The Second Mouse (6 page)

“There didn’t seem to be much to milk,” Joe said mildly, sitting in a ladder-back chair near the wall.

“That’s because I wouldn’t let it happen,” Morgan muttered, and went back to watching the game.

“Oh?”

He kept his eyes where they were. “I controlled the purse strings. Archie didn’t know anything about money. She would’ve cleaned him out.”

“I thought you said she did.”

Morgan angrily hunched forward in his chair, fixing Joe with a glare. “I said she would have. I didn’t let her. I can smell someone like her a mile off—a conniving little cock teaser. And my son was the perfect mark.”

“How did they meet?” Joe asked, hoping to move him along.

“What do I know? She probably got him drunk and spread her legs. Archie was no rocket scientist. He went where you pointed him.”

Joe scratched his head. “From what I’ve learned, they seemed pretty happy.”

Morgan looked as if he were addressing a moron. “Well, of
course
they were happy. They had me to mooch off of, all the booze they could drink, and no responsibilities. What’s not to be happy about?”

“They mooched how? The house?”

“Well,
yeah
.”

Joe pretended to be confused. “But they paid you rent and made and paid for any renovations. I saw the bills.”

Morgan was clearly stumped by that, if only for a couple of seconds. “That was nothing,” he finally blurted. “It was the least they could do for my giving them a place to live. I could’ve sold that house for a small fortune instead of letting them run it down.”

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Morgan?” Joe asked out of the blue.

“I’m on disability,” Morgan said quickly. “The battery plant fucked me up and I can’t work no more. How’s that matter?”

“Just wondered,” Joe said. “Does your wife still work?”

Morgan’s face reddened. “Yeah, she works. Look, what’re you busting my balls for? Why’re you even here? Am I supposed to get a lawyer or somethin’?”

Joe’s eyes widened. “A lawyer? What for? You feel like you need one?”

“No. That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just, all these stupid questions. I mean, who cares? The bitch is dead. There’s nothing to talk about.”

Except maybe how she got that way, Joe thought. “It must have been tough on you, after Archie died, having to deal with Michelle directly,” he said instead.

“Trying to deal is more like it,” he grumbled. “She just pretended I didn’t exist.” He suddenly put the beer down, as if to clear his mind. “Look. I tried being nice. I’m no shit bag. Whatever she was after at first, I knew she was up a creek after Archie died. So I told her she could stay an extra month before I threw her out. She ended up totally abusing that generosity, like I was some landlord she could fleece or something. I mean, damn”—here he pounded his fleshy knee with his fist—“I gave that woman the roof over her head. You’d think she could show some consideration.”

Joe nodded. “You’d think. What reason did she give for staying put?”

“Oh, Christ. You know, ‘I can’t find a place,’ ‘I have no money,’ ‘I’m looking for a job.’ All the usuals. She was just trying to see if she could ride me as easy as Archie.”

All these allusions suddenly prompted Joe to ask, “Did she try anything sexual to convince you?”

Newell looked stunned for a moment. “Me? She’s not my type. I’m a married man, besides. She would’ve known what I’d say.”

But he hadn’t actually answered, Joe thought, and the question still remained whether Newell had ever propositioned her. “She was a good-looking woman,” he pressed.

The fat man allowed for half a concession. “If you like that type.”

“When did you last see her?”

“I didn’t. I mean, not lately. I’d call on the phone. Later I communicated through my lawyer.”

“But when was the last time?”

Morgan put on a show of thinking hard. “Well, there was the funeral. I tried being nice then, like I said, dropping by to see how she was doin’. God, I don’t know . . . maybe about four months ago.”

“That would be after you served eviction papers on her, right?” Joe pretended to be scribbling something in his pad, unconcerned and purely conversational.

Morgan’s face reddened, but he said nothing.

Joe looked up. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah, I guess. That was just a legal thing, to show her I was serious.”

“I heard you’ve been out of town for a few days.”

“So?”

“Where’d you go?”

Joe expected some resistance, but Morgan immediately said, “New York—Frankfort. It’s outside Utica. It was like a reunion with some buddies.”

“You were there the whole time?”

The big man’s eyes narrowed, and he stood up, looking down at Joe. “Yeah. What’s that to you?”

Joe’s response was mild, although he noticed that Sam had casually taken up a good place from which to throw a tackle if necessary. “This is a death investigation, Mr. Morgan. Pretty routine question.”

“Bullshit, it is. You’re thinking I had something to do with her dying. I heard she did herself in. You saying she was murdered?”

Joe put on a show of bewilderment. “Jeez Louise. You’re starting to make me think this is something it’s not. What’s got you so worked up?”

“
You do,
” Morgan blustered. “I know who you are. The VBI is like major crimes. They only do murders and rapes and bank robberies and stuff like that. If Michelle drank herself to death, there’d be some deputy dog here, not you.”

He was perfectly correct, which made Joe long for the recent past, when he’d routinely had to explain that the Bureau wasn’t an enforcement arm of something like the restaurant sanitation division.

“The FBI does banks,” he explained disingenuously. “And I’m just here covering for the state police.”

Morgan rose and moved toward the window, as if giving himself room to escape. “Right. Real likely. That’s why there’re two of you.”

Joe stood up at last, his face set and his voice harder. “Think what you will, Mr. Morgan. Can you prove you were in Frankfort?”

“You bet. I got six buddies to vouch for me, and if you think they’re all in the bag, then I got a bunch of credit card receipts and shit like that to back me up. I wouldn’t stick my neck out killing that fucking whore. No way she was worth it. What happened to her was just a matter of time anyhow. It wouldn’t have been long before I got my house back. Besides, even if she hadn’t died, she would’ve found some other sorry loser like my son to move in with.”

Gunther took the pad he was holding, flipped to a fresh page, and handed it over. “Write the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the people you were with, as well as the names of any motels or restaurants you might have used.”

Morgan held the pad in his hand, motionless. “Why do I have to jump through a bunch of hoops for you?”

Joe tilted his head slightly to one side. “You don’t, which’ll really start me wondering why you’ve gotten so cranked up over this. Do yourself a favor, Mr. Morgan. Cooperate.”

Morgan did just that, moving over to a couch and hunching over the coffee table to laboriously scratch out his information. As Gunther glanced around the room, trying to gauge from its contents the lives it contained, his reluctant host chanted a muttered, half-intelligible but clearly vituperative recitation in frustrated protest.

Finally, he put his pen down, lunged to his feet, and thrust the pad back at Joe. “There, have fun wasting your time and pissing off my friends.”

“Thanks,” Joe said, pocketing it and moving toward the door, Sam silently in tow. He put his hand on its knob and then asked, “By the way, what’s going to happen to the house now?”

“I’m going to sell it. See if I can at least break even.”

Gunther laughed and headed out onto the porch. He knew how long Morgan had owned the place, how much he’d charged his son in the interim, and what the market would probably deliver in an upscale area like greater Wilmington. Morgan was going to make a killing—assuming he hadn’t already done so.

“You have a good day, Newell. Enjoy what’s left of the game.”

They got back into the car, and Joe continued driving west into the center of town, rejoining Route 9, passing through the infamous intersection with Route 7, and going up the hill past the old Hemmings News gas station, the elaborate Catholic church, and the art museum, into what was called Old Bennington—the fancy historic part of town that had also once been its center before industry decreed that the mills and their workers gather on the banks of the river below.

“What was your take?” he asked Sam as he drove.

“I disagreed when he said he was no shit bag, but looking around, I didn’t see anything that suggested he was another Ted Bundy. Just a slob. I hope his wife isn’t there much.”

“How ’bout his story?”

“I think you got him when you said he’d been to see her after filing the eviction papers. You have anything behind the theory that he put the moves on her and got turned down?”

“Not a shred.”

He left Route 9 at the top of the hill and drove along a block suitably named Monument Avenue, lined with a series of old-time New England mansions, classic enough to have appeared in a daguerreotype. Just beyond it, opening up onto a gently rounded hilltop, was the site of the famous Bennington Battle monument, a three-hundred-foot-tall obelisk built in the 1880s and more an homage to local jingoism than to historical accuracy. In fact, the Revolutionary War battle so celebrated took place five miles away in New York State—Bennington and its alluring supply depot had been merely the goal of an ambitious British army.

Nevertheless, the area had become a graceful, peaceful, oddly sylvan spot from which to enjoy the low, rolling countryside around it, and Joe parked by the monument’s side to give them a suitable setting for contemplation and, a little subversively, to enhance Sam’s impression of the town.

“Still,” he resumed, “assuming we ever get enough to officially take this case, I wouldn’t mind canvassing Michelle’s neighborhood with a picture of Newell and whatever vehicle he drives. I have a hard time believing that a guy like him could leave a woman like Michelle alone in her time of grief.”

Sam groaned. “You’re probably right. Gross. Maybe she did commit suicide.”

Joe nodded wordlessly. Newell Morgan’s personality hadn’t come as a surprise. His findings at Michelle’s house and his chat with Linda Rubinstein had prepared him for it. What did keep tugging at his mind were less obvious loose ends—details of pattern and cadence, of inflection and body language. From Michelle’s posture on her bed to the recent bluster of her landlord, there had been subtle discordances. Not any of them alarming or even unusual, but all together forming a picture of incomplete parts. Joe was feeling like the only man on board a ship surrounded by calm water and fine weather, who was fighting the strong urge to seek cover.

“It does always end up going back there, doesn’t it?” he asked almost rhetorically.

“Where?” Sam asked.

“The body,” he said. “What, exactly, did her in?”

He reached for his cell phone and dialed Beverly Hillstrom, the chief medical examiner. They had long used each other as sounding boards over the years, forming a bond he was pretty sure she shared with no other cop, most of whom were stymied by her aloof and rigorous personality. He knew that side of her—he’d all but smacked into it on their very first meeting—but he’d soon discovered that couched behind it was a woman who merely demanded higher standards than the norm and showed her impatience with all who fell short. On that level alone, she’d quickly seen Gunther as a kindred spirit, even if his style was far from her own. In fact, to this day, in observance of her sense of propriety, they still referred to each other by title and always kept strictly to business.

“Doctor Hillstrom,” he therefore started out once she answered the phone, “it’s Joe Gunther.”

“Agent Gunther,” she said shortly.

Even given her normal manner, this was unusually brusque, and generally unheard of once she knew he was on the line. He made a note to stay strictly on the straight and narrow this time. She was clearly preoccupied.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he continued, “but I’m wondering once again if you might indulge me for just a couple of minutes on a case.”

“I wasn’t aware VBI had sent us anyone recently.”

He pursed his lips slightly. Her tone was bordering on hostile. “We didn’t. It came through the state police. Technically, in fact, it’s still theirs, but it’s got some questions attached that’ll probably—”

He didn’t get to finish.

“If it’s still theirs, then you better have them make the contact. And make sure,” she added pointedly, “that they follow proper protocol. This office does have a full-time police liaison. Things have begun to slip along those lines.”

“Right, I promise I’ll—”

But the phone had gone dead.

Gunther closed the cell and slipped it back onto his belt, feeling the warm breeze on his slightly reddened face through the car’s open window.

The view he’d driven here to enjoy remained unappreciated. Fighting his own immediate disappointment and embarrassment, he stared sightlessly into the distance, struggling instead to see a connection, if any, between his last two conversations. Both of them had certainly been straightforward enough—Newell Morgan had clearly stated his dislike of Michelle, his lack of regret at her passing, and what seemed to be the makings of a solid alibi. And Beverly Hillstrom had responded to his request for a special favor with an official thumbs-down. Yet each exchange had contained undertones that made him wonder if what he’d heard had in fact been the whole truth. The trick was to discover if the timing and tone of both were coincidental, or if they were tied to the evolving mystery that had made Joe initiate them in the first place.

“That didn’t sound good,” Sam suggested, watching him closely.

He started the car. Morgan’s background and alibi would take some footwork to check out. Hillstrom was a friend. For that reason alone, she merited his attention first. But he wasn’t kidding himself, either—he now had frankly ulterior motives beyond mere friendship.