Act of God (28 page)

Utt looked at me, then the floor some more. “Top was up, so no. And I was disappointed, like I said.”

“Disappointed?”

“Yeah, at your Darbra girl. Her not coming by to apologize for the noise or at least say good-bye or something.”

I let my eyes go around the room again. “When you came in here after they left, was anything unusual?”

“Unusual?”

“Out of order, messed up?”

“No more than you’d expect. Except for the sink, which I figured was the reason they took off like that, afraid I’d charge them for it.”

“But the rest of the place?”

The chin routine. “Bedclothes kind of pulled this way and that, like they’d had a real active night.” Utt winked at me, man to man.

“No signs of … a struggle?”

He darkened. “Struggle? Hell, no. What are you getting at?”

I looked at him. “I wish I knew how to tell you.”

I
CHECKED OUT OF
my motel an hour later, William Proft getting charged for the extra night. The traffic wasn’t so bad, Sunday being the middle day of the long weekend, but driving from New Jersey back to Boston I still had more than a few hours to think things through again.

Six years ago, Barbra Proft dies in a fall that her sister Darlene, and a pretty good cop in Angelo Folino, think was caused by either Darbra or William for the insurance. Darbra’s share is just about exhausted when she starts an affair a year ago with Roger Houle and moves into the Commonwealth Avenue building with Traci Wickmire. Three and a half months ago, Darbra makes a not-so-subtle call to her aunt to see if Darlene has kept up the premiums on the remaining policies. A couple weeks later, at the end of March, Darbra starts working at Value Furniture thanks to what William thinks of as a prank on his part. Maybe Darbra starts an affair with Abraham Rivkind, too, and maybe she doesn’t. A month later, Rivkind and Joel Bernstein decide they need a security guard and hire Finian Quill. A few weeks after that, Wickmire overhears Darbra’s “sugar daddy” call. Then, sometime later—and about four weeks ago—Darbra breaks up with Houle at Grgo’s, knowing that Beverly Swindell is there to witness it, and starts up with Rush Teagle. Another week goes by, and Abraham Rivkind is killed, with Bernstein, Quill, and Swindell the only people certainly in the store. Nine days after that, two weeks ago, Darbra and Teagle leave Boston for New Jersey. Darbra calls Wickmire midweek from Sunrise Beach to check on the cat. Frank Utt at Jolly Cholly’s doesn’t see Darbra Friday night, nine days ago, when the noise problem arises nor Saturday morning as Teagle “bolts” after leaving the key. Back in Boston, Darbra’s suitcase and mail look like she returned sometime Saturday, but the rest of her apartment doesn’t, and Teagle’s shaky story about the note from her almost has to be a lie. When Darbra doesn’t show up at the store on Monday, Bernstein and Swindell treat her as fired, and brother William uses Pearl Rivkind as camouflage to get me to go looking for his sister in the hope that she’s dead and the insurance company will pay off again. Sometime Thursday, two days after I’m working on the case, somebody with a key ransacks Darbra’s apartment.

I shook my head. You could line things up that way, or a half dozen others that I tried out on the drive, but none made more sense than another. One thing seemed obvious, though.

Rush Teagle’s was the next cage to rattle.

I got off the Mass Pike at Newton and went over Centre Street to Commonwealth. Stopping at a pay phone, I let Nancy know that I was back and that we could go to Norm’s party the next night. When I arrived at the apartment house, I found a space on the street. I was pleased to see a yellow convertible across the road and down.

Getting out of the Prelude, I walked over to the convertible, a late-model Ford Mustang with the top up and the look of a nice car poorly maintained. There were some divots and rust spots from minor collisions, but no indication of the vehicle being recently repainted or even retouched. I used my hand to shade the passenger compartment. Amid the litter of fast-food wrappers and soda cans, there was some ragged sheet music; three wires, irregularly coiled, that could have been guitar strings; and a torn road map with something on it that looked an awful lot like the shape of New Jersey.

I crossed back to the apartment house. I didn’t want to give Teagle any advance notice, but after five minutes, nobody had come in or gone out through the front security door, so I tried Traci Wickmire’s button. Nothing. I pushed it again, longer.

A voice squawked over the intercom, but if I hadn’t been expecting hers, I doubt I’d have recognized it. “Who’s there?”

“Traci, it’s John Cuddy.”

“I’m busy. I can’t see you right now.”

“I want to talk with Rush Teagle, but he’s not answering.”

“So maybe he isn’t home.”

“Buzz me in so I can find out.”

Nothing. Then, “All right.”

Opening the door, I walked through the dark vestibule to the basement stairs. I moved down them slowly, partly for my knee but also staying to the edges in case Teagle was camped at his door, listening for anyone. When I got to his apartment, I waited, listening myself. Nothing. After a minute or so, I knocked. Nothing. I knocked harder. Still nothing.

That’s when I got just the faintest whiff of it.

“Jesus.” I dropped to my good knee, like a Catholic genuflecting, then all the way down to push-up position. From the little space under the door I confirmed it, nearly gagging as I always did. As everybody always does, no matter what they try to tell you about how they’ve gotten used to it.

The sweet-and-sour smell of not-so-fresh death, of decomposing flesh.

I got back to my feet and pulled out my shirttail, using it to try the door. Locked.

I stuck the shirttail back in my shorts and climbed to the third floor and Wickmire’s apartment. I knocked on the door impatiently.

From the other side came her voice. “Is that you?”

“Open up, Traci. I have to use your phone.”

“I can’t. I’m—”

“Open up. It’s an emergency.”

“Look—”

“I think Teagle’s dead down in his place. Will you open the door?”

The bolt slid back, and then a chain. She was wearing just a bathrobe, her hair stringy from a shower. “What do you mean, dead?”

I came into the apartment, almost barging past her. Instead of potpourri, there was incense burning somewhere. From the bathroom area came a deep female voice, “All right, Honey-bun, where’d you hide my panties, you little—”

The husky woman who appeared in front of me was just throwing her head back to get the wet hair out of her eyes. She was naked except for the unbuttoned flannel shirt Wickmire had been wearing the first time I’d been there. The shirt seemed to fit her.

The woman said, “Oh great, just great,” but made no attempt to cover herself.

“So now you know.”

“Traci, it doesn’t matter.”

“Sure.”

Wickmire was sitting on her writing chair, the computer closed down and on the desk, as though she hadn’t been using it for a while. She’d changed into the torn jeans and a blouse. Her friend, first name “Myra,” was in the bedroom, maybe getting dressed.

I said, “The police will be here pretty quickly. You know anybody else who’d have a key to Teagle’s apartment?”

A shrug. “We don’t have a super. The management company, maybe, but by the time they get here, won’t the cops have broken down his door?”

“Probably.”

“Are you going to tell them?”

“Tell them?”

“The cops. About … Myra and me.”

“I’m going to have to tell them that you and Teagle knew each other. Or know each other, if he isn’t who’s dead down there. Then the police will want to know a lot about you, including your whereabouts for the last day or two and who, if anybody, was with you.”

“It’s not like I’m ashamed or anything.”

I thought back to her faked flirting with me the first time I’d seen her and the relative absence of it the second time, as though she’d forgotten to maintain the pose when we went through Proft’s ransacked apartment.

Wickmire said, “It’s just I like my … privacy.”

“I’m going to have to tell them what I saw and heard here today, Traci. They’ll draw their own conclusions, but my advice, if you want it, is that you tell them the truth right off, because they have a way of finding out later that’s usually not as pleasant.”

She was about to say something else when her buzzer rang in three strident bursts.

The patrol officers got there first, a single car followed by a sergeant/supervisor and a shotgun guard minus the shotgun. While the first cop and the guard secured the scene, meaning stood outside Teagle’s apartment, the sergeant burned up Wickmire’s phone wire with calls to every uniformed branch in creation. I suggested they just kick down the door, but the sergeant insisted on waiting for a fourteen-pound sledge from the Narcotics Unit, by which time Bonnie Cross and one of her two partners had arrived. The partner examined Teagle’s door, asking about outside windows, then reared back and kicked it in anyway. After that, the uniformed sergeant said he was going outside to assist in crowd control around all the official vehicles.

You couldn’t blame him. As the door gave way it whipped inward, then hit its hinges and swung back, fanning a wicked volume of tainted air into our faces. Cross was ready with a hankie doused in air freshener, the rest of us making do with our hands. The younger of the two original uniforms said he had to leave, too.

Cross said, “Cuddy, you stay outside the apartment.”

“Fine with me.”

She went in, stepping very carefully around the overturned everything on the floor. Pots and pans from the kitchenette, videos and their cassette boxes, but as with Proft’s place, smaller items were untouched. The instrument cases had been unzipped and emptied, however, the guitar off its stand near the wood stove and Rush Teagle’s body.

Cross said, “It’s cool enough in here, he could have been done a while ago.”

Teagle lay on his right side, drawn slightly into a fetal position. His hands were crabbed, the rictus also pulling his lips away from his teeth in a ghastly, uneven grin. The left eye was open, and, from where I stood, the right eye was, too, but they weren’t working together anymore. You couldn’t miss the wound, hair matted and scalp torn and the left ear nearly ripped off. What I expected would prove to be the murder weapon was lying a few feet from him, and Cross moved toward it.

She started to stoop, then caught herself. “Just what we needed.”

Even from the doorway, you could see the hair and gore on the business end of the poker from Rush Teagle’s wood stove.

I waited downstairs with Cross until the M.E. pronounced the body and the lab techs in surgical masks started their macabre rituals. Then we left her partner with them and moved up to Traci Wickmire’s apartment. Cross had me sit on the floor in the hall outside as she interviewed Wickmire and I assumed Myra as well. While I waited, another detective from Homicide arrived and started canvassing the neighbors. Given the basement location of Teagle’s apartment, I didn’t have high hopes for that.

After half an hour, Cross came out with some keys in her hand. “Let’s go downstairs.”

“I doubt the air’s much better yet.”

She looked at me. “Darbra Proft’s place.”

I stood. “Hope you like eau de cat.”

“Christ, Cuddy, you weren’t kidding.”

“I doubt anybody’s changed the litter.”

“So this is the way you found it?”

“This is the way Wickmire showed it to me, except for what I handled and what the cat might have moved around since.”

Cross bent down to scratch Tigger behind the ears. “Ms. Wickmire seemed awfully touchy about her sexual preference.”

“I got the same impression.”

“You think it could have anything to do with this here?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know about her preference until an hour ago.”

Tigger started purring and nudging his head hard into Cross’s hand. She said, “Poor little guy.”

“He may be eligible for adoption.”

She looked up at me. “You figure this Darbra Proft is dead.”

“The last link I can find with her being alive was Teagle.”

Cross stood, went to the antique cherry table, and sat down. “Tell me.”

I summarized my talk with Frank Utt at Jolly Cholly’s.

She lowered her pen. “So, our ‘foxy lady’ makes a big deal about people knowing she’s there, then doesn’t bother to say good-bye.”

“And whatever was in the motel sink, it doesn’t look like it went on the convertible.”

“We’ll impound the car, run it through, and find out for sure.” Cross fixed me with that good, intimidating stare. “So, what more do you have on this?”

“Nothing that makes any sense.”

“Let’s give it a try anyway.”

We did.

She nodded, but more from resignation than agreement. “Generally, you get a killer finds a way that works, he sticks with it.”

“The poker, you mean.”

“Pok-
ers.
”

“Granted, but why kill Teagle even if he did kill Darbra Proft?”

“I don’t get it. Seems neither of your clients would’ve done it. Shit, the brother Proft’d pin a medal on him, maybe even split the insurance if Teagle’d just show the adjuster where the body was. And the widow—if Darbra was punching the husband?—old Pearl ought to have kissed Teagle, avenging her honor, so to speak.”

“Cross, I think you have a warped view of human relations.”

“It’s the job, Cuddy. Makes you lose touch with the brighter side of life.”

“Okay if I still look into Proft’s disappearance and the Rivkind killing?”

Cross closed up her pad. “Give us a day first, let my people and me talk to these folks. Tomorrow’s the Fourth. Take some time off, celebrate the founding of this great country of ours.”

I wasn’t going to argue with her.

“I
THINK
I
’M MIMOSA
comatosa.”

“Have to learn to nurse them, counselor.”

“But then all the bubbles go away.”

“Life is compromise.”

Her head resnuggled itself against the right side of my chest. “But not today, okay?”