Crime of Privilege: A Novel (22 page)

Chuck’s eyes came down with an idea. “You don’t think he’s gone crazy, living out
in the woods and all?”

It was an interesting question, not because there was any possibility of truth to
it, but because it indicated that Chuck was thinking McFetridge might actually have
fired the shots.

“Chuck, I don’t think he’s gone crazy.”

“All right, I’ll drop it. It’s just, you know, nobody in the family’s heard from him
in years.”

“Not since he was here for the Figawi race.”

Chuck spent a moment deciding how to react. He went for innocence. “Yeah. Did he say,
like, why?”

“No.”

Chuck was in a quandary. He needed information, but he also did not want it to appear
that he was concerned about anything that had happened that last night McFetridge
was at the Gregory compound. I wondered if he would examine the ceiling again.

“Did you get the feeling he was mad at the family?” That was his first foray.

“No.”

“Well, to just disappear like that, never be in touch again, something must have happened.”
That was his second.

“I asked him what they did when they got back from Nantucket. And he told me he and
Jason Stockover picked up a couple of girls and brought them over to the Gregorys’.”

If a stranger came into the room he might have thought Chuck was in agony, that, at
the very least, he had hemorrhoids. “Is this the party old Mr. Telford’s been talking
about?”

“He said they went down the beach behind the Senator’s home. He and Jason and the
two girls.”

“One of life’s two most overrated pleasures,” Chuck declared. “Making love on the
beach and reading in the bathtub.” Immediately, he looked apologetic. “ ’Course, could
be me. A guy my size doesn’t always experience things the same way as other people.”
He pressed his hands down on his thighs as if he was going to stand up. “So, that
was it? That was all he said? About a party, I mean.”

I didn’t tell him about the golf. I just nodded.

Now Chuck smiled in that way he had of making his whole face crinkle. The hemorrhoids
were gone. The stranger who thought he had them might now have guessed he had just
been given a new pickup truck, one with comfortable cushions. “Okay, then. You ready
to report back to Mr. Telford that he’s got to start focusing somewhere else?”

“I’d like to find those girls, talk to them.”

Agony, happiness, apology, helpfulness, confusion. Chuck Larson had an expression
for each of them. “Paulie give you their names?”

“He said you had them.”

“Me?”

“Said they drove their own car and the Gregorys’ security guy writes down the license-plate
number of every car that enters the grounds. Said it’s your job to know things like
who is visiting. So, I’m thinking, why don’t I go talk to them, see what they know?”

Chuck gave that suggestion a good deal of contemplation. “How about if I have somebody
do that?”

“Well, Chuck, it’s like this. You’ve got a couple of women who’ve never said anything
for nine years because in all likelihood they don’t realize they know anything. A
private person shows up, an investigator, a friend of the family, whatever, starts
asking questions about being at the Gregorys’ house on a particular night when something
bad happened in the area. You don’t think that’s running a risk as to who they’re
going to tell about this visit from the mysterious visitor? I mean, chances are they’re
married now, right? They’re going to tell their husbands, husbands tell the boys at
the bar, next thing you know it’s in the tabloids.”

Chuck’s face was a portrait of worry.

“But me, I go up, show them my credential as an assistant district attorney for Cape
and the Islands, tell them we are still looking into an unsolved event in our jurisdiction
and it has just come to our attention that they were in Hyannis that night. Just want
to know if they can tell me where they were, what they were doing, who they saw. I
won’t have to get into specifics. I’d just be speaking with the voice of authority.”

Chuck Larson, for all his ability to get along with people, proved surprisingly easy
to manipulate.

I wondered if that made me a worse person than I thought.

P
ATTY, NOT CANDY. AS IN PEPPERMINT PATTY
.

Patty Margolis of Margolis & Associates, CPAs, Center Street, West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
She was not a CPA herself. That was her husband, Nick. She was the office manager,
and a notary public.

I was there without a file, without a briefcase, without a familiar face. She thought
I had come to get something notarized and gave me the welcoming smile that harried
people bestow on customers whose business they really don’t care about having.

She was in her early thirties, with a significant amount of black hair that was brushed
in such a way as to add a few inches to her height. She was vaguely pretty, generously
endowed on top, even more so on the bottom. I did not see her as McFetridge’s kind
of pickup, but her body fit the description he had given me.

I told her who I was and her eyes dimmed, even as she looked at my card. She asked
what she could do for me, and I gave her the story about our ongoing investigation
and her name just coming to our attention.

“That wasn’t my name back then.”

I had been expecting her to act perplexed, befuddled, confused. Why should she remember
one particular night out of thirty-plus Memorial Days?

I said I realized she had gotten married, but that’s why it had taken so long for
us to locate her.

She looked behind her. There were two inner chambers with doors, a half-dozen open
cubicles, a large photocopy machine. I saw no other people, but I had the sense they
were there, behind the doors, inside the cubicles. She tapped my card on the reception
desk. “Let’s go outside,” she said.

She walked around the reception desk, showing me a pair of not bad legs between wedge
heels that were too high for the office and a skirt that was too short for someone
with her figure. I followed her out the door to the sidewalk, where she squinted in
the sunlight, studying the neighboring stores and businesses, before deciding that
where she stood was as good a place as any. “All right,” she said, turning on me,
poking my card into my chest, “what’s this all about? Why are you showing up at my
office where my husband is?”

“Why?” I said. “Is there something you don’t want him to know?”

She was more than up to dealing with a little cruelty. “You know damn well what me
and Leanne were doing there or you wouldn’t be asking me questions. Now, if you don’t
tell me who it was who told you, you can haul my ass into court and I still won’t
tell you a fucking thing. Get it?” And with that she squished the card into my chest
and let it fall to the ground.

Ms. Margolis did not look even vaguely pretty now.

“A man named Paul McFetridge told me he met you that night.”

“Fucked me on the beach and pushed me out the fucking door is what he did.” This was
a very angry woman. “And he didn’t tell you because I never gave him anything but
my first name.”

“Ms. Margolis, who else has talked to you since then? About that night, I mean.”

“I know goddamn well what you mean. And let me tell you, Mr. Junior District Attorney,
I’ve got a deal, okay? So leave me the fuck alone or I’ll call your boss and your
next job will be selling newspapers at the T-station.”

And with that, Patty Margolis left me on the sidewalk in front of Margolis & Associates,
CPAs, Center Street, West Roxbury, Massachusetts.

“
I
S THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU
?”
MITCHELL WHITE WANTED
to know.

I said there wasn’t, although in truth I could have spent the better part of an hour
telling him the opposite.

“Who told you to go see that woman?”

“Chuck, Chuck Larson.”

“Chuck, huh? Well, I can only imagine that he sent you there so you could learn for
yourself there’s no evidence to support the latest crap that Bill Telford’s throwing
around.”

“So she went ahead and called you, huh?”

“Why would she call me?” Mitch demanded, his voice rising, his mustache flaring.

“Because you know I talked to her and I haven’t told anyone.”

This threw the district attorney into total discombobulation. He twisted sideways
in his big rolling chair so he could put his left forearm on his ink blotter and look
at me over his shoulder. “You know, this isn’t your case, my friend. Your cases are
operating under the influence and petty burglaries, and until you hear different that’s
all I want you working on.”

“She told me she cut a deal.”

“With whom?” Mitch White’s little eyes popped behind his oversized glasses. “Not with
me.”

“Oh, jeez, I knew that.”

That seemed to temper him a bit.

“But that leaves open the question of whom she did cut a deal with and what kind of
deal she cut.” I felt a little bit like I had when I told Bonnie to throw the rope
to the swimmers.

Mitch’s eyeballs receded, but he kept me in his sight, not sure what I was going to
spring on him next. I let him swirl in uncertainty for a moment, then said, “I’m thinking
whoever it was had a reason for cutting that deal. I’m thinking the deal could have
had something to do with seeing Heidi Telford that night.”

“She say she saw her?”

“Nope.” It was hard to tell if he believed me.

“What did she tell you?”

“Nothing. But she was angry I found her.”

“She’s not talking; there’s nothing more we can do.”

Strange thinking, I thought, from the man with the power of a subpoena. “There’s one
more person we can try,” I told him.

Mitch’s fingers were conducting a drumbeat on the pad. He was still sitting sideways.
He hadn’t blinked in an extraordinarily long time. Now he looked as though he wasn’t
planning on speaking again, ever. I helped him out.

“Jason Stockover. He was another guy who was there that night.”

“What night?”

Oh, very good, Mitch. “The night somebody buried a golf club in Heidi Telford’s head.”

The district attorney sucked in his lower lip. “And where is he?”

“I was hoping somebody could tell me. Then I’d ask your permission to go talk to him.”

“But right now you don’t need my permission because nobody knows where this Jason
Stockover is.” Mitch was not stupid, just simple.

“Well, let’s put it this way—I don’t know where he is.”

Mitch had the exit he needed. He repositioned himself so he was facing me directly.
He squared his bony shoulders, set his eyes on mine, and said, “Therefore, you will
have no problem getting back to what you are supposed to be doing, which is prosecuting
OUIs, right?”

I knew the answer he wanted. It seemed best to give it.

BARBARA BELBONNET ALSO WANTED
to know what was wrong. Her concern was different from Mitch’s. Still, I told her
nothing and set about arranging my files.

She came over and leaned her butt against my desk. She was wearing a sand-colored
top that at first I thought was a T-shirt, but it was tightly woven material made
to look more casual than it actually was. Once again she was wearing form-fitting
slacks, black this time. She must have gone on a shopping spree.

“Want to tell me about it?” she said.

I looked down at her feet. She had shoes that matched the color of her top. “Tell
you about what?” I wondered if women bought shoes to match their tops. Twenty tops,
twenty shoes.

“Whatever it is that has you so worked up,” she said.

“I’m not worked up.”

“Oh.” She didn’t leave my desk. She raised her hand and brushed her almost-blond hair
back from her face. For an instant the top that was not a T-shirt opened wide under
her arm and I could see an expanse of smooth, fair skin. The hand came down. The skin
disappeared.

I looked at my files again. I had a trial in the morning. A doctor had blown a .14
and thought he could beat it. I was supposed to wipe the floor with him. The doctor
apparently didn’t have friends in the right places.

Barbara pushed off the desk. “I think I liked you better the way you used to be,”
she said.

Which was funny not only because I didn’t think I had changed, but because I never
knew she liked me before.

BOSTON, July 2008

I
KNOCKED ON MARION
’
S DOOR
.

A male voice asked, “Who is it?”

There was something familiar about that voice, but I did not immediately place it.
I was thinking about Buzzy, and I knew it wasn’t him.

“My name is George Becket,” I said, “and I’m looking for Marion.”

There was a very long pause on the other side of the door. I was about to knock again,
ready to explain my relationship with whomever was guarding her privacy when the door
was pulled open and I looked into the taut face and cold eyes of Roland Andrews.