The Coal Black Asphalt Tomb: A Berger and Mitry Mystery (Berger and Mitry Mysteries) (17 page)

“I think ten-by-twelve is too small,” Bitsy responded, kneeling there in her overalls. “Let’s try twelve-by-fourteen.”

“Let’s,” he agreed. “Wait, do you have enough bluestone tucked away?”

“Oh, sure. I’ve got piles of leftovers. They won’t all be the same size but we’ll figure out a way to fit them together.”

“Actually, I already have.” The sketch he’d made was tucked in his jacket pocket. He unfolded it and showed it to her. “See, it’s a sort of patchwork quilt pattern. With empty one-foot squares that’ll be here, here and here. I can use these spaces for growing mint or thyme or whatever. Unless you think that would be too Martha Stewart-y. Why are you looking at me that way?”

Bitsy was gaping at him. “Sorry, I just … this is
beautiful
, Mitch. Did you design it all by yourself?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh, of course.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “It’ll be a lovely tribute to her. I’ll order a couple of yards of stone dust from Dorset Landscaping right away. Once we’ve laid a good level bed we’ll fetch the stones from my place with your truck. Heck, we can knock this off in no time.”

One thing Mitch had learned about Bitsy was that when it came to garden projects she did not dillydally around. Just marched right on over with her stakes, string lines and can-do spirit, raring to go. He’d been sprawled on his sofa with Clemmie and cup of hot cocoa watching one of Douglas Sirk’s kitschiest 1950s masterpieces,
All That Heaven Allows
, a torrid tale of forbidden romance about a wealthy country club widow (Jane Wyman) and her
much
younger gardener (Rock Hudson). Mitch had felt a powerful urge to dive headfirst into Sirk ever since he’d had that cup of Postum yesterday at the club with the elegant Beryl Fairchild.

“Bitsy, what do you know about Bart Shaver?” he asked as they expanded the stake lines by two feet in each direction.

“He’s a very nice boy. Buzzy doesn’t deserve him.”

“Okay, you’ll have to explain that.”

“Bart’s decent and honorable, and from what I hear he wants to do good things with
The Gazette
. All Buzzy’s ever done is shill for Bob Paffin and bore the hell out of people with that stupid ‘Buzzings’ column of his. As if anyone in town gives a hoot what that mean old man has to say about…” She broke off, puffing slightly. “I have a personal issue with Buzzy. I used to write the gardening column for
The Gazette
, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“It was before you came to town. I had to give it up.”

“Why?”

“Because Buzzy’s behavior toward me was unacceptable. He was just unbelievably nasty. He hated my column. Hated all of my ideas for the paper. Hated having a
fee-male
in his precious newsroom. He has this stupid sign on the wall that says
NO WHISTLING ALLOWED
. It may as well say
NO WOMEN
. He’s rude to all of the ladies. I am not a dog, Mitch. One day I finally told the old sourpuss that I was tired of being treated like one and I walked out. I’ve never been back since.”

“I guess that explains it.…”

“Explains what?”

“Why Bart can’t get the ladies in town to help him.”

“You bet it does. We’ve staged a boycott.”

“You said Buzzy hated your ideas for the paper. What sort of ideas?”

“Trend pieces about things that were going on in the community. Features that I thought would be of interest to mothers and daughters.”

“I didn’t know you were so interested in journalism.”

“Young sir, I’ll have you know that I was editor in chief of
The Sophian
my senior year at Smith. I had a reputation as something of a muckraker, too. When I sank my teeth in I wouldn’t let go.”

“My Aunt Myrna had a schnauzer just like that.”

“Mitchell Berger, are you making fun of me?”

“Never.”

“You’d better not be. Because I don’t talk about this with most people.”

“That’s for sure. You’ve never said a word. How come?”

Bitsy gave the string line a tug. “Is your end good and taut?”

“Plenty good and taut. How come, Bitsy?”

“It’s not something I’m proud of,” she answered uncomfortably. “What I did after I graduated, I mean. I-I had this dream about moving to New York City and working on a fashion magazine. I wanted to be one of those chic young career girls who get to go to runway shows and offbeat art galleries. I wanted my own cute little apartment on the East Side. I wanted all of that. I even had a real shot at a job as assistant to the lady who was accessories editor at
Vogue
.”

“Accessories are…”

“Handbags, gloves, that sort of thing. My English lit professor had been her roommate at Radcliffe. She wrote me a glowing letter of recommendation. I mailed it off to her friend at
Vogue
, who actually called me. We had a very nice chat on the phone and scheduled an interview at her office in the city later that week.”

“And then what happened?”

Bitsy’s face tightened. “I never went on the interview.”

“You cancelled it?”

“Nothing quite so mature as that. I simply failed to show up.”

“How come?”

“Because my parents were dead set against the idea of me working in the big, bad city. And they for darned sure didn’t want me living there on my own. I didn’t have the spine to stand up to them. So I caved. Ended up back here in Dorset as the assistant children’s librarian. I spent three miserable years doing that until I married Redfield.”

“Bitsy, I can’t believe you never told me this before.”

“What’s to tell? It was a just a silly, stupid dream.”

“Sorry, but you’re talking to the wrong hombre. I don’t think there’s
anything
silly or stupid about dreams. You’re also talking to someone who has a perfectly nice apartment in the city. It’s not on the East Side, but it’s plenty cute and you’re plenty welcome to stay there any time you want.”

She frowned at him, puzzled. “What would I do with myself?”

“Anything you want. Knock yourself out.”

“You’re very sweet, Mitch, but that particular dream died a long, long time ago. And I don’t like to think about it. It just makes me sad when I do.” Bitsy grabbed her rubber mallet and pounded the stake into the ground with great resolve. “Why did you ask me about Bart Shaver?”

“Because he’s in desperate need of volunteers.”

“I’m sure he is. But Bart won’t get one woman in town to help him. Not while that cantankerous old man is still around.”

Mitch heard the telephone ring inside of his house. He went in and answered it.

The voice on the other end said, “Mitch, this is Bart Shaver of
The Gazette
calling. I just moseyed over to the country club and had a nice long chat with Young Henry. Mind you, there’s no such thing as a nice
short
chat with Young Henry. Do you know where the Cahoon family cemetery is?”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

“It’s on Johnny Cake Hill Road. Not far from the old Cahoon mansion at the top of the hill.”

“Oh, sure, I know the place you mean. It’s that pocket-sized cemetery hidden behind all of those bushes, right? I didn’t realize it had a name.”

“The Cahoons started burying their people up there way back in the 1600s—more than a hundred years before the town established Duck River Cemetery. There are a lot of Lays buried there, too. The two families intermarried early on. There’s six other pre-Revolution family plots scattered throughout Dorset. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“It’s fascinating stuff. I’ll have to write a story about it one of these days. What makes the Cahoon family plot so unusual is that it’s situated smack-dab in the middle of the club’s seventh fairway. Or it would be if the designer hadn’t figured out how to tuck it into its own little corner.”

“You mean they had to build the golf course around it?”

“That’s exactly what they had to do. Can you meet me up there in, say, an hour? I may have found what you’re looking for.”

C
HAPTER
11

“Y
OU WENT
AROUND
ME,
damn you!”

“Good morning to you, too, First Selectwoman.” Des had just parked her cruiser in the lot behind Town Hall when the passenger door flew open and in jumped Glynis. “How are you today?”

“Don’t you dare play dumb with me!” she roared, slamming the door shut behind her. “You have really pissed me off. And you do
not
want to piss me off.”

“Yes, I can see that.” What Des saw was a side of Glynis Fairchild-Forniaux she’d never witnessed before. Dorset’s intensely driven first selectwoman had herself a serious temper. Her face was red. Her blues eyes were bulging. The lady looked deranged. Des wondered if this was a family trait. “Is there something in particular that I did?”

“You know there is. I expressly told you I wanted to be there when you spoke to my mother and you expressly ignored me.”

“I haven’t spoken to your mother, Glynis.”

“No, you had your
boyfriend
do it. Talk about devious.”

“Mitch goes his way, I go mine. And I think that pretty much wraps this up. Now if you’ll please excuse me…”

Glynis didn’t budge. Just sat there with her arms crossed and her chin stuck out. “Damn it, Des, I thought we were on the same side.”

“So did I.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re the one who got miffy and uncooperative.”

“When did I…”

“You told me I couldn’t look at your father’s personal papers without a judge’s order.”

“I’m a lawyer. What did you expect me to say?”

“That we’ve got ourselves a situation here and you’d do anything you could to help out.”

Glynis softened slightly. “Okay, maybe I could have been a bit more accommodating.”

“You think?”

“But I’ll have to review them before I can let you have a look.”

“Fair enough. How long will that take?”

“Two or three days.”

“I haven’t got two or three days.”

The lady’s eyes narrowed at her. “What’s really going on, Des? I keep checking the Connecticut TV stations, the New London
Day
,
Hartford Courant
. All that they have is the same old story you people gave out yesterday about unidentified remains, possibly human. I deserve to know what’s going on. My ass is in a sling here.”

“I know it is.”

“My project is a disaster. The entire historic district is one big ditch. Would you like to know how many angry voice mails I had when I got in this morning? Fifty-seven. I’ve got merchants, teachers, parents,
everyone
screaming at me. The only way this can get any worse is if it starts to rain. Then our kids will need kayaks to get to school.”

Now that Glynis mentioned it the clouds overhead did seem to be getting grayer by the minute. Des glanced down at the weather app on her cell phone and said, “Actually, there’s a 40 percent chance of widely scattered showers this afternoon—whatever that means.”

Glynis sat there fuming. “My mother tells me that Buzzy Shaver spent the night up at Middlesex Hospital. It seems he tried to shoot himself yesterday, and might have succeeded if you hadn’t managed to stop him. Des,
please
tell me what is happening.”

“Fine. But this is just between us, hear me?”

“I hear you.”

“We’ve confirmed that those are Lance Paffin’s remains. The ME’s preliminary findings are that he suffered a fatal wound to his skull from a spike-like object.”

Glynis blinked at her. “Lance Paffin was murdered?”

“And buried under Dorset Street, which was undergoing regrading at the time. Then someone took the
Monster
out and wrecked her to make it look like he was lost at sea. His disappearance was a carefully hatched scheme. Your mother and father were among the last people to see him alive, along with the Paffins and Congressmen Cahoon. Exactly what has your mother told you about that night?”

“Very little,” she said with a shake of her head. “Just that Lance was headstrong and foolish. Took his boat out when he shouldn’t have and paid the price.”

“How about your father? Did he ever talk about that night?”

“My father never talked about anything.”

“Has your mother ever said anything else to you about Lance?”

“Such as what?”

“Whether she liked him, disliked him…”

“I’ve always had the impression that she was fond of everyone in the old gang. I know she’s fond of Buzzy. He’s not a strong person physically or emotionally. She worries about him.” Glynis sat there in tightly coiled silence for a moment before she took a deep breath and said, “Okay, what am I missing here?”

“You won’t enjoy hearing what I have to say.”

“I don’t care. Please tell me what you know.”

“Lance Paffin was a major, major womanizer. I know that he slept with Delia before she married Bob. And with Buzzy’s sister, Frances, who killed herself when Lance dumped her. Buzzy despised Lance for that, as did Luke Cahoon, who was engaged to marry Frances. I know that Lance slept with Helen Weidler and that he—”

“Wait,
my
Helen Weidler? I always thought Helen was a lifelong virgin.”

“Think again.” Des shoved her heavy horn-rimmed glasses up her nose and added, “I also know that he slept with your mother.”

Glynis looked at her in disbelief. “My mother slept with Lance Paffin?”

“Yes.”

“Was this before she married my father?”

“Well, yeah. Lance was dead and buried by then, remember?”

“Des, I-I don’t…” All of the color had drained from Glynis’s face. “I don’t feel so good.”

“If you’re going to start blowing chunks please take it outside.”

She reached for the door handle, then stopped, her hand wavering in midair. “No, I’m okay now. I had no idea that she … other than my father, you know?”

“I know,” said Des, who felt no need to tell Glynis about her mother’s trip to Barbados during spring break of her senior year at Wellesley. That was something for them to talk about between themselves. Or not. That was for Beryl to decide. “I’ve been trying, quietly and discreetly, to figure out what really happened to Lance that night.”