Judgment of the Grave (26 page)

Bruce Whiting looked over the figures one more time. He had been staring at them for hours, and they didn’t make any more sense than they had when he’d first looked at them. Up until January, everything looked okay, but once you got into the new year, there was something strange going on. He took out the calculator and entered all the figures in the “paid out” column, but even after doing it three times, it didn’t match the total George had put at the bottom. They were a good $10,000 short.

And then when he went to the “paid in” numbers, there were huge discrepancies between the monthly totals and the numbers Bruce got when he added them up himself. What the hell was going on?

It was Lauren who had alerted him to the fact that something might be wrong. “Hon,” she’d said that afternoon, “see if you can get your dad to show you the accounting. The bank called and there have been a few problems with our deposits lately. They think there might be some checks missing.”

So Bruce had gone down to the showroom. But George wasn’t there and he knew that if he asked to see the books, George would come up with some excuse about why he couldn’t show them to him. So Bruce had gotten a screwdriver from the workshop and busted the lock on George’s desk drawer and got the books out.

He looked up at the clock. It was Friday night, his mother’s women’s group meeting down at the church. She was usually gone until ten or so, so he ought to be okay. He didn’t want her home when he confronted George about this. He put the books into a paper bag he found in the workroom and locked up the showroom. As he drove up Monument Street, he tried to think of a possible explanation for the books, but he couldn’t come up with anything that made sense.

The house was dark, and Bruce parked next to the Whiting Monuments van and walked up the drive. The front door was open and he flipped on the hall lights and called out, “Dad? You home?”

One of Lillian’s cats came stalking out of the kitchen, meowing aggressively. Bruce followed it back into the kitchen, and in the light from the outside fixture, he saw George sitting at the patio table, staring out across the backyard toward the woods.

The details of the kitchen were so familiar to him that he could have listed them with his eyes closed, the braided ceramic fruit bowl on the table, the chicken-and-rooster salt and pepper shakers, the red curtains with little cherries on them, but in the near darkness, the room seemed almost sinister, everything in shadow.

The sliding glass door squeaked as he slid it open, but George didn’t look up.

“Dad?” Bruce said again. “What are you doing out here? It’s freezing cold.”

“I’m all right,” George said, looking up at him. He was wearing trousers and a flannel shirt. No coat. “Nothing wrong with a little fresh air.”

“But what are you doing? Just sitting here, thinking?” Bruce sat down on the other side of the table. The metal chair was like ice against his legs. He shivered.

“I guess. I…I wanted to see the leaves, but it’s too dark. I’m not sure I really saw the leaves this year.” His eyes seemed strange to Bruce, distant. He felt something, a little warning, deep in his stomach.

“Dad, I came because I had to look through the books today and there’s a lot of money missing. What’s going on? Have you been taking money from the accounts?”

George turned to look at him, incredulous. “You think I…how could you say that, son?”

“Well, there isn’t any other explanation. You do all the books, you do all the deposits, and there’s something really wrong here.” He dropped the bag on the table and took out the books. “Do you want me to show you where the problem is?”

“I knew something was wrong,” George said, staring out at the trees again. “I knew it, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I think that…I think I…” He stopped and turned around, and Bruce could see tears in his eyes. “My memory, Bruce. It isn’t as good as it used to be. I think I forgot to put some things in there.” His hand played idly with a pebble on the table.

Bruce was concerned now. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since last year, but it’s worse lately. Your mother has noticed it in the last few months. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s like I can’t…get at things the way I used to. I know they’re there, but I can’t find them. And I don’t remember where I was or what I was doing. It’s like there are these…these gaps in time. If you ask me what I was doing on a particular day, just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t tell you, even if I looked at a calendar. And I’ve been having nightmares, Bruce, bad ones.”

“Nightmares? What about?”

As his father started to speak, Bruce thought about how the things you didn’t know were always worse than the things you did know. The night was very cold, but suddenly he couldn’t feel it. He listened to his father.

“Bruce,” George said, quietly at first, his voice gaining strength as he went on. “I did something bad, something very bad.” And then he told him.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23

When Quinn got to the station the next morning, Andy was already there, sitting at Quinn’s desk and talking on the phone. “Yup,” he was saying. “I really appreciate it. Okay, that’s great. If you think of anything else, give us a call.”

He hung up the phone, jotted down a few notes, and looked triumphantly up at Quinn. “That was Frank Pebbles. He remembered why the name Tucker Beloit sounded familiar. He met him over in the Gulf. At a military hospital. He was there for heatstroke and Beloit was there because of some problem with his foot. He said he didn’t get to know him very well, but he definitely remembers the name.”

“So, did Churchill know him too?” Quinn hung up his jacket and sat down at Andy’s desk.

“He’s not sure, but we’ve just closed the circle a lot, don’t you think, Quinny? If there’s a connection between Pebbles and Beloit, then there’s gotta be a connection between Beloit and Churchill.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said, sounding skeptical. “But I think we’ve also got to consider the possibility that there isn’t any connection between Beloit and Churchill.”

Andy looked over at him, his eyes narrow. “It doesn’t make any sense. What were Churchill and Beloit doing together in the woods?”

“Maybe they weren’t together. Maybe Churchill was meeting someone at the clubhouse and Beloit showed up and, I don’t know, got in the way. And that’s why he was killed. I think we have to think about everyone who knew about the clubhouse and had a reason for wanting Kenneth Churchill dead. I’ve got some information that Churchill was working on something that would have been offensive to at least two of the people around here, George Whiting and Will Baker, who owns the inn. Then there’s Cecily Whiting, who we know was angry at Churchill for pressuring her to continue their relationship, as well as his wife and son. I think we should be looking at those people.”

“I don’t think so,” Andy said condescendingly. “Listen, I’ve been patient on this, Quinny, but we need a connection between Beloit and Churchill. We need to know why they were killed. I don’t think it had anything to do with anybody around here, I think it was someone they met over in the Gulf, someone who’s the missing link in all this.”

Quinn felt his face get hot. “You’ve been patient?”

“Yeah, I knew you needed this for your job. I was happy to give you a piece of the action. For old time’s sake and because of your wife. But now my job’s on the line too and the D.A.’s giving me shit about not having anything yet. I’m sorry, but I think I better use my guys.” He crumpled up a piece of paper on the desktop and shot a basket into the metal garbage can. “Besides, this thing with your kid is getting old. I mean, half the time you bring your kid with you on the job. Not very professional, Quinn.”

But Quinn was suddenly so angry that he could barely see. “A piece of the action? You’ve had me doing all your grunt work.”

“If that’s how you want to think of it, Quinn.”

“That’s exactly how I want to think of it, and don’t bring my daughter into this.” He realized he had raised his fist. If he hadn’t been standing in a police station, he knew he would have thrown the punch.

“Whatever.”

“Fuck you, Andy.”

Andy’s face was little-boy petulant and suddenly Quinn remembered him as an eighth-grader. Quinn had gotten a new glove from his father for Christmas, and somehow Andy had talked him into betting for it. Quinn couldn’t remember what the bet was, something stupid that he should’ve known better about. But when Andy had won, he had given Quinn the same look he gave him now.

“Too bad, Quinny,” he said before he turned away. “You win some, you lose some.”

Quinn was so angry that he drove right past the inn and down Lexington Road. So, that was it, then? After all his work, Andy was going to freeze him out and take all the credit if and when he solved this thing. Quinn would go back to Cambridge with his tail between his legs. Who knew what Andy would put out there about why he and Quinn had parted company. Havrilek would likely have his job, and he’d have to go figure out what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

He pulled off the road onto a little cul-de-sac and got out of the car. Jeez, he was pissed. He slammed the car door and then went over and kicked a tree by the side of the road. It hurt but he didn’t even care and he stood there, breathing hard for a few minutes, feeling the cold autumn air in his lungs, thinking about all of it, about Andy screwing him and taking the credit for himself.

But what if Andy couldn’t solve this thing? Quinn was pretty sure that Andy was off on the wrong track. He was pretty sure that Kenneth Churchill’s killer was someone who knew him not from a far-off desert, but from somewhere a lot closer to home. He’d already talked to most of the people who had access to the clubhouse. He wasn’t sure about Cecily Whiting and he had been almost positive that George Whiting had been lying about his alibi, but the one person he hadn’t talked to yet was Will Baker. He got back in the car and headed toward the inn.

Will Baker was in the kitchen. Quinn had asked for him at the front desk, and the woman behind the desk in the lobby said he was talking to the chef about dinner. “Can I help you with something?” she asked Quinn.

“No. I really need to talk to him. I’ll just go back and find him.” Quinn headed back toward the dining room before she could stop him. He pushed through the swinging doors and found Baker talking to a young guy in a white chef’s smock.

“Can we help you?” Baker asked, looking annoyed.

“Yeah, I was just hoping to chat with you for a few minutes.”

“Well, I’m in the middle of something here. Can it wait until later?”

Quinn leaned against the countertop and crossed his arms. “I suppose so. I was just interested in talking to you about Cecily Whiting.”

The effect was exactly what Quinn had been hoping for. Baker blushed and stood up suddenly, knocking a spatula off the butcher block. “Harry, I’ll be right back,” he said. The guy in the chef’s smock nodded.

Without looking at Quinn, Baker led the way back through the dining room and into a little office off the lounge. He shut the door carefully behind them and sat down behind the desk. He didn’t offer Quinn a chair, so Quinn stood.

“What is it you want to know?” he asked, straightening a few pieces of paper on his desk and refusing to look at Quinn.

“When you and Cecily Whiting were seeing each other, did you meet at the clubhouse?”

Baker continued straightening papers. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” he said.

“It’s my business because I’m a police detective and there was a murder right next to the clubhouse.” Two murders, he said to himself. “And we need to know about everyone who spent time at the clubhouse, anyone who knew about it.”

“I don’t see how it could possibly help you, but if you must know, yes. We went there sometimes.”

“When were you seeing her?”

“It was a year or so after her divorce. For maybe a year, off and on.”

“How did you get to know her?”

“I didn’t have to get to know her. Bruce and I went to high school together. We were friends. So I had become friends with both of them. And she was very lonely after the divorce and it just…started.”

“Did Bruce know?”

“No. And I don’t want him to. I don’t think he would have any right to protest, but he’s my friend and I didn’t particularly want him to know. Cecily wanted to tell him. That was what made me realize that she was just using me to get back at him.”

“And did you break things off because of it?”

“I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t. I loved her and I thought that maybe, after some time, it would stop being about revenge and we could…well, she would be with me for a different reason.” He stood up. “If that’s all.”

“It’s not,” Quinn said. For some reason, Will Baker was pissing him off. “Why did you break up?”

“I guess she decided that she didn’t want to see me anymore.” Even as he said the words, Quinn could see he was reliving the hurt of it.

“When was this?”

“Beginning of the year.”

Right about the time she started seeing Kenneth Churchill. Quinn could feel his heart speed up. “She didn’t give you a reason?”

“No.” He was lying. Quinn was sure of it.

“How well did you know Kenneth Churchill?”

“I told you before. He stayed here at the inn when he came to town. We were members of the same Minuteman company. I knew him casually.”

“Did you know that he started seeing Cecily Whiting?”

Baker looked up at Quinn, afraid. He didn’t say anything.

“How did you know? Did you follow them? Did you see them together?” Quinn was standing over the desk now, in Baker’s face, letting him know that he wasn’t going to give up. All the anger he felt at Andy was right there, right on the other side of his fist, and he felt as though he would like to start hitting Will Baker and not stop until he was good and satisfied.

“No, no. I didn’t follow them.” Baker looked scared, as though he could sense what was in Quinn’s mind. “He told me.”

“Kenneth Churchill told you?”

“Yeah. We were talking one day at a reenactment and he said, ‘By the way, I’m not just spending time down here because of the reenactments and my book.’ Something like that. I asked him what he meant and he told me about Cecily. I realized that he was probably the reason she broke up with me.”

“Did you say anything?”

“No. What was I going to say? Besides, he was…I don’t know how to describe it. It was like he was smirking. I think he could tell that I was uncomfortable. I don’t know. Maybe he knew about Cecily and me. Anyway, I had the distinct feeling he was enjoying it.” He looked up at Quinn. “And I know what you’re going to ask. Yes, I hated him enough to kill him.” He looked away. “But I didn’t.”

By the time he got upstairs, Quinn was exhausted. He knocked on Sweeney’s door and when she didn’t answer, he tried the door again. It was propped open very slightly, and he pushed it in and found Sweeney talking on the phone. She waved him in, a concerned look on her face. “What floor?” she asked the person on the other end. “Okay.”

Quinn lifted Megan out of the Pack ’n Play and collapsed it to bring back to his room. “Hi, little girl,” he said. “How are you?”

“Okay, I’ll see you soon,” Sweeney said. “Good-bye.” She hung up the phone and turned to look at Quinn. Instinctively, he stepped closer and put a hand on her arm. She looked stricken.

“What’s the matter?” he asked her.

“It’s Pres. He’s in the hospital.”