Red Herring

by Archer Mayor

  “Was it?” he asked, figuring he had nothing to lose.

  To his astonishment, she became angry. “It wasn’t my fault. They work us too hard in here.”

  “How long ago was this?” he followed up.

  “About six months. Not that they ever let it go. Doreen was always nagging—did I do this, did I do that? Like I was incompetent or something.”

  “And she stopped paying you extra?” Joe suggested.

  She looked at him wide-eyed. “Why would she do that?”

  He scratched his forehead and decided to move on. “Brenda, did you ever get any feeling for Doreen’s personal life? Boyfriends? Problems with other people? Anything at all?”

  “She used to travel before Maggie came here,” she volunteered slowly. “It sounded like she always went alone, though, which I thought was a little strange. Sounds even stranger now.”

  So much for being bosom buddies, Joe thought. “And how long has Maggie been here?”

  “Three years.”

  “With Doreen coming every day?”

  “Like clockwork, from day one. I thought it was sweet at first, before I found out what they were like.”

  “Did they treat everyone here like they did you?” Joe asked her, suddenly struck by a thought.

  She looked disgusted. “Oh, noooo. Everybody thinks they walk on water around here. Doreen conned them good with all her doting on her mother.”

  Joe watched her for a few seconds, absorbing the transformation from cheerful best buddy to resentful malcontent.

  “Do you know where Doreen lived?” he asked quietly.

  “I was never invited there, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But you did know.”

  “Sure, I knew. She even drew me a map, and always made sure I had her phone number on me. I was supposed to know the address in case I had to drive out there for some reason, like that would ever happen. That’s the kind of thing I was talking about. She actually thought that because she gave me a handout now and then, it bought her special favors. I have a lot of residents to care for here. They run me ragged as it is, without me doing extra service just because Queen Maggie develops a need in the middle of the night.”

  Joe thought back, considering what he might have missed. “You said it sounded strange that Doreen went on her trips alone; actually, you said that it was even stranger now. What did you mean by that?”

  Brenda looked nonplussed. “Well, she was raped, wasn’t she?”

  Joe tried to suppress his surprise. “Did the officer who called you tell you that?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “He was a jerk, if that’s all right to say. You’re one of the nice ones, but most cops are like him. No, one of her neighbors called up right after to check on Maggie. I found out from her. They’re all pretty upset—no surprise.”

  Joe suddenly studied her bland, flat face with new insight, a chilling thought evolving.

  “Brenda,” he asked slowly. “You told that to Maggie, didn’t you? That her daughter had been raped?”

  She became innocence personified. “Well, that’s what happened, isn’t it?”

  He stared at her in silence for a moment, trying to imagine the moment, and the effect it must have had on the old lady.

  “You really ended up hating them,” he murmured.

  Her face closed down. “That would be un-Christian. I have never hated anyone in my whole life.”

  A switch clicked in Joe’s head. He’d had enough of this woman. He could always return, and if he did, he’d be far better informed about all the players in this sadness.

  He got to his feet, just controlling his anger. “Thank you, Brenda. You’ve told me a lot—all of it useful.”

  “I do what I can,” she said. “If people don’t sacrifice a little for each other, what hope is there?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lyn Silva slid into the small house’s entryway quickly, snow from the trees outside dusting the shoulders of her coat. As she stamped her feet and brushed off her arms, a few flakes broke free and shimmered in the light from the lamp beside Joe’s easy chair. The weather had cleared and the forecast was calling for warmer temperatures tomorrow, but for the moment, it was still freezing, leaving all remnants of the freak storm in place.

  “I thought you’d be in bed,” she exclaimed, crossing the living room to give him a kiss. Her lips were cold and the night air clung to her. It was after two in the morning. Lyn owned a bar in Brattleboro and worked several nights a week.

  “I just got in a while ago myself,” he confessed. “We caught a murder in Westminster, up near Saxtons River. Been hard at it all day.”

  She hung her coat on to a row of pegs opposite the door and pulled a face. “And in the middle of a snowstorm, of all days. I’m sorry. Was it bad?”

  “Bad enough,” he said. “We don’t know who did it, which ruins the fun right off. It’s not snowing again, is it?”

  “No, no. It is beautiful, though. I always think I’ll get used to it, like fall foliage, but it sneaks up on me every time.”

  “Well, you’re allowed to be a little surprised this time. Plus, you get a bonus—foliage is still in the trees.”

  “I know,” she beamed. “That, I’d never seen before, even after a lifetime of living up here.”

  She was younger than he, and originally from Gloucester, Massachusetts, where the ocean had a tempering effect on the winter weather. He doubted if even today they had snow in the trees down there. New Englanders could be snotty about their hardships—Vermonters, Mainers, and New Hampshirites were inclined to view southern New England as the Banana Belt.

  She paused at the entrance of the kitchen area. “You want some chamomile?”

  “With a good slug of maple syrup and a lot of that vanilla sweetener?” he countered. “You bet.”

  Lyn made a face and set to work, still visible across the counter separating the two rooms. “I saw your girlfriend on the news tonight,” she said, her back turned. “Couldn’t hear what she was saying over the noise, but she looked like she was getting ready to lead the nation. You think she has ambitions that big?”

  Joe craned his neck to better study the set of her shoulders, but saw nothing obvious. The reference was to Gail Zigman, who had been Joe’s lover for many years, some time ago. She’d been a state senator when they’d broken up, already living part-time in Montpelier, and was now running for governor, head-to-head against the incumbent, James Reynolds. By Vermont standards, which were pretty tame, it had been a bruising campaign, with a grueling primary race between the usual half-dozen disorganized Democrats, and now it seemed Jim Reynolds and the Republicans—unbloodied, fresh, and eager—were ready to hunt for bear.

  “I don’t know,” he answered blandly. “We never discussed it. And she’s my ex-girlfriend.”

  At that, Lyn turned and gave him a big smile. “I know. I’m just busting your chops. Can you talk about the case?”

  He allowed the subject to pass, although he doubted she was as lighthearted as she pretended. He knew she was sensitive to being not only the replacement of a decades-long, erstwhile companion, but one who was currently the most talked about woman in the state.

  “I can, but I don’t have much more than the paper will tomorrow. Fifty-four-year-old woman found murdered in her own home, seemingly a rape/homicide. She lived alone, had no relationships going, and doted on her mother who’s in a retirement home.”

  Lyn leaned on the countertop, having put the kettle on the stove. “That’s horrible. Someone raped her?”

  “Maybe,” he conceded. “That’s the way we’re playing it for the moment. A neighbor called it in and had already begun spreading the word far and wide based on what he saw through the window, which suggested a rape, so there wasn’t much left for us to put a lid on once we got there.”

  He shook his head in wonder. “I suppose I should be grateful that people call 911 at all, instead of just starting with the paper. We’d barely begun when the first repo
rter showed up, and by the time we planted a guard on the house for the night and headed out, there was already a TV truck from Burlington camped out on the lawn.”

  Lyn was looking confused. “So was she raped or not?”

  “Maybe. It looks like it at first glance, but some relevant details are missing. The ME’ll tell us for sure.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Doreen Ferenc. Worked for McNaughton Trucking till recently. Lived on the Back Westminster Road.”

  Lyn snorted and set back to work. “Wherever that is. You woodchucks have the weirdest names for roads around here.”

  “Speaking of woodchucks,” he asked, “how was work tonight?”

  The bar was named Silva’s, in honor of Lyn’s late father, and was the current hot spot on Elliot Street, an honor it had held for over a year by now.

  The kettle began whistling, so she killed the flame and began fixing two mugs of tea, not that there was much of that in Joe’s mug by the end.

  “Same ol’, same ol’,” she reported, entering the living room, handing over his milky-colored, sweetened concoction and sitting down opposite him. “We didn’t have to call on any of Bratt’s finest, which always works for me, and the band did a good job.”

  She took a sip, watching him over the rim of her mug, and then asked, “No idea who did it?”

  He shook his head. “Not a clue. That’s what we’ve been doing most of the day, digging into her background, trying to find something to pin down, or someone. But all we’ve found so far is a completely regular human being who seems to have led a completely regular life—at least for her.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  He tapped the surface of the legal pad he’d been working on when she’d entered. “She made her choices—stuck with one job, seems to have opted for no sex life, dedicated herself to her mother’s care, and spent her leisure time happily cooking, traveling, and taking pictures.”

  “No sex life?” Lyn asked. “That’s unusual. Doesn’t that make the way she died a little ironic?”

  He stared into middle space, having heard that reaction before. “On the surface, unless it actually means something.”

  Lyn didn’t respond. That was one of the qualities Joe liked about her: She knew when to ask questions and when to just let him think. She was a pragmatist generally, having handled her share of turmoil while still just shy of official middle age. Divorced, she had an adult daughter, one marginally functioning brother with a criminal record, and a mother who sat all day watching TV. Another brother and her father had been murdered by smugglers in Maine. Lyn Silva had earned her survivor merit badge.

  For the moment, though, he was considering none of that. “We always tend to emphasize the who-what-where-when-how in these cases. I’m just wondering if ‘why’ isn’t going to be carrying the most weight this time.”

  “Why the rape, or why the killing?”

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Course, I’m probably getting ahead of myself. The one person we haven’t talked to yet is likely to shed some light.” He raised his eyebrows at her. “Chuck McNaughton inherited Doreen when he inherited the business from his father. Certainly Willy’s thinking there might be something interesting there, given that she was personal secretary to both of them.”

  Lyn made a face. She was no more fond of Willy than most people. “What do you want to bet it just proves he’s a smart businessman, keeping the one person who really knows how the company works. You said it was a trucking firm?”

  “Yup,” he said. Lyn had only been in Brattleboro a little over a year, and was still so immersed in creating her own business that she barely knew who was who in town, much less the bigwigs operating just across the river.

  “Why did you hold off on talking with Chuck?” Lyn asked. “He go AWOL?”

  Joe smiled and checked his watch. “He’s most likely in bed. He was out of town, due back tonight. I asked Sam to intercept him at the airport, hoping she’ll get to him before he catches wind, although I doubt we’ll get that lucky. She’ll let us know in a few hours at the office.”

  “You going in early?” Lyn asked, already knowing the answer.

  He smiled at her. “In four hours. You should’ve gone home tonight, instead of coming here.”

  She put her tea down, got up, and came over to give him a long, seductive, chamomile-scented kiss. “Not on your life. I’m here to make sure you go to sleep with pleasant dreams . . .”

  In fact, Charles “Chuck” McNaughton was not in bed. His company’s Falcon jet was taxiing off the Keene, New Hampshire, municipal runway, heading toward their private hangar.

  Where, unbeknownst to him, Sammie Martens, the fourth and last member of Joe’s small Brattleboro team, was waiting for him.

  Standing just inside the hangar’s yawning open door, between the frozen black night and the heated, glaring cavern of metal trusses and walls behind her, she watched the jet roll toward the hangar’s embrace. Unlike in Brattleboro, the falling snow had moved on, leaving behind an inky void overhead.

  She’d spent the afternoon researching Chuck McNaughton, prepping for her interview of him, before discovering that he wasn’t available. He’d been running the company for six years, about half of them with Doreen in the front office. That was a significant detail, given what Sam had heard of Doreen’s prowess and Chuck’s limitations. He was better on the back of a motorcycle, or at the controls of his boat, or his ATV, or his various snow machines, or simply flying around the country. Sometimes, if rarely, he even hung out with his wife and two kids.

  He was not an idiot, she’d been told in discreet conversations, and perhaps even a chip off the old block. But he was untested so far, first overshadowed by his late powerhouse father, and then by Doreen’s complete if carefully muted competence.

  He was also sleeping with Dory’s replacement, according to the scuttlebutt, which had added that the girl had better be good in bed, because she sure wasn’t much at a desk.

  Did that mean that he’d enjoyed such an arrangement with Doreen? Interestingly, Sam’s informant hadn’t rejected the idea outright, but had conceded that if so, discretion had been absolute. Dory had been a good-looking woman, though, Sam had been told. Whatever that meant . . .

  Like a sci-fi movie set designer’s vision, the jet slid into the hangar, shimmering, clean, and muscular. Sam waited for it to coast to a stop, the enormous doors to rumble shut, and finally for the plane’s side door to split away from its skin and metamorphose into a stairway. Only then did she push away from her station and stroll up to where she stood near the bottom step.

  The hangar attendant, to whom she’d introduced herself an hour earlier, eyed her warily.

  “You gonna arrest him?” he’d asked her at the time.

  “Should I?” she’d countered.

  He hadn’t spoken to her since, preferring to sweep the floor until she thought the concrete might start peeling. She’d understood the guy had been here for hours already, waiting for the plane, which had been delayed by the bad weather.

  There was movement at the top of the stairs, and Sam looked up to see a young man in a blazer stick his head out the door and ask the hangar man, “Car ready?”

  “Yeah, but . . .” The man merely pointed at Sam.

  Blazer stared at her. “I help you?”

  She showed him her badge. “Depends.”

  He scowled a moment, muttered, “Shit,” and disappeared back inside.

  A minute later a broad-shouldered, athletic-looking man with the start of a thickening waist and a toothpaste-ad smile stepped onto the top step as if he’d just been summoned onstage.

  “Hey there, officer. I come in too fast?”

  She waited for him to reach her level before she showed the badge again and asked, “Chuck McNaughton?”

  The smile stayed in place. “I sure ain’t the pilot.”

  “Special Agent Samantha Martens—Vermont Bureau of Investigation. I’d like to have a few words with you.
”

  He made a great show of flashing a Rolex wristwatch and announced, “Three A.M. I don’t guess we’re talking parking tickets.”

  “No, sir. Is there somewhere more private?”

  “You can use the office,” the hangar man volunteered, making them both turn toward him.

  McNaughton laughed and raised a single eyebrow at Sam. “I don’t think so. How ’bout back in the plane? I can throw everyone out. This won’t take long, right?”

  “Probably not,” she conceded.

  The plane’s interior was just as she’d expected—both stylish and antiseptic, as if stuck between individual luxury and the practical knowledge that each owner might have to sell out to his successor at a moment’s notice. In that way, she was reminded of a rented limo’s air of nervous impermanence.

  She even noticed that the company logo had been Velcro’d onto the fabric-covered bulkhead between the cabin and the cockpit.

  McNaughton called out toward the front of the aircraft, “Hey, guys? We need a little privacy back here. Could you give us a few minutes?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the response, along with the metallic slap of the door.

  Sam’s host waved her to one of the cabin’s leather chairs. “Sorry I can’t offer you anything. They sort of button everything down after we land.”

  She sat down at the same time he did, opening her coat to the cabin’s lingering heat. “Mr. McNaughton . . .”

  “Chuck,” he said, still smiling. “I insist.”

  “Mr. McNaughton,” she repeated, “we were told you just came in from Oklahoma City, is that right?”

  He did his thing with the one eyebrow again. “Yup. Is there something wrong with that?”

  “We don’t know,” she answered. “What were you doing there?”

  “Attending a trucking convention, which I’m pretty sure you know.”

  “You were alone?”

  He gestured to their surroundings. “You know I wasn’t.” He checked the big watch again and stood back up. “You also seem to think you know some other things you’re not telling me, in real Eliot Ness style. That’s cute, by the way, and I guess it works for you most of the time, but it’s late and I’m tired and I’m not nuts about your attitude . . .”