McMansion (23 page)

“Almost a copy. Structures at either end connected by walls. Scaled down.” She could have been sitting on four aces or a four flush and I hadn't a clue which, especially when she said, “So why are we having lunch?”

“The garden cinched the deal.”

“Well, it's like my garden, but I don't follow.”

“Not only your design. It was weeded so beautifully.”

She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Not beautifully, Ben. Lovingly.”

“I give up,” I said. “You're an absolute master. I have no clue what was going on.”

“Well, it wasn't what you thought.”

“Can I ask what it was?”

“An infatuation experienced by a lonely man.”

She looked out the window and watched cars go by on Main Street. I watched her eye trace the gardens across the street and settle on something. I couldn't see what unless I turned around, but I suspected it was the hints of color through Connie's fence.

“And an unfortunate kindness on my part. Which only made it worse.”

She finally looked down at the table, saw the ice tea that had arrived without either of us noticing, and looked up at me.

“I was never considered attractive until I was sometime in my thirties. When the change occurred it was absolutely thrilling. It might not make up for all the adolescent years of feeling plain. But it is a kick. You walked into my house with Connie's plant and I could see in every gesture and expression that you would give anything to jump my bones.”

“You should see me when I'm not subtle.”

She did not hear me.

“I hadn't yet realized the change a few years ago when Billy first walked into my house. It would never have occurred to me that he would see me as anything other than Edward's plump, dowdy wife. So it never occurred to me when I befriended the poor, lonely man, that he would fall in love with me. That he would drive Edward absolutely nuts.”

Nuts enough to spray Main Street with gunfire. Did she know it was him who had shot Billy? Did she know he had told me?

“Where did that leave you?”

“Destroyed by guilt and remorse.”

At that she stopped talking. She looked out the window, looked back at me, looked out the window again, and I believe that if I hadn't prompted her, she would have eaten an entire lunch without another word.

“I met you the day of the funeral. You seemed…”

“Dry-eyed?”

“Unmoved.” Not a woman who had lost her lover. E. Eddie Edwards was right that they had broken it off a year ago when he shot Billy.

“I'd had time to get over it. Though I was surprisingly upset the day he was killed. I sort of wanted to go to the funeral, but I knew it would kill Edward, so I brought a flower to the funeral home. Probably more for me than poor Billy.”

“Are you aware that you are registered as a principal of Total Landscape Corporation.”

She looked puzzled, then irritated. “Of course. I sign papers all the time.”

“Did Billy know that your name was added?”

“I don't know. Probably not.”

“What kind of papers do you sign?”

“Whatever Edward asks.”

“Do you ever worry it could put you at risk?”

“Of course not,” she said, clearly annoyed. “Edward would not do anything to hurt me. He loves me.”

She told a great story. I believed her so totally that I wondered if I shouldn't. Three down? Two friends to go? I did not know.

We parted stiffly after lunch.

***

I checked my messages. Bruce Kimball had left one on my cell. “His Honor will see you in his chambers at four o'clock.” I looked at my watch, jumped in the Fiat, and raced south.

Chapter Twenty-six

Judge Clarke's clerk was waiting just inside the Court House metal detectors, looking at her watch. Something set off the machines and we had to wait while I removed my belt and my shoes. Two guards wanded me. Then they asked me to step behind a screen, where they frisked me thoroughly.

“Sorry I'm late. Long run in bad traffic.”

“His Honor waited for you,” was her cold reply.

“This security stop didn't help either.”

“His Honor had me alert the judicial marshals about your graduation from Leavenworth.”

“Well you can tell His Honor the only metal they found was in my teeth.”

Once his door was shut and we were alone in his chambers, Judge Clarke said, “So what can I do for you, Ben?”

“You could start by canceling this speeding ticket I just got trying get here on time.”

He laughed amiably. “I'm afraid not, Ben. One little indiscretion leads to another and soon one is careering down that water slide into the swamp.”

Considering his history in Newbury, I thought he was pushing it a bit with the water analogies. Or was he was boasting how Billy Tiller's death had freed him from a bribery investigation.

“Sit down, Ben.” He indicated the couch and we settled there, backs propped against the arms with a few feet of space between us. His chambers looked like a comfortable, book-lined law office, with decent state-purchased wooden furniture. Blinds were partially closed against the early evening sun, which was lighting the air pollution a rich shade of red. On Clarke's desk was a framed photograph of his girlfriend and her dog, and another of him with his arms around a twenty-something man and woman who were probably his kids from an earlier life.

“So what would you like to talk about?”

I said, “I don't believe that Jeff Kimball killed Billy Tiller.”

“Despite his confession.”

“Despite his confession.”

“So your first question will be, ‘Do you know how drive a bulldozer? Like the one that flattened Billy Tiller.'”

“We could start there.”

“No,” he said. “Never drove one of those. Then you'll ask whether I hired someone to flatten Billy with his bulldozer. My answer is no, though I am fully aware it is hard to prove a negative. But you'll ask anyway if I could somehow prove that. And I will answer, no. While noting that there is no evidence of a second operator on the bulldozer. Do you have any more questions?”

Bruce Kimball had assured me that he had forked over no more than a small down payment for Clarke to talk to me. “A long list,” I said.

“Go right ahead. I've cleared my entire schedule. We can talk all night, if you like. Ask me anything you like. Did I kill Billy Tiller? No. Am I glad he's dead? Nothing personal against Billy, but yes, he had the potential to become a problem. When a man is as crooked as he was, he is eventually going to get caught for some crime and when he is caught he will do damage to his friends while attempting to save his own skin. So yes, my friend Mr. Kimball's son did me and any number of people a huge favor, inadvertently, when he killed Billy Tiller.”

“You're home free?”

“Well, I always had the right to be, but now I have the reality as well. My fear was that Billy would name my name in return for a lighter sentence and that even though I did nothing wrong, I would be ruined.”

“If you did nothing wrong, what could Billy say about you?”

“He could say I took bribes to overrule Newbury P&Z in his favor. I did overrule P&Z in his favor, but I didn't take bribes from him.”

“Why did you rule for him?”

“I thought he had the better case.”

“Why?”

“I don't remember the details right now. Is it that important?”

“You yourself just said there's a suspicion of bribery.”

“No. There is no suspicion of bribery. The man who would have paid such bribes no longer exists. At least in bodily form. I don't speak for Heaven and Hell.”

“Does the same hold for your earlier service in Family Court?”

“Same situation,” the judge smiled. “Dead men don't turn state's witness.”

I get up from the couch and stood with the blinds behind me. “The reason I'm late is I got lost on the way down. Overshot the Court House, ended up driving around a ritzy neighborhood on the Long Island Sound. Water views to kill for. Gorgeous old houses. Beautifully kept up. I saw one that had been completely renovated, with a replica gate house added on as a kind of a guest cottage. Up in Newbury a job like that would run half a million at least. Down here, on the Gold Coast, wow. Almost incalculable unless you had a builder in the family.”

“Very fucking funny, Abbott,” said Judge Clarke. He stood too, moved to the center of the room and folded his arms.

I said, “The trouble with taking cash bribes is you have to launder them. The trouble with taking service bribes is that they're hard to hide. Especially from the tax man.”

“Tiller is dead. He's gone. He doesn't exist.”

“Lucky, lucky you. Unless the guy you hired gets in trouble, and then you're right back where you started.”

“Hired? What are you talking about? Tiller's crews did the work. I didn't hire anyone.”

“I meant to drive the bulldozer.”

“There was no bulldozer. Well, I guess there was a backhoe to dig the cellar. Why are you staring at me?”

“I'm referring to the bulldozer that killed Billy Tiller.”

Judge Clarke laughed.

“What's funny,” I asked. “We're discussing the homicide of a human being.”

Judge Clarke sat down at his desk, made a tent of his hands, and smiled at the imaginary contents. “I am a far simpler person than you seem to assume. Until I was forty-seven years old I behaved myself as I was supposed to. I did well in school. I went to law school. I worked for a respectable firm. I finally made partner. Nothing spectacular, but nothing to be ashamed of, either. I was married. I had children—all doing well in their own careers, thank you for asking. When I was forty-seven I had an affair with a law clerk, a young lady just out of school, who was nowhere as attractive a woman as my own wife, but deeply passionate. If you've ever been there, you know that such an experience changes the course of your life.

“Having broken one rule—the proscription against adultery—and having discovered impoverishment, thanks to an expensive divorce, it was almost logical, shall we say, to revisit, shall we say, certain other rules—thievery, bearing false witness. But only those rules. I still attend mass. I still go to confession. I am devoted to my elderly mother. And ever since I built the guest cottage for my place on the water, I do not covet my neighbor's house or anything in it, including his new girlfriend, who, even if she is only the thirty-nine she claims, is still nearly double the age of mine. Having confessed simple sins, Mr. Abbott, I find it very easy to look you in the eye…” He folded his hands and looked me in the eye. “…and say to you that I could not even imagine committing murder. Much less hire some miscreant to do it for me.”

“Subverting the legal system is not a simple sin.”

“We are discussing murder. I am not a murderer.”

“Even if murder was absolutely the only way that you could protect all these revisited pleasures?”

“I got lucky when Tiller was killed. I didn't kill him. And I don't give a damn if you believe me or not because I know that I didn't do it and therefore I have nothing to fear.”

“Who do you think did?”

“Sadly, my friend Kimball's son. The boy who confessed.”

I said, “Your friend is paying you a bunch of money to give me a break. In some ways you knew Billy Tiller better than anybody. Who else might have experienced a ‘great favor' when Billy was killed?”

“Who else did he bribe?”

“Exactly.”

Clarke hesitated. Then he answered carefully. “I have no personal knowledge. But once he boasted that he had some state EPA official in his pocket. I have no idea who. He never mentioned it again.”

“A state official? Wasn't the state investigating him?”

“Not about that, to my knowledge. If so, same story. And yet another reason I am in the debt of Mr. Kimball's son.”

***

The next day, I finally got over to Connie's. “Sorry I took so long to get back to you. I got all tied up with Kimball. Boy, you really stuck to Kimball, the other day.”

“I like Mr. Kimball.”

“You like Kimball?”

“He's redeemable. As I told you, he hasn't a self-conscious bone in his body. It's better for society to have new money with new ideas rather than aping their so-called betters.”

“New ideas?”

“We should observe new worlds with a clear eye, not automatically decry change because we happen to fear our youth passing away.”

“Anyway, sorry I'm so late getting back to you.”

“Back to me for what?”

“Air guitar.”

“Oh, Ben, that silly phrase. Did I say that again?”

“You told me that you remembered air guitar.”

“I don't remember.”

“You said you wrote it down.”

“Did I? Well let's go see.”

We went to her writing desk, in the bay window of her morning room. She snatched up sheet of note paper, which lay on the blotter. “Look at this. Air guitar. All right. Sit down, Ben. Sit down.”

I perched on a chair originally upholstered for a small Victorian lady. Aunt Connie sat at her desk and read her notes. “Oh, yes, of course. ‘Mulch without flowers is like air guitar.' I am so relieved. It makes perfect sense.”

“Could you, uhm, draw the connections for me?”

“Do you remember when air guitar started?”

“Not really. You're talking about kids pretending to play an imaginary electric guitar?”

“It is the saddest thing. A young person who has never learned a skill—never had a teacher, never practiced, never drilled, never played scales, never learned a chord—jumps about strumming the air, pretending to have skills, while others with no skills applaud. I remember, now, I was talking about Samantha's boots.”

“Samantha—E. Eddie's great-grandmother. You said she wore boots, like a Polish peasant.”

“It's not about the boots.”

“All right,” I said. “Although from where I am sitting Great-grandmother Samantha and air guitar are quite a leap.”

“It's about Eddie Edwards' great-grandmother.”

“That's who we were talking about the other day.”

“Samantha used her peasant image to great advantage. When someone came to her to buy land, she would pretend to be an ignorant old woman. But all the while she'd be worming out of them why they wanted the land. When she saw they were assembling a parcel for development, she would buy the key lots out from under them. A very clever woman. She always took the long view. She bought on both sides of the Merritt Parkway, before it was built.”

“Wow. Did she leave all that to Eddie?”

“No, she gave it to the church. The priests started coming around and before she died she gave it all to the church.”

“He must have loved that.”

“She did the right thing. Engineer Edwards is perfectly capable of earning his own living. I mean, you wouldn't want me to leave everything to you, would you?”

“Honestly?” Inheriting her wealth was a compelling thought that had never been on the table. “I'm fine,” I said. “I'm glad you're leaving the land to Newbury Forest. Protecting open space in large chunks.”

“And my house?”

“I love this house. But only an entire museum staff could keep it the way you do. So leaving it to the Historical Society is a much better idea. I can always visit.”

“And my money? Such as it is.”

“I don't know, Connie. I mean I wouldn't do anything different if I had more of it.”

“Exactly. You've got the house your mother gave you and you're perfectly capable of paying your way. The last thing I want to leave behind is a dreary trust fund child—Did I tell you that Samantha Edwards had a clever trick when she wanted to buy land? She always had an old farmer to buy for her.”

“A front.”

“She kept the prices low, and her competitors off balance. They never knew where she would turn up next.”

“What did she give the farmer?”

“Haying rights, I'd imagine. Enough to keep him loyal.”

“I wonder if E. Eddie is a chip off the old block?”

Connie said, “He seems as clever from what I've seen. Oh, Ben, I'm so glad I remembered. I hate when thoughts disappear. It's the long view that counts.”

Had Evil Engineer Edwards learned the long view at the old lady's knee? He had certainly been standing close by when Billy Tiller inherited his uncle's farm.

“Ben, would you like tea?”

“Actually I think I'm going to head over to the White Birch.”

“Must you?”

“I'm feeling a sudden, powerful urge.”

“One of these days those rapscallions will start a gunfight and you'll be caught in a cross fire.”

“Come on, Connie. They never have gunfights this early in the afternoon.”

In fact, things were starting to heat up at the White Birch. My conversation with Wide Greg was interrupted, repeatedly, by thirsty customers. Sans interruptions, it went like this:

“I guess you heard what happened to the Olds.”

“Tough break. That was a fine machine.” High praise from a man who did not believe in more than two wheels on any one vehicle.

“I want to meet a guy named Angel.”

“Come on, Ben, you don't want to get into a revenge thing.”

“I just want to do business with the man.”

“Can't help you.”

“Greg, I just want a chance to sit down and talk to the man.”

“Well, he won't want to talk to you. The man's not responsible for how an individual chooses to use his product.”