Final Settlement (19 page)

Darby called out again. “Mr. Bridges? Everything okay?” She indicated another door. “That leads to the studio. The kitchen’s that way, and I imagine several bedrooms are upstairs. Alcott’s room is off the kitchen so he doesn’t have to climb stairs.” She led the way with Miles following close behind.

The kitchen was dim in the dwindling light, but Darby and Miles discerned a small stack of dirty dishes, piles of unopened mail, and several empty, unwashed cans of condensed soup.

“This fellow’s aiding and abetting Tripp Dodge’s lifestyle with all these cans of soup,” he commented, as Darby pushed open the bedroom door. “He seems to favor only one type: cream of …”

“Miles!” Darby’s voice was an urgent whisper. “Come here. It’s Alcott Bridges.”

Miles spun on his heel and joined her at the threshold of the bedroom.

The elderly man lay sprawled across the double bed. He wore a faded dressing gown belted around his thin waist. Both arms were outstretched, the hands open as if in supplication. Bunched at his feet was a threadbare quilt and several thick wool blankets.

Darby saw a framed photograph on the floor and moved to look at it. Grace Bridges, her smile warm and inviting, beamed from behind the cracked glass.

“I take it he is dead?” Miles asked, his voice quiet.

“Looks that way.” She felt his skin. “He’s cold to the touch.” Darby looked at Alcott’s vacant eyes, staring toward the ceiling, and sighed. “Too late now for me to ask you about Lorraine Delvecchio,” she said. She turned to Miles. “I’ll call the Manatuck police.”

He gave a nod of agreement and together they retraced their steps out of the room and through the kitchen. At the door to the sewing room, Darby stopped. She stared down at a small table upon which were a set of keys and a blue plastic case.

A checkbook
. She picked it up and flipped through the register where the old man had kept track of his expenditures. “Here it is, Miles—L. Delvecchio.” She flipped back. “And again here.”

“How much did he pay her?”

“Looks like two hundred dollars a month.”

“You don’t take trips to Switzerland and Hawaii on that kind of money,” Miles commented, peering over Darby’s shoulder.

“No, but keep in mind Lorraine had four other sets of initials in that book. Perhaps Alcott Bridges was small potatoes. She could have had victims willing to pay a whole lot more.”

“Right.” He glanced around the dark room. “Darby, let’s discuss this somewhere else.”

She put the checkbook back on the table and spun, smiling, to face him. “Don’t tell me my brave investigative reporter is frightened!”

“Not in the least,” he answered. “I’m just thinking ahead. You’re going to call the Manatuck police, and then Chief Dupont. Chances are he’ll want to meet us at the house, and—” he paused. “I’m dead on my feet.”

Darby considered the tall Brit’s lopsided grin. She had whisked him from the wedding reception right to a dead man’s home, after he’d barreled his way through a blizzard. And he was correct: the day was still young.

“You’re right. Back to my house and a nice warm fire. I’ll call 911 right now, and then phone Chief Dupont from the ferry.”

She ushered Miles out the door, closed it firmly behind them, and watched as he crunched his way through the snow.

_____

Bitsy Carmichael had a bad feeling about the phone call.

It had come just as they had entered their house after the wedding, and she could see from the look on Charles’s face that it was important. He talked rapidly for a few minutes, and then hung up, replacing the receiver with a bang.

“What is it?” she asked, taking off her heels. Her feet were killing her, and she was already contemplating a half-hour soak in the master bathroom’s large tub.

“It’s Darby Farr,” he said, taking off his suit coat. “She stopped in at a house in Manatuck and found the artist Alcott Bridges dead.”

“That’s the Manatuck police department’s problem, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I’m headed over to see her.”

“Can’t she wait until the morning?”

He climbed the stairs to their room to change. “I’ll be back before you know it,” he called over his shoulder.

Bitsy collapsed on the couch.
No use pouting
, she figured. He was going whether she pitched a hissy fit or not. Instead, she turned her thoughts to the wedding.

Except for the food, which she’d judged to be substandard, it was a quaint little ceremony. Nothing like the glitzy affairs she’d been to in Vegas, of course, but cute and cozy. Tina had seemed besotted, and although Bitsy wasn’t super crazy about her, she was glad for Donny that he was happy.

She flipped through a magazine while she waited for Charles. How strange that he was heading out on police business on a Saturday night. Why didn’t people consult the calendar when they decided to drop dead?

He descended the stairs hurriedly, strapping on his gun when he reached the bottom. She watched as he strode across the room and bent down to kiss her.

“See you later. I’ll call if I’ll be late getting home.”

She nodded, watching as he went out the front door and into the darkness, the feel of his stubbly chin still lingering on her skin.
Home
, she thought, curling her feet under her bottom and thinking how much she liked the sound of that word.
I’m finally home
.

_____

Darby answered the door and ushered Chief Dupont into the snug farmhouse.

“Thanks for coming by. I’m sure you’re tired from the wedding.”

“You’re not kidding,” he said. “That Bitsy kept me out on the dance floor all afternoon. I’m going to need a whole bottle of Advil just to be able to walk in the morning.” He grinned. “But it was a fun time, and that redheaded friend of yours certainly looked happy.”

“She did. Donny, too.”

He bobbed his head, gave a questioning look. “Miles here?”

“Upstairs, having a little rest. He’s exhausted from driving, poor guy. Can I get you something to drink? Glass of wine, cup of coffee?”

“Nah, I’m fine. Let’s talk this thing through and then we both can call it a day.” He pointed at the little kitchen table. “Should I sit down?”

“Let’s go into the living room. I’ve got a fire going.”

He followed her in and eased himself onto the couch. “Spoke to the Manatuck guys after they went over to Alcott’s place. Sounds like he had a heart attack last night, but we’ll see what the medical folks have to say.” He paused a moment. “Wish I could have seen that checkbook you found, because I don’t like what you’re suggesting, Darby. I knew Lorraine, and I find it impossible to believe she could have been a blackmailer.”

Darby was quiet.

“I mean, this was a woman I trusted for several years. It just doesn’t fit.”

Darby lifted the notebook from the coffee table and gave it to the Chief. “Tina and I found this in Lorraine’s home office. There are columns with numbers and payments, and a bunch of initials that didn’t make sense at first, but seem to be encrypted.”

“Encrypted? What are you talking about?”

“I’m told it’s written using a Caesar cipher.”

“What the heck is that?”

“It’s a simple substitution cipher in which each letter in the message is replaced by a letter several positions down the alphabet. When these initials are deciphered, they are BA, ML, DT, AB, and RC.”

“And you think the ‘AB’ is Alcott Bridges?”

“Well, those are his initials, and he was writing regular checks to Lorraine. If we can show a correlation between the checks and this notebook …”

“Okay, okay. Let’s say for a moment that you’re right—that Lorraine was playing at extortion. Just what would she have on Alcott Bridges?”

“Miles suggested she could have known something from her employment with Dr. Hotchkiss, but I’ve been thinking about the scandal with his painting of the judge. Might Lorraine have had information about its authenticity?”

“Who knows? With her memory she may have known something about everything, when you think of it.” He sighed and leaned back on the couch. “Give me those initials again. I want to write them down, see if I can come up with more names.”

Darby read the letters as the Chief scribbled them on a piece of white paper. He folded it and pushed it into his pants pocket, giving her a frank look.

“What do you think about her slipping from the Breakwater now? Seems to me it’s clearer all the time that she was murdered.”

“Do you think the Manatuck police will start treating it like a homicide?”

Chief Dupont nodded. “Let’s hope. You can bet I’ll be in touch with them again.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d better go. They’re still trying to contact Alcott Bridges’ family, so keep his death under your hat for the time being.”

“You know I’ll be discreet.” She followed him to the door. “It was nice getting to know your wife.”

He blushed. “Bitsy? Yes, well, thank you.” He pulled on his coat and gave a shy grin. “I know the whole town thinks I’m crazy, but heck, I’m glad to have her back.”

Darby smiled. “She’s lucky to have you, Chief.” On an impulse, she gave him a small hug. “We all are.”

“Thanks.” The voice was gruff, his cheeks slightly reddened. “I was thinking. Would you like to get together and swap stories about your parents? I have a lot of memories—not just about Jada, but your dad, too.”

“I’d like that very much.”

Darby watched as Charles Dupont departed, driving into the dark night with his police beacon off and siren quiet. When his taillights had disappeared around the corner, she shut the door against the cold.

Once I detested the very sight of that man
.
And now I feel fondly toward him, almost protective.

She knew that Hurricane Harbor’s Chief of Police did not need her to worry about him. And yet he seemed newly vulnerable, thanks in part to the reappearance of Bitsy Carmichael.

Darby shook off her gloomy thoughts and prepared to head upstairs, when she remembered the thumb drive Tina had taken from Lorraine Delvecchio’s desk. Would it reveal more about the identities of the dead woman’s victims? She pushed it into the USB port in her laptop and waited. A password was requested, and Darby nearly groaned.

Undaunted, she began typing in permutations of Lorraine’s name, then address, and finally random things she now associated with her furtive classmate.
Breakwater. Manatuck. Hawaii.
Finally, it was a word that she tried on a whim that worked.

Memory.

A second later, there were five scanned images on the drive.

Darby clicked on one and a close-up photograph of a couple embracing filled the screen. The man’s back was to the camera, his countenance hidden, but the woman’s face, framed by wavy brown hair that fell to her shoulders, was smiling and happy.

Darby did not recognize the woman, and when she clicked on the rest of the photos she saw that they were much the same: full, head-on views of her; obstructed, rear shots of the man. She frowned. They were pretty poor blackmail photos, if that’s what they were.

Chief Dupont might recognize the woman,
she thought. Sighing, she removed the thumb drive and turned off her computer.
Too bad I didn’t think to show him when he was here.

_____

Miles Porter was still sleeping when Darby entered her bedroom. She changed into a silk teddy, smiling as she remembered her promise to Tina to “be a little bit braver.”
The little cloakroom interlude at the wedding was pretty courageous,
she thought. Tina would no doubt approve.

She slipped into bed. Miles stirred and rolled over, his hand accidentally brushing the smooth fabric over her breasts. Instantly he opened his eyes.

“Well … this has to be the best wake-up call ever,” he said softly. He reached for her hair and stroked it, while she sighed and snuggled into his broad chest. Their bodies curved together under the thick down comforter.

Miles kissed her forehead. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for this moment.”

“I have some idea,” Darby murmured. She sought his lips with hers and they shared a long, lingering, passionate kiss. “I’ve been waiting, too.”

“I have just one question for you,” Miles whispered. “Do we need to discuss this Kenji chap?”

Darby ran a hand down his torso, lingering on his taut stomach and then tracing her fingers down and over his groin.

“It can wait until the morning.”

“Right. Let’s leave it for then, shall we?”

He rolled onto his side, pulling her close with powerful arms, a sudden urgency so unexpected that she gasped. His signature scent of bayberry was faint and yet the merest whiff was like an illicit drug. She breathed him in and let herself be carried away.

TEN

B
ITSY
C
ARMICHAEL STIRRED IN
the warm king-sized bed.
Bacon.
It was the scent of Sunday mornings from her childhood, the boisterous band of young Carmichael girls clamoring around their father as he flipped blueberry pancakes on the electric griddle while a pound of bacon sizzled in the skillet. The big breakfast was followed by the whole family taking the ferry to Manatuck for Mass at St. Catherine’s, because there was no Catholic church on the island. Bitsy smiled and stepped into her pink slippers.