by R J Fournier
“Come on. You enjoyed it.”
Delyth knew he was begging to have his male ego stroked. He deserved the truth. “Yeah, but it makes the walk of shame even more humiliating.”
“That’s your religious background talking.”
She had no comeback.
◆◆◆
Freddie had been more than willing to talk to Vickie when she interviewed him right after the murder. A week later, Delyth discovered he and his wife were just as eager to talk to her.
The three of them were sitting in a neat, modern kitchen. Freddie bragged that their son had built the house for them. “When I retired from the county. Twenty-five years and out. June here still works for the local library.”
Delyth had claimed a busy schedule when he asked if she wanted a tour. She did accept the coffee June offered although she’d already had too much caffeine. Rather than jittery, it made her feel vaguely removed from herself.
“I can’t say much more than I told the first reporter,” Freddie answered in response to Delyth’s first question.
“You said you didn’t know her very well, despite living next door to each other for thirty-five years?”
“Well, I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression, with the cops nosing around and all, but to be honest, we didn’t always see eye to eye.”
“No need to speak ill of the dead,” June told him.
“She was a bitch about the trees.” Turning to Delyth he added, “Excuse my French.”
“Trees?” Delyth asked in her most naïve voice.
“One of our eucies fell on her property,” June explained, “and took out two of her apple trees. She wanted us to pay.”
“Act of God,” Freddie interjected. “Happened during a storm.”
“But she said the tree was diseased and we should have removed it before it fell. We offered to split the cost of someone coming out to take care of it. She wouldn’t have it. Threatened to take us to court.”
“Did she?” Delyth asked.
“Nope,” Freddie answered. “Damn tree is still there, rotting away.”
“We really hadn’t spoken since,” June said. “She wasn’t the same after her husband died. She didn’t trust anyone and became more and more reclusive. I worried about her, poor thing. But a fallen tree stood in the way of my doing anything.”
It didn’t seem the Olsens would have much more to share about Cécile DuQuenne, so Delyth turned to a new topic. “How about Mykolas Vitkus?” she asked. “You told the police you saw him arguing with Mrs. DuQuenne?”
“The very day she got killed.” Freddie answered. “I saw them having at it in her driveway.”
“Do you know what it was about?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“I got the impression it was about his stealing her persimmons,” Delyth suggested with a lift in her voice implying it was still in question.
“I don’t know about that,” June said. “The police asked Freddie if Mike stole the money from the persimmon stand. We told them it was possible, but we really didn’t know.”
“It could have been,” Freddie said. “You’ve got to admit he came back from Iraq missing a few screws. Doesn’t work. Has some kind of disability from the Army. All he does is bike into town every day with his little dog in his backpack. Reminds me of Dorothy riding with Toto in the basket.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
“No,” Freddie said. “Nobody talks about it. Probably PST or whatever it’s called.”
“PTSD, dear,” June said. “I heard there was brain damage.”
“An IUD,” Freddie interposed.
“IED,” June clarified. “Either way he came back damaged goods. For a while there he was drinking a lot. Totaled his mother’s car into a tree. And he’d fly off the handle. He’d be fine then something would set him off and, poof, Mr. Hyde would be standing in front of you. Ranting in front of you was more like it.”
“Was he ever violent?”
“Not that I know of. He just has these ideas and he insists everyone around him has to hear about them.”
“What kind of ideas?” Delyth asked.
“I don’t know. Some kind of religious thing.”
“His mother finally kicked him out, you know,” Freddie said. “Wasn’t safe to live with him.”
“Really? Was he violent to her?”
“Oh dear, no,” June said. “I suspect she couldn’t handle him lecturing at her all the time. Marija and I aren’t that close. She’s quite proper, you see. She wouldn’t say anything in any case.”
An overweight golden retriever waddled into the room, and pushed its head against Freddie’s knees.
“Here’s my Daisy,” Freddie said digging his fingers into the dog’s thick mane.
Delyth didn’t understand people and their dogs. She liked pets well enough, but she had no desire to live with one.
She returned her attention to June. “What was Mike like before he went into the military?”
June shook her head slightly. “I really can’t say. Like I said, we haven’t been close to Marija or her son for a while.”
Delyth suspected June knew more about Mike Vitkus than she was willing to share. People in small towns were supposed to know everything about everyone and talk about it incessantly. Perhaps Sullyton wasn’t small enough. “Do you know anyone else I could talk to? Someone who might know Mike Vitkus better?”
“His mother, of course,” June said.
“And the ex-girlfriend,” Freddie added, still mauling the blissed-out dog.
“Freddie, you’re getting her all excited. She’s going to pee.”
“Girlfriend?” Delyth directed her question to June.
“More than that. They were engaged. Even lived together for a while when he first got out of the army. You should talk to her. Samantha Gawley. But everyone calls her Sam. Sam Gawley.”
“Do you know how I can contact her?”
“She’s a cop,” Freddie put in. “Works for the town.”
◆◆◆
Sam Gawley lived in a bungalow at the edge of town. A tricycle in the front yard attested to at least one young child, but when Sam answered the door no toddlers clung to her legs. Delyth saw a tall, trim woman hiding under leggings and a baggy sweatshirt. Her hair, blond and close-cropped, was military in its severity.
Delyth preferred putting people at ease with a friendly sentence or two before springing on them that she was a reporter. After one look at Sam Gawley, though, she decided to come right out with who she was and why she was there.
“I really can’t tell you much,” Sam said. “I don’t even know why you’re asking me. It was in an unincorporated area so the sheriff’s in charge. All I know is what gets reported in the paper.”
“I was hoping we could talk about Mike Vitkus.”
“Mike? Why?”
“He was seen arguing with the victim on the day she was killed.”
Sam looked puzzled and concerned. It took her a minute to say, “You should come inside.”
The living room was small, the furniture fairly new but inexpensive. Toys littered the floor.
“Sorry for the mess,” Sam said. “The kids are with their father. I’ve been taking the day to chill.” She motioned to the sofa. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Water. Water would be good.”
“You sure?”
Delyth followed her into the kitchen, a place more conducive to confidences.
Once they were seated at the table, Sam asked, “What’s this about Mike?”
Delyth explained about his stealing persimmons and the witness to their arguing.
“And they think he killed the old woman over that?”
Delyth didn’t answer, letting Sam draw her own conclusion.
“That’s ridiculous,” Sam said. “He’s a vegetarian because he can’t kill animals. Can’t kill them himself, doesn’t want to be responsible for someone else doing it. How can a man who
can’t shoot a squirrel kill a human being? Certainly not over a few persimmons you can’t give away around here.”
“He could’ve in the army. Someone told me he’d been in Iraq.”
“Yeah. Two tours. But he never talked about killing anyone.”
“What did he talk about?”
“Stuff. Nothing sticks out in my mind.” She looked away for a moment. “It’s been a long time since I thought about Mike. Since we went out, I’ve been married, had two kids and got divorced.”
“So you went out?”
Sam looked at her askance. “I figured you knew. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” Her tone was accusatory.
Fearing Sam would refuse to continue, Delyth mumbled, “I’d heard something.”
“It’s no secret. We were engaged. It seems so long ago.”
“Why’d you split up?”
Another harsh look. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m just trying to understand the kind of man he is.”
After a long pause Sam said, “I wanted children. He said it wouldn’t be fair to bring a baby into this world. I was getting older. I decided I needed to move on.”
Sam seemed lost in thought. Delyth knew better than to push. She’d get more information if she let Sam follow her memories for a while.
“When he got back the first time,” Sam went on, “he seemed fine on the outside. I can’t tell you what might have been going on inside. Then he got stopped-lossed. He wanted out but they sent him back to Iraq.”
“Was he injured?”
“On his second tour, he was close to a car bomb. He got thrown a few feet. He lost hearing in one ear for a while but no signs of brain damage.” She fell silent again.
“But after his second tour he was different?”
Sam nodded but didn’t elaborate.
“Drinking and reckless behavior are typical.” Delyth didn’t want to reveal that neighbors had been gossiping.
“Yeah, he went through some of that at first. What’s weird is I could handle that. It was to be expected. All he needed was patience and time to heal, they told me.”
“Was he ever violent?”
“Never. He’d just get himself all worked up over the littlest things. Gradually he got over that. But instead of going back to the man I knew, he grew more and more reclusive. He railed against the culture, its materialism. He said there was too much stuff in the world. He set out to simplify his own life. So he moved into his truck camper.”
“His mother didn’t throw him out for some reason?”
“Oh, no. They have a complicated relationship though. His mother is a very elegant woman.”
“I’ve met her,” Delyth put in.
Sam nodded. “So you understand. She likes beautiful things but he felt suffocated living surrounded by all that. He’d live in a cave in the middle of nowhere if he could, except he feels responsible for his mother. Talk about a love-hate relationship. The truck in the front yard is his compromise. He’s like one of those medieval ascetics living on a pole in the middle of town, but his pole is that damn truck. He doesn’t go anywhere he can’t bike to. He isn’t even doing it for God. He doesn’t believe in God. He isn’t spiritual as much as just anti-stuff.”
“How’d you two meet?” It wasn’t a premeditated question, one intended to ferret out secrets. Delyth liked Sam and, perhaps coming under the spell of a cozy, kitchen chat herself, she asked the obvious.
Sam wrinkled her brow for a moment. “He just was always there. We went to high school together but he was a little ahead of me. I don’t think either of us was on the other’s radar. Afterwards, I’d see him around. The first time we talked, at least the first time I remember, was in the hardware store. He didn’t work there but he helped me find the right washers for a leaky faucet. He was a man’s man. I don’t mean tough or aggressive. Just solid, you know what I mean?”
“What happened?”
“He asked me out. We had a couple dates but he’d already enlisted so I thought that would be it. I wrote to him while he was away. Trying to be patriotic and support the troops, that kind of thing. We got together when he came home on leave. After a while we were serious without my realizing it was happening.” She sat silently looking at her lap. After a moment she went on. “You’d think that’d be a tough time, but in a way that was the best year of our relationship. I worried about him, of course, but my heart was right there with him. We’d email or Skype and there were no barriers between us. I’ve never felt so close to anyone. Now I don’t think I ever will again.”
Delyth’s phone buzzed. “Sorry, I should’ve turned it off.”
Pulling it out, though, she saw that it was Ted. “It’s my boss. He doesn’t call me often. I’d better get this.”
“Where the hell are you?” Ted demanded.
“It’s my day off.”
“Well, you should come in. They’ve arrested Vitkus. The sheriff is going to have a press conference in an hour.”
Josh knew about it that morning but hadn’t told her. Of course, he wouldn’t. He’d say he couldn’t. Now that she was covering crime, dating a homicide detective was going to be more complicated than she’d imagined.
She didn’t tell Sam about the arrest, not wanting to be the bearer of bad news. Instead, she just said, “I’ve got to get in to the office. Thanks for the information.”
“Are you going to write what a good guy Mike is?”
“We’ll see. My editor has a lot to say about what gets published.”
Driving to her office Delyth mulled over Sam’s story. The way she described Mike Vitkus, he sounded like a secular saint. Could a saint kill? Sam said no. To Delyth the difference between a saint and a fanatic depended on who was talking. Her own mother had been on the fanatic side of the scale, so Delyth had some experience with the matter. Saint or killer? That was a different question. Having met the Vitkuses, mother and son, Delyth felt it could go either way.
SIX
Helen couldn’t stop thinking about Mikey Vitkus, despite trying to rationalize herself out of caring. It’d been years since he was in her classroom. The grown man living in a camper and roaming the fields clearly wasn’t the same little boy she’d taught. But her arguments didn’t work. He’d always been good to her son, Richard, despite being a couple years older. The sweet boy Mikey had been couldn’t have changed so much that he’d be a killer now?
Frank was sitting at the kitchen table after breakfast sketching ideas for new art projects when she told him she’d decided to call Detective Griffin. “What are you going to tell him?” he asked.
“About meeting Sophie and André and whether he’s investigating them.”
Frank changed to a green pencil. “Didn’t the niece say the police called her?”
“Yes, but did they interrogate her?”
Frank kept his attention on his sketchpad. He had so many ideas he never had time to work on most of them. He said he hung on to them in case he ever ran out of inspiration. “What’re you going to say when Griffin asks why you didn’t call sooner to tell him about bumping into the nephew in the DuQuenne house?”
“The truth. I didn’t think it was my business.”
“And now it is. That’s one of the things I love about you: you’re not constrained by consistency.”
Helen felt like grabbing his pencil and throwing it at him, but made do with, “That’s not very nice.”
Looking up, he said, “I mean it. It allows you to put things together other people miss.”
Later, his question made her rethink whether she should call. In the end, she decided to use the photo of the crucifixion as an excuse, asking Detective Griffin how she could get it to Sophie. She hadn’t anticipated how he’d react.
“Damn it, lady. I could charge you with interfering with a crime scene. Didn’t you notice the yellow tape?”
She tried to explain. “Yes, but the—“
“And don’t you know that the yellow tape m
eans keep out?”
“Yes, but I tried calling you, and you never returned my message.”
“Didn’t that tell you something?”
That he was a rude young man, she thought. She said, “The door was open when I got there. I thought you’d be inside.”
“But I wasn’t. Were any police there?”
“No, but—“
“Then you shouldn’t have been there either.”
“Detective Griffin, I wish you’d calm down and—”
“Me calm down?”
“You’re not listening to what I’m telling you. I thought you might be there. The door was open when I went up to knock. My dog ran in so I followed her. And there was the nephew searching for something.”
“What nephew?”
“André. Sophie’s cousin.”
“And you say he was searching for something?”
“He said he was looking for a will.”
“I’ll check him out. Do you know where he’s staying?”
“I don’t. His cousin Sophie might. She came to my house the day after the murder. I understand you spoke with her.”
“All right. Thank you for your help, but stay—“
“I was really calling to get the niece’s phone number. I took a photo of a painting she was interested in. I thought she’d appreciate seeing that it’s still there.”
“She’s left town.”
“Do you know how I could get in touch with her?”
“Not really. If you don’t mind, I’m very busy.” He hung up.
Helen found Frank in his studio. “He didn’t even know the nephew existed, much less that André had let himself in and was searching the house. And he doesn’t know where the niece is. I don’t think the police are bothering to look beyond poor Mikey. He’s too easy a target.”
“Perhaps their case against Mike is airtight. You have no idea what evidence they have.”
“But you know as well as I do that Mikey wouldn’t kill anyone. Especially over something as trivial as a few persimmons.”
“When does murder make sense?” Frank asked, his tone more intense than philosophical.
“Murderers must have their reasons that make sense to them at the time.”