The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy (17 page)

“She has rather unusual eating habits.”

“What’s she eat, pond scum?”

“Why, you got a problem with that?”

“Won’t catch Klaus eating nothing but red meat.”

“Raw or cooked?”

“Cooked good and proper.”

“Do you ever pet him or make kissy-face noises at him? In an appropriately manful manner, I mean.”

Slawski hit the brakes, bringing the cruiser to a screeching halt right there in the middle of Joshua Town Road. “Look, man, I ain’t in the mood for none of your piffle,” he said with quiet menace. “So just stop flapping them gums and you and me’ll get along fine.”

“You mean there are people who actually get along with you?”

“Eventually. Unless they be disrespecting me.”

“You mean like Munger?”

At the mention of the lieutenant’s name, he tensed up. “If this was my investigation,” he said between his teeth, “we’d be taking soil samples from these folks’ shoes right now.”

“You consider them suspects?”

“Oh, yeah,” he affirmed. “I consider them suspects.”

“So why don’t you take them?”

“You heard the deal.”

“I heard it.”

He resumed driving, gripping the wheel tightly in his huge hands. He sat ramrod straight, his bare head grazing the top of the car. The rain had weakened to a drizzle. “How about you?”

“What about me?”

“Anyone get along with you?”

“From time to time. The problem is they usually end up dead.” I smiled at him faintly. “Sorry to be the one to break it to you, Trooper.”

Barry Feingold’s place was hidden away at the end of a long, narrow dirt road that snaked back through several hundred acres of Nature Conservancy forest before it dead-ended at the bank of the Connecticut River. The house backed right up on the water. It was an exceptionally private house. It was not a particularly nice or interesting one—just a faded gray two-story cape from the early Sixties set behind a ledge of granite. His bug-eyed Sprite sat in the garage, a Ford Tempo rental car parked next to it.

Lulu immediately sniffed at the tires of both cars, in search of familiar scents. Or maybe she was just showing off for Klaus. She found zip. Klaus stayed in the cruiser. I was really starting to wonder what he did.

The back of the house was mostly glass, and there was a pool that had a lot of dead maple leaves in it. A jungle of wild berry bushes, forsythia and lilac tumbled down to the edge of the river, where there was a private dock but no boat.

We found them back there on the terrace seated around a table under an awning, eating salad and talking. They stopped doing both of those things as soon as they saw us. And how we looked.

Ruth dropped her fork. “What is it? What did he do to her?”

Slawski took off his hat and examined the brim, his jaw muscles tightening.

“The bastard!” Marco jumped to his feet, kicking his chair over violently. He was still exceptionally hulking and exceptionally flushed. He wore a beret over his orange hair. “I’ll tear his head off! I’ll kill the—!”

“I’m afraid someone’s beaten you to the punch, Marco,” I said quietly. “Thor was murdered this morning.”

Arvin let out a strangled yelp.

“Christ, I didn’t mean it!!” Marco cried, panicking. “It was just something to say. I didn’t mean it!”

“Shut up, dear,” Barry said to him, not unkindly. “Sit down and shut up.”

Arvin ran to his mother and fell to his knees at her feet, his face scrunching and puckering like the skin on a baked apple.

Ruth clasped him tightly. “How, Hoagy?”

“Someone smashed in his head with a six-pound sledgehammer and dumped him in our pond.”

“Is Clethra okay?” she asked.

“She’s upset, of course. But she’s fine. Merilee’s with her.”

“Can I call her, Mom?” Arvin pleaded, his voice rising. “I have to call her. She
needs
me.”

“Of course you can, Arvy,” she said tenderly. I saw nothing but kindness from her toward him, by the way.

I gave him the number and he ran into the house. Then I introduced Slawski around.

The resident trooper squared his shoulders and cleared his throat. He seemed extremely ill at ease. “Naturally, we will require your cooperation so as to enable us to ascertain where each of you were at the time of Mr. Gibbs’ death,” he said, most carefully.

“Any particular reason, Trooper?” Barry demanded, climbing up on his high, rich horse.

“There’s every reason to believe that the crime was carried out by a perpetrator of the victim’s personal acquaintance,” Slawski responded, retreating all the way into the stilted, multisyllabic comfort of cop-speak.

“What reason?” Ruth demanded, scowling up, up, up at him.

“His person,” Slawski replied, glancing down, down, down at her, “was mutilated in an extremely graphic and sexual manner.”

Barry and Ruth both frowned at me.

“They cut his penis off,” I translated.

Marco clapped his hand over his mouth, staggered. Or gave a damned good imitation of it.

Through the French doors I could see Arvin on the phone in the kitchen with Clethra, pacing back and forth, gesturing wildly.

“Such mutilation is not, as a rule, considered consistent with a break-in or other random act of violence,” Slawski went on. “Thus suggesting he was murdered by someone of his acquaintance.”

“You mean me?” Ruth huffed.

“I mean someone of his acquaintance,” Slawski answered stiffly. “Consequently, this necessitates we ascertain the whereabouts of those particular individuals who—”

“Since when do resident troopers handle murder investigations in this state?” Ruth wanted to know. No one had ever accused her of being slow on the uptake.

“The Major Crime Squad has asked myself to assist,” Slawski maintained, avoiding eye contact with me. “Given the complexity of the investigation.”

“Unless now isn’t a good time,” I put in tactfully. “We could come back later, after you’ve had a chance to—”

“Nah, nah.” Ruth waved me off. “Let’s get it over with. None of us have anything to hide.”

We sat. Lulu got busy working her way around the table sniffing delicately at everyone’s shoes. Ruth didn’t seem to mind it. Barry didn’t seem to mind it either. But Marco minded it plenty. Kept fussing with the cuffs of his khakis and shifting his feet—he even bonked her on her large, black schnoggin with his sneaker, hoping she’d go away and leave him alone. She wouldn’t. A kick in the nose brings out her stubborn streak, and it’s some stubborn streak, if you know anything about bassets. Finally, he jumped to his feet, sweating freely, and fled inside, mumbling something about iced tea.

He came back a moment later carrying a tray with a pitcher and glasses on it. He was wearing a pair of sandals now. Lulu peered at them and at him while he poured, his eyes guiltily avoiding hers. Then she curled up under me with a triumphant grunt, a.k.a. her pickled herring grunt. I patted her gently. That would have to do for now.

“Now, what time was he killed?” asked Ruth, immediately seizing control.

Slawski replied, “The victim was alone between the hours of 10
A.M.
and noon. We can’t be any more specific until we receive our preliminary findings from the medical examiner.”

“I was right here that whole time,” Ruth declared, stabbing the table with a fat index finger.

Slawski focused his hot coal eyes on her. “Can anyone vouch for you?”

“Marco can,” she snapped. “We were having coffee together.”

Slawski took out a pad and made a note of it. “Anyone else see you?”

“Look around you, fella,” said Marco, his gaze taking in the forest that all but engulfed the property on three sides. “There’s no one else around.”

Slawski turned to Barry. “Where were you, sir?”

“Barry and Arvy went out for breakfast together,” Ruth answered.

I looked at Barry. Barry looked at me.

“That’s not exactly true, Ruthie,” he said slowly.

She gave her ex-husband a withering glare. “What do you mean?”

“I mean … I left him at Debbie’s Diner for an hour,” he said gingerly. “With Clethra.”

“What the hell was he … ?” She whirled and glowered at me. “This was all your doing, wasn’t it?” she snarled.

“Arvin did tell me he wanted to see her,” I acknowledged. “It was mutual. I didn’t see any harm in it.”

“And you were where while they met?” Slawski pressed Barry.

“Having a Bloody at the Black Seal.” Barry left it at that. He didn’t say he was seeing a man there about his Sprite. Possibly, he didn’t want Ruth to know he had money troubles. Or, possibly, he hadn’t been there at all. Possibly he’d sped over to the farm and bashed in Thor Gibbs’ skull. True, the ferry boat captain would remember him if he’d taken the car ferry. But he could have taken the bridge at East Haddam instead, which also had the advantage of being faster. Only, Lulu hadn’t turned up anything on his tires. How to explain that?

“I see you have your own dock,” I observed, glancing down at the vacant slip. “Your boat’s already out of the water for the winter?”

“Sold it this spring,” Barry replied offhandedly. “Wasn’t getting much use out of the damned thing so I gave it up.” He reached for his iced tea, eying me over the rim of his glass. “Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

Slawski was eying me, too. Most disapprovingly. He wanted me to let him handle things. I gestured for him to go ahead.

He went ahead. “Mrs. Feingold, it has been well documented that you tried to take the life of the victim once before in New York City. Seeing as how your individual presence here in this community coincides with his demise …”

“What kind of idiotic bim do you think I am?” Ruth blustered at him angrily. “You think I’d be stupid enough to schlepp all the way out here and kill him!? Huh?”

“I w-wouldn’t know, ma’am,” Slawski mumbled, clearly flustered. “I merely … is there anything you’d like to tell me? Anything that you feel might shed some light on this particular situation?”

“No, there isn’t.” She paused, softening. “Except …”

“Yes, ma’am?” Slawski leaned forward anxiously.

“Except that I’m sorry he’s gone. I loved the man once.”

Slawski nodded grimly. “This topless videotape that appeared on television …”

“I knew nothing about that,” she claimed.

“And neither did Thor,” I spoke up, in his defense. Someone had to.

“I see.” Slawski thumbed through his notes in thoughtful silence. He was either groping for an angle or stalling. I couldn’t tell which.

Arvin came back now and folded his gangly self in his chair, gazing at the river out beyond the berry bushes, lost in his thoughts and his grief.

“If there’s nothing else, Trooper, we’d like to drive back to the city this afternoon,” Ruth said anxiously. There was an edge of desperation to her voice. It was as if she needed to get away from this place as fast as possible, to get back home, to get where she could close the door on everything and everybody.

“Unless, of course,” Barry added graciously, “you’d rather we stick around.”

Slawski considered this carefully. “No, that shouldn’t be entirely necessary. Long as we know how we can contact you. We will be requiring formal statements. We may also wish to pursue other, more specific lines of inquiry once we have completed our examination of the physical evidence.” He passed his notepad around so that they could write down their addresses and phone numbers. Then he gave each of them one of his cards. “There’s also the disposition of the deceased to be facilitated. I assume you’ll be wanting to transport your husband’s body back to New York for burial.”

“He wasn’t my husband anymore,” Ruth pointed out.

“Perhaps not, ma’am,” Slawski conceded. “But legally speaking, he was still—”

“Don’t tell me about the law, Trooper!” she raged. “I’m a goddamned lawyer, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled, chastened.

We sat there in silence a moment.

“Hell, I’ll bury him,” I offered. “If no one else will, I mean.”

“He wanted to be cremated,” Ruth said hoarsely, her eyes filling with tears. “He always said so. He didn’t believe in crowding the earth with wooden boxes filled with bones and old clothing and …” Her voice caught. “Will that be a problem?”

“Shouldn’t be,” Slawski replied crisply. “Provided there’s nothing inconclusive in the medical examiner’s findings that would require further laboratory analysis of the body. The body’s evidence, y’understand.”

“I really wish you would stop calling him ‘the body,’ ” she fumed. “That’s a cold, dehumanizing way to talk about someone.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. Didn’t mean to disrespect nobody.”

“Of course not,” Barry said with a smile, to let him off the hook.

Marco just sat there mopping at his brow and sneaking looks down at Lulu. Arvin was still watching the river, not really with us.

Slawski got up out of his chair, towering over everyone. He started to say something else but decided to leave it be. He tipped his hat. Then he headed back to his cruiser. Lulu and I followed him.

“One of these days, Trooper,” I said, “I’m going to have to talk to you about your bedside manner.”

“What about it?”

“You haven’t got one.”

“I’m working on it.”

“It doesn’t show.”

We got in the car with Lulu in between us. Klaus was fast asleep in back, which wasn’t much of a change from when Klaus was wide-awake in back.

Slawski started up the engine, shooting an uneasy glance at me. “Can you keep a secret?”

“That’s one of the things I’m best at.”

“Rich white people like them scare the shit out of myself.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Trooper. You have more money in the bank than all of those rich white people put together.”

He raised his eyebrows at me, surprised. “How you know?”

“I know.”

“What, you make it your business to know?”

“If it has anything to do with my business.”

“And what is your business?”

“That’s my business.” I looked at him curiously. “Tell me something, why is it that Munger doesn’t want you anywhere near this case?”

“Because it’s prime time, that’s why. Put your whole career on the fast track—provided you can make the play, if you know what I’m saying.”