Final Settlement (12 page)

“Correct.” He ran a hand through his short gray hair, even more thinly distributed than Darby recalled from the summer. “Listen, Robichaud is a good detective, but I know that girl didn’t slip off that seawall. There’s no way on this earth she fell accidentally. She was pushed, Darby. Every cop instinct I’ve got tells me that.”

“I believe you, Chief. But what I keep wondering is this: why would anyone want Lorraine dead? Who in the world had a motive to kill her?”

Charles Dupont gave an unhappy grunt. “More than one person, for all I know.” He scribbled something on a piece of yellow legal paper and tore it from the pad. “Here’s some homework for you.”

Darby read the single word. “
Hyperthymesia
. What is it?”

“I believe it’s what got poor Lorraine Delvecchio killed,” he said, and his voice had the sound of total certitude. “I’ve gotta go have lunch with the prodigal wife, but you see what you can find out about that condition. Mark my words, Darby. That word right there is what signed her death warrant.”

_____

Darby walked back to the Jeep, thinking about her conversation with the Chief. Could something called hyperthymesia have led to a woman’s death? Before starting her car, she pulled out her phone and punched in the term.

A superior type of memory
, she read. She thought a moment. Had Lorraine been burdened—or blessed—with such a condition?

There was much more information, but she’d look into it later. Instead, she called Near & Farr Realty and heard Tina’s brisk voice say hello.

“Shoe delivery for Ms. Ames,” Darby intoned.

“Wahoo! Are they just spectacular, or what?”

“Truthfully, I haven’t even looked at them. They’re heavier than flip-flops, I can tell you that.”

“Those shoes are Manolo Blahnik! They probably cost Terri close to a thousand bucks. Do you want me to come pick them up?”

“No, I thought I’d stop by the office. Can I bring you a sandwich from the Café?”

“Nah. I’m watching my waistline until after the wedding. But any kind of soup is great, as long as it isn’t chowder.”

“Gotcha.” Darby hung up and drove to the center of town. She parked beside the Café, leaving the shoes and box on the passenger seat.

The Jeep’s thermometer said the temperature had risen to twenty-five degrees, but Darby shivered as she walked. The air was cold, cold and damp. Above the tops of Hurricane Harbor’s wooden buildings, large gray clouds were massing together.
It’s the moisture bound up in those clouds that’s causing the bone-penetrating chill,
Darby thought.

The Café bustled with a hungry lunchtime crowd. Darby waited several minutes before ordering two bowls of curried butternut squash soup. The restaurant’s owner, a fifty-something banker from Boston, chatted as he rang up the sale. “Looks like we’re in for a good dumping,” he commented. He saw Darby’s puzzled face and added, “Snow. Sounds like a blizzard, if you can believe what the weather people say. Of course, you can’t always go by their predictions! Half the time they are dead wrong.”

Darby took the bag with the two containers of soup and thanked the man. Was a blizzard truly forecast for the imminent future? What would that mean for Miles and his flight from California?

She walked to her car, thinking that the lack of a television at the old farmhouse had meant she was oblivious to the weather report. No wonder the air felt so damp. It was going to snow.

The compact office of Near & Farr Realty was located a quarter mile up the hill from town, with a slice of harbor just visible from the small parking lot. Darby parked, grabbed the soups, and headed down the icy path. Tina met her at the door and flung it open.

“Yum! I swear that I can smell that soup already. Curried squash, right? Can’t wait.”

Darby placed the containers on a scarred wooden conference table. “I forgot spoons, I’m afraid.”

“No biggie, we’ve got some here. Jane insisted we have cutlery, wine glasses, and cocktail plates at the ready, just in case she needed to booze up some potential buyer.” She grinned. “That aunt of yours was a character.” She plunked two spoons, two napkins, and two glasses of sparkling water on the table. “I miss her.”

“Thanks.” Darby couldn’t say whether she missed her Aunt Jane. Their relationship had been so fraught with complications that it was almost a relief having it over.
I miss the parts of her I didn’t fully appreciate,
she thought.
If we’d had the chance to know each other as adults, we might have found common ground.

The women enjoyed their lunch in silence. When Tina was finished, she pushed aside her cardboard container. “Okay … bring on the shoes!”

Darby laughed. “They’re in the car. Be right back.”

She dashed out and opened up the Jeep’s passenger door. The red lacquered box was there, but the white plastic bag holding the shoes was not on the fabric seat. She looked in the back but found nothing. Finally, she looked under both of the seats and in the cargo compartment.

The Manolo Blahniks were gone.

Baffled, Darby trotted back to the building and gave her friend the news.

“What?” she gulped, her face turning an ashen gray. “Terri’s going to kill me.”

“They were in a bag on the front seat.” She thought back, remembered leaving the box and the bag, and heading to the Café. She had not locked the Jeep. “Somebody must have stolen them when I picked up the soup. I feel terrible.”

Tina jumped up from her chair. “I’ll have to stall until I can find an identical pair.” She paced the wooden floor of the office, clearly in her own world. “First I’ll say they didn’t fit, that’s why I’m not wearing them for the ceremony. Then I’ll pretend that I forgot to bring them for her to take home. In the meantime, I can probably find a pair online …”

Darby picked up the office phone and called the Hurricane Harbor Ferry Service. She explained the theft and asked if they would be on the lookout for anyone boarding the ferry carrying a white plastic bag. To her surprise, the person on the other line agreed.

“Sure.” He took down Darby’s number. “Hate to tell you, but there’ve been other thefts on the island: a lady’s pocketbook from the Inn, and some guy’s cashmere coat. Ripped right off the rack while he was drinking beer at The Eye. Can you believe that? He had to walk home in these temperatures without a coat.”

“Does Chief Dupont know?”

“Sure, but do you think he’s going to get much done now that Bitsy’s back in town?” The man gave a hearty laugh as Darby thanked him and hung up. Poor Chief Dupont. He was now the subject of Hurricane Harbor’s extremely active rumor mill.

She faced her friend, who had stopped her pacing.

“Tina, I’m so sorry. I should have locked the car when I went into the Café.”

“Aw, honey, I don’t care about the stupid shoes one bit. The ones I’ve got fit me fine and look great.” Her face darkened. “It’s Terri that I’m worried about. She takes these kinds of things—designer clothes, crap like that—very seriously.” She snorted. “Trixie and I joke about her all the time. Not to her face, because she’d get so upset. But when we’re alone, we call her Queen Name Drop. She’s just a little too full of herself for our taste.”

Darby recalled the curator’s praise of Terri’s fundraising prowess. “She seems to be pretty involved with what’s happening in Westerly,” she offered.

“Oh yeah. She was the same way when she lived here. But then she got tired of the island. One day she just packed up her husband and kids, and moved. She said it was because Westerly had a better school system, and maybe that was part of it. If you ask me, she wanted to reinvent herself in a town where she wouldn’t be known as one of the Ames girls.”

“What does Terri’s husband do for work?”

Again a snort from Tina. “Not much. He runs some sort of consulting company. His family’s filthy rich, so he spends most of the time doing things with the kids—coaching sports, driving them here and there. The guy’s an absolutely doting father. I think if he’d had his way, they would have had a great big family.” She sighed. “Don’t worry about the damn shoes, okay? Just remember: Hurricane Harbor’s not quite as safe as it used to be.”

Darby nodded. She thought of her parents and their afternoon sail, an innocent outing that had ended in tragedy. As she logged onto a spare computer, her mind spun with one question: Had Hurricane Harbor ever really been safe?

_____

Tina Ames pushed in her chair and grabbed her pink coat from the rack. “Headed off to meet Alcott Bridges,” she announced, buttoning the coat’s enormous black buttons. “I know you just came back from Westerly, but do you wanna come along?”

Darby looked up from the computer. Definitions of Lorraine Delvecchio’s condition,
hyperthymesia,
filled the screen. “Sure. You driving?”

“Yep.”

Darby pulled on her coat and grabbed her phone and a notebook. She followed Tina into the cold afternoon, shivering at the damp February air.

“Your vehicle locked now? You wouldn’t want this thief stealing that cool box from Japan.”

“It’s locked. You know, you’re right—it’s strange that the box wasn’t taken.”

“Maybe the thief didn’t think it was as valuable as a pair of fancy designer shoes.”

“Good point. Those shoes are probably easier to get rid of, too.”

“Exactly.” Tina started her SUV and blasted the heat. “I’m betting this crook’s a woman. Maybe that purse she stole was Gucci and the coat Pucci. This isn’t some run-of-the-mill robber—this is a gal who likes quality.”

“The Name Brand Bandit,” Darby offered. She thought a moment. “That’s the kind of thing you’d come up with.”

“Ha! You’re right. Some of my humor’s rubbing off on you, and girl, that’s a good thing.” Tina steered onto the ferry and parked. “Isn’t that Chief Dupont’s car?”

Darby looked at the tan compact and nodded. “He and Bitsy were going someplace for lunch.”

“Oh Lord,” Tina groaned. “I suppose I’m going to have to talk to her sometime. Now’s as good a time as any. Come on.”

Together the women left Tina’s car and headed into the ferry’s cabin. Sure enough, Charles Dupont and Bitsy Carmichael were seated in the corner. Bitsy gave a little wave in their direction.

“See, Darby, I finally did get Charlie out of the office.” She gave his arm a little punch. “Gotta eat, that’s what I always say.”

Chief Dupont’s round face was crimson. He managed a small smile that was more of a grimace.

“Where are you headed for lunch?” Tina asked brightly. She extended her hand toward Bitsy, the red fingernails pointed like daggers. “I’m Tina Ames. Not sure if you remember me, but …”

“Of course I do, Tina! What a big week this is for you. Donny told me all about your wedding, and I hope you don’t mind, but he invited me. I’ll be going with Charlie, of course.” Bitsy patted his arm and he sighed.

Darby slid her eyes toward Tina. If the redhead was surprised by the revelation that Bitsy Carmichael was to be a guest at her ceremony, she did an excellent job hiding it. “Of course we want you there, Bitsy.” She turned to Darby. “Did I mention that our hair appointments are tomorrow morning at ten? We’ll need to take the ferry across, but my sister Trixie’s making cocktails.” She glanced hastily at Chief Dupont. “Of course we’ll be taking a taxi back and forth to the beauty parlor.”

Chief Dupont nodded. “Smart move.” He turned to Darby. “Any luck with your homework?”

“Yes. What a fascinating gift.”

“I’m not sure Lorraine always saw it that way.”

“What gift?” Bitsy’s round face was in a pout. “What are you talking about?”

“Lorraine Delvecchio had a rare condition called hyperthymesia,” Chief Dupont explained. “I asked Darby to look into it. What did you find out?”

“It’s a kind of superior autobiographical memory. People with hyperthymesia can recall specific events from their personal past with extraordinary clarity.”

“I remember things from my past,” Bitsy sniffed. “Like the day I met Chuck—I mean—Charles. You were at the elementary school, picking up the kids, and I was subbing for the school nurse. Remember? Alana fell off the merry-go-round and scraped her knee, and I came running over with a bandage.” She smiled fondly.

To Darby’s surprise, Chief Dupont smiled too. “She still hates the sight of blood,” he said.

Tina jabbed Darby with a pointy elbow. “Good Lord,” she muttered. Out loud she asked, “So how is this memory thing special?”

“Lorraine described it once,” Chief Dupont said. “She didn’t like to talk about it, but we worked together so closely that she confided in me. I gave her a random date: May 29, 1999. She not only remembered that it was the day the Discovery Shuttle completed its first docking with the International Space Station, but she also described a story in the
Bangor Daily News
about a cold case murder investigation that was being reopened. I checked it out, and she was right.” He paused. “Lorraine said it worked like this: she pictured a calendar in her head. She went to the date, May 29, and then could see, like a little movie, what had happened on that day. She knew what she was wearing, what she had for lunch, and who’d called her on the phone. All this personal stuff, in addition to world and local events she’d read or heard about back on that day.”