Killer Keepsakes (18 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

W

es and I stood in a corner near the front of the grocery store, next to the rows of shopping carts. People glanced at us as they dislodged each cart from its fellows, but no one questioned why we were huddling in the corner.

Wes stood with his arms crossed, looking as angry as he’d sounded. “Why didn’t you tell me what you found out about Vince?”

“I didn’t want my name in the paper.”

Wes shook his head. “Josie, fair’s fair. I tell you things. I tell you
everything
.”

He was right, and I felt a little guilty. “Did you learn about it from your police source?” I asked, avoiding a direct response by posing another question.

“My sources are confidential, but they’re reliable.”

I stared at his frigid countenance. “I was frightened, Wes,” I confessed quietly. “I still am. Vince scares me.”

“That’s good,” he said, reaching for the sheet of lined paper he used for notes. “Why?”

“That’s not a quote, Wes. That was my attempt to explain my reticence.”

“But it’s news.”

“Gimme a break, Wes!
Everyone
is scared of Vince. That I’m scared of Vince is not only not news—it’s
old
not news.” I sighed. “Listen, change of subject. You were terrific on the radio. Smart and competent.”

Wes smiled. “Thanks.”

“So,” I asked, “what do you know about Gretchen?”

“You first,” he said stubbornly. “Give me something.”

It occurred to me that negotiating with Wes was similar to negotiating in business. “What do you want?” I asked.

“An on-the-record report of how you figured out that Vince was lying about his alibi.”

I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I have sources that must be protected, too.”

“A quote, then. A
substantive
quote.” Wes pursed his lips and tempted me to talk with a nugget of what he had to offer. “The police have already interviewed Phil and Johnny at Phil’s Barn.”

“Did Phil confirm that Vince was lying?”

“I say nothing until I get my quote.”

“What about what you said—that you have news about Gretchen?”

Wes shook his head. “You first.”

“Okay. Here goes: From what I can see, there are many layers to this investigation,” I stated, paraphrasing Max’s comment. “A lot of deception seems to be at work.”

“That’s good, Josie,” he said eagerly, writing quickly, “but flesh it out. I need more.”

“That’s enough, Wes. You can summarize some of the areas of confusion—Gretchen’s role in Amelia Bartlett’s murder, why she might have got a new identity, and where she is now—and then close with my quote. Good stuff.”

“Maybe. Link up the break-in at your place and the attempted one at Lina’s for me.”

“I can’t imagine how they’re connected. Maybe the motive is buried under one of those layers.”

He nodded, making a note. “Yeah, that’ll work.” He finished writing and looked up. “Vince’s alibi might not be so airtight after all. Phil and Johnny confirmed what you hypothesized to the police. Vince is Phil’s supplier for the bulk of those building things—” He broke off and read from his notepaper. “Architectural artifacts. He went to Phil’s twice on Wednesday to sell stuff, once early in the morning, and once in the afternoon, after Phil had gone home sick. Since Phil wasn’t there, Vince did business with Johnny.”

“Vince can’t be the murderer,” I said, thinking aloud, “if he was all the way in Exeter when Morgan was killed.”

“Probably that’s right. There are two issues: Who was covering for Vince at his job site and why, and did he have time to both sell the artifacts and kill Briscoe—Boulanger? A carpenter named Lenny gave him the alibi. I think I mentioned before that the police did a minute-by-minute time line for Vince, and he was covered the whole time. Except Lenny lied. He said that Vince was with him for more than an hour discussing how to take down a double-wide staircase without destroying the railing and balusters. Now he says they discussed the staircase the day before and he covered for Vince because he’s his boss and he told him what to say.” Wes shrugged. “Apparently that happens a lot. Vince didn’t make an explicit threat, but since he has the ability to fire him, he didn’t need to.”

“The police believe him?”

“Yeah, because it fits. Apparently Vince ran the architectural artifact trade like a cartel. From Phil’s sales records and the building owner’s revenue reports, it looks like the owner got sixty percent of the take, Vince got thirty percent, and the guys on the job split the remaining ten percent. Except the owner thought he was getting it all. He’s already fired Vince and stopped all work on all his projects until the police can sort it out.”

“Has Vince been arrested?” I asked, awed at the speed with which the police got results.

“Yes. For trafficking in stolen property.”

Vince is going to be out for bear
, I thought.
Poor Mandy
. “What about the time issue you mentioned?” I asked.

Wes shook his head. “It’s tight. He was on a routine call with his parole officer from eleven that morning until about eleven fifteen. The police can tell his general location by which cell phone tower transmitted the call, so they know he was either at his job site or close by the entire time. It takes an hour and a half to drive from the job site to Phil’s, then to Gretchen’s, then back to his company’s Rocky Point office, where he attended a one o’clock meeting. He was with Johnny for about fifteen minutes.” Wes shrugged. “It looks like he’s not the killer.”

I nodded. My information had helped uncover a crime, but it was a different crime from the one I’d taken aim at. I made a mental note to ask Max whether we would need to return the architectural remnants. I looked at Wes. “So we’re nowhere.”

“Not hardly,” he said. “The owner’s agreed to let the police search all the houses Vince had access to. Guess what they’re looking for.”

“More stolen goods?”

“Nope—Gretchen.”

My mouth fell open. “I thought we just proved that Vince couldn’t be involved.”

“We demonstrated that he
probably
couldn’t be involved. The police are taking no chances.”

I didn’t buy anything at the store. I jogged to my car and drove straight to Vince’s Rocky Point job site. As I drove south, the freezing rain turned into snow and visibility plummeted.

I turned onto Ocean Avenue.
Avenue! Ocean Lane would be more apt
, I thought, wondering how the narrow two-lane road had ever received such a grandiose label. I passed a dozen of the small weathered-wood bungalows and contemporary stilt houses that gave Rocky Point its eclectic feel.

When I reached the job site, I slowed to a crawl. The cluster of run-down old houses stood in vivid contrast to the well-maintained, upscale residences I’d just passed. These Victorian white elephants stood like silent behemoths, relics from an earlier time.

Up until the last quarter of the twentieth century, the 120-acre family-run Winton Farm had been a major producer of apples and blueberries. In 1870, young Josiah Winton, the scion of the family, built six houses on the eastern edge of the property for his relatives. The land abutted Ocean Avenue, and each house enjoyed an unobstructed view of the ocean. When the last Winton died in 1947, the entire kit and kaboodle passed to Hitchens College. Over the years, the college sold everything piecemeal to raise cash.

It took the company Vince worked for five years to buy up all six houses and twenty-seven acres of surrounding land. The acquisition included a hundred yards of beachfront property, with only Ocean Avenue separating the land from the dunes. It took them another two years to obtain the permits they needed to build a luxury condo development complete with a man-made lagoon and a private nine-hole golf course. They’d begun demolition only a month or so ago. One house was completely gone. The others were partially stripped, almost ready for the wrecking ball.

As I approached, I saw that yellow and black police tape had been stretched from tree to tree, circling the houses, marking the border. I counted four marked police cars parked in driveways. Lights shone in all the houses.

The snow wasn’t sticking, but it was coming down thickly, and I was having trouble seeing through the white haze. There was nowhere to park, or even to pull over. Heading south, with the ocean on the left, there was no curb. Where the asphalt stopped, tall grasses, brambles, and wild roses grew in jumbled abandon. On the other side, the street led directly to crabgrass-covered private property.

I turned around and inched back past the work site at near-idling speed. I looked into each house, seeking out signs of life, but I saw nothing.
Is Gretchen inside, a prisoner in a hidden basement?
I wondered, horrified at the thought.

Wherever the police were working, it wasn’t near the windows. I made two more passes, and both times I failed to see any signs of life. Knowing I had no way to convince the police to let me join in on the search, I gave up and drove back to work.

Ty called. I set aside the catalogue copy I was proofreading. Sasha had done a great job—the cobalt glassware really came to life.

“Hey, Ty,” I said.

“I can tell by your voice, something’s wrong.”

“From two words?”

“Sometimes I can tell from one.”

I smiled from my toes. “How are you doing?”

“Better. I’m en route home.”

“That’s great! I was braced to hear about another delay.”

“Nope. I’ll be there in an hour or so, depending on the snow. Lots of black ice around. Want me to stop at the store?” he asked.

“Yes. I have almost nothing in the house. I’ll cook whatever you get.”

“You sure know how to woo a guy.”

I laughed. “Should you be talking on the phone while you’re driving? Is it safe?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m hands-free, and pretty much, mine is the only car on the road. So fill me in. What’s wrong?”

I recounted the events of the day, sticking to the facts and not venturing into the murky arenas of opinion or speculation. “What do you think it all means?” I asked Ty when I was done.

“If they find Gretchen, you’ll hear about it soon enough,” he said. “As for Vince’s alibi—alibis are funny things. Johnny might be convinced that Vince was there for fifteen minutes, but the truth might be that it only
felt
like fifteen minutes. It’s possible Vince was only there for five minutes. About the police timing how long it takes to drive that circuit, well, maybe, for whatever reason, there was no traffic the day Boulanger was killed, and Vince hit every light just right. So now the trip that they say takes no less than an hour and a half actually took Vince an hour and twenty-five minutes. So add the ten minutes Johnny was off to the five minutes the police were off and you have fifteen minutes, plenty of time to shoot someone and clean up the scene of the crime if you put your mind to it.”

“That makes a lot of sense.” I paused. “You know what I’m going to do, Ty?”

“What?”

“Go home and make soup.” I glanced out the window at what was shaping up to be a major snowstorm. The tree branches were covered with crusty snow, and the parking lot was totally white. “I’ll stop at the store, so you don’t need to.”

_____

I’d said good-bye to everyone and had my coat on and my umbrella in hand when the phone rang. Cara told me it was Sam Bartlett. I stared at her for a moment, trying to place the name, then ran upstairs to take the call. With my coat half off, I snatched up the receiver and said, “This is Josie. Mr. Bartlett?”

“Yes. I’m calling to thank you. I just got back from the police station. I understand you’re the person who connected the dots between Amelia’s murder and your missing employee, Marie—I mean, Gretchen. That’s what she’s calling herself now, right? That’s quite a job you did.”

“Thank you.” I looked out toward the woods. It was still snowing, but the flakes were fluffy now. It was warming up. “Am I right in thinking that Gretchen—Marie—and Amelia were close?”

“Like mother and daughter.”

“And you and Amelia were like brother and sister. It occurs to me that maybe Gretchen—I mean Marie—might consider you an uncle. If I was in trouble and had an uncle I loved and trusted, I’d call him.”

He paused so long I thought I’d offended him. Finally he said, “I wish she had.”

“Then you don’t think she had anything to do with Amelia’s death?”

“Hell, no. Never did. Forget the fact that Marie really did love Amelia like a mother, and never in a million years would have killed her, did you know that Amelia kept nearly five thousand dollars cash in her safe?”

“I knew she kept cash—but not how much.”

“Not one dime was taken. This crime shouted Morgan. No one ever thought Marie was involved. It was his fingerprints on that chair leg, and it was, as the police say, a crime of passion. Whoever killed Amelia was out-of-his-head angry. Marie didn’t have a temper, not that kind of temper—but Morgan did.”

I thought of Morgan, and then I thought of Vince. He had that kind of temper, too. Gretchen escaped Morgan while Mandy made excuses for Vince. How far would Mandy go to protect him?

“Poor Marie,” I said.

We exchanged contact information and agreed to stay in touch.

“If you hear from her,” Sam said, “tell her she’s welcome anytime.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Z

oë invited us for dessert. “I made a peach pie, so you have to come over.”

I laughed. “Why does your making a peach pie mean we have to come over?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll eat it all.”

“Well, only because we love you so much, we’ll throw ourselves on the sword of your peach pie.”

We jogged to Zoë’s through steadily falling snow. The weatherman on the local news station was predicting that we’d have a foot by morning. April snowstorms weren’t unusual, but I’d gotten myself mentally ready for spring—I was tired of winter.

Zoë told us that the kids were asleep upstairs and to get ourselves settled in the living room. She had a fire burning. I took the club chair nearest the fire. Ty sat on a leather chair next to the couch. Toys, dolls, and games leaned against the outside wall, stretching the entire length of the room.

“Creative storage,” I said to Zoë as she walked in carrying a tray containing half a pie and the fixings for coffee.

“I call it the poor man’s baseboard.”

“Very avant-garde.”

“Thanks.” She placed the tray near me. “Go ahead and cut the pie, will you, Josie?”

I reached for the knife as Zoë got situated on the sofa. She put her feet up on the coffee table and crossed her ankles. “Any news about Gretchen?” she asked.

I served pie as I filled her in.

Zoë sipped coffee. “What do you know about Morgan Boulanger?” she asked.

“He was Gretchen’s husband. He was a jerk.”

“He beat her, right?”

“Several times, apparently, according to the Denver police.”

“And killed that store owner—the woman Gretchen worked for?”

“Right.”

“And the police think Gretchen was an accomplice in the murder?” she asked.

“They think
maybe
she was an accomplice,” I corrected. “There’s an APB out for her.”

“Do the police know whether Gretchen left her apartment voluntarily?”

“I don’t think so—no, well, maybe . . . I mean, her purse and suitcase are gone, too. That sounds kind of voluntary, I guess.”

“Maybe she left them in her car because she was just running up to her apartment for a second.”

“Why would she do that?” I asked. “She’d already been gone for two weeks.”

Zoë tilted her head, her eyes serious, even somber, her mouth twisted into a wry grin. “Jeez, Josie, I can’t imagine. Whatever would keep a young woman from going home?”

A man!
I thought.
Maybe the man she met in Hawaii—Jack Stene
. I shook my head. “She would have surfaced by now. The man she met, Jack, was checked out and came out clean.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s say that Gretchen goes off with Mr. Right on Wednesday as soon as she picks up her car, hears the news that Morgan is dead on Thursday morning while she’s getting ready for work, and something about it flips her out—I mean, more than the normal flip-out one would expect on hearing there’s a dead guy in your living room. Maybe she knew who killed him.” She paused. “Maybe she’s convinced that the killer is coming after her next. What would she do? She’d run, or she’d go into deep hiding somewhere she felt safe.”

I thought for almost a minute, considering this new slant. “What about the luggage tag I saw in Gretchen’s entry way?”

Zoë shrugged. “Beats me.”

I sighed. “There’s so much about Gretchen I don’t know.”

Zoë nodded. “I think that’s right. I think you haven’t given full consideration to her mental condition. Beaten women act differently,” she said. “When someone abuses you, it changes how you feel, and it changes how you act. You’re guarded and worried about offending your attacker. You’re wary.”

“Gretchen’s not like that.”

“No, because she got free.” Zoë watched for a moment as I tried to process what she was saying, then continued. “Apparently this Morgan asshole—excuse my French—kept his ego in his fist. Which means Gretchen had no alternative but to escape as quickly and as quietly as she could. His murder of her boss gave her the cover she needed to get out. The dirtbag was so busy worrying about saving his own skin, he took his eye off of her long enough for her to get away. From where I sit, Gretchen isn’t guilty of anything but terrible taste in men.”

“Gretchen once said that there wasn’t a loser within a hundred miles who hadn’t found her and who she didn’t think was kind of cute and for sure worth saving,” I suddenly remembered. “Then she’d roll her eyes the way she did and say, ‘What a judge of men am I.’ ” I shook my head. “I thought she was being funny.”

Zoë leaned back with a quirky-sad smile. “Isn’t that something? She was aware that she had that—what should we call it? A proclivity? A weakness? A bad habit? Whatever. She was aware that, for whatever reason, she attracted the wrong sort of men—and, obviously, she wanted to change but couldn’t. The same kind of guys kept coming around. It was like she was wired wrong or something.”

“When I was with the police, I heard variations on this story all the time,” Ty remarked. “Any expert will tell you that most battered women think, on some level at least, that they deserve what they get. There’s another point, too, that lends credence to Zoë’s hypothesis. The last stats I saw on stalkers were pretty disheartening. Something like twenty-five percent of battered women are stalked by their abuser
after
they leave.”

“It’s like you hear about all the time—a woman gets a restraining order and the guy comes around anyway.”
Poor Gretchen
, I thought.

“Exactly,” Ty said. “Boulanger might be one of those guys who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Gretchen got away once and thought she was safe, but in reality, he never stopped trying to find her. He knew she liked working in an antiques store and would probably gravitate to a similar job, so he regularly read that magazine—what’s it called, Josie?”

“
Antiques Insights.”

“And if Morgan showed up again after all those years,” Zoë said, “with Gretchen thinking she’d finally got rid of him—
bam
, she’d flip.” She snapped her fingers as she spoke. “I know I would. Luckily, my ex is just a bum, not a stalker.”

“Did he beat you?” I asked, shaken at the thought.

“Beat? No, he never beat me exactly. He slapped me once, and once was enough. He’s one of those guys who can’t hold a job, but, mind you, it’s never his fault. He had more bad bosses in a year than most of us have in a lifetime. What really got under my skin was that he was lazy around the house. He didn’t work, but he wouldn’t wash a dish.” She shrugged. “I’d thought about leaving him for years, but I had kids, you know? I thought it was marginally better for the kids to be in a two-parent household even though one of the parents was an idiot.” She paused. “Then he slapped me. If you’ve never been there, you don’t know how easy it is to think that maybe you did something so bad, you earned the slap.” She shook her head. “I packed up and was outta there in about two hours, but I gotta tell you, I almost stayed—even after he hit me, shame on me. I bet most women would have. I got out because I got lucky and because I’m me. My uncle died and left me a house and a rental property and a little money—and I’m filled with piss and vinegar. No one hits me.
No one
.”

“I’m so lucky you’re my friend,” I said, tears moistening my eyes as she spoke. I took a deep breath. “Do you think Gretchen was in a similar situation?”

“Sounds like it—except a lot worse. If she got away from Morgan the way I’m picturing, on impulse and fast, can you imagine how she must have felt when she realized that she hadn’t escaped after all? She wouldn’t just be terrified—she’d be heartbroken. Maybe she went crazy, killed him, and took off. Or she saw him already dead in her apartment, knew that whoever had killed him was gunning for her next, and took off.” She shrugged. “I would have done the same thing.”

“Which brings us full circle,” I objected. “If what you say is true, why wouldn’t she contact me? Or Sam Bartlett? She
has
to know that we’d help her.”

“I think you’re missing part of the complexity, Josie. Probably she’s ashamed that she ever married such a snake in the first place. Meanwhile, she’s been living a lie for years. Now she’s spending most of her energy keeping herself alive—just coping. If I’m right, she has no idea that she has friends who would stand up for her. Plus, she might be scared to go back to Denver. As far as she knows, Morgan’s family and friends still live there, and she might expect them to blame her for his death just like they blamed her for everything else when she lived with him. So that lets out Sam Bartlett. As for you—she knows that you’d never lie. She’d figure that if she asked you for help, you’d tell her to turn herself in and you’d get her a good lawyer. My guess is that she doesn’t trust the system. If she’s like many battered women, reporting Morgan to the cops only got her a worse beating. All she knows now is that her life is in danger and she has to be very, very careful or she’ll get caught and killed.”

It was one thing to hear that Gretchen had been a battered wife—but it was another thing altogether to listen to Zoë’s emotionally charged description of what being a battered wife
felt
like.

Zoë looked at me. “You’ve got to reach out to her with unconditional support.”

“How? I don’t know where she is.”

“
Somehow
,” Zoë insisted.

“You know how to reach her,” Ty told me.

“I do? How?”

“Think about it,” he said, then turned to Zoë. “Good pie. I wouldn’t mind another slice.”

He met my gaze but didn’t speak. It took me about ten seconds to catch up.
Got it
, I thought, and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me long before now.
Of course
I knew how to find her.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I need to make a phone call.”