“I guess they didn’t catch the intruder,” Lucy then says and Marino glares at her.
“If you did what I think, just tell me why,” he says loudly.
“I can suggest why someone would,” she replies. “If you want to walk around and to see what’s going on, you have to take out those cameras. The ones along the driveway you can dodge but not until you’ve gotten past the barn unless you want to swim across the pond.”
“Two detectives show up and this intruder’s still walking around?” Marino is getting louder, almost yelling at her.
“They’d be looking in the barn where all the expensive horses are. Then they’d check the locks of everything else to make sure there wasn’t a problem. Then they’d call it a night.”
“Why would someone want to see what’s here?” Marino’s demeanor has gone from cocky and angry to incredulous.
“Maybe not to see what but who. Who he was sleeping with.”
“And was that determined?” Marino’s look turns to disbelief.
“You could ask the two detectives who showed up.” Lucy gestures toward the house. “But by the time they got here twenty-three minutes after Lombardi called nine-one-one Gail was long gone,” she says.
“Jesus Christ, it would have been nice if you’d fucking told me that earlier!” Marino’s frustration erupts. “Gail Shipton’s here Friday night and now she’s been murdered and you just mention it as a by the way?”
“I’ve known for a while she’s in collusion with the enemy, probably involved in insurance fraud and who knows what else,” Lucy says. “I’ve been trying to find an answer that’s provable.”
“Sleeping with the guy she’s suing,” Marino exclaims in disgust.
“Not because she wanted to,” Lucy says. “She needed money.”
35
“You said there are three,” I prompt Marino because I have a job to do.
I don’t have time to question Lucy further and maybe I don’t want to hear another word about what Gail Shipton had gotten into and what Carin Hegel will do when she finally finds out. Her case is over anyway. Lucy’s right. There isn’t one. It turned into a lie, a ruse. Double S made Gail desperate for money and what could be greater leverage than to wound someone and then offer to make the person whole again. And she was weak, maybe flawed beyond repair in more ways than one. Not just her heart with its leaky valve but all of her.
“Got no idea about the third victim,” Marino tells me. “She was in the kitchen when he attacked her, maybe opening the refrigerator or getting something out of a cupboard. You’ll see when you get there.”
“The staff doesn’t know who it is?” It’s hard for me to believe.
“They said Lombardi picked up somebody at the commuter rail station in downtown Concord this morning. They don’t know who, just that Lombardi left in his white Navigator and came back and had someone with him who obviously ended up being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That’s all they know but they’re probably lying.”
“Why would they lie?” Lucy asks.
“Because they’re probably used to lying about everything that goes on here,” Marino says. “Unlike the other two, she didn’t go down like a shot. I’m thinking the first slice didn’t get her right because she turned her head, maybe heard him coming up behind her. And then he finished her.” He makes a slashing motion with an imagined knife. “She walked a couple steps and collapsed where her body is behind a counter.”
“Have you found a weapon?” Lucy walks the length of the veranda, looking up at cameras and out at trees.
“Nope.” The way he stares at her is different now.
“And the guy in the hoodie wasn’t spotted with a weapon when he was running through the park,” she says.
“Nope. Haley Swanson wasn’t noted to have a weapon. That’s who we’re talking about.”
“Just because he was wearing a sweatshirt with Marilyn Monroe on it? You know for a fact who it is?” Lucy says.
“It’s unusual and that’s what Swanson had on this morning when he was questioned by police after being spotted near your aunt’s house. Two plus two, right?”
“As long as it doesn’t equal twenty-two,” Lucy says.
“Maybe Swanson was doing PR for them.”
“And part of doing PR was to kill Gail and spy on my aunt?” Lucy says. “I assume you think Swanson’s responsible for all of it.”
Marino doesn’t say anything. I can tell by the way he’s looking at her he has a begrudging respect and he’s gone from wanting Lucy out of his way to trying to figure out how he can use her.
“Has anybody touched the body in the kitchen or the other two?” I ask.
“Video and photographs and that’s it. I made sure everybody knows to give them a wide berth. But we won’t be able to keep the Feds out of here for long.”
“You won’t be able to keep them out of here at all,” Lucy says.
“You’d better make hay while the sun shines,” Marino says to me.
“And no one has so much as a clue who the dead lady in the kitchen might be.” It’s hard for me to believe no one does.
“We’ve not let anybody in here to take a look. Only essential personnel — in other words, cops.” Marino leans his shoulder against the doorframe.
He absently stares at his gloved hand, a yellowish nicotine stain on it that he rubs with his thumb. He’s been smoking up a storm and I wonder how many butts he has in his pocket. At least he knows better than to drop them at a crime scene.
“We can’t exactly have an open house,” he says. “A ranch hand or the housekeeper comes in and leaves DNA everywhere or starts touching things or puking.”
“Their DNA would be in here anyway,” Lucy says.
“I also don’t intend to walk around showing the staff photographs of dead people with their necks sawed through,” Marino retorts.
“But you’ve checked with them to see who should have been inside the house,” Lucy says.
“Jesus. Now I’ve got two of you on my ass.”
“I know who works here,” Lucy states in a way that conveys she’s not being difficult or even personal with him. “Names, ages, addresses. I know a lot more than I wish I did about these assholes. Describe the unidentified victim.”
“About your size, about your age,” he says. “Early thirties, I’m guessing as best I can because she doesn’t look so hot with her head practically cut off. Short dark hair. White. Scrawny and bony. Looks like she worked out a lot and might have had an attitude and wasn’t into men.”
Lucy ignores him. “There’s no one here who fits that description or is that young. The three ranch hands and groundskeeper are forty-four, fifty-two, and one just turned sixty, originally from Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. The chef is French. He’s forty-nine. The housekeeper’s South American, forty-three, and claims to speak very little English. The partners in the business are two Americans and two Brits, men over forty, and then there was Lombardi and Caminska, who are rumored to have had more than a professional relationship. And, yes, they called her Ika, as in Eeeka, not Icka.” She mocks the way Marino pronounces it.
“Assailant entered the house the way you are, past the stone columns, on this porch, and he opened this door,” Marino says and he’s backing away from assuming it’s Haley Swanson we’re looking for.
“What about the lock?” Lucy indicates the brushed-nickel biometric lock as she pulls on gloves.
“It was blue skies until a couple hours ago and it’s possible when the weather was decent they’d leave the front door open with just this one shut.” He opens the inner storm door, a push-button lock all that separated the people of Double S from someone who cut their throats.