Ultraviolet (2 page)

“Anything new?” he asked, scooping up the Szechuan noodles and eyeing me.

“Roland Hatchmere’s family doesn’t think much of Violet. They’d like to see her go down for this.”

“She didn’t kill him.”

“So you say. And so says Violet. But somebody hit him with the tray she gave as a wedding gift.” I forked in some rice and pea mixture that had a hint of saffron.

Dwayne swept an arm toward my laptop case. “You got a report for me?”

“There’s nothing to report.”

“Give me a list of the players. Hatchmere’s family members, the wedding guests, people from work. There’s a reason somebody killed him.”

I fought back a natural obstinance, finished my salads, then switched on my laptop. Dwayne loves hard copy. He’s always yammering about how I should spend more time logging data and generating pages and pages of information to impress the client, and he likes to look at information on paper himself. It helps him think. Unfortunately I wasn’t kidding: I had nothing to report. Since Violet had announced to me and Dwayne that she was suspected in Roland Hatchmere’s death, I’d barely learned anything of note. Certainly nothing worth writing up and printing off.

Most of what I had pertaining to this case was from Dwayne’s own hard copy on the Wedding Bandits, a group of robbers who’d been systematically ripping off the families of brides and grooms, stealing both personal belongings and wedding gifts while the ceremonies were taking place. Dwayne had meticulously chronicled the bandits’ activities, from their basic modus operandi to the homes they’d targeted. It appeared the Wedding Bandits hit Roland Hatchmere’s home the day of his daughter’s wedding, but whether that was before, during, or after his death was undetermined. At least for Dwayne and me. Dwayne had been sidelined by his accident and his client, a onetime father-of-a-bride Wedding Bandit victim, had let the police take over rather than have the case turned over to me. Which was just fine. I was glad I didn’t have a second client breathing down my neck. Violet Purcell was enough.

Dwayne picked cautiously through the salad with his fork. Apparently he didn’t believe we were raisin-free. “You got that e-mail I sent you about Hatchmere’s business partner?”

“I put in a call to Dr. Wu. He’s out of the country for a few weeks, working with a medical relief team.”

“Who’s in charge of the clinics while he’s gone?”

“No one person, apparently. They’re owned by a consortium,” I reminded him, though Dwayne was the one who’d secured that information in the first place. “I’ve been waiting for Wu to return.”

Dr. Daniel Wu was the head plastic surgeon of a group of four clinics previously owned by Roland Hatchmere, who had once been a very well known plastic surgeon himself until his personal cocaine use got in the way. With his license revoked Roland turned his talents to business, capitalizing on his still valuable reputation and garnering patients to his clinics in droves. Dr. Wu had become his business partner, though Roland held on to the lion’s share of the business until it was sold earlier this year to the consortium.

“Wu’s the one to talk to,” Dwayne agreed.

“It just means I’m stalled,” I said.

“Things’ll break.”

Like that advice was going to help me. I wanted to shout, “When? How? Would you stop looking through those damn binoculars?” Instead I just finished my meal. Dwayne was nice enough to thank me and even pay for the food. I tried to demur, but he smiled faintly and ignored me, so I pocketed the bills. I’m pretty sure I should be embarrassed by my cheapness, but I can’t stop considering it an attribute. Thriftiness is a good thing, right?

I watched him pick up the
Review
and start reading.

Feeling frustrated, I complained, “Wu’s not the only issue. I’m having trouble getting the Hatchmere clan to talk to me. I’ve left messages. I even dropped by Roland’s house once, but I got the door slammed in my face.”

“Who slammed it on you?”

“The daughter. Gigi Hatchmere. Or, wait…Popparockskill…”

“It’s still Hatchmere. Ceremony never came off when Roland didn’t show.” He shook the paper and opened to another page as he headed back outside.

“Have you got any bright ideas on what I should do next?” I called, but Dwayne was outside and either he couldn’t hear me or he didn’t care.

Annoyed, I pulled up my file on Violet and wirelessly sent its meager contents to the printer as I slid another look Dwayne’s way.

He’d put down the paper and was standing in the strange darkness created by the storm, staring up at the sky. I followed his gaze and saw a crack between clouds where sunlight spilled through, looking like a sheer, glowing curtain of white and yellow, the kind of odd illumination that, as Dwayne moved in front of it, surrounded him with a brilliant aura.

“Saint Dwayne,” I muttered.

“What?” he hollered.

Oh yeah, sure. Now he hears me? “Nothing.”

I headed to the printer, which is currently set up in Dwayne’s spare bedroom, and looked at the pages. It was disheartening how little progress I’d made. Nobody, but nobody, wanted to talk to anyone associated with Violet. I’d placed a few calls and gotten a few polite no’s and a few more “you’ve got to be kiddings.” One guy, some Hatchmere family friend known as Big Jim, just laughed like a hyena and hung up on me.

Gathering up the two pages of potential interviewees, I sensed a nub of anxiety tightening in the pit of my stomach. For all his inattention, Dwayne wasn’t going to wait forever. He would expect some hard answers. But Violet was anathema. And no one wanted to talk to a friend of Violet’s—
friend
being a stretch of the truth of our relationship—but I suspected Dwayne wasn’t going to see it that way.

“Come on out here, Jane,” Dwayne called, apparently sensing I’d returned to the living room as his eyes were once again glued to his binoculars.

He was back on the lounge, though I suspected there might be some moisture soaking into the seat of his jeans. The outdoor furniture and dock were still wet from the hail blast.

Squeezing back outside, I felt a frigid huff of wind whip beneath my black suede vest, press my shirt to my skin and generally bring me to goose bumps. Dwayne’s cowboy hat, never far from his side, was now scrunched on his head. His long, light blue denim-clad left leg, and casted right one, stretched toward the small, slatted-wood table we’d knocked over on our scramble to get back inside. I righted the table and put it beside his chair. Apart from his shirt, there was no protection against the elements, but it didn’t look like he cared much.

My eyes followed the line of his legs and I felt a twist of sexual interest. I gritted my teeth. And him being a semi-invalid. What did that say about
me
?

“Take a look here,” he said, handing me the binoculars. “Straight over there is Rebel Yell….” He pointed at a white two-story house across the bay and a little to our left. I looked through the lenses. “Parents, two teenage girls, lots of drama.”

“You’ve named another one?”

“Named ’em all. It’s next to Tab A and Slot B, just to the west side.”

I gazed at Tab A and Slot B, where all fall the man and woman had been cavorting into every sexual position known to humankind, and tried to keep my mind off Dwayne. He and I had done a bit of that mating dance not so long ago, nothing too serious, and then Violet had entered our world. Sometimes, late at night, when my mind whirls on a repetitive track, I remember those moments with uncomfortable inner jolts that seem to hit my heart and parts down south as well. “We’ve watched them before,” I said neutrally.

“Mm,” he agreed. “Tab A’ll be home in a couple hours. Lately they’ve been turning on their outdoor fire pit and then heading just inside the slider door and getting to work. Lovemaking by the fire. Guess it’s what you do when you don’t have an indoor fireplace.”

“Can’t wait for that.”

“Next to Rebel Yell is Plastic Pet Cemetery, where old lawn ornaments go to die.”

“The Pilarmos. With the dog.”

Dwayne nodded. “Thing howls and looks like a wolf.”

I centered my binoculars on the Pilarmos’ tired, dark blue bungalow. Kinda looked like my cottage, only worse, if that was possible. Probably worth a small fortune. I could make out gnomes and plastic pink flamingos and faux cement birdbaths decorating a large portion of the backyard. A grayish wolf-dog cruised around the corner and disappeared from view.

“Then there’s Do Not Enter.”

I moved my glasses to aim toward a shell of a house where the beams and a skin of plywood constituted the walls. The roof was covered with plywood, and half the composition shingles had been nailed on. “Why is it Do Not Enter?”

“It’s where the high school kids party. They try to keep their flashlights dimmed, but every Friday night, some Saturdays, there’s something going on. And that last house before the road curves toward North Shore is Social Security. He’s deaf and she’s bedridden and neither of ’em is too worried about Do Not Enter.”

Hearing he’d named more houses worried me anew. I had to remind myself that this, too, would pass. It was a harmless pursuit on Dwayne’s part. Something to entertain him while he recovered. If it smacked a little too much of Jimmy Stewart’s character in
Rear Window
, well, it wasn’t like he was going to ask me to solve a murder over there.

I handed him back the binoculars, murmured something about getting back to my job, then squeezed inside the cabana and headed to my laptop. My job—the job I was getting paid for—was to prove Violet Purcell’s innocence. Besides the fact that no one will talk to me, the bigger problem is I kinda think Violet might be guilty. She’s sensed this and has yelled, “Things aren’t always what they seem, Jane!” more times than I like to recall. And actually, I think that’s a crock anyway. Most of the time things are
exactly
what they seem. We just can’t accept them as they are. We want to make them better, or different, or meaningful.

But…I must remember, innocent until proven guilty. It’s difficult with Violet. She’s late forties, appears and acts over a decade younger, possesses more good looks than good sense, and has a family who took the “health” out of “mental health” in a big way. I would like to forget that she made a play for Dwayne, but I can’t. It’s only been a few weeks since I met Violet—basically a little over a month—but it feels like the proverbial eternity. First I thought she was a breath of fresh air. Then I decided she was a femme fatale. Now I’m thinking she might be a murderer.

I mean, couldn’t she have killed ex-husband number three? Couldn’t she? Why does Dwayne find that so impossible?

I shook my head and stared up at the fir beams that line Dwayne’s cabana’s ceiling and thought back. Upon first meeting I’d been intrigued with Violet’s tell-it-like-it-is, take-no-prisoners attitude. But she was a Purcell and I had learned, by then, that they were a secretive, squirrelly bunch, so I wasn’t sure what to think of her. It had been refreshing to be faced with a family member who initially exhibited none of their odd family traits. Key word here being
initially.
Violet’s definitely got her own issues.

Luckily, since Dwayne’s accident, things seem to have cooled off a bit between him and Violet, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. And okay, they haven’t progressed to much more than friends, but I know she hauled off and kissed him once. I got to witness that. Dwayne is my mentor, boss, partner and friend. I cannot have him mean anything more to me and stay sane. I know this, but I have to keep reminding myself anyway because there’s a part of me that just can’t quite leave the whole possible romance thing alone. I would like to be disgusted with myself for being so nauseatingly hopeless. I mean, why
can’t
I just get over it? It’s interfering with my job and my life and I don’t even think I really like Dwayne.

That memory of Violet pulling him into a kiss crossed the screen of my mind again and I had to clench my teeth.

I waited for the moment to pass.

“Are you growling?”

I jumped. Dwayne’s voice was loud. Glancing back, I saw he’d stuck his head inside the slider door.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I like to.”

We looked at each other. I would rather suck on dirty socks than admit my feelings for Dwayne.

He let it go. “Violet’s on her way over, right?”

“Yep. She wants us to talk to the police. Find out if they’re going to indict her.”

“Larrabee would have already if he could prove she was guilty,” Dwayne said.

Detective Vince Larrabee was a homicide detective with the Portland police and a longtime acquaintance, sometime friend, of Dwayne’s. I’d heard his name once or twice before Violet’s case, but now it was part of our daily dialogue, though I had yet to meet the man.

“Violet wants that information directly from the big dog. I’m a mere lackey.”

Dwayne snorted and returned to the dock. He sank into the hail-and rain-soaked chair again without comment.

It had been a lot sunnier the day Violet walked out on Dwayne’s dock and announced that she might have killed her ex-husband. I’d been so giddily happy that she and Dwayne seemed kaput that I’d let myself be talked into helping her.

She’d showed up in true Violet fashion: looking beautiful, and…well, lusty. Her hair is blond and shoulder-length, her eyes that crazy electric blue color most of the Purcells seem to share. My own hair is a little longer than shoulder length, light brown, straight and wouldn’t let itself be styled if I bought a truckload of Vidal Sassoon products. I don’t possess Violet’s curves, but my eyes are hazel and sane-looking. I’m thirty and Dwayne’s about thirty-five. I figure that evens the score.

But that day Violet hadn’t been thinking about Dwayne, not in any romantic capacity. She’d needed help.

She plopped down in one of the dock chairs and announced numbly, “My ex-husband’s dead.” I’d questioned which ex-husband, since she had a few, and learned it was Roland Hatchmere, ex number three, the only one who lived in the Portland area.

“He was killed yesterday,” she went on. “On his daughter’s wedding day. Roland was still at the house, and these robbers showed up thinking he was gone, I guess, and he wasn’t, and they killed him.”