas Cahoon House, a rambling, low-slung white Cape that dated back to 1647 and was the official residence of Congressman Luke Cahoon, who was presently among the missing.
Des saw no black Chevy Suburban in the congressman’s driveway. No cars at all. And no lights were on in the house on this cloudy afternoon that seemed to be growing darker by the minute. The air felt extremely raw.
The house was surrounded by forty or so acres of woods. The Cahoon cemetery, which was officially the property of the town of Dorset, wasn’t visible from the road. Mitch’s old Studey truck was. It was snugged over onto the shoulder about a hundred yards down from the house, right behind a silver Honda Civic. Des noticed several sets of what appeared to be fresh tire prints in the moist earth behind the truck. She pulled onto the shoulder across the road so as not to disturb the tire prints and got out. A dense ten-foot-high thicket of wild blackberry, privet and forsythia shielded the cemetery from passersby. It was unmarked. If you didn’t know it was there then you wouldn’t know it was there. A narrow footpath snaked its way through the thicket. Des walked along the very edge of it to avoid compromising any shoe prints.
After about thirty feet the path arrived at the windswept little family cemetery, which enjoyed an incredible panoramic view of the mouth of the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound. Also of the seventh fairway of the country club’s golf course, which lay just below it on the other side of an old, lichen-encrusted fieldstone wall. The cemetery was enclosed on all four sides by fieldstone walls. There were maybe a hundred gravestones. Most were of brownstone, which had been quarried plentifully in the area early on. Brownstone isn’t as hard as granite or slate. The hand-carved inscriptions and elaborate images of skulls with wings had suffered serious erosion over the centuries. Many of the names, dates and biblical quotations were hard to make out. Some of the gravestones were rounded nubs no more than eight inches high. These marked the graves of small children and babies.
Bart Shaver lay dead on his stomach amidst the gravestones. Bart’s left leg was straight, his right leg bent at the knee. Bart’s head was turned so that it faced his bent knee. His eyes were open. On his face was a look of extreme disappointment. Des had never seen such a look of disappointment on the face of a dead man, and she’d seen a lot of dead men. And women. And children.
She would have to draw that look on Bart Shaver’s dead face—assuming she ever figured out how to draw again.
He’d been shot three times in the back at very close range by what looked to be a .38. His tan herringbone-tweed blazer showed scorching and gunshot residue at the point of the entry wounds. Either someone had snuck up on Bart from behind or Bart had been talking to his shooter, then turned and started to walk away when the shooter opened fire. Des bent over and felt the exposed skin of his neck above the powder blue crewneck sweater he wore. Still a bit warm. It had happened within the past hour. She could see the bulge of Bart’s wallet in the right rear pocket of his khaki trousers. It hadn’t been a robbery, not that she for one second thought it had been. His cell phone lay in the grass next to his right knee.
Mitch stood a good distance away from Bart intently studying a gravestone, his hands buried in the pockets of his olive green C. C. Filson wool jacket, a manila folder tucked under one arm. He hadn’t acknowledged her arrival. Hadn’t so much as looked at her. Or Bart. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
She phoned it in. A trooper from Troop F in Westbrook would be there soon to provide backup. Within twenty minutes the crime-scene techies and the ME’s death investigator would arrive, followed soon thereafter by officers from the Major Crime Squad. There was no avoiding them now.
She approached Mitch, moving her way slowly toward him.
“Have you ever been up here before?” he asked her, his hollow-eyed gaze never leaving the inscribed gravestone. “Check this out … Titus Cahoon, deceased on the 27th of May, 1719, at the age of seventy. He was born here in 1649. Lived his entire life here two whole generations before the American Revolution, can you imagine? And get a look at Elijah Lay over here.… Elijah was a Revolutionary War hero. Served in the Eighth Company, Sixth Regiment. Died April 4, 1818 at the age eighty-one. Isn’t that incredible?”
“Incredible,” she said patiently. He was inching his way closer to Bart’s body. He’d get there when he was ready to get there.
“And, look, there’s eight kids buried here, aged five and younger, who all died within a few months of each other in 1696.” The tiny gravestones were clustered close together and surrounded by a low, spiked wrought-iron fence. “There must have been a smallpox or diphtheria outbreak.” He edged his way still closer to Bart, looking up at her now for the first time. “He’s in half-frog pose.”
“He’s in what?”
“That’s a yoga pose he’s doing. My teacher, Liza, likes to call it roadkill pose. It’s a hip and groin opener. I find it also works on the piriformis muscles in my butt, which are always tight because I sit on them so much. Do you think he’ll be given a proper burial?”
“Bart? Sure, he will.”
“I meant Lance Paffin.”
She studied him as they stood there together in the light drizzle that was starting to fall. “Are you okay, baby?”
“Not really.”
“Want to tell me what happened?”
“I got him killed. That’s what happened. It’s my fault.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I asked him to look into something for me. Actually, I didn’t ask him. He volunteered. He was hoping I’d do him a solid in return.”
“What did you ask him to look into?”
Mitch didn’t answer her.
“Baby, what’s in that folder under your arm?”
Again, he didn’t answer. Just gazed at her with those sad-puppy eyes of his. “What we’re into here, this is not a Douglas Sirk movie, you know? There are no violins playing. No pretty people. And the color palette is just way off. The bloodstains on his back don’t even match the color of his sweater.”
“Don’t match the what?”
“I have to go now,” he announced abruptly.
“Mitch, we have to talk about this.”
“Can’t right now. Can’t be here. I only stayed because I didn’t want the poor guy to be all alone.”
Des put her hand on his arm. “Okay, we’ll talk later,” she said gently.
Mitch didn’t hear her. He’d already started toward the fieldstone wall that protected the little cemetery from the golf course. He climbed over it and began his way across the seventh fairway, walking stiffly like a zombie. She would have gone after him except she couldn’t leave the murder scene. Besides, he needed some time alone to process his horror. He’d be okay.
And she had something she needed to do before the others arrived. Des always kept a fresh latex glove in her jacket pocket. Quickly, she put it on, snatched up Bart’s cell phone from the grass and checked his call log. The young journalist had placed two calls in the last hour of his life. One was to Mitch’s home number. He’d called someone else ten minutes after that. She stared at that person’s name and number before setting the phone back down exactly where she’d found it.
She was pocketing the glove when the trooper from the Troop F barracks arrived. She instructed him to cordon off the perimeter a hundred feet down Johnny Cake Hill Road. While he did that she strode up to Congressman Cahoon’s house for a closer look around. The black Suburban wasn’t in his garage. Just an old silver Mercedes 450SL two-seater convertible. She knocked on the front door. No one answered. She peered inside a front window. Saw nothing and no one. Strode around the immaculately manicured grounds to the back of the house and peered in the French doors to the kitchen. Still saw nothing and no one. No lights were on anywhere.
She started back toward the cemetery now, reaching for her cel
l phone. When he picked up she said, “Daddy, this one’s turned hot. Buzzy Shaver’s young cousin, Bart, has just been shot dead in the Cahoon family cemetery at the top of Johnny Cake Hill. It’s adjacent to the congressman’s home.”
The Deacon was silent for a long moment before he said, “Is the congressman home?”
“Doesn’t appear to be—unless he ditched the Suburban and is hiding in the dark. I can no longer keep it quiet. I’ve called in the Major Crime Squad.”
“As well you should,” he stated stiffly. “Thank you for alerting me. Please call if you have anything else to tell me.”
“I will.”
“Desiree?…” He fell silent again. She could practically feel him struggling for the words. Feelings were not his thing. “I’m sorry about this.”
“Me, too. There’s a big supply of sorry to go around.”
By now the crime-scene technicians were pulling up in their blue-and-white cube vans, followed by the death investigator. Soon after that a two-woman team in dark-colored pantsuits arrived from the Major Crime Squad. The lead investigator was Des’s protégé and friend Yolanda Snipes, an exceptionally fierce half-black, half-Cuban pit bull with breasts who’d fought her way out of Hartford’s Frog Hollow projects to make it all of the way to lieutenant. Her pint-sized young sergeant was Toni Tedone, who was 70 percent big hair and 30 percent hooters. Toni the Tiger was one of the Waterbury Mafia Tedones—the clan of Italian-Americans from the Brass City who pretty much ran the state police. Back before a case blew up in Des’s face, back when it was she who was a lieutenant handling homicides, her sergeant had been Toni’s chesty, fathead cousin Rico. Now Rico was on the Drug Task Force and it was little Toni who’d been handed a choice slot on the Major Crime Squad. Toni was a first of, as in the first member of the Waterbury Mafia who was a she.
When Yolie saw Des standing there her scarred face broke into a big smile. “Hey, Miss Thing.”
“Hey back at you. I thought that you girls were busy.”
Yolie let out a laugh. “That’s a US congressman’s house over there, am I right? Guess what? We are suddenly unbusy.”
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