The Cold Blue Blood (36 page)

She left him there in that banquet room. She didn’t stop. She didn’t look back. She just marched back down the long corridor to the lobby with her head held high. She was elated. She was smiling. She was definitely smiling.

But the hair would absolutely have to go.

“Awesome move on your part,” Mitch Berger said admiringly as he sat there across the table from Des, hunched over his soup. “You’ve got Dolly for the Weems killings. You’ve got the head guy of the entire state police admitting to a thirty-year-old cover-up. This is major stuff. There’s only one problem with it.”

“What’s that?” she demanded.

He reached for a hunk of bread and tore into it, chewing with his mouth open. “Dolly didn’t kill Niles Seymour or Torry Mordarski or Tuck Weems. I’m positive.”

The Black Pearl was on Bannister’s Wharf in what had once been a sail loft. There was a formal dining room called the Commodore’s Room. And there was the casual and boisterous tavern, where she’d found Mitch slurping up his third bowl of fragrant New England clam chowder, a napkin tucked into the collar of his shirt. When the man ate soup he sounded remarkably like a drain unstopping. There was a huge basket of bread and a schooner of beer in front of him. He seemed positively starved.

Des ordered coffee when the waitress appeared.

Mitch was aghast. “No chowder? You’ve got to have the chowder. It’s a sacrilege not to. Tell her it’s a sacrilege,” he commanded the waitress.

“You’ll go straight to hell, honey,” said the waitress, nodding.

“Just coffee,” said Des.

The waitress went off to get it.

Mitch peered at her across the table. “You don’t eat when you’re tense, am I right?”

She nodded reluctantly.

“Me, I eat like crazy. Which I guess explains why you look the way you do and I look the way I do. This is a big difference between us.”

“Well, what do you know—we found one,” said Des, wondering how he’d look if she cleaned him up. Say, three months on the treadmill. No between-meal snacks, a decent set of threads, proper haircut … Then what would she have?

An average-looking white man who’s hungry all the time, that’s what.

When her coffee came she took a sip, shaking her head at him. “If Dolly Seymour isn’t our killer, then why did Tal Bliss go and kill himself?”

“For the very reason you gave,” Mitch answered. “He was afraid that you’d unearth the truth about Dolly murdering Tuck’s parents. He took his own life so as to short-circuit your investigation. That much is true. But there’s much more to it than that. A boatload more.

“What are you telling me—that Bliss
did
kill them?”

“Yes and no.”

“Man, don’t talk at me in riddles.”

“It’s like I was telling you—it all comes back to the Fibonacci Series.”

“And don’t you start gas-facing me about geometry either, because I am
so
trying not to hear that.”

“You have to hear it,” Mitch insisted. “It’s a law. Not your kind of law, but a fundamental principle of proportion based upon—”

“I know, I know. The Golden Section. Which is … ?”

“Which is a line that’s divided such that the lesser portion is to the greater as the greater is to the whole.”

“Which
means …
?”

“The Fibonacci Series is an algebraic variation in which each number represents the sum of the two preceding numbers. So instead of counting out
one, two, three, four, five,
you count out
one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one
and so on. Get it?”

Des thought about this long and hard before she said, “No, Mitch. I don’t.”

“Okay, here it is,” he explained. “Two men acting together are capable of doing something that’s twice as heinous as a man who is acting alone. When you add a third man you’re not just adding another player. You’re ratcheting up the disease quotient—
each man’s capacity for evil represents the sum total of the previous players combined.
Add a fourth and you’re taking a quantum leap over into the dark side. Add a fifth and you’ve got yourself a lynch mob. It’s a law of human nature, Lieutenant. It explains the insanity of mob rule. It explains the atrocities of war. And it explains what happened on Big Sister Island. Hell, it’s the only way this whole crazy thing does make any sense.”

She gaped at him in disbelief. “You’re saying that every man on Big Sister was in on it, is that it?”

“And Tuck Weems, too. Don’t forget Tuck—he played a very valuable role.” Mitch paused to take a gulp of his beer, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “We can exclude Evan. He wouldn’t have fingered Bliss as the man who locked me in the crawl space if he had played any part in this. And we can for sure eliminate Dolly, Bitsy and Mandy. This was strictly a guy thing. The ultimate act of male chauvinism, if you stop and think about it. They felt Dolly was too fragile and misguided to make the right choice, so they made it for her. Are you with me so far?”

“I wouldn’t say I’m with you,” Des said doubtfully. “But I’m listening.”

Mitch leaned forward in his chair, his eyes gleaming at her. “Okay, here’s what we know. We know that Bud Havenhurst hated Niles Seymour for stealing Dolly away. We know that Red Peck, her big brother, hated Niles because he was a low-class con man who roughed her up—
and
wanted to build condos on Big Sister. Jamie Devers hated him for killing Evan’s dog, not to mention his constant gay-bashing. And Tal Bliss wanted him gone because he wanted Dolly for himself. It was he who recruited Tuck Weems, a man who had already threatened to kill Niles for beating up on Dolly.”

“But why would Tuck come rushing to her defense?” Des objected. “Dolly’s the one who murdered his parents.”

“For which he was exceedingly grateful,” Mitch countered. “Tuck
hated
his parents. His father was abusive. His mother was an alcoholic. The only real structure in his life was Tal Bliss. They’d been best friends since they were kids. Totally inseparable. Did you know that?”

“No, but so what?”

“We’ll call our boys the Fab Five—better that than the Garbagemen, which is what they were. Together, they took it upon themselves to rid Big Sister Island of a man who they regarded as utter human garbage. Alone, not one of them had the nerve or the cunning to pull it off. As a group, they were able to achieve staggering heights.”

Their waitress came by now to refill Des’s coffee. Des stared down into her cup, her head spinning. “Um, okay, how do you know this, Mitch?”

“Because it’s what happened. That’s how I know it.”

“That’s not even close to good enough. You have to give me a reason to believe.”

“Not a problem,” he said easily. “Let’s play it out, starting with Torry’s married boyfriend, this shadowy Stan person who none of her friends ever saw. We’ve been supposing all along that Stan and Niles Seymour were one and the same. And that’s exactly what we were supposed to think. It’s what they
told
us to think. Jamie
told
me that Niles told him he had a girlfriend in Meriden.
Bam,
we immediately jumped to the conclusion that the girlfriend was Torry. Bud and Red
told
me they saw Niles and Torry together at the Saybrook Point Inn.
Bam,
we assumed that they in fact had. Why wouldn’t we? Even though, as you may recall, I said I thought it seemed like a very odd place for a married man to stash his girlfriend.”

“Agreed. Way too public. Only, she
was
there.”

“I know that,” Mitch acknowledged. “But no one from the hotel ever saw her and Niles together. All we have is the word of Bud and Red.”

“And you’re saying they made it up?”

“Exactly.”

“Why would they do that?”

“To make us believe that Niles was dating Torry, that’s why. He wasn’t. It wasn’t Niles who they saw there with her. Niles never even knew the woman.
Niles wasn’t Stan.”

“So who was—Tal Bliss?”

Mitch shook his head. “No, no. He was pathologically shy with women. Dorset’s resident cocksman, according to Sheila Enman, was none other than Tuck Weems. Tuck had the midas touch when it came to women.
He
was Stan. He had to be, if you stop and think about it. Jamie’s a former child star. Too recognizable. Also gay. Red is away too much. And Bud has a jealous, psychotic wife. That leaves Tuck. That’s why he was recruited—to seduce an unsuspecting girl from some low-rent town far enough away from Dorset that no one would connect her death up with Niles Seymour’s disappearance.”

Des considered this a moment, recalling how Tuck’s young live-in love, Darleen, had admitted that he wasn’t always home nights. “Keep talking.”

Mitch continued: “Their plot was put in motion when Tuck, who now had Torry good and hooked, asked her to check into the Saybrook Point Inn. She paid cash, per his instructions, and used a fake driver’s license. Thus enabling the Fab Five to cover their tracks. That’s why he had her wear the red wig, too. Poor Torry probably just thought it was good, kinky fun.”

“Wait, pull over a minute. Why go to so much trouble? Why not just
pretend
they saw her?”

“Because they wanted documented evidence that Niles had abandoned Dolly for another woman,” Mitch replied. “That way Dolly could begin divorce proceedings immediately. Otherwise her case might drag on through the courts for years. His relatives might come crawling out of the woodwork … No, no—the so-called other woman had to exist. They needed a disposable Jezebel. Someone like Torry who the law would simply write off as a borderline hooker who got what girls like that get.” Mitch paused to take another gulp of his beer. “And it all worked like a charm. As far as the world knew, Niles Seymour had run off with another woman. Meanwhile, your investigation of Torry Mordarski’s murder …”

“Went nowhere,” Des admitted grudgingly.

“Exactly. But what they hadn’t counted on was the X-factor—me digging up Niles’s body. When that happened they were screwed, because they’d used the same gun to kill both of them … But wait, I’m getting ahead of the plot. How do you like it so far?”

“I think it sounds like just exactly that,” she replied skeptically. “A plot. As in one of your movies. As in not real.”

“Oh, it’s real, all right,” Mitch insisted, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Now, then, the Fab Five were good and thorough. When Niles ‘disappeared’ they made it look as convincing as possible. They left Dolly the infamous Dear John letter. They ordered plane tickets for two. They parked Niles’s car at the airport. Bud liquidated Dolly’s accounts—supposedly to protect them from Niles—thereby making their case seem all the more convincing. Tuck Weems disposed of Torry, I suspect. And Tal Bliss tidied up the crime scene for him. Who better to make sure that it was spotless than an actual state trooper? Then they sat back and congratulated themselves on a job well done. They had pulled off an elaborate, carefully planned operation to rid themselves of the most odious man they had ever come in contact with. Everyone, most especially Dolly, thought Niles had left town. Only he hadn’t. He was buried right there on Big Sister. Don’t ask me which one of them shot him. I don’t know. I only know that they would have gotten away with it if Dolly hadn’t suddenly decided to take on a tenant. That was strictly her doing. They tried to talk her out of it. Even tried to scare me half to death. But they failed. And you know the rest of the story.”

“The hell I do,” Des said. “Why did they kill Tuck Weems?”

“Maybe he was wracked by guilt,” Mitch suggested. “Maybe he genuinely cared about Torry. I do know that he was very, very tightly wrapped. And getting tighter by the day. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just plain lost it when Niles’s body was found. Bud certainly did—he suddenly had to account for why he’d raided Dolly’s accounts. Maybe Tuck threatened to tell Dolly what really happened. Or even to go to the law. And so they had to kill him. That job no doubt fell on Tal Bliss’s shoulders. Bliss met his old friend down at the beach. Got him so drunk that he wouldn’t feel any pain. And their secret died with him. Everything was cool. Until, that is, you started moving in on Bliss. He couldn’t handle it. The guilt. The shame. The suspicion and scrutiny that would fall upon Dolly. So he shot himself, thereby letting Bud, Red and Jamie off the hook. Except they’re not. We’re on to them.” Mitch grinned at her now. “Well, say something, will you? Take your best shot. Go for it.”

“Straight up, it’s a sweet theory, Mitch,” she said slowly. “It plays. But it’s not nearly enough to go on. I mean, you can’t
prove
any of it.”

“I know that,” he acknowledged. “That’s why I’m taking steps.”

“Steps? What kind of steps?”

“Ever hear of a movie called
I Saw What You Did?”

Des let out a groan. “Oh, God, I have a feeling I’m really not going to like this.”

“No, no. Everything’s cool. Really. It was a grade-Z black-and-white thriller that William Castle made back in ’sixty-five with John Ireland and a somewhat cadaverous Joan Crawford. Budget of about twelve dollars. Serious shlock. Although, interestingly enough, the screenplay was by William McGivern, the novelist who wrote
The Big Heat
. Which was made into the movie where Lee Marvin threw the pot of coffee in Gloria Graham’s face, remember?”

“Man, if you don’t get to the point, and fast, I am going to get way ugly!”

“Okay, okay—what happens is these two teenage girls are home one night making harmless prank phone calls. They pick numbers out of the book at random, call people up and say ‘I saw what you did.’ And then hang up giggling, right?”

“Right …”

“Only, by accident, they happen to call a guy who has just murdered his wife. And he totally freaks out because he thinks they saw him do it. And he comes after them to shut them up. Neat idea, right?”

“Right …”

“In my case, I go with a note. Something simple and direct:
I am on to you.
I slide it under each of their doors. They freak out. They come after me, thereby showing their hand, and,
bam,
we’ve got ’em. Perfect, right?”