Act of God (37 page)

My mentioning her name seemed to hurt him.

“You fell for her, hook, line, and sinker. But she wanted a lot of nice things, and you didn’t really have the discretionary income to provide them. However, the two of you saw a way, a way that must have made a lot of sense the more you thought and talked about it, even though it was a little different from how Darbra had earned her last grubstake.”

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Pay attention, Rog, it’ll come back to you. Six years ago, Darbra killed her mother, pushing the woman off a roof for fifty thousand in life insurance. About four months ago, Darbra was running low on money and would have done the same to her brother, even tried to get him to check whether the policies were still in effect, so there’d be no inquiry on record from her. But then she probably figured, and rightly, that two insured, accidental deaths in the same family circle within a decade was pushing it a little. On the other hand, there was your wife. Darbra was younger than Caroline, but looked old for her age, and she’d spent some time as a stage actress. Not a very good actress, but then, she didn’t need to be. Just good enough to fool a friend from a distance and strangers up close. Darbra got a job at Value Furniture, to give her a little cover and enough money to tide her over. Then you borrowed a videotape of a party from your neighbor, Mrs. Thorson, so Darbra could bone up on your wife’s limp, posture, mannerisms. You and Darbra had a violent breakup scene in Grgo’s restaurant, kind of overdone by her, as you said, though I heard you were very convincing. About the same time, Darbra wheedled some vacation time from her new boss to take a trip to New Jersey, to give both her and you perfect alibis.

“The plan was for Darbra to dye her hair blond and come back up here from New Jersey by train. Her aunt Darlene said she loved to ride trains as a kid, and it fit in perfectly. The day of your wife’s flight to Washington, Darbra takes the Amtrak from Newark to Boston. She comes out here, probably by cab to an address a few blocks away. Then she walks over to this house. Tell me, Rog, was Caroline already dead by then?”

No response, the eyes seeming to look not at me but inward.

“I’m guessing she wasn’t, that you’d want Caroline alive as long as possible, in case Mrs. Thorson or another neighbor popped over to wish her well on the trip. I also believe you’d want Darbra in on the killing. That’s the one death I can’t describe for you, so let’s hold it for now. At some point, Darbra goes up to your wife’s closet, dresses in one of her outfits, and puts on her sunglasses. You call a cab for Darbra, and then pop next door yourself, so that Mrs. Thorson gets a look only from her door of a cab pulling away and through the passenger window her ‘friend’ Caroline’s classic wave, something Darbra had practiced from the video. The plan from there was for you to go to Mrs. Thorson’s for dinner, to bring your cellular phone and to act naturally, at some point noting with concern the fact that your wife hadn’t gotten in touch with you after her plane landed. Then we’d have an investigation, which would show that Caroline Houle had gotten the assistance of a flight attendant in preboarding, introduced herself even, and definitely had been on the plane when it arrived in D.C. The authorities would search the Washington area for the woman, nobody but you and Darbra knowing that Darbra had changed in the ladies’ room at the airport, gone to the train station, and taken the Amtrak back to New Jersey, to finish out her vacation and round out her alibi. How am I doing so far, Rog?”

He lifted his chin a little.

“I’ll take that as confirmation for now. There were also some things you didn’t know about, of course. A couple of people told me Darbra was somebody who couldn’t leave well enough alone, who couldn’t resist trying to do someone else’s idea one better. She probably figured she had a little more experience in the area than you did, thanks to her mother’s situation, but I’m thinking she probably also didn’t quite trust love to be enough. So Darbra didn’t just get a job with Value Furniture, she seduced one of the bosses into an affair with her, to make it look like she was in the process of acquiring another ‘sugar daddy’ and easing off with you long before the breakup scene at Grgo’s. She also wanted a little extra alibi the day of the killing, somebody to convince the motel owner at the Jersey shore that she was ‘in the shower’ that Friday night when she would have been on the Amtrak coming back from her flight to Washington. Maybe also some help with the videotape and transportation while she was in Jersey itself. So, about a month ago, Darbra started up with Rush Teagle and brought him into the ‘vacation’ part of the plan. Given how Teagle behaved, I think he must have been promised a couple thousand dollars by Darbra for helping her, because he bragged about being in line for some new money to his band before the fact. That Friday night at the motel, though, he probably waited for Darbra till he fell asleep, maybe from all the beer the motel owner saw in the room. I’m guessing that the next morning, Teagle woke up, saw Darbra wasn’t back, and turned on the TV while he tried to figure out what to do. The plane crash would have been on any news broadcast along the Northeast Corridor, and Teagle must have realized what happened. He threw his and Darbra’s stuff from vacation into his convertible and hightailed it back to Boston.

“From your reaction the first time we met, Rog, you had no idea about these other men in her life. You didn’t even know Abraham Rivkind had been killed, because it happened while you were out-of-state on business, and I’m betting Darbra didn’t breathe a word of it to you, for fear of making you skittish about her being close to two deaths in a few weeks’ time. Unfortunately, though, the Friday your wife died here Darbra also inconveniently ‘forgot’ to bring back to you Mrs. Thorson’s videotape of the party. Do you think Darbra thought of that tape as insurance, too, Rog? Insurance on your honorable intentions toward her? Either way, there were other little quirks, like Darbra staining the motel sink with her hair dye and coincidentally getting a seat on the plane too close to a woman who bathed in perfume, forcing Darbra to move because of her allergy. But these other things, Rog, they were nothing compared to the biggest quirk of all, the ultimate irony.”

I looked up at the urn. “The fact that the plane, the one your wife would have been on, goes and crashes, completely by accident, killing Darbra in her place.”

Houle moved his head a few degrees at a time, like a bolt being turned by a ratcheting wrench. He stared up at the urn.

I said, “When I visited here last Thursday and told you Darbra had ‘come back’ to Boston after you knew she’d died, it really rocked you. I took it for sincere reaction to the death of the woman you loved, and it was. On account of Darbra, that is. But that made you realize that Darbra could have left the party videotape, and maybe other incriminating evidence as well, in her apartment. So you went there, used your keys, and ransacked the place. When you didn’t find the tape, you tumbled to another unpleasant possibility. There might be somebody else in on the game, the somebody turning out to be Rush Teagle.”

Houle spoke for the first time in a long time. “Bastard.”

“I was the one who told him about Darbra’s place being searched, and he seemed awfully interested. Unfortunately, I’m also the one who told you the name of the young guy Darbra was seeing. When an unidentified young guy calls to blackmail you using the videotape, you kind of put two and two together, maybe even noticing his name over a buzzer at the apartment house when you went there to toss Darbra’s place. You go along with Teagle over the telephone, then return to the apartment house and unlock the front door of the building with your key. You use some kind of ruse to get Teagle to open his apartment door in the basement. What’d you do, Rog, impersonate a cop?”

Houle looked at me.

“Anyway, you get into his place, maybe carrying a weapon of your own, but lo and behold, there’s a fireplace poker there. You remember I told you that’s how Rivkind was killed, while you were in Denver, so you figure using the same kind of weapon is the perfect way for the cops to think Rivkind and Teagle must have been killed by the same person, who couldn’t be you. Tell me, did you find Mrs. Thorson’s videotape in Teagle’s apartment?”

Houle just kept looking at me, eyes piercing me, really seeing it now.

“I’m guessing you did, Rog. I’m guessing you figured at that point you were home free. A little covered in blood, maybe, and still distraught over losing Darbra, but at least well-off and in the clear on all the killings. Except for one thing.”

Houle opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking.

“Not curious, Rog? Come on now, we’ve gotten this far together, you don’t want to know the one glitch you can’t fix?”

His hands started flexing.

I said, “The other videotape.”

“The other … ?”

“When I was here the first time, remember? You were going on about having to claim the body, how they conducted the identification, the video monitor in the room.”

“No.”

“They do keep a copy of that, Rog.”

“No!”

“Before they release the body, they make a tape of it, to show the injuries. A tape that will also show the half of the face that wasn’t burned, the features belonging to Darbra Proft, not Caroline Houle.”

He squeezed his eyes shut.

Now for the play. It would work, or it wouldn’t. “I haven’t told the cops, yet, of course.”

The eyes opened, blinking. “What … ?”

“I haven’t told the cops yet, because I wanted to learn about the one thing I didn’t know. Exactly how Caroline died.”

I suddenly stood and started through the house toward the back. “This way to the garden, Rog?”

I walked as briskly as my braced knee would allow, so he’d come after me quickly. I heard his steps behind me right away.

I went out the back door, the flowers and shrubs in front of me, the new potting shed to my left. The plastic bags and garden tools were all arranged in the shed now, as though someone had just straightened it. I turned around to face Houle, putting the shed to my right.

He came through the door and out, hands still flexing, something off about his breathing.

I said, “There was only one real problem with your original plan, Rog. Since your theory was that Caroline disappeared in Washington while you were alibied by the Thorsons up here, it would look kind of funny if her body turned up around the house. Damned complicated to get rid of a body, too. Woods? Always hunters and hikers, poking around. Water? Boaters and fishermen. Look at that guy on the sailboat, the lobstermen bringing up the woman he’d weighted down and sent overboard. So, what to do, what to do?”

I looked over at the shed and snapped my fingers. Houle shifted his feet, moving closer to it.

“A little creative concrete, Rog? It’d mean you’d have to live here forever, just in case a new owner wanted to tear down the shed, tear up the concrete under it. But what better way to hide the Massachusetts body of the wife who disappeared in D.C.?”

Houle’s breathing was getting more irregular, his head now shaking a couple of times like a fighter trying to clear it. I wasn’t sure he was seeing his chance.

“What say you pick up one of those long-handled shovels, Rog, and we do some archaeology?”

I’d tipped him, but the way he kept his eyes on me while reaching out and grabbing the handle told me he’d been thinking it before I said it. He brought the shovel into both of his hands, first like Little John with a quarterstaff, which would have been a lot more trouble. Then he switched to a baseball grip, a leftie, and swung at me forehand. I jumped back, the knee twinging as I torqued it. He swung backhand, striking me on the left bicep and knocking me downward as I drew the Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special worn over my right hip.

From the ground, I could see Houle raising the shovel above his head, like a man with a maul to split firewood. When the shovel came forward, I fired three times into his chest and rolled left, the shovel hammering my right shoulder as Houle’s face thumped into the lawn about where my head had been.

“So, what made you think it was this guy Houle?” Bonnie Cross was sitting in one of the redwood lounge chairs, using the wide drink arm on it to hold her pad as she took notes. A detective from the Meade town force and a state trooper in plainclothes attached to the county district attorney sat on lawn chairs flanking the lounge, both men deferring to her. Roger Houle had already been pronounced by a pathologist from the Medical Examiner’s officer, his body gurneyed out toward the driveway. A couple of EMTs from the ambulance had looked over my bruises and said they didn’t think I needed X-rays, but they weren’t doctors themselves, “So who knows?” At the shed, lab techs were still tutoring a crew of hardhats with picks and mallets on the finer points of excavating an area where a body might be found.

“Cuddy?”

“Sorry. Still a little in shock.”

“Right,” said the town detective, no sarcasm in his voice. Yet.

Cross didn’t look at him. “So what made you think this Houle was the one?”

“I don’t know. Little things bothered me. Darbra supposedly came back from New Jersey after a week away, but she didn’t bother to change her cat’s litter or let the person feeding it know she was back. Teagle claimed he’d gotten a note, but I found out in Jersey that while he’d been with her there, she wasn’t seen leaving with him.”

Cross said, “Making Teagle look good for killing her there.”

“Or at least losing her there. But it seemed hard to believe that Proft’s disappearance and Rivkind’s death weren’t connected, and that’s what kept things clouded.”

“Clouded,” said the statie.

“Yes,” I said.

Cross flipped through the pages in her pad. “So Houle and Proft decide to ice his wife and fake the wife’s disappearance, but the plane crash screws that up. Teagle tries to blackmail Houle, and the kid gets killed for his trouble.”

“Right.”

“And you figure we’re going to find Mrs. Houle under the shed?”

“Based on the way Houle was raving at me toward the end.”

The townie took out a pack of Marlboros. “About that. You say he came at you with the shovel.”