The Disposable Man (11 page)

“Jesus,” I murmured.

“Been clean since,” Sammie resumed, “and was a good boy up till then. Might’ve been just a flash in the pan, but the weapon impressed me, too. He works as the inn’s dishwasher. The same cop admitted he was a nice guy—normally very quiet. I talked to his probation officer, too. Same basic report—steady, quiet, dependable, and remorseful about what he did. The woman in the case moved away, by the way. Manship lives alone.”

She picked up another document. “Douglas DeFalque. No criminal record, but multiple mentions as a fellow traveler. Born in Quebec, he’s lived on one side of the border or the other all his life, and from what I could find out, makes a tidy sum on the side as a smuggler. Both the Quebec Provincial Police and the U.S. Border Patrol have him on their hot sheets, but nobody’s ever caught him red-handed.”

“What does he smuggle?” I asked.

“Cigarettes and booze going north, aliens, drugs, and bear gallbladders going south—gallbladders are a hot item in Taiwan and China. They use the bile for medicine. It’s pricey and it’s regulated, so the black market demand is pretty high. I asked the Mounties to check him out, see who his associates are. They’re still looking into it, comparing notes with other agencies, but it looks like he’s a free agent, probably working with the biker gangs, and increasingly with the Russian mob.”

There was a brief silence in the room as Ron and I digested that. Sammie smiled. “I thought you might find the last bit interesting.”

“What does he do at the inn?” I asked.

“A waiter. The people I talked to say he’s very smooth—good-looking, nice French accent, well liked by the ladies. He’s seasonal, though. Only works during the crunches. That’s what gives him time with his other pursuits.”

“Is he working there now?”

“No, but he was two weeks ago. He left four days after we think Boris got whacked. He’s around, though. Lives in Jamaica. I got the address.”

I propped my chin in my hand, looking at them both. “Top of our list?” Ron shrugged. “Looks that way. He’s got everything except a known propensity for violence.”

“Unless he contracts it out,” Sammie suggested. “Didn’t J.P. say Boris was probably spying on the inn from under that tree, hiding in the shadows? If DeFalque knew about that, he might’ve set him up.”

I shook my head. “Whoa. That’s a long way from finding a seed in Boris’s hair. You may be right, Sam, but we need to sniff around more first. Do we have anything at all on the other names?”

They both shook their heads, Ron adding, “A few vehicular citations—DWI, speeding, a minor accident or two. Two of the women I checked live together and got cited for disturbing the peace after an all-girl party a few months back. Nothing stands out, though. What did you find?”

I didn’t even bother opening my file folder. “Nothing, really. Same as you—parking tickets, whatnot. John Rarig seems to be legit. Career Washington bureaucrat. Like he said: gray office in a gray building.”

I asked Sammie, “How long before the Mounties report back on Doug DeFalque?”

“Should be today—noon at the latest.”

“Okay. Let’s get more background on him in the meantime. Locate any co-workers or neighbors who might be willing to talk. If he’s as smooth as you say, he’s either rubbed a few people the wrong way or titillated the gossipers. Ron, I don’t want us to forget that a guest might’ve been involved in this thing. See if you can find out who was staying there at the time. And don’t just interview the employees. If we can find a chatty guest who’ll rat on the others, that would help, too.”

· · ·

Ron Klesczewski appeared at my door several hours later, a smile on his face. “I may have discovered the snitch from Heaven.”

I peeled off my reading glasses and tossed them with relief on a pile of paperwork. “Do tell.”

“Dottie Delman, eighty-three years old—rules the counter at the general store just outside West Townshend. Her brother owned the inn before it was an inn, her family tree rivals Moses’, and from what I heard, she’s both wailing wall and oracle for half the people in a ten-mile radius, meaning she probably knows more about what’s happening at the inn than the owner.”

“You haven’t talked to her yet?”

“No, but I will unless you want first dibs. I got a lead on somebody else, too.” He checked a note he was carrying. “Marcia Luechauer—however you pronounce it. She’s a teacher at Deerfield Academy, in Mass. She was a guest during our time slot. Rumor has it she was very outgoing, made a lot of friends, and might be willing to talk.”

“You take one, I take the other?” I suggested.

“That’d be great, if you have the time.”

It was a typical equivocation, and a glimpse of the self-effacement that was also his best asset. It disarmed the very people who clammed up before the likes of Willy Kunkle, or even Sam, and gave Ron the upper hand in any interview demanding a delicate touch.

“I’ll go down to Deerfield,” I said.

· · ·

Deerfield Academy epitomizes the blue-blooded image of the Yankee aristocracy. Like Eton in Great Britain, or a dozen other WASP-sounding schools around New England, it has stood for generations as the springboard to the Ivy League and the world of high finance beyond. I’d heard from a southern friend of mine that boarding schools in his neck of the woods were places to lock up rich juvenile delinquents, which had made him wonder why New England had so many of them. I’d set him straight on the difference, but the dichotomy had stuck with me. My interest in traveling the half hour to Deerfield was partly to discover whether my friend hadn’t been closer to the mark than I’d been led to believe.

Initial impressions were mixed. The academy is located in the heart of a near-perfectly preserved historic village of the same name, both of which straddle a broad, straight, tree-shaded avenue. Taken together, they look like a cross between a movie lot and a museum exhibition—not bad for a reform school. But driving past one classic, cedar-roofed icon after another, I began wondering if so rarefied an atmosphere might not in fact be a little confining.

The school itself, at two hundred years old, is more monumentally imposing than the village, with brick buildings, ancient beech trees, and acres of manicured lawns, so that as I parked in front of an Independence Hall look-alike, I was beginning to feel thoroughly intimidated.

Getting out of the car, I caught sight of a skinny, mop-topped young man walking away from me, wearing gray trousers, a wrinkled blue blazer, and flaming red canvas high-top sneakers.

“Excuse me,” I called out.

He swung around and approached smiling, revealing himself to be a she—a perfect tomboy. So much for being confined.

“Hi. Can I help you?” she asked, her lively, gleaming eyes making me smile in turn.

“Yeah. I’m looking for someone named Marcia Luechauer. A teacher? She told me to ask for Mather dorm.”

“Oh, sure—Ms. L.—that’s what we call her. She’s cool. Mather’s where I live. I can take you there, if you’d like.”

I bowed slightly to this touch of courtesy. “I’d be delighted.”

We fell in side by side as my guide headed for a crosswalk.

“What grade are you in?” I asked.

“I’m a sophomore.”

“And you like it here?”

“It’s neat. I wasn’t sure at first. I thought it might be too stuck up—two hundred years of grand tradition. But the teachers are cool, the kids come from all over, and I’m having a great time. They work your—” she abruptly paused and glanced up at me. “They work you hard, though.”

We crossed the street to a pathway between two old wooden dorms.

“I thought this was a boy’s school,” I commented.

She let loose that infectious smile again. “Used to be. Girl-power won out.” She pointed to the building on the left. “That’s Mather.”

We entered, and I followed her up one flight of stairs to a closed door with a hand-lettered wooden sign reading “Ms. L.—Knock if You Dare.” Behind us I could hear girls’ voices echoing down the hall, interlaced with snatches of music and the occasional slamming of doors.

My companion knocked, saying as she did, “You’ll like her. She’s really nice.”

The door swung back to reveal a small, round-faced woman in her fifties. “Scout,” she exclaimed to my friend, “who’ve you rounded up here?”

Scout looked nonplussed for the first time. “I don’t know. I forgot to ask.”

I stuck out my hand. “Joe Gunther. We spoke on the phone.”

She smiled and ushered me in. “I thought so.” And she winked at Scout. “Just pulling your leg. Thanks for playing tour guide.”

Marcia Luechauer escorted me through a colorful, sun-filled apartment to a living room facing the street where I’d parked, and pointed to a sofa under the window. “Tea or coffee?” she asked.

“Tea would be nice,” I said. “I need a break from coffee. Cream and sugar, too, if you’ve got it.”

She laughed. “They’re the only reason I drink anything hot.” She crossed through to a door leading into a small kitchen, still speaking as she set to work. “On the phone you said you wanted to ask me some questions about my trip to Vermont. That certainly was a mysterious invitation, especially from a policeman. I’m not in trouble, am I?”

I spoke to her as she passed back and forth across my line of sight. “No, no. I’m actually hoping you can give me some help. It concerns your stay at the Windham Hill Inn.”

She appeared at the door, looking startled. “The inn? What happened there?”

“That’s what I’d like to ask you. I just found out by accident that you’d been there. Mr. Rarig would want me to make it clear he didn’t divulge your name, by the way.”

“Oh, good Lord. I don’t care. I had a wonderful time.” There was a loud
ding
from behind her, and she vanished again.

“I don’t know how I can help you, though,” her voice said from the kitchen. “I don’t remember anything happening that might be of interest to the police.”

She reappeared carrying a tray, which she placed on a low table between us, perching herself on an armchair opposite me. “I’ll let you do the honors. There’s sugar, but I prefer maple syrup—one of my many Vermont afflictions. I love your state, incidentally. It’s one of the reasons I work here.”

I poured both syrup and cream into my tea, having, like Ms. L., an unapologetic sweet tooth. “What dates were you at the inn, exactly?”

“The fifteenth through the eighteenth. I left at noon.”

For simplicity’s sake, we’d settled on the sixteenth for Boris Malik’s death. “And which room did you have?”

“It was a little thing on the top floor, facing the front.”

“And the ginkgo tree?” I asked, startled.

She paused, her cup halfway to her lips. “Yes. Why?”

“John Rarig said he’d closed off all those rooms because of the smell.”

She laughed, something I now realized she did all the time, obviously to the delight of her young charges. “I have almost no sense of smell left. That’s about the only time it’s worked to my advantage. I told him I really wanted the sun through my window, so he made an exception. It had the fringe benefit of making my room very quiet as well.” She cocked her head toward the dorm. “Not that noise is a big problem with me.”

“On the night of the sixteenth, then,” I asked, “do you remember hearing anything unusual—voices maybe, a shout, the sound of a car very late?”

She paused to reflect. “There was a car. I don’t know what time it was when I heard it, but it was the middle of the night. I’m afraid I didn’t look out the window, though. I just rolled over and went back to sleep.”

“Was the sound familiar? Had you heard that particular car before?”

She shook her head. “No. It was just a car. I am sorry.”

“No. That’s all right,” I assured her. “We ask a lot of questions, but they’re not all important.” I handed her a picture of the rental car. “Was this car ever parked in the lot, or anywhere else that you noticed?”

She made a face, considering the photo. “I’m not doing very well here. It might have been, but I’m not big on cars. They all look like this to me.”

I passed her the retouched mug shot of Boris Malik. “How ’bout him?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Ooh. He doesn’t look very good. Is he dead?”

“Yeah. Sorry about that. The photographer tried to fix him up a little, but it’s hard to do well.”

She returned the pictures to me. “No, he doesn’t look familiar. I don’t suppose you could tell me what this is all about, could you?”

I sighed involuntarily. “Don’t I wish. It’s a bit of a mystery, and to be honest, the Windham Hill Inn may not play into it at all. We’re doing a lot of fishing right now, hoping to get lucky. Rumor has it you got friendly with several of the other guests.”

“Oh, yes,” she smiled, more comfortable now. “That’s partly why I take these trips. Every short vacation, I choose a different inn, usually in Vermont. Maybe it’s being surrounded by kids all the time, but to me a vacation means meeting other people, preferably from far-off places. And inns are good for that, especially if you can’t afford to travel far. The kinds of guests they get are often world travelers. They’re fun to trade stories with.”

I thought of our hoped-for Russian connection. “Did you meet any globe-trotters at the Windham Hill Inn?”

“Several. There were the Widmers, an elderly couple from New Jersey. They’d spent an enormous amount of time in Saudi Arabia. He used to be in the oil business—”

“How elderly?” I interrupted as gently as possible.

But she cocked an eye at me nevertheless. “Ah. I see what you mean. No geriatrics need apply. How strong a person are we talking about?”

It was my turn to smile. “Pretty strong. On the other hand, we’re not sure we’re just talking about one person, either.”

She nodded. “Okay. Well, in any case, better scratch the Widmers. They were both pretty feeble. Let’s see… There was Roger and Sheila Brockman. They were middle-aged, and in good shape, too. Played tennis all the time. Sheila had the eyes of a tiger, I thought. One of those professionally skinny women, complete with tummy tucks, face-lifts, and all the rest. Roger was the traveler there. Sheila mostly stayed home and shopped, from what I could tell. But he’d been to the Far East quite a bit—Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing. An investment banker. Not what I’d call a nice man, but an observant one. He noticed things, and he had a wonderful way of describing them.”