Presumption of Guilt (7 page)

She was nodding in agreement. “Yes. You do.”

“Well, sadly, we've got to upset the applecart, and I'll guarantee you that it'll get confusing, and that your friends and relatives're going to get worked up. It's not anything we want, but we're stuck with it, or we'll never get to the truth.”

“I guess so.”

Joe gave her a supportive smile. “Fair enough. Now, let's step away from some of this emotional stuff for a while and get a few nuts and bolts squared away. Would that be okay?”

“All right.”

“We're still not messing up your plans for the evening? Fixing dinner or going out or anything?”

“No. I'm fine. Thank you for asking.”

Willy saw his chance to smooth out any ripples he might have caused. “The thanks are all ours, Mrs. Mitchell. You've been a big help.”

Joe gave him a sideways glance. His rough-edged colleague was not famous for conciliatory comments.

“Let's start with Robert Barrett, then,” Joe began. “BB—still living in the area?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied, back in conversational mode. “He's retired, but hale and hardy. Married to Number Three.”

“How old is he?” Willy asked.

She actually laughed, to Joe's relief. “He must be almost seventy. I have no idea how he does it, but he'd give most fifty-year-olds a run for their money.”

“And presumably, he's doing well for himself,” Joe surmised.

“Oh, you bet. He's rich. First he sold Ridgeline to Vermont Amalgamated, which was good enough—at least for this town—and he was put on the board. But then, in no time, he turned around and took over Vermont Amalgamated. It was amazing. In fifteen years, he doubled its business and then sold it to some national outfit with initials I can never remember. It doesn't matter, since they've left things alone. If you weren't on the inside, you'd never know Vermont Amalgamated isn't a local business anymore—it's kind of like Ben and Jerry's that way. Anyway, that deal made him millions, on top of what he already had. It's one reason I'm not too proud to accept his generosity now and then. He's rolling in dough.”

“And where's he live?”

She gave them an address on Summit Circle, on the southern outskirts of Brattleboro—an upscale, newly developed area where the police were rarely summoned.

“And your kids?” Joe asked casually. “Still dropping by for the occasional home-cooked meal—maybe with kids of their own? I saw the swing set and toys outside.”

She smiled again. “Well, my daughter does, but I don't get to see them very often. The swing set and the rest are mostly wishful thinking on my part. They do live around here. Greg's in Dummerston, I think, and Julie's in Vernon.” She recited the latter's address, but then stopped, embarrassed. “This'll sound terrible,” she said, “but I don't actually know where Greg is right now. He's going through a difficult phase. His sister knows.”

“That's okay,” Willy said offhandedly. “They both married?”

“Julie's on her second husband. Greg…” Sharon paused again, her expression wistful. “He's had girlfriends, but never married, and now … I guess I'm old-fashioned, but I think it helps a relationship to get married. Anyhow, he broke up with the last one. He's not seeing anyone, as far as I know. But, I probably wouldn't—know, that is. I really only hear about Greg through Julie, and she's too busy to spend much time with me. It's hard to keep all those balls in the air nowadays.”

“Julie has more than one child?” Joe interpreted.

“Three,” Sharon said, raising her eyebrows. “Two by her first husband, one by the second. And they are a handful.”

“She work, too?”

“Oh, yes. Don't they all? She's a secretary at McGee, Conklin, here in town.”

“That's great,” Joe said. “You said they were relatively young when Hank went out of their lives, but they weren't infants. How would you have characterized their relationship with him?”

She shook her head thoughtfully. “He was great with them, and they loved him. They were hurt when he moved out. And when he disappeared, without leaving a word, things went downhill, like I said. To me, that just showed how attached they were to him.”

“So no problems?”

“No. I always thought he was a good father, especially since he wasn't that great a husband.”

Willy cleared his throat to ask, “Did your kids like BB coming around after Hank was gone?”

She frowned at the characterization. “Coming around? He wasn't a stray. BB was a family friend—always had been. Greg and Julie saw him all the time. His affection for me was private. The kids were never aware of it.”

“Let's talk about you and Hank,” Joe said. “What were your major problems?”

“He cheated on me, for one thing,” she said quickly.

“Who with?” Willy wanted to know.

“I don't know. I asked him to give me at least that much respect—to tell me who it was. But he just denied it.”

“There was no doubt about it?”

“No. I found a crumpled love note in his pocket once, when I was doing the laundry. Nothing specific. Just something like ‘I love you,' or whatever; it's been too long and I was pretty upset. Then I began to pay attention, and there were other clues. He'd hang up the phone when I came into the room. I found a movie ticket in his truck for a night when he'd said he was working late. And one night, I even smelled her on him when he came home.”

“But he never fessed up?”

“No. That made me so mad—to be taken for a fool. He said he'd never seen the note, hadn't gone to the movies, and that I was being paranoid about the phone. He wouldn't even talk about what I'd smelled.”

“You said he drank, too.”

She let out a long breath, heavier than a sigh. “Drank, hung out with friends, wouldn't keep his promises. I told him he reminded me of a dog, pulling on his leash all the time. To be honest, I wasn't surprised when I realized he was seeing someone else. It sort of became inevitable.”

“Did he hang out with the same people?” Joe asked. “People we might be able to interview?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. “BB was one of them. They were more like brothers than business partners that way. But I think even BB began to feel bad about how Hank was acting at the end, and BB was no saint.”

“Do you think he knows who the other woman was?”

She frowned in response. “I don't. I asked him, when he was trying to get me to be with him, after Hank left. He suspected something was going on, like I did, but he swore he had no clue who it was, and I believed him.”

“How 'bout Hank's other friends?”

She tilted her head thoughtfully. “Maybe. I only knew two or three of them, anyhow, and I know there were more. But he'd meet them at bars or the bowling alley or wherever, when I'd be home with the kids, so I never knew who they were.”

Willy took a pad out and handed it to her, flipped open to a blank page. “Could you write down any names you can remember?” he asked. “And add anything else, like addresses or workplaces, even hometowns. Anything to help us find them.”

“Of course,” she said, picking up a pen from the coffee table and setting to work as the conversation continued. “It's going to be a pretty rough list. I hope you know that.”

“Not a problem,” Joe reassured her.

“By the way,” Willy asked suddenly, “did you or your husband know anyone named William Neathawk in the late '60s? Worked on the VY project.”

She shook her head, sticking to her writing. “No. Doesn't ring a bell.”

“Tell us about your parents or any siblings,” Joe requested. “They must've been saddened by the way your marriage was going.”

Sharon paused in her task. “My mom was sad, but my dad was a drunk, so he didn't care.”

“Did either of them express any anger toward Hank?”

“My mom figured that was the way all men acted, and my dad … I don't really remember. I think he probably said something like, ‘I knew he was a loser when I met him.' That was how he was.”

“They're both dead?”

“Years ago.”

“And your siblings?”

“I have a brother and a sister. They haven't lived here in forever—couldn't get out of Vermont fast enough.”

“Could you add their information to that list?” Willy requested.

“Of course.” She'd resumed writing, but now looked up to ask, “Are you going to pester all these people?”

“Pester?” Joe came back. “Your husband may've been murdered. You do get that.”

She gave him a level look, and finally spoke with some of the passion he imagined she prided herself on bottling up. “My husband's been dead to me for over forty years, Mr. Whatever-Your-Name-Is. You come in here and say you dug him up, and I'm doing what I can to help. And maybe one of these loser friends of his did hit him over the head with a shovel or a beer bottle. I don't know. But you're wasting your time and our taxpayer money if you think that my daughter or son—or my dead mother—killed him. That's a pile of baloney.”

Joe placed a business card on the table between them. “It's Gunther,” he answered calmly, “and I hear what you're saying, Mrs. Mitchell. And you're probably right. But if you
were
just another taxpayer, you'd want us to solve this thing as fast and as accurately as possible. We can't do that until we know as much about your husband's life as we can.”

She was already waving her fingers at him apologetically, still holding the pen. “I know, I know. This has been a lot to take in, all at once.”

“Don't worry about it,” he quickly soothed her. “We unfortunately do this quite a bit, and believe me, you've been a terrific help. It's a hard thing to process.”

“Thank you,” she said, straightening and pushing the notepad toward Willy, asking, all of a sudden, “What happened to your arm?”

Joe looked at him, unsure of how this poster child for unpredictability would respond.

But Willy simply said, “It was a bullet wound—a line-of-duty thing.”

She gave him a sympathetic smile. “Crazy world. Even up here in the backwoods. You never know what's going to happen.”

“Not till the last second,” he agreed.

 

CHAPTER SIX

“Those shirt stays work out for you?” Lester asked his son, entering the kitchen and tossing a grape into his mouth from a bowl on the counter.

“Yeah. Thanks. Mine kept letting go whenever I got out of the cruiser. I was starting to think I'd just live with tucking my shirt in whenever I had the chance.”

“You boys,” his sister, Wendy, addressed them, her head in the fridge. “It's all about underwear and looking good.”

Her brother threw a piece of the popcorn he was eating at her, hitting her in the back. She withdrew from the fridge with a can of whipped cream in her hand. Dave, still in uniform, recoiled in horror.

“Don't, don't. I can't get this dirty.”

She laughed at him. “I rest my case. You are such a coward.”

“You can't say that. I'm armed.”

She proffered the can threateningly. “And I'm not?”

“Where's Mom?” Lester asked, in part hoping to head off a food fight.

Wendy exchanged her weapon for a casserole dish, which she placed next to the stove. “Had to extend her shift. Someone called in sick at the hospital—there's irony for you. We're on our own tonight, with leftover lasagna.”

“Okay,” Spinney said, as Dave inquired of his father, “You work on that buried body case today?”

“Not much. Today was mostly putting all the pieces on the board—autopsy, background checks, who's who and what's what. The boss and Willy are interviewing the guy's wife right now.”

Dave was beginning to set the kitchen table. “So you know who he is?”

“We think we do.”

Wendy opened the microwave next to the stove and slid in their meal. “We were talking about it at school today. It's like a movie or something. A real whodunit.”

Lester opened a cabinet and lined up three glasses for drinks. “Yeah, with the ‘who' in this case maybe living in an old folks' home. Can you see us walking into some guy's room and trying not to get the cuffs tangled up with his oxygen tubing?”

“That would be awk,” his daughter said.

“You think that's what's going to happen?” Dave asked.

“Beats me. Everyone involved has to be about sixty or older to have been there,” Lester said. “For all we know, the doer's already dead and buried. You go around killing people in your twenties, it generally means you're not an exercise and health food nut.”

“Live by the knife, die by the knife?” Dave said.

Wendy laughed. “Oh, please. Where'd you get that?”

Lester brought the drinks to the table as the microwave's dinger went off. “It may sound like an old radio show,” he said. “But Dave's right. Most of the bad guys we deal with come from the same group of fifty to a hundred people, more or less. It's like they're on a merry-go-round. They just can't stop making all the wrong choices.”

Wendy delivered the lasagna as they sat down to eat. “Sounds kind of hopeless, if you ask me.”

“Dad,” his son asked, “isn't it a fact that if you've got a tough case with no leads, sometimes the best thing to do is nothing, 'cause someone's going to blab and spill the beans?”

“Often, yeah.”

Dave continued. “Well, then it sounds like you're stuck tween a rock and a hard place, 'cause that would've happened by now, right? Which means you're not dealing with the same bunch of losers who can't get out of their own way.”

“Don't you sound like Sherlock Holmes,” Wendy said.

“He's probably right, though,” Lester confirmed, dishing out the food. “The killer could've been grabbed right after and put in jail for who-knows-what; he might've died robbing a bank, taking his secret with him; or just maybe, he got away with it because it was either a random act of violence, or very carefully planned.”