Best Place to Die (8 page)

‘We need you, Jim.'

‘So Dennis is there?'

‘Yeah, I called him, he's been here since just after five. I've been trying to get you for hours . . . Dennis's dad is dead. He's all broken up. Jim, we need you.'

You little pussy, can't you do anything for yourself?
Knowing exactly how he'd come to despise Wally. The grossly obese and intellectually stunted linebacker could steam roll over anyone in high school, protecting him or keeping the field clear for Dennis sprinting down the field. They'd been high school royalty and then town superstars when the Grenville Ravens, always a second- or third-tier football team did the unthinkable and won the state championship . . . two years in a row. Like having the fucking world on a silver platter, and the three of them – Ravens of the Apocalypse – front and center at the banquet. Dennis out of control, his dad forever bailing him out, only to end up drinking himself into a year in jail. Fat Wally needing to be told how to wipe his butt, which girls to date, which one to marry. Which free ride at which college to take, even his career in finance – and God help his poor clients – was Jim's suggestion. And him, quarterback Jim, taking all the best morsels, the full scholarship to Dartmouth and then law school at Yale, the prettiest girl in Grenville from the richest family, and business offers from men who wanted to bask in his reflected glow. Old-money men who knew that whatever golden-boy Jim invested in would sprout returns beyond their wildest hopes, like Nillewaug Village and Eagle's Cairn.

‘Jim?'

‘Yeah, Wally, give me half an hour.'

‘So you're coming?'

‘Yeah, just stay cool. If anyone asks, tell them everything's going to be OK.'

‘Is it, Jim? I mean, this is bad.'

‘Don't sweat it, Wally. Things will be fine,' he said, picturing the relief on Wally's corpulent face. He remembered something Dennis's father, Dr Trask, once said about Wally: ‘
Strong as an ox and just as smart.
'
Poor Dennis,
he thought, wondering what he'd do without his dad. Who'd pull him out of scrapes, now?
Not your problem . . . not any more.
‘I'll be there soon.' And he hung up.

Getting up from his leather chair he headed toward his home office's marble bath. He stripped out of his dark gray Dockers and black sweatshirt. As the room steamed up he caught his wonderfully toned reflection in the mirrors. His belly flat and ripped, his arms and chest defined. If it weren't for the silver hair he could easily pass for a man in his thirties.
Maybe I should dye it
, he thought, stepping under the brushed nickel rainforest shower heads.

Toweling off he picked up his fallen clothes, and put them to his face. He inhaled and smelled traces of Delia's Chanel. ‘Shit!' Wondering what other unseen evidence of their frantic tumble might be hidden in the folds. He stuffed it along with the running shoes he'd been wearing into a gym bag, all indecision gone. Jim Warren believed in contingency plans; they were a part of his nature and had always served him well. If plan A doesn't go well, then he could easily shift to plan B, C or D. Decisions were made in the flash of an eye, or the snap of a wrist and forearm sending the pigskin hurtling long or in shorter stabs cross field to Dennis's waiting hands.

‘Honey?' Joanie's voice from the distant kitchen.

‘Up here, sweetie.'

‘There's something happening at Nillewaug. A big fire.'

‘I know,' he shouted back, as he pulled on clean underwear, jeans and a baggy sweatshirt from the office's walk-in closet where he kept an entire wardrobe. Over that he grabbed his leather bomber jacket. ‘I'm heading there now.' And he pulled down a wheeled carry-on suitcase, and stuffed it with shorts, tee shirts, a pair of sandals and a couple of favorite Tommy Bahama short-sleeved silk shirts.

‘You want some coffee?' Her voice rose up the steps.

‘Don't bother, I'll get some at the Donut House,' he said, picturing his still pretty wife, ten years younger than himself.

‘Call me, if there's anything I can do,' she offered. ‘Those poor people.'

‘You got it.' And with the gym bag in one hand, and his carry-on in the other, he opened the outer door to his home-office suite and took the back stairs to the garage. Glancing across the high-vaulted structure with its polished cement floor he pressed the button for the bay door behind his BMW.
Time to go long, Jim
, he thought, feeling almost giddy as he tossed the bag and suitcase into the trunk. Joanie was a good kid, maybe getting a little long in the tooth and the house was great and he couldn't have asked for a better pair of children. But would he miss any of it?
Not so much
, he told himself, pulling out of the garage, and down the winding drive that gave stunning views of the Nillewaug River Valley.

Focused on the road, he turned right off Grassy Mountain on to River Road and then left on Main. He was completely unaware of two dark-suited men in a black Ford sedan, who'd been waiting behind his neighbor's dense hedge. Heading down Main, he did glance to the right at Old Farm Road, where he'd normally turn to go to Nillewaug Village. ‘Let's go long.' He drove straight and then left toward I-84. Before merging on to the ramp he detoured at the drop off for ‘We Care', a local church-run charity that ships clothes to third-world countries, and tossed his gym bag into the bin. He never once spotted the Ford, which kept pace three cars back as he sped toward Bradley Airport. Nor did he notice the two dark-suited men as they trailed him from the parking garage to the ticket counter, and then through security.

It wasn't until he stood in line for first-class boarding that he noticed the men as they too headed toward the roped-off gate, where a smiling blonde flight attendant was checking tickets and running them through a machine.

‘Jim Warren?' one spoke.

He turned, his mind going fast, assuming some colleague or neighbor had just recognized him.
Not a problem, going for a little trip, a mini vacation.
His eyes flitted from the first man, mid thirties, conservative haircut –
not familiar –
to the other, African-American, dark gray off-the-rack suit –
never seen him before in my life.
‘Yes?'

‘Jim Warren.'

And his eyes flashed on the black man's hands as he reached back for something and the other continued to speak.

‘Jim Warren,' the black guy said as he reached out and grabbed his wrist.

‘What's going on?' Adrenalin surged, as his hand was firmly twisted behind his back, and he felt something wrap around his wrist. ‘What the . . .!'

‘Jim Warren, you're under arrest for conspiracy to commit fraud against the federal government. You have the right . . .'

A
s Detective Mattie Perez climbed the walk to Lil and Ada's adjoined condos – cell phone to ear – her thoughts raced. She ended the call with young Jamie, again trying to instil in the newbie detective the vital importance of crime-scene integrity. A tall order in the best of circumstances, and beyond impossible with fires.
And no
, she thought,
still not officially a crime scene,
but little doubt before this messed-up morning was over it would be. Maybe murder, maybe arson, maybe something she hadn't yet considered. And then there was Hank Morgan tromping through the scene with his buddy the Fire Marshall, who kept insisting it was an accident caused by spontaneous combustion. Sure, she liked Hank, had since they'd first met, but trust him . . . not so much. Something about him, and not the usual differences between local and state cops, where the former is more about keeping the peace and the latter about solving crimes and catching perps. Since first coming to Grenville last fall, Mattie had developed a series of partially tested hypotheses about the place. Postcard pretty on the outside, but something rank festered below the surface. And Nillewaug, with its pricey apartments and polished administrator with her French-tipped nails and perfect blonde coif were emblematic of a town that thrived off the fleecing of old people as they downsized, got ill and eventually passed. The series of murders last fall, the killing of high-end antique dealers who'd gotten fat off of Grenville's wealthy old folk, had seemed a fitting, albeit gruesome, crime spree.

Even here, in the vast retirement community of Pilgrim's Progress she sensed something corrupt. Yes, pretty to look at with pruned crab apples and weeping cherries starting to bud, beautifully maintained stone walls, and walkways with sturdy iron rails to help support wobbly residents.
Thousand of these condos
, she mused, having forgotten the exact number.
Each worth a few-hundred grand, maybe a little less in the down market, but still, someone's making a killing.

She spotted Ada Strauss coming out of Lil's condo. Despite her funk, she smiled and waved, taking stock of the spry woman in her robin's-egg-blue tracksuit, that made her silver hair sparkle in the morning sun, and set off her amazing sapphire eyes. If it weren't for the hair, Mattie mused, Ada could pass for forty.

‘Mattie,' Ada called out and came down to meet her. ‘We've been dying to have you come and visit, but I swear, this was not our doing.'

Mattie smiled, taking note of Ada's choice of pronouns: ‘we' and
‘
our'.
Interesting.

‘You look tired.'

‘It's been a long morning, and fires make the worst crime scenes.'

‘Why's that?' Ada asked.

‘Too many people, with too many agendas,' Mattie shared, her anxiety close to the surface, and wondering if maybe leaving Nillewaug so soon wasn't a mistake. But glad to be away from the noxious smells and the devastation.

‘I'd never really considered that,' Ada said, leading Mattie up the path to her condo. ‘But yes, they do have to put out the fire and make sure everyone's OK, don't they? I can't imagine there's a lot of concern for leaving things alone. Has to wreak hell on collecting evidence, and trying to reconstruct what happened.'

‘Exactly,' Mattie said, immediately reminded of Ada's keen intelligence, as she followed her into her elegant home, with its polished Chippendale, and lit glass shelves filled with a stunning collection of iridescent Tiffany, Steuben and Loetz art glass. She looked around. ‘Hi Aaron,' she said, taking note of Ada's tall grandson and two older women huddled in quilts on the living-room sofa, their faces smudged with soot.
At least this feels and smells like a real home
, she thought. ‘Where's Lil?' she asked.

‘She'll be right over,' Ada said. ‘Aaron, can you pour Mattie some coffee?'

Mattie couldn't suppress the feeling that she was being managed, as Ada brought her into the living room and made introductions.

‘Detective Perez, this is my mother, Rose Rimmelman. Lil said you wanted to get a statement from her.'

Mattie met Rose's angry gaze, noting similarities between the mother and daughter; similar high cheekbones with more sag around the jaw and a wattle throat, but Rose's eyes much paler in color behind thick glasses and bloodshot. Her body stocky where Ada was thin. And beside her a younger woman, probably in her seventies with dyed cherry-red hair and large, dark eyes, who, in her day, had been a knockout of the Rita Hayworth type. ‘And you are?' Mattie asked.

The redhead smiled, a half-eaten granola bar in her hand. ‘I'm Alice. Have you seen Johnny?'

Ada tapped Mattie on her shoulder and whispered, ‘Alice Sullivan, I'm thinking Alzheimer's and we're keeping an eye on her till her family can pick her up.'

‘A detective?' Rose looked appraisingly at Mattie. ‘So it was arson!' She glared at her daughter.

‘We don't know yet. The Fire Marshall's preliminary report says accident.' Mattie pulled out a small digital recorder. ‘Do you mind?'

‘Of course not,' Rose said, shaking her head. ‘And accident my ass! From the beginning I knew there was something bad about that place.'

‘That may be,' Mattie said, sitting in a wing chair across from the two women and placing the recorder on the coffee table that separated them. ‘If you could start by saying your name, address, and today's date.' Mattie then ran her through a series of questions to establish the sequence of events that led to Rose and Alice being under Delia Preston's office windows at the time she jumped. ‘Describe, with as much detail as you can remember, what you saw.'

Rose sat back, her lips pursed. ‘We were on the bench and I saw something shiny falling, like a shower of glass sprinkles, and I looked up and saw her go through the window.'

‘Was she standing or hanging from the ledge?'

‘No, more like a child in a swimming pool, just sort of plopped over the edge, not quite a somersault.'

‘Head first?' Delia asked, trying to picture what Rose described.

‘Yes, but not fully.' She made a fist of her hand and indicated with a downward motion of her wrist how she'd seen Delia fall.

‘And then?'

‘I stood up and walked over to her.'

‘Was she still alive?'

‘I don't think so. She didn't move.' Rose hugged the quilt tighter. ‘Her head twisted.' Rose made a face. ‘It was wrong . . . broken, like the neck had snapped.'

Mattie looked at Rose and then Alice, who was contentedly sipping some juice Aaron had gotten for her in a large plastic tumbler. She heard the front door, and Lil, her straw-blonde hair in a loose ponytail, came around the kitchen. Her forehead was smudged with ash and she seemed jumpy.

‘I brought you the memory card,' she said, holding out a small black plastic case.

‘Thanks.' Mattie took the tiny bit of plastic, pulled out a plastic evidence bag from one of her inner jacket pockets and dropped it in. Using an indelible Sharpie she wrote across the white strip, noting the date and time, and put down Lil's name and address. ‘Before I leave I'll need you to sign a form for this.'
Something's up,
she thought.
Why wasn't she here when I arrived?
And
where's the camera?
She was about to ask when her cell phone vibrated and then rang. ‘Excuse me,' she said, pulling it out and reading the LED, which gave the number and read ‘State of CT'. She knew who it was. ‘Arvin, what you got for me?'