Vultures at Twilight (14 page)

‘You've barely touched your meal,' Ada protested.

‘I don't seem to have much of an appetite.'

‘Occupational hazard?' I asked, finding that the bloody slab of meat in the center of my plate was looking less and less attractive.

She pulled out her wallet and left a twenty under her plate. ‘That should cover it.'

‘Don't be silly,' I said. ‘We'll take care of it.'

‘I can't do that,' said Mattie. ‘You two have been very helpful. Would it be OK if I called on you if I had any questions? And please, call me immediately if Mr Caputo calls.'

‘Of course,' Ada said, speaking for us both.

‘I'd appreciate it,' she said, her voice low. ‘I find myself on the outskirts here.'

‘Grenville is very pretty,' I said, matching my tone to hers. ‘But don't let that fool you. There's a lot below the surface, and we tend to be careful around strangers.'

After Mattie left, we had them doggy bag our mostly uneaten entrées, and ordered crème brûlée and tea.

‘Nice woman, Hispanic, I think.' Ada commented, while breaking the caramel topping. ‘No wedding ring, either. I wonder if she's out of her element in Grenville.'

I was about to respond, when I noticed a look of consternation on Ada's face. ‘What's wrong?'

‘Oh no,' she muttered while twisting up the right side of her mouth.

‘What?'

‘I don't believe I just did that.' She produced something small and white on the tip of her tongue.

‘A tooth?' I asked.

‘No, I should know better than to eat caramel; it's a cap.' She put her hand to the side of her face, ‘and now I've got a little nub in there that in any second will start throbbing.'

‘We need to get you to a dentist.'

‘On a Sunday, good luck. I'll take a couple aspirin and see someone tomorrow.' She examined the porcelain cap in the palm of her hand. ‘At least it seems intact. Maybe they can just glue it back. Ow!' She winced. ‘There it goes.' And she pressed her ice-water glass to the side of her mouth.

SIXTEEN

I
t was clear that Ada was in terrible pain, so halfway to Pilgrim's Progress I made a U-turn and headed back to town. I felt guilty knocking on Calvin Williams' door without at least calling. That, and for the past few years I'd been going to the
Happy Tooth Center
which had an office in Pilgrim's Progress.

The graying dentist, who was six years my junior, came to the door dressed in jeans and a flannel work shirt, his hands covered with dark smudges. ‘Lillian Campbell, you're a sight for sore eyes. You look great.'

‘Thanks Calvin,' I said, not wanting to divulge that I'd changed dentists.

He looked at Ada, who was holding her hand to her right cheek. ‘Not a social visit, I see,' he said, and his smile faltered.

‘No, she pulled off a cap.'

‘Taffy?' he asked, leading us down the walkway of his Main Street colonial, which had been in his family for many generations, toward the addition that held his dental offices.

Ada lisped, ‘Caramel.'

‘Terrible stuff,' he commented, and turned back. He gave me an odd look, and shook his head slightly. ‘It's the strangest thing Lil, I look at you and I can still see the fourteen-year-old girl who used to take care of me. Let me grab my keys, and I'll be right with you.'

‘Nice man,' Ada commented.

‘Very,' I agreed. ‘I used to babysit for him.'

‘I think he's got a crush on you,' she commented.

‘Unlikely,' I said, wondering at her comment, and praying she didn't know just how wrong that statement was. It wasn't Calvin, who'd been like a little brother to me, who had the crush; it was me. And everything about that was wrong.

He reappeared wiping his hands with a blue-checked dishtowel. ‘Let's take a look.'

We trailed behind as he unlocked and let us in. Things looked much the way I remembered, the orange and red chairs in the waiting room, the piles of magazines and the chest of toys for children. But something was different, and at first I couldn't place it.

‘Times sure change,' he commented wistfully as he led us to the treatment rooms.

‘How so?' I asked.

‘I rarely come back here anymore.'

And that's when I remembered, and felt even guiltier about our surprise visit. ‘You closed your practice?' I could have kicked myself; I'd forgotten the mailers that he'd sent following the death of his mother. ‘I must be getting Alzheimer's. I totally blanked out that you closed the practice.' The moment I said that, I could have shot myself, remembering that his mother had Alzheimer's, and how he'd taken care of her for many years.

‘No harm, and it's not like I'm retired; too young and too poor for that. I do a concierge business to a number of the local nursing homes and to Nillewaug Village. It's just me and a hygienist making the rounds. The overhead is minimal and I don't have to deal with the billing and the insurance; it's so much easier.' He turned on the gooseneck lamp and shone it inside Ada's mouth. He flicked down his magnifying glasses. ‘Hmm, the stub looks OK. Are you in much pain?' he asked, stuffing her cheek with cotton.

‘A little,' she mumbled. ‘A lot if I touch it.'

‘Then don't touch it,' he joked. ‘That's the nerve. We don't have to drill, just epoxy it back.'

‘Oh good.'

‘So how's life in Pilgrim's Progress?' he asked, while mixing adhesive.

‘Different,' I said.

‘I sometimes think about going there myself in a few years, but the thought of moving completely overwhelms me.'

‘Your family's been in this house a long time,' I added.

‘Eleven generations, and I'm the last.'

‘No kids?' Ada mumbled.

‘Nope, never went that route. When I go, the historical society can have the house; if they want it. Bite down,' he instructed, ‘and hold for sixty seconds.'

I had such déjà vu, sitting next to him. Like all those times I'd fill in for Bradley's nurse and assisted with patients. Even the mention of billing and insurance, the paperwork nightmare that drove Bradley to close his practice. How many times did I have to fight with some faceless reviewer to get approval for a needed procedure or medication for one of his patients? Often spending whole afternoons faxing and phoning to finally be told, ‘No, we don't cover that.' Or else them insisting Bradley talk to their physician reviewer to plead his patient's case for a critical, but expensive, medication. Each time they'd said ‘no' I could see his rage, his frustration.

‘Open.' He placed a small piece of gauze between her upper and lower teeth. ‘Now rub gently back and forth. How does that feel?'

‘Like it's in place.'

‘Good.'

‘I can't thank you enough Doctor Williams,' Ada gushed.

‘Don't mention it, and the name is Calvin.'

‘I thought I was going to be stuck with a throbbing tooth and I can't stand painkillers,' she added, reaching for her purse.

He held out his hand and shook his head. ‘This one's on the house.'

‘I have to pay you,' Ada argued.

‘No,' he said. ‘Lil and I go way back.' He would have said more, but a phone rang in the outer office. ‘I'll be right back.'

Ada looked at me. ‘What a lovely man. And didn't they stop making that particular model? We should invite him to dinner.'

I started tearing up, and couldn't quite figure out why.

‘What is it, Lil?' Ada asked.

‘I'm not sure. No, that's not true.' I looked around at Calvin's treatment room. It was clear that it had fallen behind the times, but something about it was familiar and wonderful, like Bradley's examination room. ‘It's all going, everything that I took for granted is all slipping away.' But there was more, and I was too frightened to give voice. Like yes, I should invite Calvin to dinner, but why would she suggest that, and why would she think he's interested in me? That was not the relationship I wanted.

‘Things change,' she remarked. ‘They have to.'

Calvin reappeared in the doorway. ‘The old town just ain't what it used to be,' he commented wryly.

‘What?' I asked.

‘That Simpson boy has gotten to be a real pain.'

‘Kevin?'

‘Yeah, he's after me to dig out some ancient dental records.'

‘On whom?' Ada asked.

‘Philip Conroy.'

‘Why?' I asked. ‘I thought they only did that if they didn't know the identity.'

‘I guess the body was in pretty bad shape and they want something additional,' he replied. ‘All I know is that it's going to take forever. My last assistant was alphabetically handicapped. Unfortunately, I didn't discover it until after the damage was done.'

‘Maybe Lil could help you straighten them out; she certainly knows her way around a doctor's office,' Ada offered.

‘Could you?' he asked, meeting my gaze.

‘Of course,' I said, not knowing what else to say, and wishing that Ada hadn't made the offer.

‘You know, I might take you up on that.'

SEVENTEEN

M
attie Perez, wearing purple nitrile gloves stared at the neatly bagged and tagged evidence spread across Hank Morgan's desk. Kevin Simpson looked on from the door, being told by Mattie – not for the first time – to touch nothing. Even so, she'd made him put on gloves.

She softened her gaze and let her mind roam. Her conversation yesterday with the two local women, Lil and Ada, had sparked new possibilities and new concerns.

‘It's a real mystery,' Kevin offered. ‘Hank says that's rare, that most of the time it's pretty obvious who killed who.'

Please shut up
, she thought, wishing she were alone. But she had enough bad cases under her belt to know that it's always best to examine evidence with at least two people in the room. That way if anyone alleges that it's been tampered with you can verify the chain of custody was never compromised. And this was one case where nothing could go wrong. She pictured her boss, Sergeant Ted MacDonald, pot bellied, arrogant and clear on his views about women detectives; he didn't like them. And he would love an excuse – like a high-profile case gone south – to put her in her place.

‘What am I missing?' she muttered. ‘These murders are deliberate, planned, careful.' But just when she thought the road was clear, some new twist emerged. The jewelry was a case in point; where was the rest of it?

‘Hank said Carl had been “gutted like a fish”,' Kevin said enthusiastically.

‘True,' Mattie said, never taking her eyes off the table of evidence, and saying a silent prayer that the swarms of journalists and news crews now flocking to Grenville would not get wind of the gruesome details of McElroy's murder. Like pieces in a puzzle, bullets removed from victims, McElroy's ledgers and customer databases, photos of the bodies and Conroy's finger, autopsy reports, dental reports, recovered jewelry. ‘What am I missing?' Her gaze fell on the blood-smeared auction paddles that had been embedded in McElroy's gut.

‘Whoever killed McElroy,' she said, ‘wanted us to see his scams. The killer – or killers – wasn't subtle; the falsified ledgers, Carl's files filled with the names of local dealers and attorneys . . . There are connections here, Kevin.' She imagined Lil and Ada might know, or at least help her make connections. ‘He was in no hurry.'

‘Why couldn't it be a woman?' Kevin asked.

‘Sure.' His well-intentioned comments were making it hard to focus.
Mattie, you need him, hold your tongue
. ‘But over ninety percent of murders are committed by men. It's “he”, until proven otherwise. According to Arvin's autopsy, cause of death was the gunshot wound, all of this other stuff . . . Somebody is making a point.'
Listen Mattie, the killer is trying to talk to you, what's he saying?
She examined the three gruesome wooden auction paddles that had been tipped with razor blades; the killer had used them like box cutters to flay the auctioneer. It was creative, and horrifying, and told her a number of important things. People in general have an aversion to cutting human flesh, clearly the killer did not, and beyond that had some understanding of human anatomy. The last a bit of insight from the ME who'd commented on how some of the cuts had separated layers of muscle from connective tissue; this was no random hack job.

When she'd compared the numbers on the paddles with last night's bidder list, they had belonged to Pete Jeffries and Salvatore Rinaldo. ‘Murder by number,' she muttered, uneasy with the killer's flourishes; too big, too careless. It made her think of past cases, like Malcolm Blade, a serial sex killer who took out crack addicts in the Frog's Hollow section of Hartford. He, too, had left his calling card, in his case elaborate burn marks on the bodies. But what made her uneasy about the connection was Malcolm's desire to be caught, and to be mowed down in a shooting match with the cops. Perps who didn't want to get caught didn't leave these many clues. While she never associated good mental health with murderers, there was something frightfully unbalanced and reckless in these killings.

‘Crap,' she exclaimed, her frustration mounting, and with it a sick feeling of being led by the nose. ‘The third paddle – number one hundred and eighteen – hadn't been issued last night.' She looked at Kevin. ‘I went back through the records; that one always goes to Rudy Caputo.' He was the dealer who hadn't returned Ada's calls. ‘How come he gets the same number every week, no one else does?'

‘No clue,' Kevin said, edging closer to the table.

‘Three dead dealers, all high-end, high-volume traders. Is someone bumping off the competition? There seem to be enough replacements around. So unless someone is planning a bloodbath through Grenville's hundreds of dealers, it's got to be something else.'