McMansion (9 page)

Chapter Ten

“I'm Jennifer.”

Maybe Jennifer had ignored the Don't-Top-Off warning at the self-service pump. Or maybe she'd just been gassing up her chainsaw. Or maybe she had stood downwind of the fire. But I saw no chainsaw. Nor did I smell smoke on her clothes.

She said, “I have to speak to you.”

“About what?”

“Jeffrey told me you could help.”

“Jeffrey?”

She looked alarmed and even younger. “Jeffrey! You talked to him. In jail?”

“Oh—I'm sorry. Jeff Kimball. Totally out of context….Of course. You're friends?” Of course. Jennifer and the spray-painting elf were about the same young age.

“Could we talk?”

“Do you have a car?”

“My van's back there.” She pointed way down the road through the storm of apparatus, people, and cars. A yellow VW microbus was parked on the shoulder at the end of the gawkers' row of cars and trucks.

“Well, if you'd like, drive me back to town and we'll have a drink at the Yankee Drover. Or a Coke.”

Her VW bus was old and looked as quaint as a sepia print of oxcarts on Main Street. The yellow paint had been brushed on by hand, and the entire vehicle was ringed with scenes of animals scampering in rain forests under the loving gaze of long-haired, half-naked hippies. Many of the slogans pasted in the windows and affixed to the bumpers were as up-to-date as “Solar Power” and “Real Men Don't Hit Women”; others were older, all the way back to a faded “Make Love Not War.”

“Borrowed from your grandfather?” I asked, and ran my fingers around her gas cap.

“No,” she answered seriously. “I bought it in Indiana.”

My fingers came away from her gas cap dry as a bone. And whatever they smelled of did not include gasoline. I stood in the road and held up my hand for traffic while Jennifer backed and filled until she got it turned around. We clattered back to Newbury and parked in front of the Yankee Drover. Jennifer asked for white wine. Anne Marie carded her—casting me a pitying look—and returned her drivers license, which was from Michigan, saying, “Happy birthday.”

Jennifer answered with a steeliness beyond her years, “Last month,” and said to me, “could we sit at a table?”

I found a quiet, empty one in the corner, tilted my Pellegrino at Jennifer, and said, “Is it Jeff you want to talk about?”

“Yes.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” Nice thing about talking to a twenty-one-year-old, you can be direct like a scary professor or a brave parent.

“No.”

“Just a friend?”

“We met at Seattle.”

She said “at,” not “in.” I matched my grammatical observation to the slogans on her van, her sober gaze, and Jeff's penchant for spray-painting Earth Liberation slogans and asked, “At the demonstration?”

“Yes.”

“What was that, about three years ago?”

“Six.”

“They sort of tore the town up, didn't they?”

She finally smiled. “We sure did.” And as quickly unsmiled. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Hey, I'm as anti-suburban sprawl, contra-globalization as the next guy. But I'm also adverse to throwing bricks and setting fire to SUVs. Although if I were to change my mind about setting fires it would probably be to an SUV.”

“Jeff said you understood.”

“You and Jeff must have been pretty young back in Seattle. When did you see him next?”

“What are you going to do for him?” Nice thing about being twenty-one, no one insists you beat around the bush.

“Strictly speaking, I'm not doing anything for Jeff. I'm working for his lawyer. His lawyer is who you should ask. I'm just helping out.”

“But Jeff said you were cool.”

I drew back in my best (stiffest) Main Street, Newbury, Connecticut, New England stance. “Cool, maybe, but not stupid.”

It went right over her head. “No, he didn't say you were stupid.”

“Two compliments in as many seconds.”

That went over her head, too. Which I'm sure didn't bother her one whit because she said, “Jeff is innocent.”

“Good. I am so glad to hear that.”

“You are?”

“Do you have any evidence that might help his case? Like you were at the movies with him that afternoon and it was just somebody who looked like him that was sitting on the bulldozer on top of the murder victim?”

“You're joking about something that is not funny.”

“I know it's not funny. But it's not fantasy, either.”

She blinked.

I said, “You're his friend. Tell me something, anything, that will help him.”

“He wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“I spent three years incarcerated in Leavenworth Penitentiary. Most of my fellow prisoners had used that same line as their defense. Some even got their mothers to testify they wouldn't hurt a fly.”

“You were in jail?”

“Jail is temporary. When they've got you for good it's called prison.”

She stared at me.

I said, “So please don't tell me that I'm joking about something that is not funny. I know what's not funny. And your friend is looking at prison for life if I can't find a way out for him.”

“What if he did it?”

“Then prison is where he belongs.”

“I didn't mean that. I mean he didn't do it.”

“I hope you're right.”

“If you only hope, why are you helping?”

I didn't tell her about Alison's horse. I didn't have to. I didn't tell her about disliking Billy and his McMansions, either. I didn't remind her that in her recent high school years they must have taught her that in America you were innocent until proven guilty. Instead, I said, “Here's what troubles me about the open and shut case against Jeff Kimball. Prosecutors prosecute. It's what they do. I've got a cat who lives in my barn who kills mice, squirrels, possums, and weasels. That's what he does, stalks and kills. What my cat does not do is entertain second thoughts. Which makes him very dangerous to mice, squirrels, possums, and weasels. Prosecutors, in common with my cat, do not entertain second thoughts, either, which makes them very dangerous to the innocent.”

I was speaking partly from the heart, partly to soften her up for a big question.

“Their goal is to convict. They will take any conviction over no conviction. When they win a conviction, they don't look back. They go looking for another. So I'm helping because in a case as open and shut as their case against your friend Jeff, the prosecutors are not entertaining second thoughts or any other possibilities.”

“Possibilities. You mean other suspects?”

“They don't want other suspects.”

“What if the killer had help?”

“They've already got the killer—” I raised my hand to quell protest. “They think they do. They are sure they do. They are positive they do. They don't want to muddy the water. The only way they will accept another killer is if the guy they've already got fingers his accomplice. Which would give them two convictions. But they're not going to go around to every friend of Jeff's and ask, ‘Where were you last Sunday afternoon?'”

“But don't they want to catch the real killer?”

“In their minds they have. Where were you last Sunday afternoon—”

“Me?”

“—is a question they don't want to ask. But since we're on the subject, where were you? Last Sunday afternoon.”

“I don't have to tell you that.”

“I thought you want to help Jeff.”

“I do. But I don't want to tell you where I was.”

“Then don't.”

“I wasn't in Connecticut.”

“I am not relieved to hear that.”

“Why not?”

“I was hoping you would tell me that you were with Jeff until moments before he was arrested and that you could testify to his state of mind which was not the state of mind of a man about to kill another man.”

“Well, I can't. I was in Pennsylvania.”

“Did anyone see you there?”

“I don't know. I mean I was just driving through.”

“Fortunately, you're not a suspect,” I said cheerfully. “In Billy Tiller's murder. Are you a member of ELF also?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you allied with the Earth Liberation Front.”

“I wouldn't tell you if I was.”

“But are you?”

“People who serve ELF do not undercut their ability to serve by turning themselves in to the cops.”

“Jeff's quite open about it. Of course he's already gotten caught spray-painting ‘E. L. F.' Which is why the prosecutor is not going around asking such questions of other people. Even people like you driving around without an alibi.”

“That's ridiculous. I don't need an alibi.”

“For now, at least. They like the easy way. Which is why they're always trying to gut the Constitution.” And now for the question. “May I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Something personal.”

She turned from me. Away she was quite beautiful. Facing me she threw up so many masks that her beauty was lost. “Not if you're going to hit on me.”

“You're too young to hit on.”

“Everybody hits on me.”

“Would you rather no one noticed you?”

“Yes.”

“Would you give me your hand for a moment?”

“You are hitting on me.”

“Just for a moment. I'll give it right back. I promise.”

Reluctantly, she extended her hand, then stiffened as I drew it to my face.

I said, “May I ask?”

“What?”

“Why do you smell of gasoline?”

Chapter Eleven

Jennifer stood up so quickly she knocked over her glass. I caught it, saving the glass, if not the wine. She shoved past me and banged out the door. Anne Marie hurried over with a towel. “Did the girl come to her senses?”

“No. I did.”

Sort of. Truly sensible, I suppose I would have telephoned 911. I mean wouldn't anyone who smelled gasoline right after an arson fire? I told myself I definitely would have if anyone had been killed or injured. As it was, Dave Goldsmith's financial troubles notwithstanding, I guess I felt a certain empathy for an arsonist who targeted SUVs. Hardly civilized. Hardly even civic minded, depending on your definition of “civic minded,” which in my book—the OED on my hard drive, when I walked home from the Drover to look it up—means “public spirited.”

The editors quoted a music critic named Neville Cardus on the subject: “He was not civic-minded and could never be trusted at a garden party.”

If there was one place I could be trusted it was at a garden party. Most of the time.

While I was at it I looked up “bulldozer” to see if Sherman knew what he was talking about. Not completely it turned out. The name came from an old American South construct of “bull dose,” original meaning an extra heavy dose of “medicine” as in flogging a slave to death or dragging someone out of his house while holding a large pistol to his head.

Already at the computer, I went on line to TireRack and read a bunch of consumers reviews and professional evaluations of automobile tires—four of which my ancient, lovingly maintained Oldsmobile would be needing in a few thousand miles. Tires were nothing I skimped on because the old car was drastically overpowered. It had started out life as my father's staid sedan in the long-ago days when no self-respecting Newbury Realtor would be caught dead in a Mercedes. When I inherited it, my cousin Renny Chevalley, who was a gifted mechanic, had swapped out the silly original motor for a bored and stroked Caddy he had pulled from a wreck.

Renny had been my childhood best friend and I loved the car. After Renny was killed—murdered—Pink had taken over the garage and maintained the Olds like a shrine to his little brother. When called upon it still could, in Pink's parlance, eat Corvettes and BMWs for breakfast. So it needed and deserved great tires. To my surprise, when it came to precise handling and adhering to the road in the rain, TireRack's surveys all concluded that the new Goodyear Triple-Tred outperformed the classy favorites Michelin and Pirelli. I was dubious about a rubber company's inability to spell the word tread. But I took a chance and I ordered four tires for the amount of money that Pink would cheerfully charge for two and arranged to ship them directly to Chevalley Enterprises Garage to mount and balance them at a price to be negotiated.

Before signing off, I checked the local banks' mortgage rates, which had been yo-yo-ing almost daily. I saw that despite the Fed's darnedest efforts, the markets would continue to allow home buyers to spend money they shouldn't. I was pouring a celebratory malt whisky when I heard a knock at the front door. Not a door usually knocked upon. Kitchen door for friends, side door to the glassed-in sunroom real estate office for business.

I opened and looked straight into the eyes of Jennifer, who was standing on a lower step. “I'm sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“For running away. But you frightened me. I travel a lot. I always feel I'm a stranger. In small towns I'm always afraid of being stopped by the police.”

“Now you smell of soap,” I said. “The kind you find in the Frenchtown Diner wash room.”

“I washed my hands. Could I come in, please?”

“Sure.”

She stepped inside, looked around, partially smiled. “I love old-smelling houses like this.”

“The mold or the furniture polish?”

“Both. I was like a relo child? My parents were always moving. They had to buy tract houses, 'cause they're easy to sell when you get transferred again? But I always tried to make friends with somebody at school who lived in a house like this. If you thought that I started that fire why didn't you call the police?”

“Because I didn't smell gas inside your bus, so I told myself that you hadn't carried a can of it in the bus.”

“I can't tell when you're telling the truth.”

That made two of us. I said, “Let's talk about Jeff. You met rioting in Seattle. When did you hook up again?”

“We didn't ‘hook up' that way.”

Another reminder that I was talking to a younger person. I meant “meet.” She meant something more entwining.

“When did you next meet?”

“Iowa.”

Time and place seemed one with her. As if she lived in events, event by event.

“Where else did you meet?”

“Michigan, last time. Oregon. He came out to Montana, after New Hampshire.”

“Let me guess, you were Deanies.”

“We were trying to take our country back.”

“What I liked most about your candidate,” I told Jennifer, “was that he made it seem stupid and lazy to be a cynic.”

I was preaching to the choir, of course and when I got the smile I expected I said, “So what do you want to do for Jeff?”

“Can we get him out on bail?”

“No. They don't give bail to murder suspects. Particularly to murder suspects who travel as much as Jeff did.”

Jennifer said, “Wouldn't it be helpful if you were able to discover who really killed that disgusting developer?”

“Well, that's kind of what I've been trying to do. Without a lot of success. I mean I've found plenty of people with motivation. And a few with the means—if you can call the ability to drive a bulldozer the means. But I don't see any of them as doing it.”

“I want to help him.”

“Well, in a way you already have.”

“How.”

“You've nudged my thinking in a new direction.”

“What direction?”

“Let me sleep on it. There's some people I want to talk to in the morning.”

I stood up. Jennifer didn't.

I moved toward the front door.

Jennifer said, “Can you recommend a place to stay tonight? That's not very expensive.”

Anne Marie had started renting B&B rooms upstairs at the Drover. Each room had a name. The Pumpkin Room, the color. The Hills had a view. The Organza Suite, famous for clouds of cloth billowing about a king-size four poster, had been re-dubbed by Newburians drinking downstairs the Orgasm Suite. Organza, however, did not come cheap and the only place “not very expensive” was a ratty motel ten miles down Route Seven. I said, “It's kind of late to go looking. You can stay in my guest room, tonight.” I emphasized “tonight” as in “tonight only.”

She said, “My job starts tomorrow.”

Surprised, I asked, “Doing what?” She didn't seem the job type.

“I'm in the Northwest Connecticut Landfill Reclamation project.”

“That's a great project. The Audubon Society got behind that.”

It was north of Newbury, up in the woods. I knew it as the Jervis Dump, a swamp that generations of the close-knit, inbred Jervis clan—who traded guns, ecstasy, high-test marijuana, and untaxed booze and cigarettes with their Canadian cousins—had found convenient to make inconvenient things disappear. Audubon would unearth fewer surprises reclaiming the La Brea Tar Pits. “What will you be doing there?”

She became animated. “I'm in a work study program. From school? I'm studying environmental engineering.”

“Where?”

“Montana Tech.”

“How'd you get to Connecticut from Butte?”

“I applied for the site characterization study. So we'll know what we'll find and how it will influence the economics. Will there be methane? Can we reclaim it? Will there be subsidence when we excavate? How will the contents affect the equipment? Reclaimed waste is abrasive. How much will that abrasiveness shorten the life of excavation equipment?”

Maybe she
was
the job type. She suddenly sounded more like an academic than a barn burner. Maybe she hadn't torched forty SUVs after all. I got her settled and showed her the shower and found her a terry robe. Then I went to my own room and lay awake for quite a while.

I wondered why couldn't I answer what was it about Jeff Kimball that made me doubt he had killed Billy Tiller. As for the unlovable, unlamented Billy, I found myself marveling at his meteoric rise. While Billy was not the only ne'er do well in Newbury to inherit a valuable chunk of free land—there was too much in-breeding to prevent that—none I could think of had ever made such a success of it.

Jennifer had raised an interesting question about the killer having help. Two killers? Maybe his victims had formed a committee. But on the subject of two, was I seeking the wrong sort of “other suspect” for the wrong motivation? Had I gotten stuck in the able-to-drive-a-bulldozer approach, while I should have been asking who—who could drive or hire a bulldozer—who was also capable of spraying Main Street with bullets? Put another way, was Billy Tiller really so thoroughly awful that not one, but two separate individuals would risk a murder conviction for the pleasure of killing him?