StoneDust (12 page)

“Come on, Vicky. You knew
something
was up.”

“
You
know as well as I—or ought to—that anything that would send Ollie charging out of town on Sunday morning was potentially a problem for me.”

“I thought that at the time. But now, I think maybe you suspected some sort of special problem because of what you saw the night before.”

“Like what?”

“Or heard in the kitchen.”

Vicky picked up my night-table lamp, turned it on, tilted the bright bulb on her face. “Does this help, Officer?”

“Come on.”

“Want to slap me around in the back room?”

“Go to hell.”

“You have some nerve.”

“
You
have some nerve. You watched me running around like an idiot and you never helped.”

“I'm helping now. Aren't I?”

“Thank you, Vicky. What were the women talking about in Michelle's kitchen?”

“Listen, you've got to promise me something.”

“I will not betray your trust. I will not use your name. I will not expose you in any way. I promise.”

“That's not what I mean.”

“What do you want me to promise?”

“Promise you won't hate me.”

“For what?”

“For anything I tell you.”

“Vicky, you're Catholic. You're already carrying more guilt than I could ever lay on you. I promise nothing you could tell me would make me hate you. Except if you killed Reg without a good reason.”

“Don't even say that. I couldn't kill anybody.”

“Did you see Reg?”

“Only at six-thirty, like I told you.”

“So what's the big guilt?”

“Promise.”

“Vicky, you're the most principled person I know, except for Aunt Connie. I promise I won't hate you.”

“Okay. First, you've got to believe me that when I saw Trooper Moody that morning, I didn't know what he was going to find. Because I didn't understand what I'd heard in the kitchen. Even after we heard the radio, I didn't know. But when you came back to the Drover and told me about Reg, I knew.”

“Knew what?”

She took a deep breath and slowly, coolly, told me what else she had heard. As she had said earlier, Michelle was doing the yelling, Sherry was mostly quiet, and Georgia Bowland was crying. Finally Ted's wife, Susan, the nurse, cut Michelle off and said, “I guarantee you he was gone. We did the only right thing.”

“That's what I'm trying to tell her,” shouted Michelle.

“Michelle, calm down. Georgia. Listen to me, Georgia. Nobody did anything wrong; it just happened. It's not our fault. We shouldn't have to pay for it.”

“I'm goddamned not paying for it,” said Michelle.

“None of us are,” said Susan.

“We'll get caught,” sobbed Georgia.

“No we won't. No one's going to get caught.”

Vicky said, “Susan had the most soothing voice. A wonderful go-to-sleep-and-everything-will-be-okay nurse voice. It was remarkable. I've seen this in meetings—one person rises to the occasion and becomes the voice of reason. Well, that was Nurse Susan. Georgia stopped crying. Sherry stopped her mumbling—I never could hear what she was going on about. And Michelle began to taper off. At least until stupid me stepped on her creaky stairs.”

“Pay for what?” I asked. “Sounds like somebody broke a vase.”

“I'll let you figure that out, Mr. Investigator.”

“I don't have to. You figured it out for me. If you didn't, you wouldn't feel so guilty.”

“Doesn't it sound like Reg died at the party and the guys dumped his body in the covered bridge?”

“Sounds that way.”

“The thing is, Ben, you wouldn't know any of this if I hadn't been there.”

“That's for sure.”

“And a lot of it is guessing. I mean, they could have been talking about something else. I mean, when I first heard Susan saying that thing about guaranteeing he was gone, I thought she meant one of the guys. Like one of the couples had had a fight.”

“Like the couple, part of one of which was humping in the guest room?”

“Right…But the main thing is—”

“The main thing is, First Selectman McLachlan was never there.”

“It's probably a crime for me not to say anything. I'm a public official. I'm supposed to operate on a higher standard than everybody. Already, I've screwed up and maybe broken the law. But all I did was wake up drunk. Ben, I could lose everything…Even if it's only an ethical lapse—Jesus, listen to me—‘only.' I'm disgusting.”

“Go to confession or something. I'll deal with the real stuff.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“How can I thank you?”

“According to the doctor, it's going to be a week before I can participate in sincere thanks. Maybe we'll celebrate your renomination.”

“What are you going to do?”

I looked out the window for a few minutes and then I said, “I think I'll go drinking with Pinkerton Chevalley.”

Chapter 15

Until my head got better all I could drink was club soda, which would be no problem, as Pink would be happy to drink for both of us.

“Your tab?” he asked, when I stopped by Chevalley Enterprises to make my offer.

“On me.”

“Betty,” he yelled. “I'm outta here.”

Mechanics looked up, smiling. Pink noticed. “I'm still waiting for my screwdriver…Let's go, Ben.”

Outside, I said, “Before we go drinking, I'd like a quick look at Reg's Blazer.”

“It's to hell and gone over in Plainfield.”

“Won't take long.”

“But it's locked up at the troopers'. I can't get in without a tow job.”

“Put my Olds on the flatbed.”

Muttering that we'd waste an hour and a half and maybe miss Happy Hour, Pink winched my Olds onto his flatbed wrecker.

“You got an extra cap?”

He found me a Chevalley Enterprises baseball cap drenched in transmission fluid.

We drove to Plainfield at a high rate of speed, yellow flashers blazing, and when the compound guard saw us coming he obligingly opened the gate. Pink wove through rows of confiscated automobiles, wrecked automobiles, and automobiles held for evidence in upcoming trials. Reg's was way in back, coated with pollen from a towering hemlock hedge that screened the lot from its neighbors. Heat shimmered from the sunbaked hood.

“Make it snappy.”

The scratch that ran the length of the passenger side had grown a line of rust already. I inspected it fore and aft. Pink blew his horn.

The door wasn't locked. I opened it on an oven blast of hot air and looked inside. The glove compartment and the console hatch were empty. No sign of Reg: no drug stuff. Everything seized, presumably, for evidence. I found a discarded wrapper for latex surgical gloves, size eight and a half. Probably Doctor Steve's. Pink leaned on his horn again. I ran back to the wrecker. “Go.”

Pink roared for the gate, but the guard had already shut it. He came out of his shack, eyes busy. “You forgot to unload the car.”

“Goddamned winch broke,” Pink growled. “Can't get the 'sucker off 'til I fix it.”

“Where's the sticker?”

“Huh?” Pink loved a good scam, but he wasn't very quick. The missing orange state police sticker that should have been pasted to my Olds threw him badly. Pulling my cap low, I leaned past him and said, “I saw something blow off on 361. Looked orange. Thought it was a bird.”

The guard wasn't that quick either; he wasn't a trooper, just an old guy with enough pull to get the job. He grumped.

Pink said, “Come on, buddy, I gotta get my truck fixed.”

He grumped some more and opened the gate.

“All right!” Pink exulted.

We drove back to Chevalley Enterprises, offloaded my car, and transferred to Pink's pickup. I'd have preferred to drive on this outing; but Pink preferred his truck because it had a cooler in the cab for beers between stops.

“What were you looking for?” he asked as we headed for the White Birch.

“I wanted to see which end that scratch started on.”

“Which end?”

“It was deepest in front, so I figured the guy with the church key started in front and walked toward the back.”

“Makes sense,” said Pink. “So what?”

“Tells me he was crossing the bridge leaving the reservation. Know any Indians?”

“Couple. Crazy 'suckers. How you know it was scratched on the bridge? Could have been done anywhere.”

“Could have,” I agreed. “Except I saw paint chips on the bridge.”

***

We made Happy Hour with time to spare.

Pink bellied up to the bar. “Beer and a shot. On my father, here.”

I told Wide Greg to run a tab.

Under such circumstances, your average guest would be eager to show his gratitude. He'd respond to attempts to make conversation and rise to every opportunity to please. Not Pink. He was Chevalley through and through: free drinks was an opportunity to be seized at speed before the fool buying regained his wits.

A big man, even bigger than Oliver Moody, Pink's capacity was enormous. And yet it was a relatively inexpensive afternoon, evening, and night as the ginmills he favored—and Wide Greg's biker bar was the toniest we patronized—catered to fortunes pegged at the minimum wage. He was known in each, and welcomed by management with the same weary resignation with which farmers greeted hail storms.

As darkness fell on our peregrine route—which I edged ever northward toward the Jervis woods and the Indian reservation—Pink encountered other large, taciturn, solitary men. Neither party seemed to find his mirror image particularly pleasing, and more than once in my concussed and scabbed condition I felt like a wart hog strolling the elephant walk between rival bulls.

At first, Pink ignored all of my small talk and most of my questions. But as his spirit intake mellowed him over the course of many hours, he revealed that he was stressing out at Chevalley Enterprises. Hardly surprising. Sustained work and a willingness to make decisions were not the hallmarks of Chevalley men, who, traditionally, left the thinking to the women and acted on impulse.

Once he did surprise me, harkening back to an earlier conversation: “That weren't no Indian.”

A very long silence followed this announcement. Finally I asked, “Who weren't no Indian?”

“Scratched Reg's S10.”

“How you figure that, Pink?”

“Son-of-a-bitchin' vandal was
leaving
the reservation…”

“Yeah, Pink?”

“Kinda late for Indians goin'
out
—Drink up, Ben. Let's blow this joint.”

Club soda, he noted at every refill, was a “pussy cure” for a concussion. His own prescription was tequila, until, up north on a dirt road off Route 7, we arrived at the River End Bar.

The River End was owned by Matthew Jervis, the only adult Jervis without a police record, which made him front man for the clan's forays into legitimate enterprise. House brew was a Newfoundland rum called Screech, aged aboard the same truck that delivered untaxed Canadian cigarettes. Screech, my cousin assured me, would fix what ailed.

Matthew agreed, claiming that Canadian fishermen subsisted for days on Screech.

“And never need no solid food,” a bearded giant down the bar put in his two cents.

Pink Chevalley, red in the eye by now, stared hard.

The other patrons—a grandmother with a baby, and some car thieves arguing the merits of popping the lock cylinder versus smashing a window—looked over with interest, hoping the big guys would liven things up by removing each other's tattoos. Just then some pickup trucks pulled into the parking lot bearing customers I did not want scared off by a fight refereed by the state police.

“How about a round of Screech?” I asked.

Matthew Jervis hurriedly filled every glass on the bar. It tasted about the way it sounded, and appeared to crinkle the varnish wherever Matthew had splashed it in his haste. But it did make everyone friends of a sort, which was my intention. People started piling in and by ten-thirty, the joint was jumpin' as they fed the jukebox and danced to what came out.

The bearded giant turned out to be the Jervises' Canadian truck driver, and a dirt-track jockey like Pink. Soon they were locked in monosyllabic conversation punctuated by spontaneous bouts of arm-wrestling, which Pink won, while hinting over his shoulder that his glass was getting dry.

I had my own arms full with the car thieves—who had had a lot to drink and were demanding I settle an argument about removing The Club by bolt-cutting the steering wheel—and the babysitting grandmother venting her dissatisfaction with a daughter who “partied way too hard.” As none of them knew anything new about a Blazer in the covered bridge, I excused myself and worked my way across the jammed-up dance floor to the jukebox, where an angular redhead in a tight blouse and tighter jeans was hesitating over her final selection.

“How about ‘I Got Friends in Low Places'?”

Gwen Jervis moved her Bud bottle an inch from her lips.

“It's Benjamin Abbott III. What are you doing here? What in hell happened to your ear?”

She drowned my answer in a long, wet kiss which I returned with pleasure and one eye on the rapid approach of a broad- shouldered, sunburned guy flashing a gold nugget bracelet.

Gwen murmured into my mouth, “Buddy's home.”

Her common-law husband and father of her two grown children worked as an oil-rig roustabout. His long disappearances allowed Gwen an independence enjoyed by few Jervis women. The fact that her villainous father, Old Herman, was clan leader emeritus and her brothers managed the criminal activities fortified her position.

Buddy had put on weight and lost hair. “Hi, Buddy. How's the Persian Gulf treating you?”

He ignored my hand and my greeting. “Next time you say hello to my wife, ‘Hello' will do.”

“For Godsake, Buddy, Ben's my cousin…Well, almost. He's Pink's cousin—right, Ben?—and Pink is my cousin, so it stands to reason.” She gave me a sexy smile, replaying the night many, many, many years ago when Pink had bought me a six-pack and propelled me in her direction for a sexual initiation that set a standard I'd aspired to ever since.

“He's no more your cousin than I'm your cousin,” Buddy retorted.

“You
are
my cousin,” Gwen reminded him. “And you're drunk,” she added with some affection.

Buddy ran a callused hand over his mouth. “Oh yeah. Well, I don't give a damn. Seems to me, Ben, you ought'nta kiss a man's wife that way. And you watch your ass,” he said, nudging her hard.

Gwen returned the steady gaze of an eagle grading woodchucks. She was missing a front tooth that Buddy had knocked out years ago. Buddy had spent the rest of that night in the care of a surgical team that specialized in puncture wounds. After which, the couple had declared a truce on the rough stuff.

“So, what happened to your ear?” Her people lived in a house-trailer encampment in the deep woods and tended not to subscribe to the
Danbury Republican
.

“Couple of guys broke into my house.”

“That why you're here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Looking for them.”

“No, they came up from Waterbury.”

“So why aren't you in Waterbury?”

“I have to get back in shape first.”

Gwen took a pull on her Bud, tongueing the bottle and enjoying my reaction. “So what are you doing here?”

“I'm wondering who might visit the Indians late on a Saturday night.”

“Like the night your pal Reg ODed?”

“Yeah.”

“I have no idea—Hey, Buddy! Dance with me.”

She glanced back, just once, to make sure I was staring at her jeans, which I was, and disappeared onto the dance floor.

I returned to the bar, disappointed, but not particularly surprised. Gwen owed me little, and what she did she would never pay with information about her neighbors, much less her own.

In fact, after eight bars, a lot of driving, and a hundred bucks' worth of booze and club soda, the day and night were beginning to wear thin. What had started with promise—an easy look at the impounded Blazer—had deteriorated to a headache in a loud, smoky joint full of people having a better time than I was. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed. But first I had to pry my cousin off a stool he appeared welded to.

“Matt wants money,” Pink welcomed me back to the bar. “We had another round—hell, Matt, while he's got his money out might as well pour some more.
Matthew
! More Screech! 'Less you want me and Zeke to come back there and get it ourselves—no, I didn't think so.” He and the bearded Canadian shared a laugh, which was suddenly drowned out by loud cheers at the door. Shouts and whistles followed the newcomer across the room.

Pink stood up, peered over the crowd. “Son of a bitch, it's old Smokey.”

“Who?”

“That's the Norfolk dude that chainsawed the Hitching Post bar.” (We had stopped at the Hitching Post earlier, found it boarded up.) “Hey, Smokey! Haul ass over here and let me buy you a drink. Buy him a drink, Ben.”

“Is that Freddy Butler with him?”

“Yeah, the little weasel—Pour fast, Matthew, if you don't want another exit. That's Smokey coming—Hey Smoke.” Big palms smacked together and Smokey, clearly enjoying his new celebrity, greeted Pink like an old friend. They weren't old friends; it was more a matter of the Alien extending Godzilla professional courtesy.

Freddy Butler, oozing in Smokey's trail like a pet snake, gave me a condescending nod. We'd gone to grade school together, where the bicepally challenged Freddy always made friends with the bully. He was a Jervis hanger-on with no obvious job, though he drove a new truck. Now he'd palled up with a case-hardened woody from the north.

I heard Pink say, “Ben, my cousin, here,” and Smokey offered a double-wide hand. “Nice to meet you. I worked for your dad on occasion; came down, cleared some lots for him. I was sorry when he passed away.” Smokey was a weather-wrinkled forty or so, backwoods lanky, long arms like braided wire. His hazel eyes were opaque, which would mask what I imagined would be abrupt changes in his mood.

“Thank you. Pink thought you might enjoy a drink.”

“Yup. Yup. That's not a bad idea at all. Hello, Matthew. Got any of that Screech left?”

I asked Freddy what he'd have and he wanted Screech too.

“Let the little bastard buy his own drinks,” Pink rumbled in my ear, but the Hitching Post wasn't that far from the covered bridge, and, the way I heard it, Smokey's alterations had been executed after closing time the night Reg died.

Everyone threw back his Screech and no one protested when I suggested another. “All right,” said Pink. “I've heard seventeen versions of what happened that night. Now I want to hear it from the horse's mouth.”