Lloyd Corricelli - Ronan Marino 01 - Two Redheads & a Dead Blonde (5 page)

I nodded, and she gave me a long passionate kiss.

“Call me tomorrow, hero. I’ll be out of class around three.”

“I’ll stop by your place.”

“I probably won’t be there; gotta’ study with the girls at the library. We’ve got our first tests of the semester coming up.”

“No problem. Just call me when you’re free.”

She climbed into the Mustang, turned the ignition, and the big five-liter engine roared to life.

“Be careful driving home,” I said.

“Always.”

She pulled away, then stopped and backed up, rolling down the window.

“Ronan, if no one ever told you this before…behind that tough guy façade, you’re really a wonderful man.” With a smile, she zoomed off into the night.

Something inside of me didn’t want to let her go. I had a nagging feeling that I needed to be with her at that moment. I should have listened to my instincts.

THREE

When
I came back from California, I spent a horrible month at my parent’s house. After about a week of listening to my father complain about his aching muscles, his vision, my mother, the washing machine, television, the Red Sox, the Big Dig, taxes, noises in the woods, and every other conceivable problem known and unknown to man, I had to find a house and fast.

I called a friend of mine with the Drug Enforcement Agency I’d worked with in L.A. who recently bought a home in the area, and he recommended a good realtor named Fred. Over the next month, Fred and I became close personal friends; at least it felt that way as we spent what seemed like every waking moment together looking for the perfect house. The problem was I didn’t really know what I wanted. My brother wanted me to buy the house next to him, and I almost broke down and did.

Good sense prevailed, however, and I realized living next door to relatives was a bad idea. The idea that I should live in the same town as my parents circulated through the family, but I had visions of them showing up unannounced on a far too regular basis. My father would be holding a six-pack of Budweiser and my mother a tuna casserole. I hated tuna and I only drank Bud in desperation. I crossed that option off the list with a thick black marker, to make sure it never saw the light of day again.

To my family’s dismay, I finally settled on a blue four-bedroom Garrison Colonial with a detached two-car garage and loft located right on the river down on Pawtucket Boulevard close to the Tyngsboro line. They tried to talk me out of it, assuming a guy with my money should be living in a wealthy suburb like Andover; the city I had grown up in had become not good enough for me in their eyes. If they knew what I had paid for the house, they might have changed their minds. Real estate had gone crazy in the years since I’d left, and waterfront property has never been cheap–unless it was on the Merrimack in the days when the river smelled like a garbage dump.

I never quite understood their whole line of thinking, especially since my parents lived there for over thirty years until they moved to Westford. It was fine during the
down
years, why not now when it made major improvements? Just because I had money certainly did not make me better than any other local.

I was very happy with my new house. It had lots of
chahm
and
charactuh
, which in New England usually meant it needed lots of work. This house truly was full of those attributes in the best sense of the words. It had recently been restored, with central air and many other amenities such as a hot tub in the rear glassed-in porch, a finished basement, and black granite floors in the kitchen.

I saw some of the before pictures, and it easily could have been the featured home on “This Old House.” I half expected Bob Villa, or whoever the guy hosting the show is now, to give me the sales pitch. Being the good realtor he was Fred extolled all the virtues of the house, such as it being located close to all the major highways and great for commuting. The poor guy seemed confused when I told him it was a moot point, because I had no intentions of working a regular job and joining the rat race. I assumed at that point that, other than my band, there would be no work. The days of having career ambitions were long behind me.

The look on Fred’s face was even better when I wrote a personal check for the full asking price on the spot during our first trip to the house. The sellers almost went into shock, but once my check was verified, I became a proud homeowner and for the second time in my life escaped the clutches of my parents. Don’t get me wrong, I love them dearly but…

It took me a couple of weeks to pick out furniture, other than my bedroom set. I lost most of what I owned in my divorce and never bothered to replace it. My last apartment in California had been furnished, and I was in Iraq for most of the time I had it anyway. I finally settled on black and gray leather for my living room and oak for the dining room. The first thing I did after closing was call the cable company and set up installation. I wouldn’t survive long without ESPN or the other sports networks, as whatever sport was in season generally dictated my schedule.

I had a hard time figuring out what to do with all the rooms in my new house. If I’d had a family, there would have been no problem divvying them up, but being a single guy living alone made it a challenge. I felt compelled to do something with the rooms and not leave half the place empty. After watching a documentary on the Travel Channel, I came up with a not-so-unique concept. Each room would be themed like my own little Graceland. The difference was I had no intentions of dying on my toilet as a fat bloated drug addict.

One bedroom became my military room, where I hung all my medals, citations and plaques on an “
I love me”
wall. It also functioned as my office, complete with computer and stack of books I’d probably never read again. I made the finished cellar a sports room with memorabilia such as my prized Bobby Orr autographed jersey, pool table, and bubble hockey game. I even had a separate temperature zone put in the huge walk-in closet in my bedroom to ensure my valuable comic book collection wouldn’t rot away, as paper is prone to do.

The other two bedrooms remained empty until I could decide what to do with them. I had fleeting thoughts of a sex room with framed, blown up pictures of Playboy centerfolds, a big round vibrating bed and mirrors on the ceiling. In retrospect, the idea seemed pretty immature, and I canned it rather quickly. In my defense, the idea came after I’d had a few too many Sam Adams.

The loft over my garage became the practice area for my band. Hopefully the neighbors wouldn’t mind too much; although they were probably too far away to notice.

Karen helped me decorate the living room, dining room, and the other common areas. I didn’t know a damn thing about curtains and wallpaper, but she had some innate woman sense about decorating. Maybe that’s a sexist way of looking at things, but outside of women and gay men, no one I hung with could decorate without making a room look like a bar or frat house.

My mother offered to help but I tactfully turned her down. Her taste runs toward Wal-Mart prints of little kids playing baseball, and I couldn’t bear the thought of living in a mirror image of her house. I also didn’t want the constant grief from my buddies about the pictures of sweet faced cherubs on my walls. I could almost hear the Michael Jackson comments within thirty seconds of their first visit. My friends were all a bunch of ball busters, not much different than myself. I still got a rash of shit over the frilly drapes Karen picked out for my kitchen, but I could live with that. Comparisons to a whacked-out dead pop singer, I could not.

* * * *

I parked my Jeep in the garage and managed to stumble into the shower to wash the smell of cheap beer and sweat off me. After taking a whiff of myself, I’m surprised Karen could stand it. My clothes should have been burned but a heavy-duty washing might save them.

I fell into bed sometime around four. Before I drifted off, I thought of Karen, again feeling like I should have been with her at that moment. Somewhere in my dreams, I was bounding across roof tops in some random crime filled city, my cape flowing behind me, when the doorbell rang and a pounding on my front door woke me.

I slowly opened my eyes and looked at the clock. It was nearly ten in the morning. My mind raced through all the possibilities of who could have been banging on my door this early, and none of them were good including a scary image of my mother and tuna fish. I dragged my ass down the stairs and looked out the window. It would have been better if it were my mom with a casserole.

“Open the door, please.”

Two guys in jackets, ties, and dark glasses stood on my porch. This is never a good sign.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“We’re with the Lowell Police Department. Please open the door, sir.”

I unlatched the door and opened it.

“Ronan Marino?”

“You got em’. What can I do for you?”

“I’m Detective Morley. This is Detective Garcia.”

They badged me, and I quickly glanced over their shields and nodded. There looked to be about a twenty-five-year age difference between them. Garcia was a squat tough-looking Puerto-Rican with a Marine high and tight, while Morley was tall and lanky with thinning gray hair and a big pointy nose. They were an odd pair to say the least.

“We’d like you to come down to the station,” Morley said. His breath smelled like he had eaten rotten fish with garlic for breakfast.

“What’s going on, guys?”

“Were you with a Karen Pommer last night?”

A feeling of dread washed over me. “Yeah, we left Max’s together after closing.”

“She was found dead this morning, floating in the river near the Pawtucket Falls.”

The news hit me like a Ray Bourque slapshot between the eyes.

They didn’t handcuff me or read me my rights, so this was going to be a voluntary interview. That meant I could choose to leave anytime I liked, though in reality it never actually worked that way. There is always an excuse to keep you there. I was a suspect in my girlfriend’s death.

I quickly got dressed and sat in the back seat of their unmarked patrol car, feeling ill with thoughts of Karen floating in the cold waters of the Merrimack.

They drove into the police garage off of Arcand Drive and parked next to an old paddy wagon that must have been left from the days when they didn’t transport in cruisers. I was led up the stairs, past the booking area to an interview room.

“Can we get you something?” Morley asked.

“I could use a cup of coffee, regular.”

The elder detective nodded and exited, leaving me alone. The room was a standard interview room, white sound dampening tiles on the walls, a small table and three chairs. On one wall was a large pane of one-way glass, and I figured I was being watched for any behaviors they could use against me. No doubt Morley and Garcia chatted behind that glass right now, plotting their interrogation strategy. That’s what I would have been doing if our positions were reversed.

I’d used the same technique for many years. Was the suspect nervous or cool, calm and collected? Right now, I was upset, verging on anger, but I made an effort to conceal it. They were probably hoping I’d just admit to killing Karen, so they could spend the rest of the day accepting pats on the back for a job well done. If that was the case, I was about to dash their hopes.

After what seemed like an eternity but was much closer to five minutes, I grew impatient and waved to them from my side of the mirror. They returned, shortly after, without my coffee. Bastards.

Morley took the lead interviewer chair directly across from me while Garcia sat behind me with a steno pad. He wouldn’t write anything important, just notes like
what an
asshole
when I told them to shove their questions.

Morley just stared, trying to instill the fear of the Lowell Police Department into me. It wasn’t working. The staring went on for a good thirty seconds before I chose to instigate the questioning. I’m a great instigator.

“Do you have something to ask me, or are we going to sit here all day and see who blinks first?”

“Don’t get smart, you’re in a lot of trouble, pal,” Morley growled in his best Jack Webb voice.

“Really? Then let’s start with my Miranda rights.”

That threw them off. They looked at each other, and Morley stammered. His breath was killing me. I could probably confess to anything right now, and it would be thrown out for being extracted with torture.

“We could do that, but I’d just like to chat first, Ronan.”

“Okay. I didn’t catch your first name.”

“Detective Morley.”

I saw that one coming. It was a common tactic to make a suspect feel inferior by addressing them by their first name and not giving them yours.

“Tell us about your relationship with the deceased.”

I hated hearing Karen referred to that way. “We’d been dating for about six weeks.”

“You don’t seem too upset,” Morley said. “I’d be crying if something happened to my wife–unless, of course, I did something to her.”

Bad analogy, but he was right in one sense. I wasn’t visibly shaken. I’d lost a lot of good friends, some right before my eyes, and I’d become hardened by it. I was hurting inside, but I wasn’t going to let these fine public servants see it.

“Just because I’m not sitting here bawling my eyes out like a little girl doesn’t mean I’m not upset.”

“I see. Two of our officers observed you with her last night in a secluded parking lot. I have the contact card they filled out at the end of their shift. What happened after they left you and the deceased in the parking lot?”

“Can we stop calling her that?”

“What’s that?” Garcia asked.

“The deceased. She had a name.”

“Yesterday she was alive, today she’s dead,” Morley said.

“You insensitive fucking bastard,” I sneered.

The detectives looked at each other, neither showing any emotion. Morley thought he had something. He was wrong.

“What happened after you left…Ms. Pommer last night?” Morley asked.