The Sense of Death: An Ann Kinnear Suspense Novel (The Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels Book 1)

by Matty Dalrymple

  “I tried the Rittenhouse and the Sofitel but they won’t give me any information.”

  “I know one of the concierges at the Rittenhouse, he might tell me.” She took a distracted sip of coffee. “Although if she’s hiding out maybe she doesn’t want to be chased after.” She smiled slightly. “Or maybe she does. Who can tell with Elizabeth.”

  “I think I’ll go down to the shore house, I feel like taking a drive.”

  “Well, it can’t hurt—let me know. When you see her, remind her we were supposed to have brunch with her grandmother this morning,” she said with mock severity. “That on its own might have been enough to make her leave the state.”

  Biden produced an unconvincing smile.

  “Don’t let me keep you from your breakfast.” Amelia turned to go but when she left the library rather than turning right toward the front door she turned left toward the back of the house. Biden, alarmed, followed her, reaching the hall in time to see her disappear into the kitchen and, after muffled goodbyes to Joan and Esme, reappear in the back hall and head for the door to the garage. He caught up with her as she was descending the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, more abruptly than he intended.

  Amelia turned, surprised. “I parked in back.”

  “Oh. Sure.” He stood at the top of the stairs with his hands in his pockets. Normal.

  Amelia continued down the stairs, skirted the Mercedes on her way to the back door, then stopped and peered in the window of Elizabeth’s Porsche. “She was supposed to get a present for her grandmother—I don’t suppose she left it in her car.” She opened the passenger door and looked in the back seat, then circled to the driver’s side and, popping open the trunk, checked there as well. “No. No granddaughter, no present.” She sighed. “It’s going to be a long brunch.”

  She glanced toward the Mercedes and Biden bit the inside of his cheek, tasting the iron tang of blood.

  “Let me know when you hear from her,” Amelia said with a small wave, and she slipped out the back door.

  Biden heard her car, parked just outside the garage doors, start up, and saw her drive down the alley. He crossed the garage and locked the door behind her. He returned to the library where his coffee was cooling and his juice was warming on the desk—his stomach churned, he couldn’t even think of eating now. Leaving the tray on the desk, he got a navy pea jacket and leather gloves from the coat closet, picked up the overnight bag, then went to the kitchen where Esme was feeding Sophia and Joan was polishing a glass with a dish towel.

  “I haven’t heard from Mrs. Firth—I’m going to drive out to the shore house and see if she’s there. I might end up staying there tonight. Can one of you stay if I’m not back?”

  “Yes sir, that’s no problem,” Joan replied.

  “If she calls, let me know right away.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Biden went down the steps from the back hall to the garage and, steeling himself, opened the trunk. He made a point not to look at her face. A stray ray of light from the small windows in the garage doors glinted off her engagement ring which looked garish against the lifeless gray of her hand where it rested on her stomach. He wished he had covered her body. He grabbed her purse, stuffed it into the gym bag, slammed the trunk closed, and almost screamed when he saw Joan standing at the top of the garage stairs.

  She held something out. “Mrs. Firth left her cell phone, do you want to take it with you?”

  “Yes.” He came to the stairs and took the phone from her. She turned back to the kitchen and closed the door as he climbed in the car and hit the automatic door opener.

  Biden drove across the Schuylkill River to one of the churches near the University of Pennsylvania campus and found a parking space among the church goers. With his gloves still on he opened the gym bag and his wife’s purse and took out her wallet. He removed the cash—nearly $500—and put it in the glove compartment. He wiped the handle of the purse with the t-shirt and, replacing the purse in the gym bag, got out of the car and began walking west.

  As he walked, the surroundings deteriorated until, after about a dozen blocks, he was in a neighborhood he would never go into at night and, in fact, felt uncomfortable in in broad daylight. The streets were nearly deserted and the few people he passed appeared drunk or perhaps exhausted after a graveyard shift.

  He glanced into the garbage-strewn alleys he passed until he saw what he was looking for. He turned in between a closed pawn shop and a boarded up row house and, lifting the lid of the dumpster, pulled the purse out of the gym bag, dropped it in, and quietly closed the lid. His heart thumping, he stepped out of the alley and glanced around—no one in sight. Trying not to hurry he continued in the same direction he had been walking, turned at the next street, and then returned to his car one block over from his original route. Better not to risk being seen passing twice by someone looking out of their grimy front windows.

  When he got back to the car he made his way to I-95 and headed south, exiting when he saw signs for the wildlife refuge at Tinicum, near the Philadelphia International Airport.

  Even in February there were a few cars in the parking lot near the visitors’ center—what idiot goes bird watching on a freezing February morning?—so he began skirting the borders of the refuge, relieved to see that it was not enclosed by a fence. In many places there were tightly packed, rather worn-looking houses directly across the street from the refuge but in others the border of the refuge wandered away from the houses and here he found a few places where construction on streets had begun but then been abandoned, the weed-infested stretches of pavement blocked by concrete barriers.

  Next he negotiated the streets around the sports complex and crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge, heading toward Long Beach Island through the Pine Barrens. Traffic was light but the road was by no means deserted and the pine woods on either side of the road were less dense than he had remembered—a body lying on the ground away from the road wouldn’t be easy to spot but a person carrying a body would be visible from the road for dozens of yards. Even at night, who knew what passing headlights might be able to pick up? Tinicum was still looking like the best option.

  Near Long Beach Island, he stopped at a mom-and-pop sporting goods store he had once visited when he was looking for snorkeling gear. A bell jingled and a painfully thin teenager looked up from the magazine he was reading spread out on the checkout counter.

  “Help you?”

  “No.” Biden turned his head away from the boy. “Thanks.”

  The store was small in comparison to the giant sports stores of suburban shopping centers. Biden found a pair of waders but had almost given up on the other item on his mental shopping list and was loath to ask the clerk, wanting to have as little interaction with him as possible, when he spotted it—a sleeping bag in a dark green carrying sack enclosed in dusty plastic.

  He brought the items to the checkout counter where the clerk—Bud, according to his plastic name tag—flipped his magazine closed. Based on the cover, surfing was Bud’s sport.

  “Find everything?”

  “Yes.”

  Bud punched the price of the waders into an old-fashioned register and turned the dusty sleeping bag over in his hands.

  “Know how much this was?”

  Biden named a figure he thought sounded reasonable; it must have sounded reasonable to Bud as well because he punched it into the register and gave Biden the total. Biden peeled bills off the roll of money he had removed from Elizabeth’s purse.

  “Cash?” said Bud, mildly surprised. He gave Biden his change. “Bag for that?”

  “Yes.”

  Bud packed the waders and the sleeping bag into the largest plastic bag he could find. “Receipt in the bag?”

  “I’ll take it,” said Biden. Bud handed over the bag and the receipt.

  “Nice day,” said Bud, returning to his magazine. Biden dropped the receipt in a trash can on the way out.

  Back in the car he crossed
the East Bay Avenue bridge over Manahawkin Bay, the only way onto the long narrow strip of land that was Long Beach Island. Long Beach Boulevard was practically deserted, with only a few restaurants open, catering to the local after-church lunch crowd. Elizabeth’s cell phone vibrated periodically on the seat beside him and he glanced at it disinterestedly, recognizing most of the names that appeared on the caller ID as friends of Elizabeth’s and, once, her mother.

  He arrived at his in-laws’ shore house around 1:30. It was a large, airy house on the bay, with the ocean, on the other side of Long Beach Island, just a few blocks away. In back was the dock where Bob Dormand kept his boat in the summer; in the winter it would be in storage. The house itself looked as if it were in storage, its storm shutters closed and the gravel yard speckled with leaves.

  Biden used a keypad to open the garage door, pulled the car in, and closed the door behind him. He got the shopping bag from the sporting goods store out of the back seat and pulled the tags off his purchases, using the bag to collect the trash. He had to keep everything together—no good leaving a scrap of paper behind that could tie him to the evidence, should it ever be found. He removed the sleeping bag from its nylon carrying sack, unzipped it, and spread it open on the floor.

  Pulling on the leather gloves, he steeled himself and opened the trunk. Averting his eyes as much as possible, he slipped his hands under her shoulders and knees and tried to lift her out. It was like trying to move a piece of furniture. The side of her head cracked against the lip of the trunk and her feet were jammed against the other side of the trunk, making it impossible to maneuver the body.

  After struggling for a few moments he stepped back, breathing hard. In the light of the garage he noticed a small stain at the crotch of her pants where her bladder had released; based on the smell emanating from the trunk he suspected she had also defecated—Jesus, wasn’t this bad enough without that? He hoped the towel under her had protected the trunk.

  Fighting nausea, Biden hooked his arm under the knees and pushed down as hard as he could on the feet. The muscles and tendons gave way with a creaking sound like old, long unused machinery being forced into operation. Finally he was able to extract the body from the trunk and he laid it out on the open sleeping bag.

  Keeping his eyes off her face, he unfastened the diamond necklace and the watch and after a little work was able to remove her engagement ring and wedding ring as well. He put the jewelry into one of the socks from the gym bag and then rolled two socks together so the lumps of the jewelry were not visible.

  He had planned to put her coat on her but her arms—one at her side and one across her stomach—were as stiff as her legs had been and the thought of repeating the brute force operation on her arms tightened the knot in his stomach. Instead, he laid the coat over her body, giving her the look of a hit and run victim. He zipped the sleeping bag shut, using the cords from the sleeping bag’s carrying sack to tie the top of the bag closed. Then he lifted the body back into the trunk—maneuvering her back in was easier now that the rigor in her legs had been broken. He put the shopping bag containing the trash in the front seat of the car and scanned the garage to make sure he had not left anything behind.

  Returning to the living room, he opened the contact list on Elizabeth’s cell phone and dialed the number for Lydia Levere, Elizabeth’s best friend from college.

  “Hey there,” said Lydia cheerfully. There were echo-y sounds in the background, as if she were standing near an indoor swimming pool.

  “Lydia, it’s Biden Firth, Elizabeth’s husband.”

  “Oh. Uh, hello, Biden, how are you doing?”

  “Fine. Listen, I’m sorry to disturb you but Elizabeth and I had an argument last night and she stormed out of the house and I haven’t heard from her since and I was wondering if you had heard from her.”

  “No, I haven’t. Have you tried calling her cell phone? Oh, wait, I guess you have her cell phone since her name showed up on my caller ID. Does she have her purse?”

  “Yes, the purse but not the car keys.”

  “Hmm.” There was silence for a few moments. “Maybe she went to a hotel.”

  Biden sighed. “I tried checking a couple I thought she might go to but they won’t give out information about who’s staying there.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help, Biden. Do you think she’s all right?”

  “I don’t have any reason to think she’s not all right but I’d feel better if I knew for sure.”

  “Of course. Well, I’ll certainly let you know if I hear from her. Or at least encourage her to give you a call.”

  “Thanks. Listen, can you think of anyone else she might get in touch with?”

  Lydia gave him a few names and numbers and he had several almost identical calls with those people. Then he turned off the lights in the shore house, locked it up, and drove to a local bar where he had a beer and a burger. On his way back to Philadelphia, he dropped the sporting goods store shopping bag into a trash can at a gas station.

  By the time he got back to Tinicum it was dark and he had a few moments of panic when he couldn’t find the concrete barrier-blocked streets he had seen before. Eventually he got back to the wildlife refuge visitors’ center and was able to get oriented. With the lights glowing behind the windows, the houses looked closer to the blocked streets than they had before but he wasn’t in a position to second-guess his plan now; the bitterly cold evening, he hoped, would be enough to keep the locals indoors.

  Getting out of the car, he tossed his coat into the back seat, pulled on his gloves, and, glancing around, popped open the trunk. He pulled on the waders then hoisted the sleeping bag over his shoulder. Rigor mortis was beginning to relax its hold but there was still an unnatural angularity to the body. Moving as quickly as the weight of the body and the bulky waders would allow, he walked down the garbage strewn pavement beyond the concrete barriers and, when the pavement ran out, began making his way through the bushes and undergrowth. Branches snagged the sleeping bag and the waders made it difficult for him to keep his balance but they would, he hoped, keep incriminating evidence off his clothes.

  A gibbous moon cast a dim silver glow. Soon his eyes adjusted and he was able to pick out his path more easily. The garbage that had littered the pavement near the road lessened, and for a moment he could imagine—despite the hum of traffic on I-95—that it would be a peaceful resting place but then he heard a scuttling nearby and could just pick out in the moonlight a large gray rat hunched over the mutilated body of what he guessed had once been a cat. He felt his gorge rise but he couldn’t afford to vomit—that would be evidence that would be difficult to explain away should Elizabeth’s body be found—so he swallowed down his bile and turned back to his task.

  After about a hundred yards his breath was burning in his throat and he knew he couldn’t carry the bag much further. He found a shallow depression sunk into the ground in the middle of three close-growing trees and dumped the bag into it, wincing at the thump the body made when it hit the ground. He covered it loosely with a couple of branches and made his way back to his car.

  He had popped open the trunk and begun pulling off the waders when he heard footsteps and, turning, saw a man striding swiftly toward him carrying what looked like a baseball bat, a smallish dog at his side.

  “You go somewhere else to buy your drugs, you hear?” the man shouted, slapping the bat against his palm. “There ain’t no drugs here for you!”

  Biden slammed the trunk shut and staggered awkwardly around to the driver’s door, his right leg still in the waders. He started the car and peeled out, the left leg of the waders dragging on the ground from the open car door. He heard the sound of the barking dog drawing closer but then heard a whistle and the barking receded. When he looked in the rear view mirror, the man was walking away, the baseball bat hanging at his side, the dog following.

  A few blocks away, Biden pulled over, got the waders off, and tossed them into some tall marsh grass by the side of the r
oad. His hands were shaking and his breath was coming in short gasps. He pulled back onto the road, trying to drive extra carefully, but he almost ran a stop sign as he headed away from Tinicum Marsh.

  On his way home he stopped at a self-service car wash and, after circling the building and checking as best he could in the dark for video cameras (he didn’t see any), he sprayed down the car and vacuumed out the trunk. He used the bath sheet from the trunk to dry off the car and then threw it in the car wash’s dumpster.

  When he got home he found Esme reading a book in Sophia’s room while Sophia slept; Joan had left for the day but, Esme reported, could come back tonight if needed.

  “Yes, have her come back,” said Biden. “Please.”

  Biden went back to the garage, getting a small Ziploc bag from the kitchen on his way. Listening for anyone approaching, he removed the sock from the gym bag, unrolled it, and emptied his wife’s jewelry into his hand.

  The necklace was a large, rectangular diamond he had given her on their fifth anniversary. The watch was a Concord, a row of small diamonds lining each side of the face, a circle of tiny diamonds inlaid in the face itself. It had been his present to her at Christmas, less than two months ago. The wedding ring was a plain but substantial platinum band. But the piece that would have caught any jeweler’s eye was the engagement ring.

  *****

  Elizabeth, fresh out of Wharton, was working for Morgan Firth when Biden met her at a charity event that his father’s company was sponsoring. His date for the dance was an on-again, off-again girlfriend from college whose name escaped him. Biden entered the ballroom tugging irritably on the cuffs of his shirt and saw Elizabeth standing with Morgan and a group of other employees, all men, and his mother, who looked bored but placid. Elizabeth’s dark hair shone, caught up in some sparkly clip, her shimmery green dress bringing to mind a mermaid. Biden was mesmerized.

  Elizabeth was telling a story and his father stood next to her holding a scotch and smiling—no, beaming—down at her. The thought flashed into Biden’s mind that his father was having an affair with this woman—a thought that made him queasy less because of the idea of his father being unfaithful to his mother but rather because he couldn’t stomach the idea of his father being intimate with this particular woman. But as the evening wore on, it seemed clear to Biden that his father was being attentive to Elizabeth not as if he were her lover but as if he were her proud parent. It was a look Biden had never experienced himself.