Caught Dead (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-seven

When I pulled into the back lot of my apartment, headed to my spot next to Gracie's, I noticed my spot taken by an ice-blue Mercedes. Leaning against it, arms folded, was Danny Trinh, himself ice-blue in bright white chinos and a cobalt-blue muscle shirt that said: Tina Turner Farewell Tour. He wasn't moving. I couldn't see his eyes, hidden behind dark sunglasses. But his lean, muscular body told me quite a bit—anger, frustration, resentment. You name it.

I parked my car and got out. “You waiting to see me?”

“No, I'm here to pose for animal crackers.”

I grinned. “If you came back as an animal, which one would it be?”

For a second I could see him simmer. “A fly,” he snarled. “That way it's easy to track down a piece of shit like you.”

“Not bad. I'd be a…” I paused, thinking.

He jumped in. “Man, I don't care what the fuck you'd come back as because in this life you're just a big asshole.”

“So we have a problem. Wanna come upstairs?”

“Look, man, I just wanna know what you're trying to pin on me.”

I leaned against my own car, the two of us perhaps ten feet apart, adversaries, arms folded, both in dark sunglasses, both dressed for a reunion of
Beach Blanket Bingo
. Frankie Avalon. I used to watch late-night TV when I couldn't sleep, especially during my college days. The Americanization of the Viet boy. Now, standing there, Danny and I looked like two grim CIA agents slumming in South Beach.

“I'm not trying to pin anything on you. I'm just talking to anybody who knew Mary and Molly.”

The old charming Danny was gone now—in its place a cool, defiant anger, the words spaced out with deliberate care. “And that involves following me?”

“I followed you?”

“How else did you find my apartment in Frog Hollow?” He bit his lower lip. “Which has nothing to do with anything.”

“Then why did you keep it a secret?

He made a mocking laugh. “Maybe a secret to you, but not to my family.
They
know I live there.”

“Your mother?”

“Well, no. She wants nothing to do with my father's family. As I grew up, his relatives were around. Not so much him, but an uncle, an aunt, some cousins.”

“And your father's cousin gave you a place to stay?”

“I love my mother, but she can be a little nosy sometimes. Hey, I'm a young man. My mother spends her time talking to the Virgin Mary. Right now she tells me she needs me to live with her. For now. My cousin lets me rent the second floor. I pay him rent, I handle the mortgage and finances through the bank, and I have a little space to myself…”

“But
that
neighborhood?”

“It's my family, you know.” He sneered. “You're talking about my family.”

“Your mother doesn't suspect?”

“Enough questions. I'm here to tell you to back off.”

“Why?”

“For one, I've done nothing wrong—as you've discovered—and, two, you'll screw things up with my mother. You're gonna make me into a bad guy. I've already talked too much to you.”

“I'm just asking questions.”

“No,” he yelled, pounding his fist on the fender. “Enough. My cousin Binh tells me you and Hank are sneaking around. He spots you in front of the house, spying. Asking questions. Of course, he calls me. Tells me. ‘Are you in trouble?' he says. No, but I gotta worry.”

“Why the old Honda?” I asked.

He took off his sunglasses and glared at me. “I don't wanna leave the Mercedes in the back lot there. It's dangerous, as you pointed out. Even with an alarm. It's my baby. The old clunker, well, I feel safe with it there.” He walked so close to me I could see a prominent vein throbbing the left side of his neck. “How does any of this relate to Mary and Molly's murders? Tell me how.” He yelled the last sentence.

“I'm asking questions around…”

“Fuck you. You're ruining my life. I built a successful life. I'm respected, I got a future, and this negative chatter—this nasty innuendo—if it gets out, to the bank, it's gonna kill everything I built up. You're fucking with my future.”

“Then I'm fucking with everyone's futures. Kristen's and Jon's and Tommy's and Cindy's. Because I'm asking the same questions of them.”

He laughed that phony laugh. “The only problem is, they really don't
have
futures.”

“And you do?”

“Haven't you been paying attention?”

“You know, Danny, I'd think you'd want to help.”

“And you don't think I don't. I've talked to you—even the police at my door. That asshole Ardolino—that grade-school Neanderthal—knocks on my door, looks at me like I'm every lowlife he's ever hauled in for spitting on a sidewalk, and what am I supposed to think? And it all comes back to you.”

“As I said, interviews…”

“Oh, that's right. Interviews. You're trying to pin an impossible murder on me because you don't want it to be one of the family.”

I started to walk away. “You wanna come inside. It's hot out here.”

He shook his head, but I noticed he backed up, into the shade of an old oak at the edge of the property. I stood in the blazing sunlight. “No, I'm not staying here long. Just long enough to tell you to lay off. I answer every question and still you track me down. My life is an open book, Rick. I work for a bank. You think they don't monitor my life, even my private life. And you'd think I'd jeopardize the life I've worked hard to build. You got to be crazy.”

“Could you answer one question?”

He looked ready to say no, fishing his key out of his pocket, then moved closer, almost three feet away. I could smell his aftershave: pungent, almost sweet. “If it'll end this nonsense, shoot.”

“On the night Mary Vu was murdered, around six p.m., you called her at her home.”

He looked surprised. “You sure?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I don't think I did. Why would I call her at home?”

“You called Tommy, then talked to Benny at the store, and then you…”

He breathed in, confident. “Oh, God, yes. I was supposed to meet up with Tommy for something, but his cell phone went to message. I had to change the time. I couldn't meet him. We were supposed to meet later that night. So I called Benny and, I guess, I called Mary. Though I can't remember that. Looking for Tommy.” He finished dramatically, emphasizing the word
Tommy
. He looked happy.

“Did you talk to Mary?”

“I guess so. I don't remember. If Tommy wasn't there, I probably said hello or something and hung up.”

“You talked for ten minutes.”

“I don't know. The woman always made me nervous. I probably yapped about nonsense. How are you? What's new? This or that. Nonsense. I don't even remember making that call, but I probably did.”

“Did you ever reach Tommy?”

“No,” he said. “And plans sort of went out the window when we learned his mother was dead.”

“Who told you?”

He hesitated. “I think it was my mother, calling from Molly's home.”

“What did you think?”

“Like everyone, I thought—how dumb. Mary? Who'd wanna kill her? She was, well, just there. Like you never really thought about her.”

I moved into the shade and forced him to turn to face me. I was sweating and I mopped my forehead with a handkerchief.

“Did you know that Molly warned Mary about you?”

“Yeah, I knew. Tommy told me.”

“Did you know that Molly suspected Kristen was on drugs?”

“Yeah, she told me her mother was on the warpath. She found a goddamn joint. Look. Kristen leaves a fuckin' joint on the bureau in her room or something. So Molly finds it. The Opium Wars Revisited.”

“Molly probably thought it was your influence.”

“Yeah, I'd be the first person she'd think of. That fucking prep school arrest. My God, one little mistake and I'm branded
capo de drugi
on the Eastern Seaboard.”

“Mary was keeping an eye on Tommy.”

“Because Mary was nuts about drugs and always was afraid Tommy would get back in trouble. It kept her awake nights.” He drew his lips into a thin line. “God, what a simple, simple woman.”

“She'd been worrying since the prep school days.”

“But we're all in our midtwenties now. Perhaps the mothers could take the drug-abuse hotline off speed dial.”

“But you're still using,” I said. “Tommy told me the two of you share a bag now and then.”

He looked angry. “Big fucking mouth on him. That's why I didn't say anything about Kristen. Kristen herself thought it
funny
.” Then he laughed. “Yeah, so what? Like you don't? Come on.”

“Did you give that joint to Kristen?” I asked.

“No, but she took it from me. We'd smoke before sex. There's nothing like sex with good weed—it makes good sex, well, wonderful. But Kristen was too unstable for me to let her run around the house with grass. I think she probably took it from my cigarette case. It wasn't the first time, but I warned her. Seriously warned her. She thinks I never see her stealing joints. God knows what she does with them.”

“Solitary pleasure?”

“I don't know. For a pretty but simple girl, she can be a little—wily.”

“But Molly assumed drugs had reentered
all
your worlds—not knowing it had never stopped—and now Kristen was in. And she blamed you.”

“No one said anything to me,” Danny said.

“But Molly talked to Mary about it. And Mary worried, not about you, but Tommy.”

“You know,” Danny sighed, “this drug business is infantile—so unimportant. But I sensed a change in Mary.” He smiled. “She'd recently quit my fan club. When I called the house or stopped in, I'd get the old arctic freeze from her. I guess Molly was, well, on my case.”

“She suspected your affair with Kristen?”

He laughed. “Affair? That's quite a word for it. Makes me think of French movies in black and white.”

“How would you define it?”

“Availability. Kristen is available.”

“That's cruel.”

“She knows the way I am.”

“Are you sure?”

“We talk of it. I
told
her—don't expect a thing from me, except a good time.”

“But did Molly
know
?”

He scratched the side of his nose. “No, of course not. Kristen knew how bad it would be otherwise. It would ruin a good thing—for
her
. And I got to worry about…”

“I know, I know—your image as a banker.”

He didn't like that. “Fuck you,” he sneered. “Kristen did say her mother might have suspected, a little bit, maybe. I mean, Molly would ask her what we talked about when I visited. ‘Danny's a good-looking boy, isn't he? Right?' They were all fishing expeditions.”

“But why would she mind?”

“I told you. Because Molly didn't trust me since prep school. And she made it clear that she saw me as, well, a player. Too many girls, you know. They don't want that for sweet little Kristen.”

“You
are
a player.”

“But top it off with Molly's worries about my friendship with Larry—he loved me like a second son—and her own husband's dislike for his own son Jon, her own blood—and, well, you got yourself a problem. And then there was the old wives tale that I was Larry's son.”

“So I've heard.”

“As tired a story as you can find.” He straightened up, lifted his chin. “Finding that joint in Kristen's room probably moved Molly into overdrive.”

“And Mary as well.”

“True.”

“Who else knew about the joint?”

“No one. I told Kristen to shut up. It would blow over.”

“But it didn't.”

“Well, I never thought it would be an issue.”

“But,” I said, “was Mary curt to you when you called her at home?”

Frustrated: “I told you, I don't even remember the
call
. How am I supposed to remember the
context
?”

He opened the door to his car and slid into the driver's seat.

“Tell me this. Would Larry mind if you married Kristen?”

“I'm not gonna marry Kristen.”

“That's not my question.”

He paused, thinking about it. “Like Molly, he's branded me as a womanizer, which he sort of likes. My fault because I used to regale him with stories of my teenage conquests. That was a mistake. He loves me, but doesn't think I'd stay with Kristen very long. There's always another girl on the next corner.”

“So the answer is yes—he would mind.”

“It's not an issue. But I do know he'd agree with me on one thing, though.”

“What's that?”

“That I could easily do a lot better than his special-ed daughter.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

Hank and I sat with Cindy and Tommy in Tommy's apartment. Tommy took a phone call from Danny, right after our parking-lot talk, and he'd called me, angry, spitting out the words so fast he had to start again. “Come over now. We gotta talk. Now. Cindy's here, too. We need to talk this shit out. Get the hell over here.”

They were waiting for us, the two of them, sitting next to each other on the shabby sofa, cans of Pepsi gripped tightly, cell phones in their laps.

“Just what the hell's going on?” Tommy spat out the minute we sat down. Cindy grumbled. Humorless, jaws set, hands folded over chests, they looked like they'd practiced this particular posture especially for our mandated visit.

Cindy's voice was squeaky, nervous. “You trying to pin Mom's murder on Tommy? If you are…”

I broke in. “Is that what Danny told you?”

“Why are you hounding my brother?”

Hank looked from one to the other. “Nobody's hounding anybody, Cindy.”

“Just what did Danny tell you?” I asked.

Tommy looked ready for another outburst, but he changed his mind, answering me calmly. “He said you're trailing him around, even to the apartment he keeps in Frog Hollow…”

“You know about that?” Hank interrupted.

Tommy frowned. “Everybody does. I've been there.” But then he looked as though he'd misspoke, and backtracked. “I watched a Super Bowl game there. His Mom doesn't like sports.”

The look Cindy gave him told him to shut up.

I noted, “For someone everyone seems to dislike, you all seem to spend a lot of time with dear old Danny.”

“What you don't understand is that he's one of us, but that doesn't mean we see him a lot. He's around now and then.”

“So why did he call you now?”

“Because you put him on the spot—for that apartment, but also because of the fact we buy a little weed together.”

“And?”

He looked exasperated. “A little weed, man. A little. We don't even think about it any more. It's like we buy toothpaste when we run out.” He liked his own analogy because he smiled, looked appreciatively at Cindy, who wore a blank look on her face.

I stared into his face. “You know, I bring up drugs, and all you kids run amok.”

“That's because you're trying to somehow connect it to Mom and Aunt Molly's murders.”

“Preposterous,” Cindy yelled loudly. “My brother would never kill our own mother. Do you know how stupid that sounds?”

“I never said he did.”

“Danny said…”

“Tell me exactly what Danny
says
I said.” I looked at Tommy.

“He mentioned that Molly found a joint in Kristen's room…”

Cindy scoffed, “Barbie goes to pot.”

Tommy glared at her. “And Molly blamed Danny. The way she blamed him for everything. I mean Danny can be an asshole and all, but, like, Kristen is a twenty-something girl. She can buy her own shit.”

“But what if Danny did give it to her?” Hank said.

“So what? A joint. Do you people hear yourselves? She's not hiding the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction, for Christ's sake.”

“But Molly called your mother, and you know how your mother got crazy over drugs.”

“I know, I know,” Tommy grumbled. “Do I have to hear it again?”

Cindy looked at me. “But I don't understand how this connects to murder. You don't kill people over a joint in someone's purse. The fact that Tommy and Danny smoke a bit—and me too if you gotta know, why don't you lock me up in your loony bin?—has nothing to do with murder.”

“I never said it did.”

“Then why are you asking the questions?”

“I'm asking
every
question I can think of. I'm hoping something will fall in place.”

“That's a helleva way to do a job,” Tommy snickered. Cindy smiled.

“So Danny told you I thought the drugs were connected to the murders?” I asked.

“Not in so many words. He said you were on him and me for smoking, and because Molly was losing it over the
idea
of her little kiddy smoking a little cannabis,
you
thought somehow that we had to kill them.”

“Kill them,” Cindy echoed.

It did sound—to use Cindy's word—preposterous, but somewhere deep within me, in that hollowness where I listen to my own quiet, I felt there was something going on here. And in that moment, just like at other times in my life, I remembered the Buddha quotations from that tattered phrase book my mother tucked into my breast pocket.
The smallest moment is the shadow of the greatest. The greatest is a shadow of the smallest
. In the tiniest moment, in the most irrelevant anecdote, there lurked, somehow, the larger picture, the sun spot that came to dominate the sky.

“Sometimes,” I translated, “by talking about something like this trivial stick of pot on Kristen's bureau, sometimes, maybe, there's another story behind it.”

Both Tommy and Cindy yelled. “There you go again,” Tommy screamed. “What you're saying is that we're…like hiding something.”

“No,” I rushed in, “I'm saying that there may be a part of the story that
you
both don't understand because you don't have all the pieces.”

“And you do?'

“No. Not yet.”

“But Danny…”

“Tommy, the phone call from Danny was meant to scare you. He's pissed off at me, and he wants
everyone
pissed off at me.”

“It worked.” From Tommy.

“I don't get it.” From Cindy.

“Look.” Tommy looked first at Hank, then at me. “I wouldn't kill Mom. She was…my Mom. And I wouldn't kill Molly, even though she got on my nerves. This isn't news to us, you know.”

Cindy drew her lips into a tight line. “Aunt Molly was a troublemaker.”

“You know,” Tommy said, “yeah, it was funny how Mom kept
asking
me if I was doing drugs just recently.” We all waited. “I told her no.” A pause. “You know something? One time she even asked me if Danny did drugs. Opium, no less. Sometimes we joked—you know, okay it's time to relive the Opium Wars again. Shit, who the hell sees opium? I thought that was strange, after all this time, but I figured that was Molly's doing.” He sighed. “You know, sometimes like we're all eating together—like when she made
mi ga
on Sunday morning—I see her just staring at me, hard and long. Once, stoned out of my gourd, I told her how good her
mi ga
was, and she smiled at me.”

Hank spoke up, “But your mother was getting worried. She'd even put in that call to Detective Smolski.”

“I know,” Tommy said. “Rick told me. I don't have a clue what that was about.”

“What it suggests is that she
did
believe you were back on drugs.”

He nodded. “I guess so. Unless—unless she believed me, and was calling
for
Molly. After all, Mom had lots of contact with Smolski back when. She
liked
him. Maybe she was helping Molly deal with Kristen.”

“Huh!” Cindy roared, again melodramatically. “Kristen, the drug fiend.”

“You don't like her?” I asked.

“What's to like? It's like asking my opinion of an air bubble.”

Tommy grinned. “Cindy, that's cold.”

“Kristen likes only herself.”

“And Danny,” Hank added.

Cindy sat up. “I
assumed
that. One dirt bag fucking another.”

“Cindy.” Tommy put his hand on her wrist. “Stop it.”

She stood up and left the room. I could hear her rattling around in the cluttered kitchen, forks and spoons banging against a drawer.

“Your mother was afraid you'd go to jail,” I told him. “She didn't understand how insignificant the prep school arrest was.”

Cindy came back into the room and sat down.

“Danny talked to your mom shortly before she died,” I told them.

“Yeah,” Tommy said, “I know. He told me. He was trying to reach me. To change plans.”

“He never got you?”

“I was planning on blowing him off anyway. Sometimes when I knew he'd be calling, I turned off my cell. Blocked his texts.”

“What did you do together?”

“Not much. Like a couple times a year…you know…go to get a hamburger in his Mercedes and drive around. Maybe stop at Hooters or a strip club.”

“Smoking dope?”

“I swear, we never did that together. I didn't want to—with him. It would bum me out.”

“He must have been angry that Molly suspected him of giving drugs to Kristen.” I looked at Hank.

Tommy answered. “I don't know. I told Danny that Mom
suspected
something, but he said, ‘Your mom loves me to death. She won't believe anything bad about me.'”

Cindy echoed, “‘Your mom loves me to death.' Sure got that one right.”

***

Driving back to my place, Hank and I were quiet. The united forces of Cindy and Tommy, two lost siblings on a decrepit sofa, bothered me. And, I think, their blood relative Hank. Finally, he mumbled, “The only comfort I got this afternoon is that Cindy has become Tommy's biggest advocate.”

“Loyalty.”

“It seems to be a novelty in my family,” he said grimly.

My phone rang. “Where are you?” From Liz.

“With Hank, back from Cindy and Tommy's.”

“Family reunion?”

“Of course.”

“I just got back from Bank of America.” Humor in her voice.

“Holding it up?”

“No, just protecting my cherished assets. No, I wanted to take a look at your boy, Danny Trinh.”

“Why?”

“My being a world famous Farmington psychologist and all. I asked for information on my statement, an answer I had all along, being a financial whiz. I had to wait until he was free of the swooning women who encircled him like he's the last cupcake at the church bazaar.”

“And?”

“Well, I hoped he'd topple the inkwell so I could get hints to his psyche, a la Rorschach—just what do you see, Banker Trinh? A dead rabbit? A coiled snake? But no, all I could manage was a good moment of chitchat.”

“And?”

“You keep saying that word with such expectation.
And
I was very taken with him. He's quite the looker. And the way he looked at me, it was clear he liked what he saw.” She waited.

“I didn't ask you to date him.”

“A smooth talker, he is. Quite the work of art. Those dark brooding looks, Heathcliff meets Saigon. My, my, my. But the line of his female acolytes was bustling behind me, and you know how such women are. Full-force tsunami love. I had to thank him for ending my abysmal ignorance, and he flashed those brilliant ornaments the rest of us simply call teeth.”

“Liz, for God's sake. Isn't there a car wash nearby you can walk through?” She laughed. “So what do you think?”

“I think that Danny could get a woman to do almost anything he wants.”

“I hope you're not one of them.”

“Alas, no.” She sighed melodramatically. “I was once married to a good-looking guy. Hot actually. I've forgotten his name though. Sounded foreign. He had one of those smiles, too. Made a simple city girl like me dizzy. But that was a long time ago, in a faraway kingdom by the Rivers Hudson and East. That girl is no more. Once, to disappoint Jacqueline Susann, is definitely enough.”

When I hung up the phone, I found myself smiling.