Murder Came Second (27 page)

I turned to Sonny. “That seems like taking a chance—hanging around at that hour just hoping Terese would show up. What if someone woke up and saw him? And if Harmon was smart enough not to use his key, why wasn’t he smart enough to scuff out his footprints?”

He shrugged. “Nobody is smart all the time. Maybe he heard a noise. And he had to have been under a lot of stress. Stress means mistakes.”

“Well, he seems to have made some, skipped some. How did he know Terese would come back downstairs at all? If he didn’t realize he left footprints, how come he made his boots disappear? And why did he have them on in the first place, in the middle of the night? Was he going to mow the lawn at three a.m.? In the rain?”

“We don’t have all the answers yet,” he answered stiffly. “But Dr. Gloetzner raised an interesting point. You see that torso on my blackboard? It shows the approximate locations of the six wounds. Five of them were not deep and would not have been fatal if she’d gotten help. Gloetzner thinks they were done immediately after she died, though. The first, where the knife was apparently replaced in her chest, was deep. In fact, it nicked the heart. That accounts for nearly all the blood, and the swift, quiet death. But back to the other five, they were small, almost decorative. That’s a total of six wounds, if you figure the knife was placed back in the first, fatal wound. Not counting Terese, six people live in the house. You don’t suppose it’s one of those things where everyone stabs her so no one can squeal on the person who actually killed her, do you?”

I slowed down as if I were thinking. “I could possibly believe it of everyone except Hamlet. He’d be too scared to prick her with a pin if anyone else was going to know about it. He’d be afraid someone would somehow blame it on him. I can see him losing his temper and killing her, but not as part of a ritual.”

“Okay,” he said. “I can buy that. Then consider this, if you connect the dots, as it were, the wounds could be said to form a rough letter ‘R.’”

I tried to think of where he could be going with this. Finally, I tried, “R for revenge? R for rage? For retribution?”

“Or for Rob.”

“Sonny, are you
trying
to put this onto Harmon?”

He left me tying Fargo to the big anchor in front of the Rat and stormed through the door. Inside, I stopped at the bar to order Fargo’s burger. The Blues Brothers were out in full force at the front table, minus Harmon. They all watched Sonny move across the room toward a table for us. Their eyes were not friendly.

I waited at the bar for the burger and took it and some water out to my patient pooch. By the time I got back inside, Sonny had us a beer and had ordered lunch.

Just getting off the ankle made me feel better. A large swallow of Bud helped even more. I broke the silence. “I’m sorry, Sonny. I shouldn’t have said that about you and Harmon. I didn’t mean it. You must be terribly upset.”

“Yeah. And there’s one more thing. Dr. Gloetzner has confirmed sperm in Terese’s vagina. The sperm’s gone off to the lab, along with a clear liquid, which is not seminal fluid, but a fluid which some men ‘leak’ when they have sex. Before they ejaculate, or even if they don’t. We are pretty sure the sperm is Hamlet’s. We’re going to be real interested in the leaker. We’ll have DNA on both in a few days.”

“Well, maybe Carlucci wasn’t as impotent as everyone thought, unless it is Hamlet’s.” They seemed the most obvious. “Hell, that only leaves Nick and Noel in the Brownlee building.”

“Uh-huh,” Sonny gave me a weary smile. “Or Harmon.”

“Sonny, just hush!” I chewed a bite of my sandwich viciously. “Oh, all right. I might as well tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

I told him of Harmon’s practically wrecking my backyard, and of his final statement, “I shall take action.”

Sonny looked puzzled. “Now that isn’t like Harmon. That sounds like something out of a book or a movie. Harmon would say he’d get her for this, or she’d pay for this, not ‘I shall take action.’”

“Look, Sonny, he didn’t necessarily mean he’d kill her. Maybe he meant to get a lawyer and sue the
A-List
. Or get Carlucci to throw her out. Hell, maybe he meant to put a dead bluefish in her bed.”

“Now that sounds like fun! Can I play, too?” I looked up to see Noel smiling above us.

“Hey, Noel, sit down,” Sonny said. “We could use a little cheer.”

“Did you say beer?”

“That, too.” Sonny stood up and waved for Joe’s attention. “Hey, Joe, three Buds please. And a pastrami and fries for Noel.” He turned and asked belatedly, “That okay?”

“Absolutely. I apologize for interrupting your lunch, but your office said you would probably be here, Sonny. I have a couple of things to tell you. They may not be important, but . . .”

I picked up my sandwich and beer. “I’ll finish eating at the bar so you two can have some privacy.”

“Not for my sake,” Noel said. “They aren’t anything secret as far as I’m concerned.”

Sonny waved me back to my chair. “Stay here. You’ve been making brilliant comments all morning. I can’t wait for more.”

Noel looked as if he wished he’d picked another time, but began bravely. “I called my ex-wife when we got to the motel. I like her to know exactly where I am, because of the kids. She has my cell number, but I’m just overcautious, I guess. Karen, my ex, is a good friend of our wardrobe mistress, Diane Hoskins. They had been speaking on the phone yesterday. Do you know Diane?”

I shook my head, Sonny nodded. “Slightly.”

Noel smiled his thanks as his lunch and beer arrived. “When Terese first got involved with Paul and being
embedded
up here, she wrote a sidebar on the duties of the wardrobe mistress and how important she and her assistants are to any stage production. Keeping costumes fresh and clean, mending, getting the right costumes to the right dressing room for every performance, etc. It was a well-done article.”

Noel dragged a french fry through some ketchup and chewed for a moment. “Diane wanted to do something to thank Terese. Diane and her husband George own a farm just over the border into Connecticut. One of those farms where you can go and pick your own tomatoes or pumpkins and whatever. It’s a great place. I’ve had the kids there. Well, Diane called George and asked him to bring up a bunch of produce for Terese, enough for all of us, actually. George and the three kids came up yesterday morning.”

“What did Terese do?” I asked. “I know it was something awful.”

“Yes, worse than you can imagine, and I’ll bet you’d never guess. As George was unloading the stuff from the truck, Terese asked if he didn’t get lonesome with Diane away so much. He said he did, but that the kids kept him company. Terese said they were certainly beautiful children, but wasn’t it strange not one of them looked like him, or with Diane traveling, was that to be expected? Then she laughed and walked away.”

“She never missed a chance, did she?” Sonny shook his head in disbelief.

“It may not all have been her fault,” Noel said. “Terese had a single mother, father unknown. As a kid, she interfered with mom’s ‘social’ life, so mom farmed her out to a grandmother, whose coat of arms was,
Do unto others before they can do unto you.

“Terese thought any sign of kindness was a sign of weakness that would be used against her later.”

I lit a cigarette and left the pack on the table. It would save Sonny asking. “That’s sad. She did goof once, though. At the cemetery the other day she told Harmon she was sorry about his brother. Of course, she made up for it later.” I was curious. “How did you know all this?”

“Karen worked with her years ago at
Variety
before Terese got so thoroughly nasty. But that’s not the finish. Yesterday morning, when she made that crack, George got more and more pissed, finally threw all the produce back in the truck, left the kids with Diane and went looking for Terese. He said he was going to drive her to Hyannis and put her on a bus for New York, and she’d damn well better not show up anywhere near him again. And one of the kids says he thinks there’s some kind of gun in the glove compartment.”

Sonny had a notebook and pencil out before I even thought of it. “His full name? Do you know the make and color of the truck? Connecticut plates, I guess. Where was he staying?”

“George Hoskins. Otherwise, I don’t know. I think he was just going to make a round trip. Oh, the truck was blue, I think.”

Sonny was already muttering into his cell phone. “Pick up Diane Hoskins . . . . Wardrobe mistress for Hamlet . . . husband, too. George . . . careful . . . may be carrying. Make sure his kids are with their mother. ASAP. Let me know.”

“This gets worse and worse,” Noel said. “It never occurred to me the kids might be a problem. You think he just hung around and came back and killed her? But wouldn’t he have shot her? You think he would use his own kids to help him get away?”

Sonny grimaced. “Probably none of the above, but I don’t want some hostage situation arising out of this. He was most likely just in a snit and is home or off drunk somewhere. I hope. Look, sorry to run, but I’d better get back. Noel, can you walk back with me? Alex left her car at the police station and she’s hobbling on a bad ankle. Could you play chauffeur? I don’t want my mother accusing me of police brutality.”

Sometimes he bordered so closely on being nice.

Chapter 21

After dropping Noel off at the Marshes, I pulled in our driveway to find Cindy backing out of it.

“Whither goest?” I got out of the car, did my Quasimodo hobble over and kissed her through the open window of her car.

“If you can’t guess, you really need help. Where would I go if I couldn’t concentrate at work, couldn’t find you, couldn’t stand the sight of a police car and plan to write a whole new song about yellow ribbons?”

I rested my forefinger delicately on my chin and pretended to think.

“If you’re really stuck, there’s a note on the kitchen table.”

“Aha! Could it be that lovely little cottage by a homey little pond?”

“Your adjectives are reversed, but yes. I really want peace and quiet. If you’ve been running around all day, you must be ready to go hide, too. Why are you limping?”

I was embarrassed to mention it. “Oh, when I was playing Superman this morning, I tripped on my cape and turned my ankle. I’ll get an Ace bandage at some point.”

“Like now. It can’t be good to walk or drive with it not supported.”

“I don’t—”

“In that little cabinet in the half bath. Go get it.”

The thing that amazed me was not so much that Cindy could tape an ankle as well as Lainey, but that she knew exactly where the bandage had been. Honest, could you walk right to a certain spot and lay your hand on a bandage you use maybe once every two years?

Anyway, I then drove to the cottage while Cindy went off on a spree to Evans’s Market where delicious things awaited—all ready, or very nearly ready, to eat. Later, we sat on the deck, where Aunt Mae had joined us, the three of us nibbling a smooth Stilton and sipping a smooth bourbon, tea for Aunt Mae, and at least two of us listening to our nerves loosen up with almost audible twangs.

I was working slowly up to a nap, when a car came to a noisy halt in the gravel in front of the cottage. Two doors opened and closed, one normally, one in a manner that made me listen to see if it dropped to the ground.

My brother stomped onto the deck, followed by an anxious-looking Trish. Leaning against the railing, he spread his arms like an evangelist in full swing. “Sing hallelujah, everybody. The murder is solved! Solved by none other than our own genius, Captain Anders.”

“Aha!” I laughed. “Let me guess. It was a transient who broke through the French doors to get out of the rain. He just happened to fall down the basement stairs and into the closet where the silver was stored. Coming back to the kitchen, he spied Terese, didn’t want her to give him a bad write-up, stabbed her and ran away with the loot, wearing Harmon’s boots because his own were wet.”