Crime of Privilege: A Novel (12 page)

He seemed more put out than appreciative.

“Look,” he said, “the Gregorys come down here in the summer, come down from their
fancy schools, and they get any girl they want. My daughter and all her friends knew
that. Still, it was kind of a thing for them. Good that one of the Gregory boys hit
on you—bad if you went along with it. Because, you know, the locals knew these kids
weren’t interested in them in the long run. So we just had a little restriction in
our house, same as a lot of other families around here. You can go out, you can date,
you don’t allow yourself to get picked up by a Gregory.” He wanted me to tell him
I understood.

What I was tempted to say was that I knew full well what the Gregorys did with pretty
girls. What I actually said was, “Because you felt they were only interested in one
thing and you didn’t want your daughter to be known as one of the girls who gave them
that thing.”

“It’s true,” he said indignantly, as if I was arguing with him.

But I wasn’t arguing. I was thinking of Kendrick Powell lying on her back, her leg
on top of the couch back, while Peter leered over her, his cock in his hand. Except
I hadn’t seen his cock, had I? I had seen the red candle, I had seen his fingers,
I had seen Jamie’s finger disappearing inside her. I shivered and drank quickly to
try to hide it.

“This is how we put it together, my wife and me.” Mr. Telford wiped his mouth as if
smoothing the path for what he was about to say. “That dress Heidi was wearing, it
was an Ann Taylor dress. Paid more for it than she ever did for any of her other clothes.
It was probably a style she picked up at school, quality without looking too sexy,
you know what I mean?”

I didn’t know if I did or not. I had not looked at the dress that closely, not thought
about it that deeply, didn’t know too much about dresses in the first place. My wife,
when we were married, kept most of her dresses at her apartment in Boston.

“Thing is,” Mr. Telford went on, “what was she doing wearing that dress? Like I told
you, it wasn’t what she was wearing when she left the house. Second thing, okay, we
found some pictures of her when she had worn it before. It had a red belt. Or at least
she wore it with a red
belt. And red sandals. Accessories, my wife calls them. Both the sandals and the belt
are missing. They weren’t in the house and the cops never found them. So it makes
sense they were in that bag she was carrying when we last saw her. All of it: the
dress folded up, the red belt, the red sandals. And she obviously changed someplace
outside the house. Question is, why would she?”

It was his turn to look around, look at the fat couple, at the rambunctious kids behind
us, at a new group of post-middle-aged, none-too-fit folks who had just come in and
taken a table in front of the fireplace. Then he leaned in closer. “This is the part
I’m not real comfortable talking about, Mr. Becket. But my daughter was what you call
‘well endowed.’ You know what I’m saying?”

It was important to him that I understand there was nothing salacious about what he
was telling me. It was just a fact to be recognized. Recognized and reckoned with.

I nodded.

“When they found her, she didn’t seem to have been sexually molested, but she wasn’t
wearing a bra. Okay, we look at the pictures, the pictures of when she was wearing
the dress before, and she was definitely wearing a bra then. The other thing is, the
cloth of the dress, it’s good, sturdy cloth. It’s not like you’re going to be able
to see all the way through it.”

“Just enough to see that she’s well endowed and not wearing a bra.”

He sat back, embarrassed. But this, apparently, was his point.

“Maybe whoever killed her took off the bra.”

Mr. Telford shook his head. “The way that dress was, it didn’t make sense. We’re back
to the part that’s hard for me to talk about, Mr. Becket, but it was like, you’d have
to peel the dress down from the top, take off the bra, and then pull the dress back
up, you know, to get it the way it was when they found her.”

I flashed back to Kendrick, to what I had tried to do when I was dressing her.

When I focused again on Mr. Telford, he had both hands on the bar, his fingers folded
tightly together. “Look, maybe this is just something that only a parent can feel.
But that dress is the clue. The dress and the bra.”

“You’re saying she put on a dress because she was going someplace she didn’t want
you to know about. It was a conservative dress, which tells you she thought she was
going someplace nice. And she took off her bra because she didn’t want whoever she
was going to see to think she was too conservative.”

“She was twenty years old, Mr. Becket. I see my other daughter, she thinks she’s gettin’
dressed up when she puts on a denim skirt.”

“I’m just trying to make sure I understand the clue you’re talking about, Mr. Telford.”

“Yeah, you’re understanding, all right. More than Mitch White. I give him the photo,
tell him the same thing I’m telling you. Ask, ‘Who would she do all that for, Mr.
White?’ He just stares at me.”

“And you were trying to tell him she’d do that for the Gregorys.”

“Well, they fit the bill perfectly, don’t they? And here’s one more bit of information
for you. That was Memorial Day weekend when it happened. What goes on around here
on Memorial Day weekend? That race over to Nantucket. The one they call the Figawi.
Who sails in the race? Well, the Gregorys do. Some of ’em, anyhow. And what happens
at the end of the race? Parties. Parties on Nantucket, parties here. You’re an attractive
girl like my daughter, you run into a Gregory, he invites you to a party, you’re gonna
be sorely tempted, don’t you think? Even if your parents wouldn’t approve?”

I stared at my drink, wondering if I should finish it off or ask the next question,
the one that could get me in a whole lot of trouble. I did both. “I don’t suppose
you found out which Gregorys were in town that weekend?”

“Their boat’s called
The Paradox
. I found out who was registered as the crew. Six people. Five of ’em guys.”

There was no exit now. “You want to tell me who?”

“Ned Gregory was the captain. It was his boat. Crew was Jamie Gregory, girl was Cory
Gregory, there was a boy named Jason Stockover, another one named Paul McFetridge,
and then there was Peter Gregory Martin.”

My Manhattan surged back up from my stomach, got caught in my throat, didn’t seem
to want to go back down again.

“You know him? Peter Martin? He was the one who was accused of
rape down in Florida that time. They never proved anything, but people said the only
reason he wasn’t prosecuted was because he was a Gregory.”

My skin was burning, my chest was constricted, and yet my whole body was so cold I
began to shake. I gripped my empty glass around the stem and held it tight just so
the old man could not see my hand rattling.

“I took the names, I give them to Mitch White, give them to Detective Landry. What
happens? They go, ‘Hmm, hmm. We’ll look into it, Mr. Telford.’ Never hear anything
more. So I do my own work. Start going to Bon Faire on a regular basis. Get to know
the Ross girls; they get to know me. They know about Heidi, of course. They ask me
what’s going on. They’re interested, and I can tell they’re concerned because, like
I said, they’re good people. And finally one day I’m in the store alone with Rachel
and I ask her, that last day she remembers Heidi being in there, was Peter Martin
there, too? And she tells me the truth. She tells me he was.”

“Same time?” I surprise myself by getting the words out. They seemed to have escaped
through a corner of my mouth.

“Well, she’s a little evasive there, but I can tell they were. See, what you gotta
understand is that Rachel knows Peter. She probably knows the whole family, but, well,
she’s a little chunky, so she’s probably not on their radar. Anyhow, she’s already
told the police she can’t remember anything else, but now here she is admitting Peter
was in the store. And what she’s really doing, Mr. Becket, is she’s being honest with
me while still being loyal to them.”

“You told all this to—”

“Yep.” Bill Telford drew a five-dollar bill from his wallet. “And now I’m telling
you.” He slid the bill under his coffee cup, inclined his head in the direction of
John the bartender, and said, “That ought to smooth his feathers a little bit.” Then
he got to his feet, looked up at the television screen, where the Bruins were getting
shut out, and said, “Those three guys they got in the trade for Thornton are about
as worthless as hazelnuts.”

T
HAT THIRD-YEAR STUDENT WHO HAD SAVED US FROM BEING
busted was named Tiel. I never saw his name spelled out, but I assumed it was T-i-e-l.
His father did not live in Old Town and was not deputy attorney general of the United
States. There was no
Baldwin
case, either—at least none that held what Tiel had claimed.

He and Marion had wanted to celebrate what they had managed to pull off. I just wanted
to go home. After much protesting, they dropped me at my apartment and continued on
to Marion’s place, where Tiel proceeded to spend the night with my date.

Marion liked the fact that I wasn’t bothered about Tiel sleeping with her. She thought
it meant I was kinky. And I thought that was why she called me when she moved to Boston.

She was working for a well-known firm and hating every minute of it. She had heard
I was on the Cape and wanted to know if she could come down for the weekend.

Sure, I said. Come on down.

Within a year we were married.

“
Y
ES, GEORGE
?”

Mitch White seemed put out that I was coming to see him a second time.

I took the seat I wasn’t offered and told him that I had looked through the Telford
files.

“Make any great discoveries?”

The district attorney almost smiled. At least that is what I think was going on beneath
his twitching mustache.

“Only that none of the stuff was there that Bill Telford claims to have turned over.”

“What stuff? A picture of his daughter in the dress? Is that what you’re talking about?”

“He said he gave it to you.”

“Which is why I took it. But Detective Landry and those guys, they already had pictures.”

“So what did you do with it?”

“Hey—why are you talking to me like that?” Mitch White’s eyes flashed behind his glasses
in a way that was meant to remind me of who he was.

“Just … the picture was part of a point Mr. Telford was trying to prove.”

“What point?” He put his hands under his pectorals and cupped them there. Then he
stared.

I looked around Mitch White’s office rather than look at the spectacle he was making
of himself. I wondered how a man like him could make me feel like such a loser.

The district attorney’s hands flew up in the air, extending over his head, compelling
me to look back at him. “C’mon, George,” he said. “After nine years, that’s all he’s
got? And you think that’s good enough for me to what? Convene a grand jury? I’d be
the laughingstock of the community.”

I didn’t tell him he already was. I just said, “Well, I got the impression Mr. Telford
had to build up a lot of good faith with the girl in the store, the one who finally
told him about Peter Martin being there.”

“What, did the girl get jilted by the Gregorys? Is that what’s behind this? She couldn’t
remember before, but now she does?”

“I don’t know, Mitch. I’m only asking because Mr. Telford says he’s supplied various
items to the investigation, and from what I can tell, the files haven’t even been
opened in years.”

“You know what the first thing he wanted us to do was? See who bought golf clubs.
Medical examiner says the girl must have gotten hit by a golf club. Okay, nobody has
any reason to argue with that. So Bill Telford thinks it’s a good idea for us to canvass
the Cape, get a list of everyone who bought a single club in the thirty days after
Heidi’s death.” Mitch White flung himself around in his chair in agitation. “What,
we go to every golf course, Sears, Walmart?”

“We don’t have a Walmart.”

“Yeah, well, you know what I’m saying. I tell him we can’t do it, don’t have the manpower.
So he comes up with these lists. Says if you’re gonna use a club to make the wound
Heidi had, it can only be one of these clubs. I forget … three, four, five irons,
I think he figures. Flat heads. Then he says okay, if the person knows about the Wianno
course, it’s only going to be a nice club, a Ping or something. Then he says, and
he’s not going to be buying it at a Sears or a Kmart. That’s the other place I was
trying to think of. So all right, we indulge him. Detective Landry goes to the shops
at all the golf courses, private and public, in about a ten-mile radius. And that’s
a lot, believe me. We
come up with a couple of doctors, some university chancellor, the travel editor of
The New York Times—
”

“Any Gregorys?”

Mitch White stopped talking and went back to staring. After about ten seconds, he
seemed to have a revelation. His forehead tilted back, his chin, what there was of
it, lifted up. “No,” he said. “No, George. There was no evidence of any Gregory buying
any golf club that we were able to find.”

His expression had lost the agitation, the sense of annoyance, he had shown before.

“So when Bill Telford goes around saying he’s handed in all this stuff, the only thing
he’s really talking about is a picture of his daughter in a blue dress with a red
belt, red sandals?”

“That’s right, George.” It was clear now: Mitch White thought I was putting him through
some kind of exercise.

“What about a list of the people on the Gregorys’ boat in the Figawi race that year—did
he give you that?”

“Oh, yes. He gave us the list.” He pumped his head in a show of assurance.

“What did you do with it?”