Body Double (13 page)

Frost asked: “When was the last time you saw Ms. Leoni?”

“It would have been sometime in March, I think. I drove by her house one afternoon. She was out on the sidewalk, getting her mail.”

“Wasn’t that after she took out the restraining order against you?”

“I didn’t get out of my car, okay? I didn’t even speak to her. She saw me and went right into the house without saying a word.”

“So what was the point of that drive-by?” said Rizzoli. “Intimidation?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I just wanted to see her, that’s all. I missed her. I still . . .” He paused and cleared his throat. “I still miss her.”

Now he’s going to say that he loved her.

“I loved her,” he said. “Why would I hurt her?”

As if they’d never heard a man say that before.

“Besides, how could I? I didn’t know where she was. After she moved, that last time, I couldn’t find her.”

“But you tried?”

“Yes, I tried.”

“Did you know she was living in Maine?” asked Frost.

A pause. He looked up, frowning. “Where in Maine?”

“A little town called Fox Harbor.”

“No, I didn’t know that. I assumed she was somewhere in Boston.”

“Dr. Cassell,” said Rizzoli, “where were you last Thursday night?”

“I was here, at home.”

“All night?”

“From five
P.M.
on. I was packing for my trip.”

“Can anyone verify that you were here?”

“No. Paul had the night off. I freely admit I have no alibi. It was just me here, alone with my piano.” He banged the keyboard, playing a dissonant chord. “I flew out the next morning. Northwest Airlines, if you want to check.”

“We will.”

“The reservations were made six weeks ago. I had meetings already planned.”

“That’s what your assistant told us.”

“Did he? Well, it’s true.”

“Do you keep a gun?” asked Rizzoli.

Cassell went very still, his dark eyes searching hers. “Do you honestly think I did it?”

“Could you answer the question?”

“No, I do not have a gun. Not a pistol or a rifle or a pop-gun. And I didn’t kill her. I didn’t do
half
the things she accused me of.”

“Are you saying she lied to the police?”

“I’m saying she exaggerated.”

“We’ve seen the photo of her taken in the ER, the night you gave her a black eye. Did she exaggerate that charge as well?”

His gaze dropped, as though he could not bear her accusatory look. “No,” he said quietly. “I don’t deny hitting her. I regret it. But I don’t deny it.”

“What about repeatedly driving past her house? Hiring a private detective to follow her? Showing up on her doorstep, demanding to speak to her?”

“She wouldn’t answer any of my calls. What was I supposed to do?”

“Take a hint, maybe?”

“I don’t sit back and just let things
happen
to me, Detective. I never have. That’s why I own this house, with that view out there. If I really want something, I work hard for it. And then I hold on to it. I wasn’t going to just let her walk out of my life.”

“What was Anna to you, exactly? Just another possession?”

“Not a possession.” He met her gaze, his eyes naked with loss. “Anna Leoni was the love of my life.”

His answer took Rizzoli aback. That simple statement, said so quietly, had the honest ring of truth to it.

“I understand you were together for three years,” she said.

He nodded. “She was a microbiologist, working in my research division. That’s how we met. One day she walked into a board meeting to give us an update on antibiotic trials. I took one look at her, and I thought:
She’s the one.
Do you know what it’s like, to love someone so much, and then watch them walk away from you?”

“Why did she?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have an idea.”

“I don’t. Look at what she had here! This house, anything she wanted. I don’t think I’m ugly. Any woman would’ve been thrilled to be with me.”

“Until you started hitting her.”

A silence.

“How often did that happen, Dr. Cassell?”

He sighed. “I have a stressful job . . .”

“Is that your explanation? You slapped your girlfriend because you had a hard day at the office?”

He did not answer. Instead he reached for his glass. And that, no doubt, was part of the problem, she thought. Mix a hard-driving executive with too much booze, and you get a girlfriend with black eyes.

He set the glass down again. “I just wanted her to come home.”

“And your way of convincing her was to cram death threats in her door?”

“I didn’t do that.”

“She filed multiple complaints with the police.”

“Never happened.”

“Detective Ballard says it did.”

Cassell gave a snort. “That moron believed everything she told him. He likes playing Sir Galahad, it makes him feel important. Did you know he showed up here once, and told me that if I ever touched her again, he’d beat the shit out of me. I think that’s pretty pitiful.”

“She claimed you slashed her window screens.”

“I didn’t.”

“Are you saying she did it herself?”

“I’m just saying I didn’t.”

“Did you scratch her car?”

“What?”

“Did you mark up her car door?”

“That’s a new one to me. When did that supposedly happen?”

“And the dead canary in her mailbox?”

Cassell gave an incredulous laugh. “Do I
look
like somebody who’d do something that perverted? I wasn’t even in town when that supposedly happened. Where’s the proof it was me?”

She regarded him for a moment, thinking: Of course he denies it, because he’s right; we can’t prove he slashed her screens or scratched her car or put a dead bird in her mailbox. This man didn’t get where he is by being stupid.

“Why would Anna lie about it?” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But she did.”

TEN

B
Y NOON
M
AURA WAS ON THE ROAD,
yet one more weekender caught in traffic as it streamed north like migratory salmon out of a city where the streets were already shimmering with heat. Trapped in their cars, their children whining in backseats, vacationers could only inch grimly northward toward the promise of cool beaches and salt air. That was the vision Maura held on to as she sat in traffic, gazing at a line of cars that stretched all the way to the horizon. She had never been to Maine. She knew it only as a backdrop in the L.L. Bean catalogue, where tanned men and women wore parkas and hiking boots while, at their feet, golden retrievers lolled on the grass. In the world of L.L. Bean, Maine was the land of forests and misty shores, a mythical place too beautiful to exist except as a hope, a dream. I am sure to be disappointed, she thought as she stared at sunlight glaring off the unending line of cars. But that’s where the answers lie.

Months ago, Anna Leoni had made this same journey north. It would have been a day in early spring, still chilly, the traffic not nearly as heavy as today. Driving out of Boston, she too would have crossed the Tobin Bridge and then headed north on Route 95, toward the Massachusetts–New Hampshire border.

I am following in your footsteps. I need to know who you were. It’s the only way I’ll learn who I am.

At two, she crossed from New Hampshire into Maine, where the traffic magically dissolved, as though the ordeal up till then had been merely a test, and now the gates were opening to admit the worthy. She stopped only long enough to pick up a sandwich at a rest stop. By three, she had left the interstate and was traveling on Maine’s Route 1, hugging the coast as she continued north.

You came this way, too.

The views Anna saw would have been different, the fields just turning green, the trees still bare. But surely Anna had passed that same lobster roll shack, had glanced at the same junk dealer’s yard where eternally rusting bed frames were displayed on the lawn, and had reacted, like Maura, with an amused shake of the head. Perhaps she too had pulled off the road in the town of Rockport to stretch her legs and had lingered beside the statue of André the seal while she gazed over the harbor. Had shivered as the wind blew in a chill from the water.

Maura climbed back into her car and continued north.

By the time she passed the coastal town of Bucksport and turned south, down the peninsula, sunlight was already slanting lower over the trees. She could see fog rolling in over the sea, a gray bank of it, advancing toward shore like a hungry beast swallowing up the horizon. By sunset, she thought, my car will be enveloped in it. She had made no hotel arrangements in Fox Harbor, had left Boston with the quaint idea that she could simply pull into a seaside motel somewhere and find a bed for the night. But she saw few motels along this rugged stretch of coast, and those she did pass all displayed
NO VACANCY
signs.

The sun dipped even lower.

The road made an abrupt curve, and she gripped the wheel, barely managing to stay in her lane as she rounded a rocky point, past scraggly trees on one side, the sea on the other.

Suddenly there it was—Fox Harbor, nestled in the shelter of a shallow inlet. She had not expected it to be such a small town, little more than a dock, a steepled church, and a string of white buildings facing the bay. In the harbor, lobster boats bobbed at their moorings like staked prey, waiting to be swallowed up by the incoming fog bank.

Driving slowly down Main Street, she saw tired front porches in need of paint, windows where faded curtains hung. Clearly this was not a wealthy town, judging by the rusting trucks in the driveways. The only late-model vehicles she saw were in the parking lot of the Bayview Motel, cars with license plates from New York and Massachusetts and Connecticut. Urban refugees who’d fled hot cities for lobster and a glimpse of paradise.

She pulled up in front of the motel registration office. First things first, she thought; I need a bed for the night, and this looked like the only place in town. She got out of her car and stretched stiff muscles, inhaled damp and briny air. Though Boston was a harbor town, she seldom smelled the sea at home; the urban smells of diesel and car exhaust and hot pavement contaminated every breeze that blew in from the harbor. Here, though, she could actually taste the salt, could feel it cling like a fine mist to her skin. Standing in that motel parking lot, the wind in her face, she felt as if she’d suddenly emerged from a deep sleep, and was awake again. Alive again.

The motel’s decor was exactly as she’d expected it would be: sixties wood paneling, tired green carpet, a wall clock mounted in a ship’s wheel. No one was manning the counter.

She leaned forward. “Hello?”

A door creaked open and a man appeared, fat and balding, delicate spectacles perched like a dragonfly on his nose.

“Do you have any rooms for the night?” Maura asked.

Her question was met with dead silence. The man stared at her, jaw sagging open, his gaze riveted on her face.

“Excuse me,” she said, thinking that he had not heard her. “Do you have any vacancies?”

“You . . . want a room?”

Didn’t I just say that?

He looked down at his registration book, then back at her. “I’m, uh, sorry. We’re full up for the night.”

“I’ve just driven all the way up from Boston. Is there some place in town I might find a room?”

He swallowed. “It’s a busy weekend. There was a couple came in just an hour ago, asking for a room. I called around, had to send them all the way up to Ellsworth.”

“Where’s that?”

“About thirty miles.”

Maura looked up at the clock mounted in the ship’s wheel. It was already four forty-five; the search for a motel room would have to wait.

She said, “I need to find the office for Land and Sea Realty.”

“Main Street. It’s two blocks down, on the left.”

Stepping through the door into Land and Sea Realty, Maura found yet another deserted reception room. Was no one in this town manning his post? The office smelled like cigarettes, and on the desk, an ashtray overflowed with butts. Displayed on the wall were the firm’s property listings, some of the photos badly yellowed. Clearly this was not a hot real estate market. Scanning the offerings, Maura saw a tumble-down barn (
PERFECT FOR A HORSE FARM
!
), a house with a sagging porch (
PERFECT HANDYMAN SPECIAL
!
), and a photo of trees—that was it, just trees (
QUIET AND PRIVATE
!
PERFECT HOUSE LOT
!
). Was there anything in this town, she wondered, that wasn’t
perfec
t
?

She heard a back door open and turned to see a man emerge, carrying a dripping coffee carafe, which he set on the desk. He was shorter than Maura, with a square head and close-cropped gray hair. His clothes were far too large for him, the shirtsleeves and trouser cuffs rolled up as though he was wearing a giant’s hand-me-downs. Keys rattling on his belt, he swaggered over to greet Maura.

“Sorry, I was out back washing the coffee pot. You must be Dr. Isles.”

The voice took Maura aback. Though it was husky, no doubt from all those cigarettes in the ashtray, it was clearly a woman’s. Only then did Maura notice the swell of breasts under that baggy shirt.

“You’re . . . the person I spoke to this morning?” Maura asked.

“Britta Clausen.” She gave Maura a brisk, no-nonsense handshake. “Harvey told me you’d gotten into town.”

“Harvey?”

“Down the road, Bayview Motel. He called to let me know you were on the way.” The woman paused, giving Maura the once-over. “Well, I guess you don’t need to show me any ID. No doubt, looking at you, whose sister you are. You wanna drive up to the house together?”

“I’ll follow you in my car.”

Miss Clausen sorted through the key ring on her belt and gave a satisfied grunt. “Here it is, Skyline Drive. Police are all finished going through it, so I guess I can walk you through.”

Maura followed Miss Clausen’s pickup truck up a road that suddenly curved away from the coast and wound up a bluff. As they climbed, she caught glimpses of the coastline, the water now obscured beneath a thick blanket of fog. The village of Fox Harbor vanished into the mists below. Just ahead of her, Miss Clausen’s brake lights suddenly flared, and Maura barely had time to hit her own brakes. Her Lexus skidded across wet leaves, coming to a stop with its bumper kissing a Land and Sea Realty
FOR SALE
sign staked in the ground.