Gourdfellas (33 page)

With each ring, my calm, still center grew. By the time Joseph Trent answered, the resolve I needed to do this job right had filled all my empty spaces.

“Mr. Trent, this is Lili Marino. I need to talk to you. It’s critical. I’m just leaving Brooklyn now. I should be back in about two hours. I really need to talk to you.”

His breath rattled across the line. “What’s this about?”

“It’s, uh . . .” Let him know you’re angry, I reminded myself, or at least upset. “It’s about Connie Lovett. There’s a problem with her meds. Before I go to the police I want to hear what you have to say.”

“The police? Can’t you tell me what this is about?” His voice was higher now, quavery.

Good. He was afraid. Now I needed to convince him that I was vulnerable, so that his murderous, cheating brain would start spinning out a plan to deal with me, the way he’d dealt with Marjorie.

“I already told you. It’s about Connie and her prescription. Now, will you talk to me or should I go right to Sheriff Murphy? I’m really upset. I’m not going to wait forever. What are you going to do? Are you going to talk me, Mr. Trent?” The edge of impatience in my voice might have been too much, but I doubted he was listening for nuances at this point.

Joseph Trent sighed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But you sound very upset. I’ll see you, but only to put your mind at rest about whatever it is that you’re worried about. The store is closing in an hour, so why don’t you come to my house straight from the city? Is that all right?”

So that you can destroy any evidence you might have overlooked, and then when I get there you’ll tell me that you want to take a walk—and find a way to kill me?

“Sure, that’s fine. I’ll see you in—” I stopped myself before I blew the whole thing. I was supposed to be in Brooklyn. “—in two hours, maybe more, depending on traffic.”

He clicked off without saying good-bye.

B.H. nodded. “Now we sit. He thinks he has two hours. Castro’s watching him. I don’t think we’ll have a long wait. He’s scared. He’ll try to cover his tracks.”

From the OffiCe window, I could see people coming and going from Trent’s. Only, nobody had left the store since a young woman and her toddler had gone skipping down the steps, and nobody had entered, nobody in uniform, nobody carrying a drawn gun, nobody with a reason to arrest Joseph Trent. Yet.

“It’s twenty minutes already. What do you think he’s doing?” I slapped my hand on the windowsill with a thud. Hovanian shot an annoyed glance in my direction. I was about to apologize when a blur of motion below caught my attention. “Wait. There she is!”

Michele Castro’s ponytail swung like a pendulum as she raced across the street and up the steps of the pharmacy. Three other officers followed behind her. Two cruisers, lights spinning but sirens off, pulled up into the alley behind the store.

“Okay,” B.H. said, “I knew it couldn’t be much longer. Are you sure you want to do this? You don’t have to, you know. You can just go home and get on with living the rest of your life. Let the system do its job. Start thinking about other things.”

That was probably the wise course of action, but I was angrier than I was wise. I’d put the situation behind me after I let Trent know how I felt. All the mediation talk about forgiveness seemed like nothing more than Girl Scout ideas. Maybe I could forgive eventually. But not until I’d confronted my demons. Including Joseph Trent.

I pushed my chair back and headed for the door. He was right behind me, then right beside me. The pace quickened as I followed Hovanian’s long stride. Down the stairs, out onto the street. He stopped traffic as though he were parting the Red Sea. We arrived at the entrance to the pharmacy at the same time. A uniformed officer greeted us by blocking our way.

“Officer Castro said we could go inside,” I told him. “Lili Marino and B. H. Hovanian.”

He nodded, pressed a button on his walkie talkie, said our names. The phone crackled, and I heard Michele Castro’s voice, telling him that it was all right for us to go inside.

I almost backed away and ran down the porch stairs to the street. But when I looked through the glass and saw the back of Joseph Trent’s head, my anger returned, and with it my courage. The officer pushed open the door and stood aside to allow us to enter.

The pharmacy was a beehive of activity, deputies swarming over the cash register, carrying computer equipment out to the van that was parked in the alley behind the stores, dusting for fingerprints. Michele Castro nodded at us, and we walked to the prescription counter.

“Mr. Trent won’t talk until he’s got a lawyer. He called your office, Mr. Hovanian, but you weren’t there. He already knows I’ll be taping anything he might say.”

The store lights seemed to brighten and then dim. I never even considered that Joseph Trent might hire B.H. to defend him. But that was foolish. Given his reputation, his would be the first name that would pop into a local resident’s mind. I blinked back my disbelief and pressed my lips together.

“Well, I’m here now.” B.H. stepped around the chair and looked down at Joseph Trent. I stood frozen, unable to see Trent’s face, struggling to breathe.

“I need an attorney.” The pharmacist’s voice was barely a squeak, but he’d managed to get the words out.

B.H.’s eyes smoldered as he looked down at the man in the chair. “It looks that way. Tell me why. Why do you need a lawyer?”

The bustle of activity continued around us, but it felt as though all that motion was happening in another dimension. All that existed for me was a nine square foot space containing Michele Castro, Joseph Trent, and B. H. Hovanian.

“I’m being accused of murder,” Trent whispered. He hung his head, avoiding Hovanian’s gaze.

Michele Castro reached down and touched something on her utility belt. A tape recorder. She’d turned it on.

“Whose murder?” Hovanian asked. When Trent mumbled something, Hovanian said, “I didn’t hear you. Please pick your head up and tell me who you’re being accused of murdering.”

Trent’s head lifted but his shoulders sagged. “Marjorie Mellon. They’re saying I killed Marjorie.”

“Anything else?” Hovanian folded his arms across his chest.

“They say that I . . .” Joseph Trent pushed his glasses to the top of his head and rubbed at his eyes. A sob caught in his throat. “They were going to die anyway. Those people were very sick. I was going to lose the store if I didn’t do something. They were going to die anyway.”

When I caught my breath, I started to move forward but something in B.H.’s eyes stopped me.

“We’re all going to die, Mr. Trent. Those people might have had months or years to be with the people they loved. If they’d gotten the right medicine. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find someone else to represent you.” He peered down at Trent, his craggy face impassive, and then he stepped out of the circle. When he looked at me he raised his eyebrows in a question.

Trent’s hunched back was wracked with sobs.

I shook my head and waited for B.H. to step from behind the counter. Michele Castro pulled a still-sobbing Trent to a standing position, her face emotionless. I wondered how she could keep from being a little rougher, a little harsher with someone like Joseph Trent, but her control kept her movements firm, as though a television camera were recording her actions for the six o’clock news.

With a hand on my elbow, B.H. led me to the door, tapped, waited for the officer to let us out. I inhaled deeply, glad for the sweetness of the air.

“You didn’t say anything.” B.H. headed for the steps, and I followed.

“But you did. Thank you. You said it clearly. Without the drama.” I stopped before we reached the sidewalk. A small crowd had gathered, buzzing and pointing at the store. As we drew closer, they fell silent. “And you declined to represent him. I have to admit, I was a little surprised.”

His generous mouth grew wider as he smiled. “Good. I didn’t want things to be too predictable between us.”

The crowd parted. As soon as we passed, the buzzing started again, louder this time. “What’s happening in there, B.H.?” someone called out.

“You know I can’t talk about active cases,” he said over his shoulder, and then smiled at me. It wasn’t his active case, but nobody knew that yet. His hand rested lightly on my elbow as he steered me toward my car. “You want some company? I don’t feel like being alone right now.”

Another unpredictable turn of events. “How about a drink? I think there’s some Scotch somewhere in my house. I don’t want to be where people will stare and come up and ask questions about what happened or offer congratulations or anything. I don’t even know what I feel about all this except a great relief that it’s over.”

“Your place. Fifteen minutes,” he said as he held my car door open for me.

When he turned to walk to his car, I felt a pang at the thought that he’d be in a separate space. He’d known me better than I knew myself, and I didn’t want to let go of that. Not for a very long time.

“You Came back just for this game? That’s great!”

Karen swiveled at the sound of Nora’s voice and grabbed her in a hug. “Wow, you’ve got some kind of glow. Not just the game. David and I are going shopping tomorrow in the Berkshires. Hey, Nora, you think we can get away with convincing them we can play partners again?”

Both Elizabeth’s eyebrows rose at the same time. “No way, you two. Fool me once, you know the rest.”

Nobody would fool Elizabeth twice, and that was a blessing in my life—another blessing. That Connie was now on the real drugs, and looking stronger and feeling better, was the biggest one. Her doctor, chagrined that he hadn’t suspected sooner, was delighted and hopeful, and Connie’s gourds showed an exuberance that made me feel lucky to be part of her life. Joseph Trent would never dim another light, would not diminish the glow I felt when I looked around and saw my friends sitting around the table without an undercurrent of dissension, hurt, and anger crackling around the room.

“Joseph Trent thought he was going to fool me twice. You know that those white pills he was calling valerian were really crushed up aspirin. B.H. says that he spilled not only all the beans but some of the rice, too. He was setting me up so that if I caused trouble, he could just give me something stronger and I’d be history.” I passed the chips to the center of the table.

“You have to wonder—was he a sociopath? I mean, isn’t the definition someone who cannot empathize, who has no sense of how other people will be affected by his action? I see a kid like that every couple of years, and it’s so scary.” Susan flicked her red hair off her forehead and frowned thoughtfully into her wine glass. “Maybe it was just how he responded to the changes up here. I could see it in his face and hear it in everything he said. He’d gotten more and more bitter in the past two years. You know, the chains driving out Mom and Pop businesses. Lifelong service and what do you get, all that. But I’d never have imagined that he’d be greedy enough to do such a thing.”

“Not greed, I don’t think, even though that’s how it might look.” Like the Caterra-Smith mediation, what looked like greed at the start was revealed to be something else by the end. In the case of Joseph Trent, it was more like self-preservation born of desperation. “The man didn’t know what to do. Profits down, heating costs and taxes up, those kids in college and all. His poor wife—she kept cutting corners and scrimping but the business was going under.”

Melissa’s scowl deepened. “He killed Aunt Bernie. And Rod Phillips.”

“And he got away with it,” Elizabeth said, “which gave him license to keep going. His desperation must have kept growing until it became so consuming that it burned up his sense of right and wrong.”

“So consuming he didn’t even realize that he was planting evidence that could help convict him. Remember that address book that turned up under my stove? Castro finally admitted that no one in her department had checked under the stove during those searches.” I still couldn’t believe that mild Joseph Trent had slipped into my kitchen and planted Marjorie’s little red book where he hoped the police would find it. “Those notes I saw—they were shorthand for one of the expensive meds. Kytril. It’s an anti-nausea drug for people on certain chemos and it costs eighty-five dollars a pill. One single, tiny little pill.”

Susan glared in outrage. “I cannot bear to have
that
discussion now. It’s one of those things that drives me crazy. I know big pharma has to spend money to develop new drugs, but those executives aren’t giving up their private planes and four homes and . . .”

“But still. Joseph Trent saw those high prices as an opportunity to help pay his bills.” Elizabeth sipped from her wine.

“Now he’s going to pay in a different way.” I took little satisfaction in the telling. The whole thing left me sad. “B.H. says that Marjorie called him and hinted that she’d found something that she needed to ask him about. He looked around and realized that his books, the ones that almost got burned by Anita, were missing. He got frantic looking for them until he put everything together. So he talked her into a meeting. Smart cookie that she was, she demanded that it be in a public place. He convinced her to drive with him to a diner somewhere.”

“Mistake. Big mistake. That one little slip made all the difference.” Melissa chewed thoughtfully. “If she’d been a little more careful . . .”

I nodded. “She got in that car with him. Wrong. And he pulled over in the woods, dragged her out of the car and shot her.”

“Blackmail.” Karen nodded and looked around the table. “I bet Marjorie was trying to blackmail him. You think?”

“No. She was just furious.” I was about to start another sentence with “B.H. says” but I caught myself. “I heard that she told Trent she was going to the police. That she told him she couldn’t let him kill anyone else. And that those words were the last she ever said in this world.”