The Coal Black Asphalt Tomb: A Berger and Mitry Mystery (Berger and Mitry Mysteries) (21 page)

“Don’t you put any of this on me. And don’t bother trying to play with my head. I won’t lose my temper and shoot you. Not going to happen. I have a lot more experience at this sort of thing than you do. Just for starters, I know that you’re not going to shoot yourself. Not in front of all of these nice ladies. So why don’t you just put the gun down, okay? You and I both know that you won’t be using it again.”

“
Again
?” Glynis looked at her sharply. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Somebody shot Bart Shaver to death in the Cahoon family cemetery about an hour ago.”

Glynis let out a gasp. Her mother and the others merely stood there stone-faced. They already knew. Of course they did.

“Bart was shot three times in the back from very close range with a .38. His killer took Bart’s laptop and notepads.” Des gestured at Buzzy’s desk. “That laptop and those notepads, unless I’m wrong. And I’m not. Have you fired that gun recently, Mr. Shaver?”

“You know I have.”

“I don’t know a damned thing.” Des looked around at the group of old friends who were gathered there. “For instance, why are all of you here?” On their total silence she gazed at Dorset’s former first selectman and said, “How about it, Bob?”

“Beryl phoned me and asked me to come here,” he answered quietly.

“And what about you, Congressman? I heard you rabbited on your staff after I left you in Fairburn.”

“I needed to be alone for a while, Master Sergeant,” Luke Cahoon said, gazing down his long nose at her. “Senior centers happen to depress the hell out of me. It’s the smell of all of that perfume, chiefly. It reminds me of funeral parlors. So I got the hell away from there. I do have that right, you know. If I feel like going somewhere, I go somewhere.”

“And where did you go?”

“Are you
questioning
me?”

“Have you been to your house up on Johnny Cake Hill Road?”

“The congressman was at my house,” Bob interjected. “We were in my study having a highball when Beryl called. He and I drove here together.”

“So I’ll find your black Suburban at the Paffin place?” she asked the congressman.

“
Yes
, you’ll find it there,” he answered with elaborate patience.

Des turned to Delia Paffin. “And you were where?”

“Grocery shopping at the A&P. Bob reached me on my cell phone after he heard from Beryl, and I met him here. Him and Luke, that is to say. I still have the groceries outside in my car. And my receipt, which is time-stamped. And you can ask the cashier, Rosie, if you don’t believe me.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.”

“You didn’t have to,” Delia huffed, her plump cheeks mottling. “I can see it in those eyes of yours.”

Des looked at Glynis now. “And you’re here because—”

“You phoned me and suggested I meet you here. I’m grateful that you did, Des.”

“No problem. You told me you wanted to be in the loop. Welcome to the loop.” Next Des turned to Beryl Fairchild and said, “Why did you phone Bob?”

Beryl glanced over at Buzzy, who continued to sit there at his desk chair, Ruger in hand, glowering. “I stopped by here to look in on Buzzy,” she explained in a soft voice. “I’m the one who brought him home from the hospital this morning, you see. Once I got him settled there I left to run some errands. I tried phoning him a while later to see how he was doing but he didn’t answer. After I’d tried him several times I got a bit concerned so I drove to his house. He wasn’t home. I thought he might have come here. I didn’t see his car parked out front but I came inside anyway to see if Bart knew where he was.”

“Bart’s car was here?”

“No, but he likes … liked to ride his bike to work. Only, Bart wasn’t here either. No one was. The place was deserted.”

“And the office door was unlocked?”

“We never lock this newsroom during business hours,” Buzzy informed her. “It’s a family tradition. My father never locked it. And my grandfather never locked it. If anyone has a story for us they can just walk right in, whether someone’s here or not. That’s one tradition my ball boy didn’t dare trample on. Besides, there’s nothing around here worth stealing.”

“Not even that Ruger of yours?”

He glanced down at his gun. “This I keep locked in the bottom drawer of my desk, along with a bottle of the good stuff. Also a family tradition.”

“I was going to leave a note on Buzzy’s desk asking him to please call me,” Beryl went on, “when he suddenly came bursting in the door with that—that gun in his hand.”

“Did he say anything to you about Bart?”

“He didn’t say anything to me at all. He was having trouble breathing.”

“How about the laptop and notepads? Did he have those with him when he came in the door?”

Beryl lowered her blue eyes, swallowing. “I don’t recall.”

“You’re a lousy liar, ma’am.”

“I sat him down right there and made him use his inhaler. Then I poured him a stiff drink.”

“Did his doctors put him on antidepressants when they discharged him? Because those meds don’t mix well with alcohol.
Are
you on meds, Mr. Shaver?”

“They gave me some pills to take home with me,” Buzzy grumbled. “I flushed them right down the toilet.”

“He looked as if he needed a drink,” Beryl said defensively.

The newsroom fell silent now. Or make that almost silent.

“Oh, no.…” Glynis gazed up at the ceiling with a horrified look on her face. “What’s that
tapping
sound?”

“I’m just a small-town newspaperman, Madam First
See
lectman,” Buzzy answered sourly. “But it sure sounds like rain to me.”

Glynis shook her head in disbelief. “I honestly don’t know how this day can get any worse.”

“Stay loose—it’s still early,” Des said. “So let me see if I’ve got this straight: Bob Paffin can vouch for the congressman’s whereabouts at the time of the shooting, and vice versa, which means that neither one of you has an alibi. Delia Paffin was at the supermarket, which means she was also on her way to and from the supermarket and has no one to vouch for her whereabouts while she was. Beryl Fairchild was driving to and fro and has no one to vouch for her either. And how about you, Glynis? Where were you an hour ago?”

Glynis blinked at her. “Why, I was in my office at Town Hall. You know that.”

“No, I don’t know that, actually. I called you on your cell. You could have been anywhere.”

“Well, yes, that’s true,” she allowed. “But I
was
in my office. If you don’t believe me my secretary can … you don’t think that
I
had anything to—”

“I don’t know what to think,” Des said, looking around at the group of old friends. “But I do know that all of you, along with two of your gang who are no longer with us, Chase Fairchild and Congressman Cahoon’s ex-wife, Noelle, made up a story one warm spring night forty-seven years ago. And now that story has finally caught up with you. Bob? You knew your brother Lance was underneath Dorset Street. You’ve always known it. That’s why you fought so hard against regrading it when you were first selectman. Also why you fought to stay in office for so many years. Thirty-four of them to be exact.” She looked at Buzzy Shaver. “That’s why you attacked Glynis so viciously during the campaign. Demanding recount after recount when the tally went against you. Denouncing her regrading plan as evil and just plain un-American. Because you knew Lance was down there, too.
And
because you were doing Bob’s bidding. He’s been quietly bankrolling
The Gazette
for years. You would have folded a long time ago without his backing.” On Buzzy’s surprised look she said, “Yeah, I know all about that. Bart told me.”

Again, the newsroom fell silent—aside from the hard, steady rain that was now falling on the roof.

“Two people are dead,” Des went on. “One died in 1967. The other is still warm up at the Cahoon cemetery. You folks have been sitting on this story for your entire adult lives. It’s time to get it out in the open. Tell me, what really happened to Lance that night?”

Not one of them would answer her. Or look at her or each other. They just stared straight ahead in stony silence.

“Tell her, Mother,” Glynis said pleadingly. “Tell
me
.”

Beryl Fairchild drew in her breath, but she remained mute.

Delia Paffin’s head was starting to jiggle slightly on her neck. The lady was trembling with fear. And Bob Paffin, he of the weak heart, was looking real pale standing there next to her.

“You’re not going to pass out on me again, are you?” Des asked him.

“Perhaps we should talk to an attorney,” he responded weakly.

“I’m an attorney,” Glynis reminded him.

“As am I, it so happens,” the congressman said.

“Look, it’s
over
, people,” Des informed them. “You’ve held together for all of these years but it’s
over
. A pair of top-notch Major Crime Squad investigators are going to be walking through that door any minute now. Either you can tell me
right now
what you’ve been hiding or you can tell them—in an interrogation room while the whole lot of you are under arrest for criminal conspiracy and illegal disposition of a body, just for starters. They will cut you
no
slack. Not even you, Congressman. You’ll get no free pass.”

“Wouldn’t expect one,” he said, his jaw clenched tight.

“I’m your resident trooper. If you’re straight with me I’ll do everything I can to help you out. I look out for my people. But once Lieutenant Snipes and Sergeant Tedone are here it’ll be their case and I won’t be able to do a thing for you. And I sure would feel a whole lot better if you’d give me that gun,” she said to Buzzy Shaver. “Hand it over.”

“No,” he growled, gripping it tightly.

“You should have taken Bart’s phone, too, you know.”

He frowned at her. “His what?”

“His cell phone. After you shot him you took his laptop and notepads but you left his cell phone. I found it in the grass next to his body.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Bart’s call log, Mr. Shaver. He placed two calls shortly before he died. One of them was to this office. He asked you to meet him up there, didn’t he?”

“I
don’t
know what you’re talking about,” he repeated.

“Sure, you do. I’m talking about your young cousin. The one who called you Uncle Buzzy as a sign of his affection. You were the only family he had. He loved you. He also loved
The Gazette
. Wanted to keep it going as an online newspaper. Build a life here for himself and his girlfriend, Mary Ann. The one you don’t like because she’s plain faced. She doesn’t know yet that Bart’s dead. I still have to call her and give her the news. I’m really looking forward to it.” She moved a few steps closer to Buzzy, holding her hand out. “Give me the gun.”

“No!” he snarled, baring his hideous yellow teeth at her.

“Give it to me.
Deal
with me. This is your last chance. Let me help you before it’s too late.”

Buzzy let out a wet, painful cough that wracked his entire chest. “You get away from me,” he warned her, gasping for breath. “Get away or I’ll shoot you right where you stand.”

That was when the door to
The Gazette
opened.

But it wasn’t Yolie and Toni who walked in.

C
HAPTER
14

T
HE NEWSROOM WAS SO
crowded with people that Mitch felt as if he’d just walked into a color-drenched remake of
Front Page Woman
, a zippy little 1935 Warner Brothers newsroom drama helmed by Michael Curtiz. All that was missing were Bette Davis, George Brent and the zippy. There was no zippy. The air was heavy with tension. And the place was teeming with public officials, past and present. US Congressman Luke Cahoon was standing there with his shaggy eyebrows and air of patrician authority. So was Glynis Fairchild-Forniaux, Dorset’s hard-charging first selectwoman, along with Bob Paffin, her weak-chinned, snowy-haired dick of a predecessor and Bob’s pudgy wife, Delia, with her rosy apple cheeks and Tang-colored hair. Beryl Fairchild, the first selectwoman’s elegant, silver-haired mother was there. And Buzzy Shaver was slumped there in a chair at his rolltop desk with his liverish lower lip stuck out and a short-barreled revolver clutched in his right hand. He wasn’t pointing it at anyone. But it had a way of commanding attention.

It sure had the attention of Dorset’s uncommonly lovely resident trooper.

“Good afternoon, Master Sergeant,” Mitch said to her.

Des peered at him in that way she did whenever she was worried about him. He did happen to be soaking wet—it was a long walk back to his truck in the rain. And he suspected that he still looked somewhat shaken, possibly because he was. “Right back at you,” she said guardedly, glancing at the manila envelope that was tucked under his arm. “What have you got there?”

“A pretty darned good local news story for
The Gazette
. It’s got political intrigue, suicide, sex, more sex. Oh, and a couple of murders, too.”

“Young man, we’re rather busy right now,” the congressman said.

“On the contrary,” Des said. “The door to
The Gazette
is always open. Anyone who has a story to share can just walk right in and share it. That’s a Shaver family tradition, right?”

Buzzy Shaver didn’t respond. Just sat there at his desk, gun in hand, glowering and wheezing.

Mitch noticed that he had a bottle of Old Overholt on the desk. “I
knew
you’d keep a bottle of Old Overalls around this place,” he exclaimed. “Why, it’s been the beloved house grog of ink-stained wretches from coast to coast ever since there have been ink-stained wretches from coast to coast. I used to work with an old-time restaurant critic who drank an
entire
bottle of that rotgut every single day. Really, really made me wonder what it was doing to her palate. Do you mind if I join you, Mr. Shaver?” There was a coffeemaker on a table over in the corner. Mitch fetched a Styrofoam cup and poured himself a generous jolt of the rye whiskey. “You’re supposed to get plastered at a wake, right? That’s what this is, isn’t it? Mind you, I don’t usually imbibe so early in the day. Especially the hard stuff. This is making me feel just like Jack Nicholson.” He raised the Styrofoam cup ceremoniously into the air and drawled, “‘Here’s to the first of the day, fellas. To old D.H. Lawrence.…’” Mitch drank it down in one big gulp. As he felt it burn his throat he flapped his left elbow like a chicken and gasped, “‘Nick-nick-nick, fiff-fiff-fiff, gyahh …
Indians
.’”