Hare Today, Dead Tomorrow (6 page)

Cassandra Thorndike, 29, was found slain at her
home in Cuttituck yesterday,
I read, trying to commit every word to memory.
Police reported to the victim’s home at 254 Cliffside Lane at approximately
4:30 P.M. after Thorndike’s next-door neighbor, Virginia
Krupinski, called 911. Krupinski told police she had repeatedly rung the doorbell but received no response.

According to Lieutenant Anthony Falcone, Norfolk
County Chief of Homicide, the victim had suffered multiple stab wounds to the chest, which police believe was
the cause of death. The victim had been dead for approximately two hours at the time she was found.

Police have not yet determined the murder weapon.
According to Falcone, the investigation is ongoing and
several suspects are being questioned. They found no
signs of forced entry, and robbery is not believed to have
been a motive.

Thorndike was employed as a sales representative who
specialized in restaurant sales for Thorndike Vineyards,
a Cuttituck winery founded by her father, Gordon
Thorndike...The rest of the article was devoted to quotes from neighbors. They mainly commented on how shocked they were that such a brutal killing had occurred right in their midst. The impersonal nature of what they said gave me the feeling that none of them had actually known her.

Thursday’s article was more detailed, although the number of photos had been reduced to one. It was the same high-school picture they’d run the day before.

Police are continuing to question suspects in the murder of Cassandra Thorndike, according to Lieutenant
Anthony Falcone, Norfolk County Chief of Homicide,
I read.
The 29-year-old woman was found slain on
Tuesday in her Cuttituck residence.

“We believe the victim was home alone when someone came to her house,” Falcone said. “It is likely that
that individual was someone she knew. At some point, a
disagreement may have broken out, although the perpetrator may have come to the house with the intention of
killing the victim.”

Falcone stated that police found a large amount of
blood at the crime scene, and much of the room, especially Thorndike’s desk, was in disarray, indicating a
struggle between the victim and her attacker.

The rest of the article was more of the same. It recapped the basic facts, threw in a few quotes, and assured the public that the police were doing everything that could be done to solve the crime. To me, it said they may have had suspects but no hard evidence that pointed to any one person. At least, not yet.

I tried to take comfort in that fact as I drove along Route 35 later that afternoon, passing through Riverton on my way out east to Cassandra Thorndike’s house. The rain had stopped a while ago, yet the day was still dreary and gray. It had gotten cooler, too, and I’d zipped my polyester fleece jacket all the way up.

As I checked out my surroundings, I was struck by how quickly the sprawling town at the juncture of Long Island’s North and South Forks was turning into Anytown, U.S.A. Practically overnight, gigantic box stores like Home Depot and Linens ’N Things were springing up on land that just a few years earlier had been scrubby lots lining a sleepy country road. Yet after passing every chain store I could name, I noticed a large sign at the side of the road as I was about to veer off onto the North Fork.

Welcome...
To Long Island
WINE COUNTRY
Tour
The Vineyards

If the sign wasn’t enough to tip people off that they were about to enter a special place, the countryside immediately went through a dramatic transformation. I felt as if I’d passed through a time warp and was suddenly driving through the Long Island of the 1950s—or even the 1930s. As I meandered along the two-lane road, relieved that the rain had finally let up and I could actually see where I was going, I took in one quaint country town after another. Each one consisted of a block or two of rustic wooden buildings that housed antiques shops, luncheonettes, and small grocery stores. In between were white-shingled farmhouses with large, friendly porches, often with weathered barns set even farther back from the road.

Farm stands were as abundant as telephone poles. The larger ones were already stocked with piles of pumpkins and huge terra-cotta pots of chrysanthemums, a clear indication that autumn was upon us. Others were tiny family operations consisting of a single cart at the edge of the road, offering bouquets of wildflowers, ripe red tomatoes, and bushels of apples. Most of them were unmanned, and customers were expected to pay by leaving the correct amount of money in the large jar that had been left for that purpose.

Beyond the houses and farm stands stretched the flat fields of rich soil that had attracted farmers to the North Fork in the first place. While housing developments were going up on some of them—a sign of modern times, and one that I didn’t find particularly pleasing—most were still being used as farmland.

After I’d driven another mile, however, even that changed. The trees along the road, their leaves barely tinted with the fiery colors of fall, began to disappear. Here, the fields were covered with grapevines planted in perfectly even rows. Every mile or so, a sign with the name of a vineyard jutted up along the side of the road: Costello Cellars, Martin Creek Vineyards, Cuttituck Winery, Sophia Family Vineyards and Winery. There was almost always a visitors’ center, and most advertised tours and tastings.

I finally trundled into the village of Cuttituck, periodically checking my trusty Hagstrom map to make sure I didn’t miss the turnoff to Cassandra Thorndike’s house. I’d never actually had a client in Cuttituck, but I’d driven through it a number of times. Like many of the towns on Long Island’s North Fork, it was a charming little hamlet that looked as if it were stuck in time. A few of the businesses were geared to the locals, like the video store and the delicatessen housed in a tiny clapboard house. Some establishments clearly catered to the tourist trade, like Annie’s Antiques and the Wine-Tasting Room, a tiny shop that featured the wines of several of the local vineyards.

One of my favorite roadside attractions was the ironically named Modern Café. The sign outside featured a woman with a 1950s-style pageboy, holding a tray of steaming hot biscuits. The Modern was frequented by both visitors and members of the community. In fact, on the few occasions I’d stopped in to chow down on some good old-fashioned comfort food, I’d been amused to find well-heeled Manhattanites dressed in Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan alongside farmers and winery owners. It was always fun to watch them wolf down house specialties like the meat loaf platter and the liver and onion special, as ecstatic as if they’d just discovered the new sushi.

I turned left onto the Northway Turnpike and headed north. The road remained straight and well-paved for a mile or two. But suddenly it branched off into a maze of narrow, unpaved streets that meandered toward the coast.

I braked heavily, not only for safety but also to allow myself a closer look at the residential enclave I’d just entered. Most of the houses had clearly been built decades earlier as summer bungalows. But interspersed among the boxy, one-story buildings were larger, more modern houses. These were at least two stories high, and many were perched atop hills that afforded them a view of the Long Island Sound, only a few hundred yards away.

I hadn’t ventured far along Seashore Lane before I spotted a weather-worn sign that read CAPTAIN KIDD COVE. I had to smile. As most Long Islanders know, in the late 1600s the infamous pirate William Kidd buried booty that was reportedly worth a small fortune on nearby Gardiner’s Island, marking the spot with a pile of rocks that still stood. Shortly afterward, he was arrested. He was eventually hanged, but not until the governor of New York had seized his treasure.

Yet the notorious pillager and plunderer was said to have buried some additional loot in this area, hidden treasure that had never been recovered. There was even a rocky spot known as “Kidd’s Ledge” that garnered some coverage in the local media every now and then. The legend of Captain Kidd and his missing treasure had never been proven—nor had it ever been forgotten.

I checked my map one more time before turning onto Cliffside Lane. My poor little VW bumped along the gutted, muddy road, which ran parallel to the coast. On the sea side, the terrain dropped sharply. Forty or fifty feet below stretched a narrow strip of sand, edged with the calm, lapping waves of Long Island Sound. Most of the houses on that side of the street, particularly the newer, larger ones, had long wooden staircases leading down to the beach.

I focused on the six or eight houses that dotted both sides of the street, figuring their inhabitants were the witnesses who had noticed Suzanne in the neighborhood the same afternoon Cassandra had been murdered. On a quiet back street like this one, I could understand that a visit from an outsider was something they would have noticed.

At the same time, if Cassandra’s killer had been someone she knew, her neighbors wouldn’t have thought twice about the appearance of a vehicle and driver they recognized. It may not even have registered in their minds—which would have explained why they hadn’t mentioned it to the cops.

I immediately knew which house had belonged to Cassandra Thorndike: the one with Forrester Sloan’s dark-green SUV parked in front of it. I pulled up behind it. Before getting out, I took a minute to study the house with the faded
254
stenciled onto the mailbox and the red Miata with the CASSLASS plates parked in the driveway. It was one of the small houses that had originally been built as a summer place. It probably consisted of no more than a living room, kitchen, and a couple of bedrooms, all nestled together on the main floor. From the outside, its most distinctive features were its weather-beaten unpainted cedar shingles and the broken step leading up to the front porch. There were few signs that it was lived in, and even fewer that it was loved. No cheerful curtains in the windows, no flowerpots on the porch, no brightly painted birdhouses in the few scraggly trees that somehow managed to grow so close to the cliffs. While I had yet to learn a single fact about its owner, I already knew she hadn’t possessed the Martha Stewart gene.

Of course, the yellow crime-scene tape stretched across the front didn’t exactly scream Home Sweet Home.

I climbed out of my car, wondering if I’d get the chance to see if any more of Cassandra’s personality was reflected on the inside, when I heard someone cry, “Hey, Popper!”

I whipped my head around and saw my host for the afternoon striding toward me.

“Thought you might turn up,” Forrester said, grinning. “I guess I’m as irresistible as always.”

I cast him the dirtiest look I could muster. “Hardly. I’m just trying to help Suzanne.”

He laughed. “Seriously, Popper, it’s good to see you.
Really
good.”

He just stood there for a few seconds, staring at me and grinning. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d gotten especially spiffed up for me. He smelled suspiciously like soap and men’s cologne, as if he’d somehow managed to sneak a shower into the middle of his busy day. The fact that his thick blond hair looked slightly damp, especially the mass of tiny curls at the back of his neck, added weight to my theory.

Like me, Forrester was in his mid-thirties. He was tall with a sturdy build, his broad shoulders giving him the look of someone who’d played football in college. As usual, he was dressed as if he were posing for the cover of
The Preppy Handbook.
He wore a pink cotton button-down shirt, khaki pants with nary a wrinkle, tan loafers, and a sporty brown jacket made of a tweed fabric that probably had an English-sounding name like Harrington or Tatterbumper.

But it was the look in his gray-blue eyes that really got me. I was pretty sure that what I saw in them was real concern, coupled with something that looked dangerously like fondness.

I looked away.

“You know I hate being called Popper,” I reminded him.

“Precisely why I enjoy doing it so much,” he returned breezily. “There’s just something about you that makes me want to get under your skin.”

Probably a few other places as well, I thought. I’d be lying if I said that Forrester Sloan didn’t have some appeal, at least on an intellectual level. He possessed something that wasn’t quite charm, but close enough that he deserved at least some credit for it. But given the situation, I had absolutely no patience for him—and no interest in fending off his flirtatiousness. The fact that we were both standing outside Cassandra Thorndike’s house was a harsh reminder of the reason I was here in the first place. A young woman had been murdered—and another young woman was being unjustly accused.

“I talked to Falcone earlier today,” I said, anxious to bring the conversation back to the investigation. “He wasn’t exactly thrilled over my interest in this case.”

“Even though you and Suzanne Fox are friends? I’d have thought that would make him more willing to indulge your interest in the investigation.”

“Except that he’s trying to prove that she did it and I’m trying to prove that she didn’t. That kind of puts us at cross-purposes, don’t you think?”

“I see your point.” Forrester only hesitated for a moment before saying, in that newspaper-reporterly way of his, “So tell me more about your relationship with Suzanne Fox.”

“There’s not much to tell,” I replied with a shrug. “We’ve been good friends for over fifteen years. We met in college, at Bryn Mawr. We both wanted to be vets. She went to Purdue and I went to Cornell, and we lost touch for a few years. But this past June, I discovered that she’d moved out to West Brompton Beach. She has a practice in Poxabogue.” I shrugged again. “That’s it in a nut-shell.”

“I see.” I braced myself for a smart-ass comment. Thankfully, it didn’t come. Instead, Forrester said, “So, Popper, what can I tell you about the case?”