The Sour Cherry Surprise

by David Handler

  “All day long I’ve been wanting to hold you in my arms,” he purred at her.

  She melted into him, her head nestled on his shoulder as they slow-danced right there in the kitchen, pausing now and again to sip their champagne and get lost in each other’s eyes. Just like it was when they first met. When she couldn’t believe this one in a million man noticed her, liked her, wanted her. Couldn’t believe how gentle he could be. How lucky she was.

  “God, you smell good.” He ran his big hands up and down her bare back. “And you are smooth all over.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said, raising her mouth to his. “Just so you know, there’s steak.”

  “How can you think about food at a time like this?”

  “Why, are you thinking about something else?”

  “Girl, you are naughty. Know what happens to naughty girls, don’t you?”

  “Haven’t the slightest idea.” She put a finger to his lips before he could say another word. “Don’t tell me. Show me.”

  For starters, that dress came right off over her head. And now Brandon’s tongue was on her breasts. And now, oh, God, it was slip-sliding its way downtown. He fell to his knees, the better to devour her. She threw one leg over his shoulder and let out a groan, her breathing growing deeper and deeper … until he picked her up and carried her off to their bedroom.

  It was long past dark out, nearly ten, by the time she stirred and got up, searching for something to throw on.

  “Where are you going?” he asked her sleepily, sprawled there in bed.

  “To start dinner.”

  “Now that you mention it, I’m starved,” he admitted. “Only, wait, there’s something else I wanted to say to you. Let’s disappear from this place for a couple of days. Jump in the car tomorrow morning and head for the Cape. Find ourselves a little inn near a beach somewhere. What do you say?”

  She flashed her wraparound smile at him. “I say, what time do we leave?”

  That was when her phone rang. It was the 911 dispatcher. A call had come in from the Sullivan residence on Sour Cherry Lane. Amber Sullivan phoning to report she’d just heard some sort of a fight out in the lane. Followed by the sound of a man screaming.

  There were plenty of lights on at Kimberly and Jen’s, as well as across the lane at the Procters. But the lane appeared to be deserted as Des eased past their cottages. Until little Molly suddenly loomed before her there in the road—standing out in front of the Sullivan cottage with her eyeglasses shining in the headlights.

  Des rolled down her window and called out, “Girl, what are you doing out here at this time of night?”

  “I heard something,” Molly answered in a quavering voice. “Somebody’s hurt.”

  Des nosed her cruiser up to the pile of cedar mulch in Amber and Keith’s driveway and got out, flashlight in hand. The night air was very heavy and still. It smelled of a skunk that had been marking its territory. With her light, Des looked the girl over carefully as Molly stood there in her UConn jersey, baggy shorts and floppy socks. She seemed frightened but unharmed. “Were you up in your tree house for the night?”

  Molly nodded her head, swallowing.

  “Did you see anything?”

  She shook her head gravely.

  “Well, what did you hear?”

  “Voices. Men’s voices. They came from out there somewhere.” Molly pointed past the Sullivan place toward the utter darkness at the end of the lane.

  Des shined her light out there. Saw nothing other than wild, overgrown brush crowding both sides of the pavement. The road dead-ended at Jersey safety barriers after a hundred feet or so. Beyond the barriers was the bank of the Connecticut River.

  “How many men did you hear?”

  “Two, I think.”

  “And you’re sure they were both men?”

  “W-What do you mean?”

  “Could one of them have been a woman?’

  “I don’t know. Maybe. One of them … he screamed.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I don’t know. I listened real hard, but I didn’t hear anything else.”

  “And you’re sure you didn’t see anyone?”

  Molly gazed up at her, mystified. “Like who?”

  “Someone running away from here. Or driving away. Did anyone pass by your place after you heard the scream?”

  “I didn’t see anybody. But I-I was …” She faltered, lowering her gaze.

  “You were what?” Des asked, hearing footsteps now. Amber and Keith were approaching them.

  “Scared to come down.” Molly let out a sob. “I hid in my tree house until I saw you coming.”

  Meaning she may not have seen someone fleeing in her direction. Des knelt and hugged the frightened girl, her thoughts on Grisky’s team in the woods. What had they seen and heard? And where in the hell were they? “You did the right thing, Molly. You were smart to be afraid. But you don’t have to be afraid now, okay?”

  Actually, Amber looked plenty scared herself. Those big brown eyes of hers were huge and shining. “Des, I really, really hope I didn’t get you out here on a wild goose chase,” she said in a frantic voice.

  Beefy, blond Keith trailed along a few steps behind her clutching a bottle of Sam Adams. He wore a T-shirt, shorts and a pissed off expression. A vibe of tension was coming off of the two lovebirds.

  The source of which tumbled straight out of Keith’s mouth: “I am totally sorry about this, Des,” he growled. “I told her not to waste your time.”

  “Stop being such a know-it-all,” fired back Amber, all ninety pounds of her in a halter top and linen drawstring trousers. “I am a sentient adult being. I know what I heard.”

  “What you ‘heard’ was a couple of raccoons,” Keith argued. “I’ve heard ‘em fighting in the night a million times—and you’d swear it was a person being gutted with a grapefruit knife.”

  “It wasn’t raccoons,” Molly said in a low, insistent voice.

  “You see?” Amber huffed at him. “Molly heard them, too.”

  Keith shook his head disgustedly. “Fine, whatever.”

  “I heard them when I was taking out the trash.” Amber gazed toward the end of the lane same as Molly had. “They were down there somewhere.”

  “And how about you?” Des asked Keith.

  “I was watching the Red Sox game in the living room,” he replied, swigging from his beer. “Didn’t hear a thing.”

  “How are our boys doing tonight?”

  He made a face. “Toronto’s killing us.”

  “That figures.” Des looked over in the direction of the Procter and Beckwith houses, guessing that no one in either place had heard anything. If they had, they’d be out here in the street telling her about it by now. “I’m going to ask you folks to please follow me, okay?”

  She strode back to her ride with the three of them and left them standing there in the driveway. Backed out into the road and pointed the cruiser so that its high beams lit up the end of the lane right down to the Jersey barriers. Then she got out and slowly checked out the wild brush growing alongside of the pavement, left hand gripping her flashlight, right hand resting lightly on the holster of her Sig. She trained the light on the tangled profusion of sour cherry trees, blackberry bushes, forsythia and lilac. She saw no broken branches. No signs of trampling. The brush did not appear to be disturbed on either side of the lane.

  Until, that is, she got to within twenty feet of the barriers. Here, the lane began to dip downward as it neared the shallows of the river, the wild brush giving way to boggy salt marsh where Spartina grass and phragmites grew.

  Here, the marsh grasses were newly trampled. There were mucky shoe prints on the pavement. And there was more.

  There was blood. There was a lot of blood. And droplets leading down toward the water.

  Stepping carefully around them, Des approached the riverbank and waved her light out into the water. She wondered if someone had pitched a body out there—figuring it would float
out to sea on the current.

  She did not have to wonder for long. She spotted the floater maybe fifty feet downriver where a dead tree had washed up in the mud. One of its branches had snagged him as he’d drifted past. Or at least it looked like a he from where she stood. The body lay facedown in the water, bobbing up and down in the gentle current of the river. Des didn’t want to disturb the crime scene. But she also didn’t want the body to break free and drift out into Long Island Sound. So she went down there and fetched it, keeping a watchful eye out for shoeprints or any other disturbances in the mud as she tiptoed her way along the water’s edge.

  It was a man, all right. Dressed in a light blue shirt, khaki trousers and hiking shoes. Gently, she untangled him from the branches that held him there. Then she pulled him ashore and flopped him over, her abdominal muscles clenching as the pang of recognition hit.

  It was Richard Procter. Someone had cut his throat from ear to ear.

  It took the uniformed troopers less than ten minutes to get there from the Troop F barracks. They immediately set up a vehicular cordon all of the way back up Turkey Neck at Old Shore Road. And another cordon around the perimeter of the crime scene itself, which included all of Sour Cherry Lane, the riverfront and, at Des’s suggestion, the woods between Sour Cherry and the Peck’s Point Nature Preserve.

  Soon after that, the Major Crime Squad crime scene technicians rolled up in their blue and white cube vans along with a death investigator from the Medical Examiner’s office.

  By now it was nearly midnight. The residents of Sour Cherry were huddled together out in the lane like the survivors of an apartment house fire. By now Des had expected to see or hear from Grisky. But she’d had no contact from him or Cavanaugh or anyone else associated with Operaton Burrito King. She didn’t know what to make of that beyond the fact that they seemed content to let the normal investigative process unfold. So she went ahead and did her normal thing, which was to conduct preliminary interviews of the neighbors.

  Kimberly and Jen Beckwith were standing out there with Molly. Kimberly was sobbing and moaning, utterly blown away. Her frizzy red hair was wet and uncombed—she’d been in the shower when Jen answered Des’s knock on their door. When Kimberly heard what had happened to Richard she threw on a purple caftan and came running, a damp towel still wrapped around her neck. Neither she nor Jen had heard the screams. Nor had they seen anyone fleeing the scene.

  Jen seemed quite shaken herself, but unlike her mother was trying to keep her emotions in check for Molly, whose own mother was nowhere to be seen.

  Molly had a surprisingly serene look on her freckled face as she stood there holding Jen’s hand. It was almost freakish how composed the girl was.

  She was certainly holding up better than Amber and Keith, both of whom had turned goggle-eyed with shock and disbelief when Des told them what she’d discovered.

  Patricia Beckwith stood slightly apart from the others, her posture erect, facial expression stony. Whatever emotions she was experiencing were private. Not to be displayed in front of others. “Richard and I ate a good dinner together,” she told Des in a firm, measured voice. “Scallops, rice and string beans. He had a fine appetite. He seemed very positive and upbeat. After we’d had our coffee he said he felt like taking a walk. I asked him if he would like some company. He said he’d be fine on his own, and went striding out the door shortly after nine.”

  “Mrs. Beckwith, did he happen to speak to anyone on the phone before he left?”

  “Not that I am aware of,” Patricia responded, pursing her thin, dry lips. “I shouldn’t have let him go by himself, I suppose.”

  “He wasn’t your prisoner,” Des told her. “He was free to come and go as he pleased. So don’t blame yourself for this, ma’am. Whatever this is.”

  Actually, Des thought she had a pretty fair idea what it was as she gazed over at Clay and Hector. The two of them were seated on the front porch of the Procter house drinking Coors and acting completely innocent. They’d been playing Texas Hold ‘Em at the kitchen table all evening, or so they claimed. Neither of them had heard a thing, or so they claimed. No screams in the night. No footsteps. No cars leaving the lane. Nothing but good ol’ country quiet.

  Neither man had a scratch on him. No indication that he’d been involved in anything remotely physical that evening.

  As for Carolyn, she’d been sacked out in the bedroom since nine o’clock, according to Clay. “The poor woman still can’t chase that virus,” was how he put it to Des. “You want me to get her up?”

  “No, let her sleep for now,” Des replied, detesting the man. He and Richard had already fought once over Carolyn. Tonight, they’d fought again. There was no doubt in her mind about it.

  What a mess. What a great big steaming turd of a mess this ruthless drug trafficker had made in her nice little New England town.

  The homicide investigators from the Major Crime Squad were the last to get there from Central district headquarters in Meriden. They sent a two-person team that Des happened to know real well—Lt. Rico “Soave” Tedone and his half-Cuban, half-black sergeant, Yolie Snipes. Soave had been Des’s stumpy, bulked-up young pup of sergeant back in her glory days when she was still the state police’s great nonwhite hope. And Yolie, a brash hard-charger out of Hartford’s burned out Frog Hollow section, was someone who Des had very high hopes for. Yolie had a Latina’s liquid brown eyes. Lips, nose and an hour-and-a-half glass figure that said sister all of the way. The boys all called her Boom Boom because of what went on inside of her sweater. She wore a sleeveless one tonight, tattoos adorning both biceps. In her chunky boots she towered over Soave, who was still trying to win cool points with that goatee and shaved head look of his.

  “Hey, Miss Thing,” Yolie exclaimed, showing Des her smile.

  “Back at you, girl.”

  “Haven’t seen you since you and your ex got back together. How is that?”

  “All good.”

  “And it shows. You look fantastic.”

  “Thanks. You’re the first person who’s told me that in … ever.”

  “Yo, dumping that fat doofus Berger was the smartest move you ever made,” Soave declared with great assurance. “The two of you had zero future as a couple.”

  “Thank you, Rico,” said Des, who was certainly ready to change the subject at any time.

  “What have you got for us?” he asked.

  “One dead Wesleyan history professor named Richard Procter. Our victim was the estranged husband of Carolyn Procter, who lives in that scenic farmhouse on your left. She recently took up with another man, Clay Mundy. He’s the one sitting on the porch in the white T-shirt.”

  “Who’s the other gee?”

  “Hector Villanueva. Works for him. Are you ready to look at the victim?”

  “On it,” barked Yolie, who immediately went charging down toward the crime scene personnel gathered on the riverbank. She was more comfortable around techies than Soave, who tended to get edgy and snappish with them. Partly because he wanted quicker answers than they were able to give him. Mostly because he got insecure around people who he feared were smarter than he was. When it came to self-esteem Des’s little man was still very much a work in progress.

  She could see the flashbulbs go off down there as they photographed Richard’s body. Not so long ago, she would have wanted a set of those photos. Wanted, needed to draw Richard. Richard with his carotid artery severed—the deep, puckering knife gash washed clean by the river. Richard with his eyes wide open and that look of complete surprise on his ghostly bluish face. Her fingers would have itched at the prospect. Tonight, she felt no such itch. Only the knots in her stomach.

  She filled Soave in on how Richard and Clay had scuffled in the driveway a few nights back. How she’d found him in out on Big Sister in a despondent state. How he’d been hospitalized, then had moved in that very afternoon with Patricia Beckwith.

  Which was when he stopped her. “Wait, who’s Patricia Beckwith?”


  “The elderly mother-in-law of Kimberly Beckwith.”

  “And she is …?”

  “That redhead over there in the caftan. Kimberly lives across the lane from the Procters with her daughter, Jen. Patricia was very fond of the victim. Happy to take him in for a few days until he got back his act together.”

  Soave mulled this over, nodding his gleaming dome. “Who called it in?”

  “A neighbor named Amber Sullivan. She lives in the house that’s nearest to the crime scene. Amber’s a grad student at Yale. The victim happened to be her mentor, for whatever that’s worth. She told me she heard a scream. Her husband Keith didn’t. But Molly Procter did. She’s the victim’s nine-year-old daughter. Molly was up in her tree house at the time. Neither she nor Amber witnessed anyone fleeing the scene. Nor did anyone else I’ve spoken with. Translation: Whoever did this to Richard is still right here among us. Or took off through the woods. Or swam, though I highly doubt that. The current is treacherous down here at the mouth of the river.”

  “How about a little boat?”

  “That’s possible,” Des allowed. “Though it suggests there was some degree of premeditation. To me this doesn’t play out as any kind of planned thing.”

  “Fair enough. Anything else?”

  Des shoved her heavy horn-rimmed glasses up her nose and said, “Couple of things. I still haven’t spoken to Carolyn.”

  “She’s next of kin. Why haven’t you?” Soave started his way down toward the crime scene now.

  Des walked with him. “Clay Mundy claims she’s asleep in bed. He told me she has a quote-unquote virus. But when I visited yesterday I got the distinct impression she’s way into crystal meth. Not to mention both Clay and Hector.”

  Soave let out a short laugh. “Nice, tight little bunch you got here.”

  “Welcome back to Dorset, Rico.”

  “I love this place, Des. Really, I do. Every time I think the real world’s spinning out of control I come to this safe, sane little haven of yours and discover that things are even more whacked than I thought.”

  “Well, then you’d better prepare yourself, wow man. Because when it comes to whacked out I am just getting rolling.”