Murder 101 (9 page)

Eleven

I was sitting in Starbucks in town when my phone rang for the first time. It was nine o’clock, and I had just finished my third cup of coffee. Ray’s voice sounded strained.

“Alison, I need some help. They want to hold me overnight. I cannot stay here all night,” he pleaded.

I pulled the scrap of paper from my pocket. “Ray, I got Mitch Klein’s number from Max. Call him. He’s the lawyer who defended that guy who shot the kid on the subway.”

“You don’t understand. You’re my one phone call. Call Klein and tell him I’m at the Fiftieth Precinct in a holding cell. He’ll know what to do.”

He hung up before I could respond. So they really did enforce the one-phone-call rule. I called Klein. I got an answering service but left the message with the operator, saying that Ray and I were friends with Max and that he was involved in something related to the Katherine Miceli case. I figured that would get his attention and at least get us a call back. High-priced lawyers and high-profile cases went together like peanut butter and jelly.

I was the only person in the cafe. I asked the young woman behind the counter what time they closed. She had on a very small T-shirt and jeans that barely covered her butt crack; I prayed that she wouldn’t have to bend over for anything. “Eleven,” she said, and returned to cleaning the big espresso maker. “You want another? It’s on me.”

I pulled a five out of my jeans pocket and got up. I handed it to her. “No, it’s on me. Have one, too.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” she said, stuffing the five into the tip jar. “That stuff will rot your insides.”

Great. Global warming, breast cancer, terrorism, a potentially homicidal ex-husband, and coffee that rots your insides. One more thing to worry about.

She handed me a hot cup of coffee. “Be careful. That coffee is nuclear hot.”

Nuclear hot. As opposed to just hot, I thought smugly. I sat back down and prepared to take a careful sip. The door to the coffee shop opened suddenly, and a bell jangled, startling me in my over-caffeinated state. Instead of the slow sip I was going to take, the cup jiggled a bit in my hand, and coffee spewed out of the top of the cup. The scalding liquid dribbled from my lip down my chin and into the front of my blouse. The pain ignited every nerve ending in my body, and it was all I could do not to cry out loud.

Crawford stood in front of the table, and handed me a napkin to blot the damage. His tie was off, and the top three buttons of his shirt were open. I could see a clean, white crew-neck undershirt peeking out. He was holding his jacket, his shirtsleeves rolled up into the neat cuffs that he had started when I was at the house. His demeanor said “off duty.” He sat down across from me and stretched his legs out in front of him, laying his jacket across his thighs. “Are you OK?” he asked, taking in my red lip and chin. “Do you want some ice?”

I shook my head no, but he had already asked the girl at the counter for a cup of ice. He wrapped some in a napkin and handed it to me.

“How did you find me?” I asked, pressing the freezing napkin against my lip.

“I figured you’d be here,” he said. “There’s really nowhere else to go in this town.”

“They don’t call you ‘detective’ for nothing,” I said, and moaned slightly as I removed the napkin from my lip and threw an ice cube into the coffee cup. “Do you want anything?” I asked him.

He looked over at the girl behind the counter and something registered on his face—it looked suspiciously like disapproval to me—and shook his head. He leaned in and whispered to me. “I hope she doesn’t have to bend over for anything.”

“You find anything?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Not sure. We took some things out, but I don’t think they were yours.”

I wrapped my hands around the cup and jiggled my legs up and down. “Like what?”

“Can’t say.” Under the table, he put his hand on my legs to stop them from moving and left it on my knees.

“I hope you didn’t take my vibrator. It’s innocent, I tell you!”

He turned crimson and looked around. For an escape hatch probably.

“I’m kidding. I don’t have a vibrator.” I looked away. It had been so long that I didn’t even know if I still had a vagina. Mental note: lay off the off-color sex jokes. “When’s the last time you slept?” I asked.

“A few days ago. Why?” he asked.

“You look like shit.”

He laughed. “Thanks.”

Something dawned on me. “Robert Edward, did you sleep in your cruiser outside my house last night?”

His body tensed, and I knew that I was right. It was his car that had pulled away this morning at six-fifteen. “It’s not a cruiser,” he said.

“Details.”

“You’ve been under constant surveillance for the last week.”

“I was the main suspect, wasn’t I? That’s what you were trying to tell me last night.”

“I told Wyatt that the only thing you were guilty of was bad luck and a weak stomach, but he was still suspicious of you.”

Weak stomach. Funny. I took a drink of the now-lukewarm coffee to prove him wrong. “Why?”

“He thought you were too nervous.”

“I am. But not because I’m a murderer. I’ve got a million other things to be nervous about.”

He chewed on a wooden stirrer and considered what I said. “He also didn’t like the connection between you and the car that the body was dumped in.”

Made sense.

“But you’re a lot smarter than that. You wouldn’t use your own car to dump a body.” He took the stirrer out of his mouth and pointed it at me. “Would you?”

“No, I would steal a car from a total stranger and then dump the body in that,” I said, going along with his train of thought. I must have answered too quickly because he looked at me closely. “Kidding!” I said. “I wouldn’t know how to steal a car. I can barely program my dishwasher to ‘pot scrubber.’”

Somewhat satisfied, he continued. “Once we found a connection between Kathy and Ray, it took the heat off you a bit. I’m trying to keep the heat off you altogether, so you have to tell me everything you know.” He leaned back and caressed the gun on his hip, like I had seen Wyatt doing in the chapel. These guys loved their guns. “I think I’m right about you. I am, aren’t I?” he asked, staring at me with red-rimmed eyes.

“You are right about me,” I said. My coffee was approaching ice-cold but I finished it anyway. Weak stomach, my ass.

“Don’t disappoint me.”

“Well, don’t set the bar too high,” I said, thinking back to the old breaking-and-entering situation. “Why didn’t you haul me to the station house and put me under the bright lights?” I asked, trying to sound more lighthearted than I felt. A suspect in a murder case. I guess it made sense. The cuckolded wife and all. Who’s dumb enough to use her own car to stash a dead body. Believe me, I had thought about killing Ray and his paramours many times over the last several years, but none of my students or my car had figured into the scenario. Medieval torture devices maybe, but not my car.

“We didn’t have enough to go on.”

“The car wasn’t enough?”

“No. And the deal was sealed for me when you passed out in your office and vomited on yourself. You didn’t have the stomach to look at homicide photos, never mind be a coldhearted killer. Fred wasn’t so sure.” He saw the puzzled look on my face and responded, “Wyatt,” by way of clarification.

“Oh. I call him something else.” I picked up my debris from the table—countless sugar packets, wooden stirrers, and balled-up napkins—and pushed them down into my empty cup.

“And then there was all that crying and fainting,” he said, looking at a spot over my head. He was either embarrassed or perturbed; I couldn’t tell. “You cry an awful lot.”

“Have
you
ever been a suspect in a murder case?” I asked defiantly. He shook his head. “So, so . . .” I couldn’t come up with anything else. Being a suspect in a murder case was enough. “Anyway, I have very low blood pressure, which is why I faint more than your average murder suspect.”

“You never seem to lose your appetite, though,” he said, looking at the debris on the table.

I looked at him. What a freaking comedian.

“What happens now?” I asked.

He traced his finger along the design of the table. “We look at what we took from your house, see if we have enough evidence to charge Ray officially and take it from there.”

“I called Mitch Klein. Ray wants out tonight,” I confessed.

Crawford rolled his eyes. “I’ll probably be on desk duty by morning if that guy gets involved. I’m sure somebody’s civil rights have been violated or some kind of crap like that.” He looked at me. “How do you know Mitch Klein? He’s not the kind of guy you just call out of the blue.”

“Remember Max?” I asked.

“Sexy, red-bottomed-shoe girl?” he asked. I might have imagined it, but I thought I saw a hint of red flush his cheeks. It looked more like embarrassment than anything else, but I couldn’t be sure. Max had that effect on certain men. The good ones, mostly.

“Oh, you noticed?” I asked. “Well, she and Klein used to date. Or something. Whatever you call it when two rich, successful people spend time together having sex.”

“I think you still call it dating,” he said, smiling. He straightened up in his chair. “I’ve got to go.” He stood up. “Let me take you home.”

I collected my garbage and threw it in the metal trash can by the door. He held the door open for me, and we walked onto the street. In the distance, I could see the river and a couple of boats swaying back and forth in the marina. It was early in the season for boats to be in the water, but a few optimistic sailors had taken a chance anyway. I thought about leaving the house after he dropped me off and going to the river to sleep on one of those boats. Maybe it would drift away in the middle of the night and deposit me in Bermuda. Or, maybe, with the way my luck was going, the police would be called, and I’d end up in jail for breaking and entering. An image of me in the Bedford Correctional Facility wearing an orange jumpsuit and paper shoes popped into my head, and I shuddered.

I saw the Crown Victoria parked in front of the coffee shop. “Do I have to ride in the cruiser again?”

“It’s not a cruiser, and yes, you have to ride in it again.” He walked over to the car and opened my door, waving his hand ceremoniously for me to get in. I got in and closed the door.

The car sagged slightly as he threw his large frame into the driver’s seat. He looked over at me and saw that I hadn’t put my seat belt on, and like the night before, reached over and pulled the belt from its holder above the door. I was close enough to see the stubble on his cheeks and smell the slightest hint of the clean-laundry smell that I had detected before. Now it was mixed with something muskier, a pleasant smell nonetheless. We were nose to nose; his normally sad expression was replaced by one that either said, “I am in love with you,” or “I’m going to fall asleep on you.” I couldn’t tell, but I suspected it was the latter. I found myself pushing my head as far back as I could into the headrest instead of leaning forward, as I probably should have, given our close proximity, my attraction to him, and the situation. I focused on his undershirt. “You were an altar boy, weren’t you?” I blurted out as his left hand pulled the belt over my chest and his right hand dropped onto my upper thigh.

The moment gone, he clicked the belt into the slot and pulled back, a bemused look on his face.

“You knew the words to all of the hymns that were sung at the funeral.”

He turned his body and faced the steering wheel, putting the key in the ignition. “You talk too much.”

“So I’ve been told,” I admitted, and looked out my window.

Before he backed out of the spot, he turned on the interior light and took my chin in his hand, turning my face to his. He stared at my lips. “I don’t think you’ll get a blister,” he said. “Put some more ice on that when you get home.” He pulled out of the spot, drove down Main Street, and hung a right onto my street.

“I’m off tomorrow,” he said.

“OK,” I said slowly, not sure why he needed me to know this.

“You have my card, though, so . . .”

“. . . so, I’ll call you if I remember anything.” I finished the sentence for him. He seemed afraid to deviate from his cop script, and I didn’t want to throw him off.

He pulled up in front of my house. It looked fine from the outside, but I didn’t know what to expect when I got inside. “What does it look like in there?” I asked, my hand on the door handle.

“I made sure that everything was put back. We didn’t do our usual ransack.”

“That was nice of you.” I took my seat belt off. “So, were you?”

He looked puzzled. “Was I what?”

“An altar boy.”

“Six years,” he said. “Trinity Church.” He smiled. “Did I mention that I’m fluent in Latin?”

I’m a sucker for guys who speak dead languages. I cupped my hand to his cheek, surprising the both of us. “Get some sleep, would you?”

He grabbed my hand and put my knuckles to his lips. “I will.”

I got out of the car, walked up the steps, and let myself in. He waited until I was inside and then drove away. I was sure of it this time.

Twelve

I woke up the next morning, later than I should have and having to rush to get ready. Only when I opened my underwear drawer and saw the tangled mess that it was did I remember that I had had a swarm of cops in my house the night before. When I had arrived home, my knuckles were tingling from where they had touched Crawford’s lips, and I was in an oxymoronic state of exhaustion and caffeination. I stayed awake in bed until three, tossing, turning, and while I should have thinking about Ray in a holding cell, all I could think about was Crawford and his white undershirt.

I examined my face in the mirror in the bathroom, and I didn’t look too bad. The spot on my lip hadn’t blistered, just as Crawford had promised, but it was still a little tender. I put on some extra ChapStick as a precaution.

I threw on a printed rayon skirt that just hit my knees, a T-shirt, and a pair of sandals that I knew would hold up well for my trek to the train. They were basically the sandal version of my clogs, but not as goofy-looking with a skirt. I pulled my hair back into a pony-tail and ran downstairs to grab my briefcase.

I went into the kitchen and found my briefcase just where I had left it on the kitchen table. My wallet and cell phone were still in my jeans pocket upstairs. I cursed under my breath and turned to go back to my bedroom when there was a slight tap on the kitchen door. I looked up and saw Crawford standing there, holding up a bag and one of those slotted cardboard holders with coffee.

I opened the back door. “Don’t you have a Mass to altar-serve?” I asked, not in the mood for questions, sexual tension, or unfulfilled fantasies. I was tired and cranky and not looking forward to my workday.

He laughed out loud, clearly a different man from the one whose only jewelry was a Glock fifteen-round gun. He was wearing jeans, a blue-linen shirt, untucked, and Teva sandals. He came in and put the coffee and the bag on the counter.

“What are you doing today?” he asked.

Obviously, he hadn’t been getting enough sleep. The answer to that question was obvious. “Going to work,” I said.

“Call in sick,” he commanded, taking the phone from the receiver and handing it to me.

I eyed the coffee on the counter, and he handed me a cup. “I can’t just call in sick.”

The sad face almost made a reappearance, but not quite. He had bags under his eyes, but he was clean-shaven and appeared pretty chipper. “Just trust me. Call in sick.”

I took a sip of the coffee as carefully as I could. He watched me, a bemused smile on his lips. The coffee was some kind of cafe au lait or latte; I couldn’t tell which, but it was different from what I usually drank—black and strong. I was still buzzing from the coffee consumption the night before, rotting insides and all. “What’s going on?”

He leaned his frame against the counter. “We let Ray go last night. We didn’t have enough to hold him. But the campus is a zoo. I don’t think you should go in until things die down a little bit.”

“And when will that be?” I asked. “I’ve got classes to teach and students who have to graduate. What are they supposed to do?”

He placed the phone squarely in my hand and spoke slowly. “Call Sister Mary and tell her you’ll be back tomorrow.” The way he stared at me convinced me that he was serious, and that this was a good idea.

I thought for a moment. I had two classes today. One was the senior seminar in which students chose an author and did a semester’s worth of research on that author and his or her works. The seniors were mature and would do whatever assignment I left for them, or do their own thing. The other was freshman composition, which wouldn’t be a loss either; those students could sit in class and diagram sentences for the day and be none the wiser. I dialed Dottie’s number, told her I was sick, and told her what assignments to leave in each classroom and by what time.

She asked me to hold on and clicked off for a minute. “I’m back. One of the students was looking for you. That good-looking Costigan kid.”

“Did he say what he wanted?” I asked.

“No. I told him that you were sick today and that you’d be back tomorrow. I hope that was OK.”

“Yes, Dottie. That’s fine. Thanks for helping out. If anyone else looks for me, tell them I’ll be back tomorrow.” I made a mental note to buy her flowers and to be nicer to her for a year. I hung up and looked at him. “Happy?”

“Drink your coffee.” He pulled the lid off his and dumped a creamer into it. He proffered the bag of baked goods and I reached in and grabbed a chocolate-chip scone. “Can we sit down?” he asked.

I nodded and pulled a chair out. He sat next to me at the round table. “You did a good job of keeping my house neat.” I waited a few seconds. “Thanks,” I said begrudgingly, remembering my underwear drawer.

“You’re welcome.”

“Did you see my underwear?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I didn’t go into your bedroom.”

I breathed a mental sigh of relief.

“Did Ray tell you anything helpful?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“You wouldn’t tell me anyway,” I said.

He smiled and nodded. He reached back with a long arm and grabbed a muffin out of the bag. He held it up to me. “Split it?” he asked, pulling the paper from around the sides.

I shook my head and picked at my scone. “You must think I’m a real idiot.”

“Why?” He looked down at his muffin, working intently on taking the paper off neatly.

“Because of Ray.”

He kept his eyes down. “I don’t make judgments like that.”

I laughed. “Sure you do. Everyone does.”

He finally looked up. “I really don’t.”

I took a slug of coffee.

“I don’t know Ray; I only know you a little bit. You must have seen something in him to make you want to marry him, right?” He pulled the top off the muffin. “You seem levelheaded.”

Levelheaded. Quite the compliment. Next, I’d have common sense.

“Do you like lobster?” he asked suddenly, breaking an uncomfortable silence.

I looked up from my scone. “Does that have something to do with the case?”

“I’m not working today,” he reminded me.

“Then yes.”

“Do you want to take a drive with me?” He crumpled the wrapper of his muffin into a tiny ball.

I was taken aback. “Uh, I guess so.”

“Come on. I know a great place,” he said, and took my hand.

I remembered my cell phone and wallet and told him that I needed to go back upstairs for a minute. As nice as it was to have his hand around mine, I extracted it and ran upstairs.

I came back with the phone and my wallet, grabbed my coffee and the rest of my scone, and followed him outside to a car that was thankfully not the it’s-not-a-cruiser. It was a very nice Passat station wagon with an impeccably clean interior. I didn’t peg him for the station-wagon type, but it was a nice change of pace from the SUVs I usually encountered on the roads. No gold chains or sports cars for this almost midlifer. I got into the passenger seat, put my coffee in the cup holder, and my head against the headrest. He got into the driver’s seat of the car and started it. As usual, he reminded me to put on my seat belt, and I obliged.

He headed north on Route 9 toward the Tappan Zee Bridge. Once across the bridge, he went north on the Thruway to the exit for the Garden State Parkway going south. I stayed awake until we passed through the first toll plaza at Exit 168, but that was it. I awoke as we were exiting at Exit 98 and merging onto Route 34 south. I had only been down this way once but recognized that we were at the Jersey Shore.

I sat up and pushed my hair from my face. My scone was still in my lap, with the paper wrapped around it. I looked over at him. “Where are we?”

“The shore,” he said. “Did you have a nice nap?”

I looked at my watch. Two hours had passed since he had arrived at my house. “Where are we going?”

“Ocean Beach,” he said. “I know it’s kind of a long way to go for lunch, but I wanted to give you a change of scenery for the day.”

“This is different,” I agreed. This stretch of 34 was home to window stores, a few restaurants, a large grocery superstore, and lots of advertisements for Realtors. I was hoping that if we had come this far, I would see the ocean, but judging from the landscape, I wasn’t so sure.

We crossed over a drawbridge and pulled up to a red light. When the light turned green, we drove a few hundred feet to a small shack on the bay called Spike’s Fish Market. It was on the other side of the street, so he pulled a quick U-turn and drove up to the front of the store.

“You can wait or come inside. Whatever you want to do,” he said.

“I’ll come,” I said, and opened the door. We went inside. Directly in front of us was the fish display, and tables were to the left. Slabs of every kind of fish imaginable rested on chipped ice in a display case. The tables were planks of wood with sea salt, ketchup, and oyster crackers on each; there were long wooden benches on either side. As far as ambiance went, it had none, but judging from the fact that not one table was empty and it was still spring—technically off-season—I figured the food must be incredible.

The grizzled old guy behind the counter—Spike, I presumed—said hello to Crawford and gave me the once-over. He pulled a big sheet of butcher paper off a roll, and said to Crawford, “Shoot.”

“Two lobsters, one pound of the tiger shrimp, a quart of jambalaya with rice on the bottom, a pound of coleslaw and a pound of potato salad.” He looked at me. “Is there anything else that we should get?”

“That should cover it,” I said. I hope he had plans to prepare whatever needed cooking, because I was off duty.

Spike put everything in a big plastic bag and waved Crawford off from paying. “I’ll put it on your tab.”

We got back into the car and headed south on 35, a new road, until we reached a small beach community in which the houses were about six hundred square feet each, very close together, and all within walking distance of the ocean. He made a left onto a street called Tarpon, and drove up to a house that was right on the beach. He pulled the car into a small apron of a driveway.

I got out of the car and walked to the right side of the house. The ocean was steps from the house, and, from what I could see, the water was calm on this gorgeous day. There were a few people on the beach south of us, but in front of the house was an empty expanse of smooth white sand.

Inside, the house was one big room with two smaller bedrooms to the side, fronted by a giant picture window that faced the water. It was paneled in dark wood, with slipcovered furniture and hardwood floors. The galley kitchen was next to the large window, and contained a tiny, four-burner stove, a few cabinets above and below the counter, a small sink and a refrigerator.

I looked at the walls. They were covered with pictures of his family and it seemed that he had the brother he mentioned, plus a sister. All looked younger. The parents were your stock Irish characters: the little, gray-haired father with the ruddy complexion, and the redheaded mother with freckles. Judging from the rest of the family, Crawford must have been adopted. None of the people in the picture was over five-foot-seven. In every picture, he towered over the rest of the family like some kind of lanky interloper.

I focused on his father’s face, much like Crawford’s, but weathered. “What did your father do for a living?”

“Cop.”

“Brother?”

“Assistant District Attorney. Brooklyn.”

“Wow,” I remarked. “You’ve got a one-family crime-fighting team going. It’s like a bunch of Irish superheroes.”

“I guess.” He opened the refrigerator and assessed its contents. “We’re Irish. If you’re smart, you become a lawyer, if you’re not so smart . . .” He grinned sheepishly and put his palms up.

“I think you’re selling yourself short.” I continued looking at the picture. “I’ve known my fair share of dumb lawyers, and I’ve met some really smart cops recently.” There was a slight facial resemblance between him and the brother—around the eyes mostly—but that’s where it ended. “Where do your brother and sister live?” I asked.

“My brother lives in Hawthorne—by you actually. And my sister lives in northern California.”

“Is she a crime fighter, too?”

“If you call breaking up slugfests among her four sons crime fighting, then yes.” He rooted around in the upper cabinet and came out with a lobster pot and a lid. He filled it with water from the little sink and put it on the stove, placing the lid on top. He grabbed the lobsters from the bag, still squirming and fighting against their inevitable execution, and put them in the sink. One was on top of the other, their claws taped together. “You can’t get water to boil down here unless you put the lid on. I don’t know why that is.” He opened the refrigerator. “Do you want something to drink? Beer? Soda? Bloody Mary?”

“The last,” I said. I would begin the twelve-step program next week.

He pulled out a bunch of ingredients and whipped together my drink. Then he set about putting the shrimp on a plate and mixing up a cocktail sauce from ketchup, horseradish, and Tabasco. He got a beer from the refrigerator. It was Labatt’s, just like my parents used to drink. He took the plate and a beer and kicked open the back door. “Come on outside,” he said.

The back of the house sat on the sand with a deck stretching out onto the beach. A glass-topped table and some wrought-iron chairs looked like they hadn’t been cleaned for the season yet, but I took a chance and sat down, hoping I wouldn’t end up with some kind of rust print on my skirt. Crawford went back into the house and returned with a towel, asked me to get up, and spread it on the chair. “Thanks,” I said.

He plopped into his chair, unconcerned about any dirt that might end up on his jeans. He threw his head back and took a deep breath of the ocean air.

I took a sip of my drink and felt white heat travel down my throat and into my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol, the Tabasco, or the horseradish, but it tingled and was a pleasant feeling. He pushed the shrimp plate in front of me and sat next to me, his back to the ocean.

“Eat,” he said.

I obliged and took a bite of shrimp.

“How often do you come down here?” I asked.