The Coal Black Asphalt Tomb

by David Handler

  “Even though Lance and Luke argued in the parking lot over Noelle?” Des asked.

  “That was just Lance being Lance,” Delia said mildly. “I understood that about him. We all did. Didn’t we, Beryl?”

  “Yes,” Beryl said, her blue eyes shining.

  “Not long after he and Luke quarreled,” she went on, “Lance pulled me aside and told me he wanted me—right that very minute. It never even occurred to me to say no to him. I was high as a kite. And I adored him. He was exciting, confident, fun.…”

  “Everything I wasn’t,” Bob said miserably.

  “I excused myself and toddled off to the ladies’ room. Lance slipped away and joined me in Old Henry’s garden. We’d done that at least a dozen times before and dear Bob never noticed. Never so much as suspected a thing.” Delia’s face fell. “But that night he…”

  “I was feeling queasy from all of that champagne,” Bob explained. “It isn’t just the sea that riles my stomach. I don’t do well with sweet wine. Or fatty meat. And the prime rib that night had definitely been on the fatty side. I could feel it churning away in my—”

  “Really don’t need to hear this part,” Mitch assured him.

  “I stepped out into the garden for a breath of air and found them together on a bench.”

  “It could not have been more awful,” Delia remembered, her voice hushed. “Lance’s pants were unzipped, my head was in his lap. Do I need to draw you a picture?”

  “I think you just did,” Mitch assured her.

  “I can never, ever forget the look on poor Bob’s face when he caught us there. Until that moment he’d thought I was as pure as the driven snow. He hadn’t known a thing about Lance or the others. And there were others. Not that many, but a few. They wanted me. I liked to be wanted. I liked to make men happy. Bob was very traditional. He wanted me to be a certain type of girl and so for Bob I became that girl. I liked being that girl.” Delia smiled at him sadly. “I still do.”

  “What happened when he caught the two of you?” Des asked her.

  “It was just as Bob said. Lance became incredibly abusive. He said, ‘Didn’t you know, B-B-Bombo? Your b-b-beloved Delia will b-b-blow anyone.’ Bob ordered him to stand up and take what was coming to him. They began to scuffle there in the garden, Bob throwing wild punches, Lance laughing at him and taunting him. By now the others—Beryl, Chase, Luke and Noelle—had heard them yelling and joined us out there. It wasn’t much of a fight. Lance was so much bigger than Bob, and had been trained in hand-to-hand combat. He could have killed Bob if he’d wanted to. But he just let him have it once in the stomach, hard, and had himself a good laugh watching Bob puke his prime rib dinner all over Old Henry’s ornamental flowering—”

  “Really don’t need to hear this part either,” Mitch assured her.

  “He laughed and laughed. That was when I decided I’d had just about enough of Lance Paffin. I told him so to his face. And then I shoved him. He wasn’t expecting me to do that. I sent him teetering backward. He pitched over and cracked his skull on that spiked fence, twitched a couple of times and was dead. I killed him. It was an accident. But everything we did after that wasn’t. We should have called the police. We didn’t. Instead, we—we…”

  “We protected our fort,” Bob explained. “Same as we’d been doing since we played cowboys and Indians together behind Buzzy’s house on Appleby Lane.” He smiled faintly at the childhood recollection. “Remember that old fort of yours, Buzzy?”

  “Guess you haven’t been out back in a while,” Buzzy responded. “It’s still there. Couldn’t bring myself to tear it down. A family of raccoons took up residence there last winter.”

  “We used to call ourselves the Appleby Gang. Chase was always our idea man. Smarter than all of the rest of us put together.” Bob’s face tightened. “He knew exactly what to do that night.”

  Glynis glared at him accusingly. “Are you saying it was my father’s idea to bury Lance underneath Dorset Street?”

  Bob nodded his head. “And to wreck the Monster. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth, Glynis. Chase was the brains of the Appleby Gang. Luke was our leader. Always the calmest under fire. He put the girls in Beryl’s car and sent them straight home while I called Buzzy from the pay phone by the pool. I told Buzzy to grab every shovel he could find and meet us in front of the Congregational Church.” Bob smiled at his old friend. “I knew we could count on Buzzy. There’s no one more loyal.”

  “Chase’s plan worked to perfection,” Des said. “Except for the fingerprint evidence that the techies took from the tiller of the Monster. Nice, fresh fingerprints that would have shown you’d recently piloted Lance’s boat, Congressman.”

  “You’re right, they would have,” Luke Cahoon acknowledged. “But Dave Stank, the lead investigator, was hungry to get somewhere. He took care of the fingerprint evidence, and I took care of him. Things worked out just fine.”

  Delia Paffin gazed at her husband affectionately. “And Bob forgave me for being such a silly girl. We’ve raised our children, grown old together and we’ve been very happy, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, we have,” Bob assured her, his voice soaring with conviction.

  Des didn’t know if she believed him or not. And she definitely wondered if Delia did. But he had stayed by Delia’s side for all of these years and guarded her secret and that did say something about Bob Paffin as a man, even if Des still thought he was a consummate weasel.

  “Why didn’t you stop me, Mother?” Glynis wondered aloud. “Why did you let me go charging ahead with my road project?”

  “I didn’t want you getting mixed up in it,” Beryl answered. “It wasn’t your secret. It was ours.”

  Mitch drank down the last of his Old Overholt, shaking his head. “I’m not wired like you people are. I couldn’t live with such a huge lie for so many years.”

  “We did what needed doing,” Luke Cahoon said loftily. “It was our duty.”

  “For the first year I had to avoid that intersection entirely,” Delia confessed. “I couldn’t drive over him. Just couldn’t. I-I did learn to live with it. But the horror has never, ever gone away. Not once have I forgotten that Lance was down there in that coal black asphalt tomb. I still have nightmares that he’s trying to claw his way up through the pavement. He was like a naughty little boy, you know. And he’s remained that little boy. He never changed. Never got older. Not like the rest of us.” She took a ragged breath, letting it out slowly. “I’m relieved that this is finally out in the open. I’m glad that you found him.”

  “I’m glad that you’re glad,” Des said to her. “It’s a shame that Bart can’t be here to share in this moment.”

  Delia Paffin recoiled as if Des had just slapped her in the face. Possibly because she had.

  Now was when Yolie and Toni walked in the door, both of them wearing rain-soaked slickers.

  “What have you got for us, girl?” Yolie asked Des, her eyes flicking around the newsroom at everyone.

  “Bart’s shooter is seated at the desk. Say hello to Mr. Clyde ‘Buzzy’ Shaver. I’ve got the murder weapon right here,” Des said, patting her jacket pocket. “Lance Paffin’s death was accidental. Mrs. Paffin shoved him and he hit his head. The others then buried his body under Dorset Street and staged his disappearance at sea. We’re talking involuntary manslaughter, criminal conspiracy and illegal disposition of a body. And the statute of limitations ran out on all of those charges after, what, seven years? But the district prosecutor will have to sort that out once these folks make their formal statements. They’re all yours, Yolie. Except for the first selectwoman. She was just here to observe.”

  Yolie looked at Des in astonishment. “Are you saying we’re all done?”

  “What I’m saying. You’ll need transportation for everyone in this room who’s over the age of seventy.”

  Toni cleared her throat. “Including the congressman?…”

  “She said everyone,” Yolie barked.

  “On it,
Loo.” Toni reached for her cell.

  Mitch watched Toni as she phoned it in, gazing at her curiously.

  Yolie smiled at him. “Hey, sweet thing. How are you?”

  “Quite hammered,” he stated with solemn gravity. “I am going to have one mondo headache in the morning.”

  “Mitch is blaming himself for Bart’s death,” Des explained.

  Yolie stuck her chin out at him. “Did you pull the trigger?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Then don’t beat yourself up over what some other fool did,” she blustered. “You’ll make yourself crazy. Are you hearing me or do I have to slug you?”

  “I’m hearing you.”

  “Good.” Yolie kissed him on the cheek and said, “Damn, I love me the sensitive type.” Then she placed Buzzy Shaver under arrest for Bart’s murder.

  Des took Mitch’s hand and brushed it with her lips. “How did you know?”

  “How did I know what?”

  “That it was Delia.”

  “Didn’t you notice the way she was shaking? Her hooters were jiggling just like Arlene Dahl’s when the earth’s core erupted at the end of Journey to the Center of the Earth. Great sequence, by the way. All except for the part when Count Saknussem ate Gertrude the duck. That was totally unacceptable.”

  “Doughboy, do you realize that sometimes I have no idea what you’re talking about?”

  “But sometimes you do. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”

  “It’s very cool.”

  “Girl, I owe you one,” Yolie said as she steered Buzzy Shaver toward the door. The old newspaperman seemed very calm. Almost serene. Des wondered if he, too, was relieved the secret was finally out. “Word, I’ll make it up to you next time.”

  “There’s going to be a next time?”

  Yolie let out a laugh. “Hell, yeah. This is the thin white edge of paradise, remember?”

  Toni ushered the rest of the old bunch out the door while Glynis remained there in the middle of the newsroom with a stricken expression on her face. Dorset’s first selectwoman looked as if her entire world had come crashing down around her. Possibly because it had.

  “Am I seeing things or is Toni sporting an engagement ring?” Mitch asked Des.

  “A promise ring, actually. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Who’s the lucky guy?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later. Right now, I think I’d better give you a ride home.”

  “Yeah, I think you’d better, too. I’m feeling kind of sleepy all of a sudden. Hey, Des?”

  “Yes?”

  “Let’s not have prime rib for dinner tonight, okay?”

  “Okay. You talked me into it.”

  “Hey, Des?”

  “Yes?”

  “Bart was right,” he said, sniffing at the air. “You can still smell the ink in here on damp days.”

  Des couldn’t smell a thing, but she didn’t see any point in telling him that. So she didn’t.

  EPILOGUE

  (ONE WEEK LATER)

  THE WEATHER FORECAST WAS more than just a little bit off. Those showers that began to fall on the day Bart Shaver died developed into powerful thunderstorms in the night. According to the National Weather Service, nearly three inches of rain fell on Dorset in a period of less than two hours. An additional five inches of hard, steady rain fell the following day, transforming Dorset Street from a dirt road into a rushing river that roiled its muddy way through the entire historic district. Homes, businesses and Town Hall were flooded. Des had to evacuate several elderly Dorset Street residents by carrying them from their front porches out to the emergency motor launches that navigated the historic district for two days and nights. Schools were cancelled until the floodwaters receded four days later, leaving behind a sticky, oozy muck that stank of creosote. It was a total disaster for Dorset’s new first selectwoman. The only way that Glynis’s signature road project could have gone any worse was if the crew had found a dead body buried underneath the old pavement.

  Oh, wait, they had.

  Things did turn out okay once the roadbed had a chance to dry out. The Wilcox Paving crew returned and rerolled Dorset Street and the huge paving machine extruded fresh, smooth asphalt pavement that was plenty wide enough for a bike lane. The public works team laid sidewalks where there had previously been none. And the local TV news crews were there to film it when Sheila Enman personally oversaw the planting of three new copper beeches out in front of the Congregational Church. Good sized ones, too. Not itty-bitty saplings. Everyone seemed quite pleased with the way the project turned out, actually. Everyone except for the first selectwoman herself, who seemed to take no pleasure in its successful outcome. Or in anything else. Glynis was simply not the same lady after she’d found out what her own parents had been keeping secret for all of their adult lives.

  The freakish unearthing of Lance Paffin’s tomb became front-page news across America. There was no escaping the media spotlight. Not after Luke Cahoon resigned his congressional seat just as he’d promised he would. The scandal surrounding Lance’s death sent shock waves through Dorset. Luke Cahoon was a hometown celebrity and hero. Bob Paffin had been first selectman for as long as most Dorseteers could remember, just as Buzzy Shaver had been the man who’d run The Gazette. Delia Paffin and Beryl Fairchild had led practically every worthy charitable organization in town. These people were Dorset’s aristocracy. They’d epitomized everything that was fine and decent about the gem of Connecticut’s Gold Coast. Now they were figures of shame and disgrace. They wouldn’t go to jail for what they’d done on that warm spring night back in 1967. The statute of limitations had indeed run out long ago on their crimes. The law couldn’t touch them. And Des doubted it could touch Buzzy, who’d been under psychiatric observation the day before he shot Bart. She felt certain that his attorney would successfully craft an insanity escape hatch. But there was no escaping what the unearthing of Lance Paffin had done to the close-knit village of Dorset. It made folks uneasy. Made them ask themselves if they, too, were capable of living with such a horrible secret for so long. Made them wonder who else in town was, and what other secrets lay hidden in Dorset’s past just waiting to be dug up.

  They wondered. Everyone wondered.

  The Deacon phoned Des not long after the old bunch was taken into custody. “I guess you handled this as well as could be expected under the circumstances,” he said to her somberly. Which was a rave review coming from the Deacon. This was not a man given to ego stroking. “Do you feel compromised now?”

  “Compromised how, Daddy?”

  “Would you like to be assigned somewhere else?”

  “Hell, no. Dorset’s my home. I’ve got skin in the game here. I’m not going anywhere else, hear me?”

  “That’s fine by me, Desiree. I just thought I’d ask.”

  Des had the unhappy task of phoning Bart Shaver’s fiancée, Mary Ann Athey. Mary Ann took the news of his death with stoic reserve and made the drive to Dorset from Vassar to take charge of things. She turned out to be a rangy lacrosse player with a strong jaw and an admirably calm demeanor. Bart was buried at Duck River Cemetery three days after the ME released his body. Quite a few of their friends were in attendance. So were Des and Mitch. Mitch stood there stone-faced, holding Des’s hand as Reverend Goode of the Congregational Church said whatever words of comfort anyone could possibly say. Mary Ann had arranged for coffee and cake in the church’s community room afterward, but Mitch wasn’t up for that. Instead, he wanted to go home and watch a DVD of The Day the Earth Stood Still—not the from-hunger remake with Keanu Reeves but the original 1951 black-and-white version with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal. Des sat and watched the whole movie with him and found it reasonably enjoyable for an old sci-fi film. She had no idea why Mitch found it a comfort to watch it after Bart’s funeral. There were many things about Mitch she didn’t understand. He was, after all, a man. But he was her man.

  * * *

  He went to work on h
is new patio just as soon as the stormy weather allowed. Dug his way down a good six inches, then shoveled in a deep, level bed of stone dust before he positioned the heavy slabs of bluestone just so and tamped them into place with a rubber mallet, one by one by one. It was slow, hard physical work. It was exactly the sort of work Mitch needed to do right now.

  He worked on the patio by himself in the chilly April sunshine. His usual helpmate, Bitsy Peck, was busy making sure that The Gazette continued to report the news of the day on its Web site. What with Bart gone and Buzzy under court-ordered psychiatric observation someone had to take over. That someone was the crusading one-time editor in chief of the Smith College Sophian, who leapt eagerly into the void and enlisted a half dozen of her equally eager lady friends to help out. Strange but true—Buzzy Shaver’s all-male clubhouse had finally been taken over by the ladies whom he’d shut out for so many years. There was even talk that Bitsy, who had tons of Peck family money behind her, intended to buy The Gazette. Mitch took some comfort in knowing that Bart’s death created a void that gave Bitsy a renewed purpose in life. And he felt certain she’d blossom in her new role. It did help a little. Just not enough.

  He’d set almost a third of the patio stones in place when Des came thumpety-thumping across the old wooden causeway in her cruiser to get her first good look at it.

  “Mitch, this is gorgeous,” she exclaimed, standing there with her hands on her hips. “And I am loving the herringbone pattern. Did you design it?”

  “Not exactly,” he said softly as he knelt there in the stone dust.

  Her face fell. “Oh.…”

  “Are you okay with that?”

  “Of course I am,” she said quickly. “We are who we are. And who we were. We should embrace that. Nothing good comes from burying it. Just look what happens when you do.”

  “I’d rather not look if you don’t mind. I keep seeing Bart lying there in the grass.” He glanced up at her. “Don’t you?”

  She gazed out at the gentle swells on the sound. “Of course I do.”

  “But you draw your way out of it, is that it?”