The Sweet Golden Parachute Read online

  “Justine told me you two would like to buy a boat and sail away together.”

  “All we have to do is win the lottery.”

  “Actually, it may not have to come to that. Can we sit somewhere and talk?”

  A hooded gray sweatshirt was draped over the back of a chair. Bement flung it on over his head and started toward the back door, pausing at a work sink to wash the white sanding powder from his hands. Next to the sink sat a table with an electric coffeemaker on it. He poured some coffee into a Styrofoam cup and dumped sugar and creamer in it. Mitch did the same. Then they went out the door to a weedy, muddy area behind the barn that served as a boneyard for rusted-out patio furniture and garden gates. Becca’s Honda Civic was parked back there next to a pickup that Mitch assumed was Bement’s.

  A wooden picnic table sat invitingly in the winter sunshine. They flopped down there, the rays feeling nice and warm on Mitch’s shoulders. The land out behind the barn fell off sharply into a deep, tree-shaded gorge. The stream down there was still frozen. Bement pulled a pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes from his sweatshirt pocket and lit one, eyeing Mitch guardedly. The more Mitch studied him, the more aware he became of the intensity that lurked beneath Bement’s apparent physical ease.

  “You hear about our latest local crime news?” he asked Mitch, dragging on his cigarette.

  Mitch nodded. Des had called to tell him. She always called him when something broke. He liked it that she did. “I tried to talk to Pete just yesterday at the Soup Kitchen. The guy ran from me in sheer terror.”

  “When I was in high school he used to sit out on the town green every afternoon,” Bement recalled. “The Kershaw brothers would throw rocks at him on their way home from school. I had to tell them to cut it out.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been messing with those two for years.”

  “To know them is to mess with them.”

  “I guess the poor guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure, man.”

  “What do you mean by that, Bement?”

  “I mean he wasn’t necessarily killed because of what he saw.”

  “Well, why else would he?…”

  “I can’t say anything more because I’m not supposed to know.” Bement gulped his coffee, staring across the table at him. “Did you ever hide behind the sofa when you were a little kid? Overhear what the grown-ups were saying to each other when they thought you’d gone to bed?”

  “Sure, but all they were ever talking about was my Aunt Esther’s gall bladder. I never heard any good stuff.”

  “Well, I did. In my family we had lots of secrets. But I don’t talk about them. Besides, that’s not why you’re here. You’ve read Teeny’s book, or as much of it as you could stand, and you don’t know how to tell her it stinks. You’re afraid you’ll hurt her feelings. Am I right?”

  “Not even close. You haven’t read it yourself?”

  “She won’t let me near the thing. Keeps saying it’s private, like a diary. Which is fine. I can respect that.” Bement cocked his head at Mitch curiously. “So why are you here?”

  “To tell you I think it will be published to great success.”

  Bement drew his breath in, flabbergasted. “You’re… kidding me, right?”

  “I’m absolutely not kidding you.”

  Bement sat there in stunned silence, absently massaging the skinned, swollen knuckles of his right hand. “Collided with Don-nie’s face yesterday,” he explained, flexing the hand. “A guy’s cheekbone is a hell of a lot sturdier than your fist is. They never mention that in the old westerns, do they?”

  “The sound effects are usually wrong, too. It should be a dull thud, not a smack.” Mitch sipped his coffee, studying Bement. “Do you have any idea what her book is about?”

  “I really don’t, Mitch. Teeny never works on it when we’re together. Don’t ask me why.”

  “I’m going to tell you why, actually. And you’d better brace yourself, because this may be a bit hard to take. It’s about a smalltown New England teenaged girl who is brutally raped by her two older brothers, who then turn her out. First she takes on half the boys in town, then their fathers.”

  Bement pulled on the last of his Lucky and flicked the butt off into the weeds, his face revealing nothing. Until suddenly he lunged across the table and grabbed Mitch by the front of his jacket. “Are you trying to say my girlfriend was the town bang?”

  “This is a very good question you ask,” Mitch responded hoarsely. “Want to let go of me?”

  “Not until you tell me what you’re getting at.” Bement’s eyes were narrow slits.

  “Let go of the material, Bement.”

  Bement abruptly released him and sat back on his bench, a blue vein throbbing in his forehead.

  Mitch straightened the collar of his jacket. “Freak out much?”

  He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair and reached for his coffee, his hands shaking. “I just love her so damned much that I lose it sometimes. I apologize, man. Really, I do.”

  “No harm, no foul.”

  “I couldn’t stay away from her, you know,” he confessed miserably. “I was out there in Palo Alto, starting my senior year at Stanford, and I was a total nut job. I can’t make it when we’re not together. I begged her to join me out there, but she wouldn’t. I guess she’s more attached to this place than she lets on. That’s why I dropped out. She’s why. I had to be with her. It was like she controlled me.” Bement shook his head slowly. “Whatever love is, it’s sure not about being smart. Me getting my degree from Stanford? That would have been smart.”

  “You’re not enjoying what you’re doing?”

  “No, I am. And the two of us are real happy together. But my mom’s pissed at me all of the time. Hell, the whole town’s pissed at me. They watched me grow up. They act like I’ve let them down.”

  “You can still get your degree, Bement. Plenty of colleges around here would take you.”

  “I don’t see the point anymore.” Bement gazed across the gorge at the bare winter hills beyond. “I don’t even know who I am.”

  “Again, that’s why they invented college.”

  “What are you, a campus recruiter?”

  “You just don’t strike me as the kind of guy to sail off and hide from the world, that’s all. I happen to know a little about hiding. I spent twenty years in darkened movie theaters doing just that.”

  “And what are you doing now, exactly?”

  “Trying to understand people, I guess. We’re a lot more screwed up than I ever realized.”

  Bement let out a short laugh. “Now you’re talking about my parents. My dad’s totally lost. Which for me is way weird, because your dad’s the one who’s supposed to have the road map, you know? They’ve always had to work at their marriage, but he doesn’t even want to try anymore. My mom’s freaking, as you can imagine. And totally pretending that she’s not. It’s just a huge mess. My dad’s a good guy, too. I love him to death. Hell, I love both of them.” Bement drained the last of his coffee, glancing at Mitch coolly. “You wanted to tell me about Teeny’s book. Is there more?”

  “There is. And I mean to be as tactful as I can, but it’s still going to come out blunt. Justine won’t tell me whether it’s a true story or not. Frankly, it’s so detailed and explicit that I find it hard to believe it’s not at least partly based on personal experience.”

  Bement’s nostrils flared slightly. “Mitch, who my girlfriend may have banged is not my idea of a legitimate topic of conversation between us, okay? I barely know you. And even if we were blood brothers, I still don’t know if it’s any of your damned business.”

  “I don’t disagree.”

  “Then why are you sweating me?”

  “Because once this book is published it’ll become everyone’s business. If there’s one thing I do understand, it’s the media, and I’m telling you right now that Justine is about to get one hell of a lot of attention. And so
are you.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Because you’re the man she’s seeing. Total strangers will want to know everything about you. You’d better prepare yourself, Bement, because if you can’t handle it, then your life will become a special kind of hell.”

  “I didn’t ask for any of this,” he pointed out hotly.

  “I know that. But I’m here to tell you that it’s what you’re looking at.”

  Bement Widdifield stared at Mitch long and hard. Not so much with anger now. He had a solemn look on his handsome face. “Fine, if it’s an answer you want then I’ll give you one. But I won’t discuss this with you or anyone else ever again. This is it. Teeny was never raped by her brothers. She never did their friends. She never did their fathers. None of those things ever happened to her.”

  “How do you know this, Bement?”

  “I know it, okay?”

  “Not okay. How?”

  “Because we’ve been going together a lot longer than most people know. Since we were in high school. We had to sneak around so our parents wouldn’t find out. Teeny was seventeen the first time we slept together. That was the night of our senior prom and I… I was her very first. She was a virgin, okay? Teeny was still a virgin.” Bement crumpled his Styrofoam cup angrily in his fist. “Now do you believe me?”

  CHAPTER 12

  POOCHIE’S MUCK-SPLATTERED ISUZU TROOPER was up on the lifter in one of the service bays, where a mechanic was working on it. Doug was on the computer in his glassed-in office ordering parts from a catalogue. He got off of it quickly when he saw Des standing there in his doorway.

  “How’s that working out for you?” she asked him, gesturing at the Isuzu through the glass wall.

  “She’s a hurting girl, but we’ll get her right soon enough.” Doug Garvey was big and balding, with an easy-does-it small town air. More than a few of Dorset’s high school boys over the years got their first paying work pumping gas for him here at his Sunoco. A lot of them bought their first ride from him, too. Doug moved a lot of cars on consignment. Also rented them out by the week. The man was no easy-does-it businessman. He owned summer rental cottages in several shoreline towns. A piece of the boatyard at the Dorset Marina, a car wash in Old Saybrook, convenience stores in Branford and New Haven. “Have a seat, Des. How can I help you?”

  She sat in the chair across the desk from him, twirling her hat in her fingers. “I’m sorry to tell you that Pete’s dead.”

  “Aw, hell, that’s a damned shame. He seemed perfectly fine this morning, too. What was it, heart attack?”

  “No, somebody bashed in his head.”

  Doug’s eyes widened in shock. “Where did this happen?”

  “Near the foot of the driveway to Four Chimneys. The Major Crime Squad is up there investigating it right now, along with the theft of Poochie’s Gullwing. We figure the two are related.”

  “Pete saw it happen, is that it?”

  “That’s our working theory.”

  “He’d never have told a soul.”

  “An outsider wouldn’t necessarily know that.”

  “So you don’t think it was someone local?”

  “Doug, we don’t know.”

  “I was just beginning to wonder about him. He should have been home from his rounds by now.” Doug ran a scarred, meaty hand over his face, knuckles permanently etched with grease. “Any sign of the Gullwing yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Poochie will need something to get around in. I’d better run the Jeep up there later.”

  Des nodded her head, thinking that everyone saw life through the prism of their own priorities. For Doug Garvey, this represented an opportunity to rent Poochie a car. “The state is legally obligated to notify Pete’s next of kin. Can you help me out?”

  “Des, I’m happy to do whatever I can,” he replied, although he seemed uneasy now. “Just don’t expect much in the way of answers. It’s not like Pete opened up to me or anything.”

  “You let him stay here,” she pointed out.

  “I did,” he allowed, rocking back in his chair. “I felt responsible for him. He was one of ours. And he wouldn’t go into a facility. That crazy son of a gun jumped right out of my truck when I tried to take him up to Connecticut Valley Hospital. Took off running down the center divider of Route Nine, almost got himself killed. I’m no miracle worker, Des. Just an old grease monkey. I found Pete sleeping under the I-95 overpass one winter, must be five, six years ago. I was afraid he’d freeze to death, so I let him use the old trailer out back. Figured it was the decent thing to do. No different from what you and Mrs. Tillis would do for a stray cat. Speaking of which, I’ve got a ton of mice nesting up in my storage loft.”

  Des treated him to a huge smile. “Stop by any time. Happy to fix you up. Doug, you mentioned that Pete was ‘one of ours.’ Does he have family in Dorset?”

  “Well, you always heard stories…” “What kind of stories?”

  “Crazy stuff. You know how people are. One time, I heard that he was the illegitimate son of Ted Williams, who’d kept himself a mistress here in town. Your Yankee fans were floating that one. Then I heard he was a Kennedy cousin who’d been disowned because he was loco. Your Republicans were behind that one. I also heard he was a Swamp Yankee from up in the hills, whose parents had been, well, brother and sister. Mind you, folks say that about pretty much anyone in Dorset who’s a little slow or off or whatever. In plenty of cases, it’s not so far off the mark either. I’m a Swamp Yankee myself, so I can say it.”

  “Would you happen to know what Pete’s last name was?” “Des, that’s not something I can help you with.” “Then can you point me to someone who was related to him?” “That’s not something I can help you with either.” Des shoved her heavy horn-rimmed glasses up her nose, studying Doug carefully. He was acting all amiable and cooperative, but he wasn’t being the least bit forthcoming. Which wasn’t to say that he was lying. He was being scrupulously careful not to—so careful that she could swear he’d been coached. “Doug, was there anything unusual about Pete’s routine this morning?”

  He shook his head. “He came in and washed up about six, had himself a cup of coffee and took off on that bike of his. I was getting ready to open up when he left.” “Were you here all morning?”

  “Pretty much. I took the truck out a little after seven to jump a dead battery for Mrs. Bingham up on Old Ferry Road.”

  “You have to go past Four Chimneys to get to Old Ferry. Did you see Pete making his rounds?” “Sorry, I’m afraid not.” “Doug, how long did you know Pete?” “Since we were little guys—eight, nine years old.” “Is that right?” Nothing he’d said so far had even hinted at this. “So Pete grew up in Dorset?”

  “Well, yes and no. Pete was one of those kids who didn’t seem to belong to anybody. For a couple of years, he lived next door to me with the Millers. They were both schoolteachers, had a whole mess of kids. Some their own, others foster kids they took in. Although that kind of thing seemed a lot less formal back in those days. We three used to play together in the woods behind my house.”

  Des frowned. “You three?”

  “Me, Pete and Milo Kershaw. Milo lived right across the street. We were always getting into mischief together.”

  “Are you and he still good friends?”

  Doug lowered his gaze. “I run a business. I try to get along with everyone. Milo can be difficult. He’s always searching for villains in his life.”

  “Did Pete seem at all strange to you when you were boys?”

  “Not at all. He was a fun-loving little guy. And a real chatterbox, if you can believe that.”

  “You say he lived next door for two years?”

  “Until they sent him away.”

  “Who sent him away, Doug?”

  “No idea, Des. I don’t know where he went either. I never saw him again. Not until I spotted him camped out under the overpass, like I said. I hadn’t seen the guy for almost fifty years, but he had that s
ame long, bony nose he had when we were kids. So I pulled over and said, ‘Holy Christmas, Pete, is that you?’ He just shrugged at me. I threw his duffel bag in my truck and brought him here. Thought maybe Pete could pump gas for me. But that didn’t work out. He got too frightened by the customers. I did what I could for him—not that he’d let me do much.”

  “Did Milo reach out to him as well?”

  “Milo thought he was crazy. Wanted nothing to do with him.”

  “Pete had no identification on him. May I go through his personal effects?”

  He led her out back through the service bays, moving none too swiftly. Doug had the ponderous duck waddle of a big man with a bad back. There were half a dozen clunkers parked out there in the mud alongside of the dilapidated old Silver Streak. The trailer was unlocked. Doug showed her in. Long ago, it had been all tricked out with a kitchen sink, propane stove and electric refrigerator. There was a dinette, a built-in bed. No doubt it once was very nice. Not anymore. The appliances were history, and it reeked in there of mildewy carpeting. There was a rumpled sleeping bag on the bare, stained mattress. A few canned goods on the counter next to the sink. Some dirty laundry. Newspapers in a pile. A dog-eared copy of The World Almanac.

  “My dad used to take this baby up to Maine on fishing trips,” Doug recalled fondly, his bulky frame filling the dank little trailer. “It’s seen better days, but it suited Pete’s needs. Mostly, he just kept to himself out here. The ladies in town would drop off old clothes for him. If he wanted anything he’d take it.” Doug shook his head sadly. “Not much for a man to leave behind, is it?”

  Des searched the trailer for personal papers, letters, anything that would provide a key to Pete’s identity. The storage cupboards were empty. She looked inside the pockets of his soiled, stinky clothing. Under the mattress. She found nothing.

  “Doug, did you ever get mail here for him?”

  “Not once, Des. He wasn’t in contact with the outside world at all.”

  “Then I guess I’ve hit a dead end. You can’t help me at all.” She stood with her hands on her hips, staring at the big man. “Is that how it is, Doug?”