It was no sense going immediately to my sister’s house as
Andrew would no doubt be catching up on sleep. Instead, I drove to the local
convenience store and bought a pack of Yodels, one of those sugar-encrusted
Hostess apple pies (because I have the cravings of a 10 year-old) and a coffee as
big as my head. Keeping up with Miss Iceland, I suspected, was going to require
arrhythmia inducing amounts of caffeine in someone as indolent as me.
Twenty pages of J.P. Donleavy and a bursting bladder later I
arrived at my sister’s. She told me Andrew would be up soon. He’d only been
given a four hour reprieve before he was needed back for his regular shift. The
kids, three boys ages eight to five, were all quiet. Either napping or
lulled into a Disney-Pixar contrived coma in the TV room. For banging out three
kids in such a small window my sister was still fit and reasonably attractive in a
tomboy-ish sort of way. From the way she looked at me, however, it was obvious
the feeling was not mutual.
“Looks like you been doing crunches,” she said, pointing at
my recently expanding waistline. “Nestle’s…”
“Well, I’ve never exactly had the body of a Chippendale
Dancer anyway,” I replied.
“Yeah, but now you look like you have the body of a
Chip-Ahoy Dancer. There’s plenty of room in your place why don’t you get a
treadmill or a stationary bike?”
“I already have plenty of places to hang my clothes. I don’t
need anymore. You know I’d never use those things.”
Amy walked over to the counter, poured me a cup of coffee and
I was reminded of my barking bladder. I made no move for the bathroom however
as I accepted this penance as my payment for access to any information she might
have gleaned from her husband.
“Then why don’t you join a gym or take one of those classes
they give at the Community Center. You could come with me to Zumba,” she said,
chuckling at the prospect.
“Sorry, I already have a workout program."
"Yeah. What's that?"
“I come home from work, smoke a cigar and eat a plate of
linguine while watching an episode of The Sopranos on Netflix. I call it Goombah. All in all I’m
feeling pretty good,” I answered, only half joking.
“Better watch it or you’ll be old before your time. You used
to live in Boston, work on a big newspaper and now look at you; locked up in
your apartment eating mac and cheese and reading books that went out of print
50 years ago.” A child screamed in the next room and without pausing for breath
or diverting her eyes Amy shot out a, “Shut the Hell up in there!”
“Well we all can’t be like you, taking a big bite out of life
and letting the juices run down our chins. By the way I didn’t know UGGs came
out with a peep-toe these days.”
“Very funny,” she spat, hiding her stained, torn footwear
beneath the chair. “I have kids, a house…a life here. You know Mom calls me all
the time asking when you’re going to get married. What am I supposed to tell
her?”
I never thought I’d welcome the company of my brother-in-law,
but I found myself listening hopefully for his flat, splayed footsteps on the
stairs. “You know what, tell Mom what I tell her. When she asks when I’m gonna
get married I ask when she’s gonna break
a hip…conversation over.”
She gave me the patented family eye roll and went for more
coffee. “Just think about it. I mean it’s probably better you didn’t marry that
Kayla or any of the others. What you need is someone sweet, kind and not nuts.”
“Hell if I’m gonna limit myself like that I’ll never meet
anyone,” I cracked just as Andrew rounded the corner rubbing sleep out of his
eyes.
He wore a yellow-collared wife beater with matching briefs
and his thinning hair was matted forward like William Henry Harrison coming off
a two-day bender. He plopped down in a kitchen chair that creaked out for
mercy, found a pack of cigarettes in what I originally thought was a fruit bowl
(silly me), lit one and accepted the black coffee Amy handed over. “I know, not
exactly the Breakfast of Champions,” he wheezed while simultaneously clearing
his nose with a low rumbling that seemed as if he was producing not bodily
fluid so much as molten lava.
“Actually sex is the real Breakfast of Champions,” I joked as
he opened the napkin and examined its contents. “But not much chance of that I
suspect.”
After my lame chuckle died out a silence came over the room.
The comedian Steven Wright once opined, “There’s a fine line between fishing
and standing on the bank looking like an idiot.” I knew exactly what he meant
as I sat there, full bladder-ed, waiting for Andrew to start blabbering about
the murders.
“What a mess,” he said after what seemed like an eternity but
was probably no more than fifteen seconds. “You couldn’t have stomached it.”
“Have you ever seen my apartment?” I quipped reflexively, then
shut my mouth.
“This was no joke Luke,” he said flatly without the more
officious-than-thou attitude he usually took when talking to me about police
business. “Blood everywhere…Ted in the bed with a hole blown through his chest.
The girl slumped in the corner, her white dress soaked red. And Merwin in the
bedroom doorway with a bullet in his temple. It was ugly, man.”
Amy reached over and put a hand on his arm as I took mental
notes. “Wait a second, who’s Merwin.”
“Curly Carson, the father. It was a family name. He never
liked it.”
Suddenly the name struck a chord in my mind. Years ago when
we were having trouble getting players for one of our softball teams Wally
Reynolds, the desk sergeant I’d spoken to earlier, offered to “…get this guy Merwin,
he played Double-A ball.” When we jumped at the chance to get someone who was a
September call up away from the Major Leagues Wally corrected himself, “…not
Minor League Double-A ball, I mean he played Sunday mornings in the Alcoholics
Anonymous League.” That meant either alcohol didn’t play a part in this case or
something had caused Curly to slip off the wagon and possibly propelled the
fatal spree.
I made a note to check out the local AA chapter and tried to
gently push Andrew for more information. “Any clue as to the motive?”
“I shouldn’t say anymore,” he said and drew on the cigarette.
I wasn’t exactly The Mentalist, but I knew that meant he would say more and I
went back to standing on the bank again looking like an idiot.
It didn’t take long. “It was the age difference. She was only
twenty-three and hell she looked like she was going on twelve. Very pretty, but
naïve. The Chief is pretty sure that’s what drove the father mad and I agree
with him. It’s a matter of interviewing folks, searching his house and checking
everyone’s phones and emails. I’m sure we’ll find something to indicate that.”
I, however, wasn’t convinced. Monica Carson may have looked
young, but Ted Sheehan wasn’t exactly Abe Vigoda. In the yearbook pictures he
was fit, handsome and had a thick, full head of hair. Men don’t fall apart,
present company including myself excluded, that quickly. Besides the Cosmo I flipped through last time I was
at the doctor’s office told me 40 was the new 30, 30 the new 20, 10 the new
embryo…well, I’m guessing on that last one, but still it was only sixteen years
not Anna Nicole Smith and J. Howard Marshall for crissakes.
At this point a generic rock song part Led Zeppelin, part Hocus Pocus by Focus came blaring out of
my pocket; the default ringtone that I had no idea, or inclination to learn,
how to switch. It was Charlie Grissom telling me that no one at the High School
was talking, but he did get pictures and a lot of good background on Sheehan’s
career. “Did a blonde show up…from the Burlington
Bee?” I asked.
“Yeah. Quite a looker. A lot better than old Glenn Hubbard,
huh.”
“Not bad. I’d throw her a chop,” I said, trying to evoke a
nonchalant ‘screw her, I did’ attitude while really not knowing what in the Hell
that was. “Um…er…well just give her any help you can. She seems like a good
kid.”
The phone flipped close with a loud pop causing Andrew and
Amy to look up from their coffee cups. “Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “I really
gotta upgrade. Nobody has these things anymore.”
“Actually Curly Carson did. I bagged all the items on his person for evidence,” Andrew continued. “Someone said it looked
like a disposable. Probably lost his phone and was using that while hoping the
real one turned up.”
From what I knew of him Curly seemed like an old school kind of guy. His daughter probably made him get a phone and he chose one of those cheap Consumer Cellular ones. And being resistant to change- as opposed to me who was just lazy- he never upgraded. It didn't merit a mental note.
He looked haggard from the all-nighter so I figured I should
push for a few more details before it was too late. “Did she have a key to
Sheehan’s place?”
“I don’t think so. Her chain had only two keys on it. One car
key, one apartment key. She was renting one of those townhomes in Dorset. We’ll eventually check it out.”
“We will? Three
people died why aren’t the State Police being brought in?”
He made a face as if he’d just sucked on a lemon and stabbed
out his cigarette in the remains of his coffee. I’d finally gotten under his
skin, but, of course, that was inevitable.
“Why do we need the State Police? This is an Artfield matter
involving good Artfield people”, said Andrew, rising from his chair. I could
tell he was simply mouthing Chief Bowden’s words, but these were likely the
last I’d get from him so I let him go on. “Sure old man Carson got crazy over the
whole affair, but what’s the point of dragging the State Police into it.
They’ll only turn it into some kinda CSI circus. We can handle things just
fine.”
And with this he turned and walked out, a hand
reaching back under the boxers to scratch a cream cheese white butt cheek, not
exactly instilling me with confidence.