Conundrum (21 page)

A little before ten, she pulled in through the north entrance and navigated up the hill toward Bigelow Chapel, following Claire’s map. This place was Disney World for landscape architects, the grounds punctuated with topiaries, obelisks, statues and mausoleums resembling garden follies. The instructions said to park on any street without a green line down the middle, but this would not be easy. There was quite a crowd already assembled. She drove past the Chapel, a Gothic Revival mini-cathedral, and made a right-hand turn down Pine Avenue, finally spotting a space just big enough for the Jeep.

As she trotted back up the hill to Chapel Avenue, she saw a black BMW station wagon with New York plates. She clutched her purse, with the cassette tape inside it but something lured her over to peer into the car. Of course nothing incriminating was left out in plain sight. She bent down to study the rear tire. The tiny pieces of pea gravel stuck in the tread didn’t prove anything because they had driven this car up Norman’s driveway to the Friday night dinner.

“What are you doing? Get away from our car, Iris!” She heard that unmistakable voice.

“I’m thinking of getting one of these. Does it get good gas mileage?”

Alyssa made a disgusted “Tsk” as she opened the car door, grabbed a sweater, beeped the auto-lock, and stood there, hands on hips, waiting for Iris to leave.

Iris tried to look nonchalant as she headed up the hill toward the chapel. She was relieved to see Detective Malone and Connors huddled together by a conspicuously unmarked car and rushed over.

“Did you get my message on your cell? I’ve brought the cassette tape. You’ve got to listen to it.” She produced the
ziploc
bag.

Detective Malone held it up and examined it through the plastic. He smiled wryly. “We will, and I have some questions about how it came into your possession. If you could come down to the station after the service, I’ll take your statement.”

Iris groaned. She was spending way too much time at that station for an innocent bystander. “Just be sure to arrest Adam before he gets away. He’s the murderer.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Was he being sarcastic? She shot a narrow-eyed look at his back. At least she’d gotten rid of the hot potato. Now she’d be out of danger. She caught sight of C.C. planted on a bench across from the chapel staring at a large granite sphinx. Iris hadn’t had time to absorb the full impact of the cassette tape, but it had to mean that C.C. was off their suspect list. Iris walked over and sank down next to
her. “So, you came. Wild place—
huh?”

“I feel like a marker in a giant board game and I’ve been moved from the Egyptian Gate to the Towering Linden Tree to the Gothic Chapel to the Sphinx.” C.C. said just before a screech of bagpipe music assaulted their ears.

“And now you’ve rolled ‘Back 1 space to the Gothic Chapel,’” Iris shouted. “It’s show time!”

A nondescript man and two adolescent boys stood stiffly on the chapel steps. From their uncomfortable downcast expressions and general resemblance to Norman, the boys must be the sons, brought home from school by Barb after all. The man, dressed in a somber suit, wore a look of prof
essional sympathy and propriety—
probably charged by the funeral home with tending to Norman’s only family. Iris couldn’t believe that Barb hadn’t come along, at least to give her sons moral support. All three wore white lilies in their lapels, and they looked rooted there as if stuck in a receiving line. Unsure of the etiquette, Iris shook the boys’ hands and mumbled something sympathetic. C.C. followed suit.

The chapel consisted of a single nave, without side aisles or transept, leading up to a large, gaudily colored stained glass window in front. An awful thought occurred to Iris. Oh, God, this had better not be an open coffin. She couldn’t face those leaden eyes again.

A large, heavily polished mahogany casket rested on a stand in the chancel, its lid, mercifully, closed. Iris and C
.C. slid into a pew on the left—
the bride’s side. She twisted around and saw Detective Connors sitting in the back row with another man, telegraphing ‘cop’ despite their formal dark suits. G.B. sat half-way down the pews, his head bowed in a prayerful pose. She noticed Alyssa in the second row near Claire, but no sign of Adam. Detective Malone must have already taken him off to the station. Why hadn’t Alyssa gone with him? Maybe she hadn’t seen him taken away and assumed that Adam was still outside. Or maybe he hadn’t come after all.
The two dozen or so other mourners were probably from Meeker Enterprises, earning their overtime by fleshing out the crowd.

An unseen organist had been playing a dirge-like tune guaranteed to depress the audience, but now segued into something more
lively
. The Meeker boys and their minder progressed slowly down the aisle to the front pew, followed by an overdressed minister exuding a bit too much pomp for the circumstance. He turned grandly at a podium up front and let his purple robe settle. The eulogy, delivered in a loud plummy voice, with an overtone of breakfast sherry, was so flattering that Iris suspected Norman was its author. Her mind kept going back to the cassette tape. Would its text be admissible in court? She thought that she remembered from a TV show that one participant had to be present for the opposing lawyer to question. What happens if the
witness is dead and leaves a tape behind? Let it go, Iris. It’s not your problem to make the case. Now that the police had Adam, maybe they could match his DNA to something.

As the minister rumbled on, Iris considered Norman. Since she had heard his cold voice on the tape her estimation of him had changed from selfish jerk to heartless monster. How had she missed seeing that side of him? What kind of person witnesses a murder and doesn’t report it because he sees the chance to get something he wants out of it? Isn’t that kind of behavior considered psychopathic? Or is it sociopathic? She could never remember the difference from Psych 101. What a pair Norman and Adam were!
And poor Carey…

After a closing song—
its words h
elpfully printed in the program—
six men from the front row stood up and surrounded the coffin. Resting the support poles on their shoulders, they slowly filed out, followed by the boys, heads down. The rows of attending mourners followed, front row to back, peeling out of the pews right and left into a smooth flow to the door. Alyssa glared at Iris as she passed, no doubt wondering why she and C.C. were sitting together. The temporary congregation spilled out into the road, dividing around a black FDR-era hearse, complete with running boards, that was being loaded with Norman’s remains. Everyone scrambled to their own cars to join the long line forming behind the hearse.

The cemetery roads wound up and down in a serpentine, passing mausoleums resembling mini-temples. Some plots had their turf defined by wrought-iron fences. The rolling procession wended its way toward the rear of the property where, for a price, one could purchase prime real estate overlooking Willow Pond.

Iris had to hand it to Norman. This was a beautiful spot. Too bad it was paid for by Carey’s life. She couldn’t help contrasting this pompous ceremony with Carey’s simple one, Norman’s prime plot with Carey’s unadorned gravestone in a crowded field. She waited in her car for the ushers to carry the casket over to a contraption ready to lower it into the grave. Most of the Norman Meeker Enterprises staff, once reunited with their cars, had taken the opportunity to escape. So it was a smaller group that she now joined, clustered by the fresh grave site near Willow Pond path. Iris noticed that Alyssa had drifted away from the group. The minister said a final prayer, arms uplifted dramatically. The two boys awkwardly threw clumps of dirt on top of the casket, making thudding sounds with a dull ring of finality. Iris felt woozy from the strong smell of newly cut grass, or maybe it was the momentarily pathetic tableau of the fatherless boys. They, at least, were innocent.

As the ceremony wound down, C.C. approached, saying “I’m going in to the station now with the Detective to give him a statement about that leverage business.”

Iris looked over to see Detective Connors watching them. She nodded. “Good. I’m going to go visit another grave.”

Chapter 42

M
alone turned to the department’s audio-visual guy, “Does the office even have a cassette player anymore?”

“Of course we do.” He seemed affronted. “We have everything in this new set-up.” The AV technician snapped the tape into the player and the miniature spools began to rotate.

After a few seconds of scratchy static, the words came through clearly: “I’m telling you, Adam, that I’m making a recording of this. It’s my life insurance policy.”

“What the hell, Norman. I never agreed to this.”

“You don’t have a choice. I saw you push Carey over the handrail, so what’s to keep you from killing me too? I’m putting this in a safe place in case anything happens to me.”

The detective’s mouth had transformed from a line to a circle. “Stop the tape! Hang on.” He pressed the speed dial on his cell.

“Did you find Adam Lincoln yet?”

“No. His wife said he felt sick and went back to the hotel. He took their car. She left from the chapel with the professor. I’m headed back now with the magazine lady. She’s going to make a statement about that phone call that Reynolds made last week.”

“Listen, Connors. Lincoln is our guy. We’ve got some proof on this tape. Is it the same hotel they were in before? Go pick him up. Put the magazine lady in a cab. I’ll send back-up, so wait for it. He might be packing.”

“Roger that. I’ll call when I’ve got him.”

Malone turned back to the AV guy. “Okay. Play me the rest.”

***

“He’s not in his room. The car’s not here. The receptionist said that she hasn’t seen him.
Whadda
you want me to do?”

“Damn
— he must have figured we’re onto him. Pick up the wife and bring her in. We’ve got to grab him before he can disappear.” Malone slammed down his desk phone.

C.C. regarded Detective Malone sullenly from under the bangs of her pageboy.

His furious gray eyes glared back at her. “
Lemme
get this straight. You’re saying Will Reynolds told you he intended to blackmail Norman Meeker into backing him in some development deal? In other words our first victim was going to try to get money from our second victim, but you didn’t think this was worth mentioning to the police?
Anything else that you haven’t bothered to tell us about?”

“Well, since Will never got there, I thought it didn’t matter. And he didn’t say ‘blackmail’. I would’ve remembered that. I’m coming here voluntarily to make sure you have all the facts, even the ones that seem unimportant. Will was my friend.”

Malone kneaded his right temple, eyes closed. A knock on his door brought his head back up.

The young plainclothes detective from the funeral leaned his head into the room. “They all left, Detective Malone. I checked them off the list like you said.”

Malone walked out to the hall and closed the door behind him. “Adam Lincoln looks like our guy and he’s still on the loose. So, no one’s left at the cemetery, right?”

“Well, the Reid woman was still there when I left. I think she was making a phone call, but she wasn’t on my list.”

C.C. opened the door and volunteered “Iris said she was going to walk around the cemetery for
awhile
.”

“Oh, shit.
DiAngelo
, get back there and find her NOW before we have another body on our hands. And YOU,” he turned to C.C., “sit down while I decide whether to book you for withholding evidence!”

Chapter 43

M
aybe now she could reach Ellie. She wandered down to her car and retrieved her cell phone. Ellie’s voice mail message came on. She was probably on the ferry to the Vineyard.

“Ellie, it’s me. Call my cell ASAP! I have news.”

She rested her head back against the driver’s seat and let the events of the morning settle in her mind. Norman had been a terrible person. She couldn’t get over how she had underestimated his greed. She and Ellie had been right about Carey’s death being a murder. Adam had killed him and he must have killed Will and Norman too, alibi or no alibi. Was he insane?

She wanted to call Luc. She wanted to hear his completely sane, reassuring voice. The clock on her dashboard read 11:21. He’d be catching up on sleep, so she wouldn’t wake him.

Carey’s memorial service had been in this general area of the cemetery. Wasn’t it in a field just beyond that ridge in the direction of the Crematorium? She’d recognize the spot when she saw it. As she realized that she’d finally be able to tell her friend that his murderer had been unmasked, the space between her shoulders relaxed.

The trees shimmered with light. The green of the manicured grass almost hurt her eyes. She wandered up the hil
l to examine a modern sculpture—
a tall, twisting bronze plane that suggested redemption and release. She found this modern expression of an afterlife far more moving than the clunky angels and saints standing solemn guard nearby. The soaring bronze was encircled by feathery plants that, Iris suspected, would give her hay fever if she lingered, so she kept moving. Her eye was caught by a prominent headstone. It listed three people with three birth dates and two dates of deaths. She wondered how the third person, born in 1927, felt about some impatient stonecutter itching to finish his commission. Also, wasn’t it tacky to lump people together on one headstone? ‘Thrift above all’ was the Yankee motto, she mused.