“Why lie to me about it?”
“Because I’m embarrassed,” she wailed plaintively. “Wouldn’t you be embarrassed? I mean, God, this is so humiliating.”
“Who visited Jeffrey last night?”
“No one, I swear.”
“Did he go out?”
Abby shook her head. “He was there by himself all night.”
“Did you think about knocking on his door?”
“Not a chance.”
“Why not, was Frankie with you?”
“Look, I’d rather not involve Frankie in this, okay?”
“That’s not an answer.”
There was a tapping at the suite door now.
Abby let her breath out, clearly relieved by the interruption. “Would you mind getting that, cookie?”
Des got up and went to the door and opened it.
A frail young man with a concave chest and a two-day stubble of beard stood out in the hallway clutching a pair of battered metal carrying cases. “I’m here for Abby,” he announced.
“Come in, Gregory!” Abby called to him as she bustled over toward the desk. “I’m afraid I’ll have to cut this off now, Trooper. Gregory has to do my mouth.”
“That’s fine,” Des said. “I got what I came for. Where will you be tonight?”
Abby frowned at her. “Right here in Boston, why?”
“Just checking. You’re a happening little girl. Liable to turn up anywhere.”
“Well, I’ll be here. That’s the truth. And I always tell the truth.”
“Except for when you don’t,” Des said, smiling at her. “Right, I heard that.”
One of the doormen down in the lobby gave Des directions to theEast Coast Grill. Her cruiser was double-parked out front. She got in and called Yolie on her cell phone to tell her what she didn’t want to hear-that Abby Kaminsky backed up Esme and Jeff’s story.
“Did you believe her?” Yolie asked, sounding thoroughly dejected.
“Yolie, I honestly don’t know. She’s rich, wiggy, in love. Anything’s possible. What have you got?”
“So far, not a damned thing. None of the guests at the Yankee Doodle saw our boy come or go. And, Lordy, were they not happy to be questioned. Kimberly Fiore backs up her boyfriend, Rich Graybill. He got home from his late shift at The Works by midnight. Word, we are nowhere,” she grumbled at Des.
“Hey, we’ll lick this, Yolie. You keep that chin up for me, okay?”
“Girl, I am all about that,” Yolie vowed before she hung up.
Des started up her cruiser and glanced in her rearview mirror, spotting big Frankie. He was seated at the wheel of the black town car parked behind her in the hotel’s loading area, glowering at her with as much menace as he could muster. Definitely a yard face. The man had done time. She was positive.
As she pulled away, Des ran a check on him on her digital radio. She got her answer before she’d made it across the Charles into Cambridge on the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge. Frank Ramistella had wriggled his way out of two assault charges when he was in his late teens, then served three years of New York state time for armed robbery. As far as the law knew, he had been clean for the past six years.
All well and good, Des reflected as he steered her way toward Central Square. The man was still hired muscle. And he was way into Abby. He’d do what that little blond asked him to, even if it meant pushing Tito Molina off a cliff. But that still begged the question about Donna. What possible reason could Abby have for wanting Donna dead?
This question Des could not answer.
And it troubled her big-time. Actually, this whole case did. Because the more she learned the more confused she got. In truth, she wasn’t getting any closer to figuring this one out at all.
In truth, her damned fool head was reeling.
CHAPTER 13
“um, okay, tell me again why we’re sitting here like this?”
“Because I have a feeling, that’s why,” Mitch explained to her for the umpteenth time.
“You have a feeling,” Des repeated from next to him in the darkness. She was still in uniform, her collar opened, sleeves turned back.
“I do. I have a definite, undeniable feeling.”
“Oh, it’s undeniable, all right.”
They were sitting in his pickup a hundred yards up Turkey Neck Road from Dodge and Martine Crockett’s driveway, their bellies full of barbecue. Carriage lanterns framed the driveway entrance, bathing it in a dim, golden glow. Across the darkened meadow, lights were on inside the house. It was just past eleven. Warm, sticky air had moved in from the south as the afternoon had given way to evening, bringing low clouds and fog with it. Now it was humid and still and the cicadas were whirring. In the distance, Mitch could hear the foghorn on the Old Saybrook Lighthouse.
“What’s more, you need my help,” he added. “You’ve got two murders that don’t seem to connect with each other except for the simple fact that they must. And you’re totally flummoxed by it- you, Soave, Yolie, all of you.”
“Well, you’re not wrong there,” she growled at him.
“Would you like to know why you’re so flummoxed?”
“One way or the other, I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
“Because all three of you think inside the box. I’m not being critical, mind you. I’m just saying that you’re encumbered by the rules and procedures of your job, and I’m not. This allows me to function as a freer thinker. You might even think of me, well, as a visionary.”
Des reached over in the dark and squeezed his hand. “Baby, I’m not going to have to hit you, am I?”
“What you’ll be doing, before this night is over, is thanking me.”
“Mitch?…”
“Yes, Des?”
“What damned feeling?!”
“That we’ve let our heads get turned by all of this sex. We’ve got so many Dorseteers hopping in and out of bed with each other that we don’t know who loves who, who loathes who, who might want who dead.. . Are you with me so far?”
“You’re talking, I’m listening.”
“Okay, good. We’ve got Abby, Chrissie, and Martine all without alibis for the night Tito died. Two of them had been romantically involved with him. The third was his mother-in-law. Now, we don’t know why Donna Durslag had to die. Therefore we have no idea which one of those three had any interest in killing her. But here’s something that we do know-that Dodge Crockett is a sick, bad, morally depraved guy.”
“I won’t disagree with you there.”
“Let’s say that this qualifies him to be our prime murder suspect, okay?”
“That’s a bit of a leap, but go ahead and run with it.”
“We know that he’s home alone tonight. He told me so this morning. So all we have to do now is wait and he’ll show his hand.”
“What hand?”
“Something is going to happen tonight,” Mitch declared with total certainty. “I’m telling you, I can feel it.”
“Whoa, time out, cowboy-this is your feeling?”
“Well, yeah. Put yourself in his shoes, Des. It’s not as if a perverted sociopath like Dodge is going to spend his night watching Send Me No Flowers on American Movie Classics. Not that it’s a bad movie, mind you. Rock Hudson and Doris Day were an underrated comedy team, and Paul Lynde absolutely goes to town as a funeral home director who loves his work just a bit too-”
“Okay, I am going to have to hit you.”
“Someone is going to visit Dodge tonight. Or he’s going to go see someone.”
“And?…”
“And that’s our chance to find out what he’s really up to and who he’s up to it with. If he leaves, we follow him. If someone comes by, we tiptoe our way to the house and put our noses to the glass. It’s smart, it’s simple, and it’ll work. What do you say, Master Sergeant, am I right or am I right?”
Des sat there in the darkened silence for a long moment before she said, “You do know that this particular move is straight out of the Hardy Boys, don’t you?”
“Maybe it is,” he admitted. “But it was a darned effective maneuver when they’d exhausted their other options. Besides, Frank and Joe cracked a number of Fenton’s toughest cases.”