Last to Know (8 page)

“You’ve broken my heart, Harry Jordan,” she said, quietly so the Frenchman would not hear, if indeed he spoke English, which she guessed he did because somehow all foreigners did. Tears stood in her eyes and she blinked them away, turning her head, careful not to grab a tissue and blot them. She wanted no one to see her cry over a man.

She had to shuffle in her bag for that tissue because those tears simply had to come out, and the Frenchman was gazing sympathetically, leaning toward her, offering a fresh supply, calling to the waiter for more champagne.

“Please,” the Frenchman said, looking into Mal’s teary blue eyes with his concerned brown ones. “Allow me to help.”

Mal thought maybe she should.

At the same time, though, she was thinking if she wanted to hold on to Harry, she had better find out who exactly the new competition was. Harry had not mentioned the girl’s name but Mal was not a TV detective for nothing. She immediately texted her office. Her assistant, Lulu, would know what to do. Within hours, Mal would bet, she would know more about her new “rival” than Harry. Even sooner perhaps because she wasn’t caught up in “helping” the poor burned girl, though it was actually the poor mother who had, as Harry so succinctly put it, “burned to a crisp.”

Mal’s sharp woman’s mind couldn’t help but wonder, among all the other questions currently crowding her head, how much the burned-to-the-ground house was insured for. It didn’t take a genius to know the poor-twenty-one-year-old-homeless blonde would inherit it.

It was, Mal thought, smiling back at the attractive French guy and accepting that glass of champagne, a classic situation. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it was just that she was acting like a jealous bitch, which truthfully, right now was exactly what she was. And what woman wouldn’t be, who’d just been dumped, alone, in Paris, for a young and now homeless fire victim who had lost her mother in the blaze and who now Mal’s lover felt compelled to take care of.

She sipped her champagne and, leaning closer, smiled at the French guy.
“Bon jour,”
she said. Adding silently
c’est la vie.

14

Back at Evening Lake, Len Doutzer was the first person Harry questioned.

Len was the eyes and ears of the lake. Unlike young Diz, who saw only what was going on from his tree, Len missed nothing. He lived up on a hill in a fifties A-frame painted mud-green, “to blend into the background like me,” he angrily told the curious who came panting up the slope to take a look at the view and also at the man known locally as “the janitor” because he kept his small compound under meticulously “green” conditions. No insecticides, no sprays of any kind. It was said real worms actually existed under his earth, which was the reason his vegetables grew so prolifically, especially zucchini, which once it got a grip was hard even for an experienced gardener to control. Still, its yellow blossoms looked lovely in spring, and Len’s single apple tree gave a goodly crop of crabapples, which he never seemed to mind the kids pinching, though he kept his plums for himself, swathed in netting to keep the birds off.

Should you ask any of the locals, that is, the people who lived there year-round, of which there were not that many since Evening Lake was mainly a resort area, but should you bump into them on the High Street, or in the Red Sails Bar or Tweedies Coffee Shop, or any of the small stores or takeout places, and ask about Len, all you’d get was that he’d been there forever, kept himself to himself, and that he drove an ’80s Chevy woodie, which he maintained himself. Len was the kind of guy, they said, who could turn his hand to anything. He lived alone with not even a dog for company on the long silent winter nights. No family had ever surfaced for a visit, certainly no wife or grandkids.

A loner, he seemed to have enough to subsist on. He owned a TV, drank the occasional beer at the Red Sails, ate pancakes at Tweedies, always wore the same faded brown cords—in winter with a gnarly gray sweater, summers with a faded T-shirt—he grew his salt-and-pepper beard bushier in winter, clipped it shorter in the warmer months. He was short and lean to the point of emaciation and his face was nut-brown and lined from exposure to all weathers, his faded eyes constantly slitted against the sun. And as far as anyone knew he’d never needed a doctor or a dentist. In fact, they said Len Doutzer needed no one but himself. He asked nothing of anyone.

Sometimes lately, he would not be seen for weeks. Somebody might notice his car was gone, or that he wasn’t picking up his usual meager groceries, eggs and bread and such-like as well as the case of Jameson that fueled his solitary life. Occasionally someone would worry and check the A-frame, peering through the dust-encrusted windows, knocking at his door, but when there was no response and they saw the car was gone, it was assumed Len was off on his travels. Wherever those might take him.

In fact Len Doutzer was so much part of the background, those around him barely registered his presence. His life was his own. He shared it with no one.

Len knew everything about the lake and would tell anyone curious enough to ask about its history, about its steady evolution, from its beginnings as a little-known fishing spot, where guys like Harry’s grandfather went to be buddies and camp out and get drunk on warm beer, to its transition into a place where those same men, married now, brought their families, wives and kids, swimming and hollering and building new frame houses with shingle roofs and porches and wooden jetties; to more recently, when the lake had been “discovered” as a resort and grander homes built, painted white or pastel with proper green-tiled roofs and expensive professional boats moored outside though never, never had powerboats been allowed to desecrate the ecology of the lake, which to this day, as Len would verify, was as pristine as the day he’d first arrived.

“And when was that?” curious listeners to the lake history might ask. And Len would say, as he always did, it was some time ago now.

In fact Len was sixty, and looked older. Thirty of those years had been spent at the lake and he considered it his own. He lived in his green A-frame, drank his Jameson, and every now and again went off on his “travels.” He helped out for a fee when a neighbor needed a hand—he was good at things like electrical wiring, small plumbing disasters, the occasional flood. He carved soft pine tables to go out on terraces, made bookshelves, anything people wanted at modest prices. And if he had any other little business going on the side, nobody gave a damn. Len was a fixture, the place simply would not be the same without him.

Harry and Rossetti were on their way to question Len. “Why are we doin’ this?” Rossetti grumbled, chugging his precious BMW up the dirt slope leading to the Doutzer compound. “It’s killin’ my car.”

“Nothing kills BMWs.” Harry closed his window so the dust would not blow onto Squeeze. The dog hunkered down in the backseat, not enjoying the ride. “Len Doutzer is the eyes and ears of Evening Lake. Anything untoward, he would be the one who’d know about it. Besides, I believe it might have been him in the second boat that night.”

“So? Then why wasn’t he down there immediately with the others when the house blew up? Where was he when the girl was drowning? Why has he not come forward since to offer any information he might have, instead of us trekking to his goddamn shack to question him?”

Harry shrugged. He had asked himself that question and come up with no logical answer. “Maybe he’s a man who knows more than he wants to tell,” he said. “Just maybe he knew things about the Havnel woman, he could see her house easily from his perch up here on the hill, see the comings and goings.”

“Seems there were not too many of those,” Rossetti said, as Harry swung the car to a stop in a flourish of dust, in front of the seedy A-frame with its grime-encrusted windows and the front door fastened with a ridiculously large padlock.

“Why a padlock?” Rossetti asked, because it was obvious all a would-be intruder had to do was smash the window and he’d be in inside a second. And anyhow, from the look of the place, there would be nothing worth breaking-and-entering for.

There was no doorbell so Harry knocked. They waited. Rossetti traced the toe of his shoe in the dust, writing his name. Squeeze refused to get out of the car and sat with his snout sticking out the window, watching. Nothing was happening.

“He’s probably in his work shed in back,” Harry said, walking round the corner. Rossetti ambled distastefully after him. Give him urban squalor any time.

The shed was probably less than six hundred square feet, hand-built, without a permit, Harry knew, years ago by Len. Nobody had thought it worthwhile objecting. Len kept his gardening stuff and work tools in there. Oddly for such a rough man who cared nothing for his appearance, Len was known to wear yellow rubber household gloves when he worked. Jokes had been made in the bar at his expense, about him needing a manicure, which he took with silence and a small twisted smile.

Harry and Rossetti stood outside his workshop and hammered on the door, calling his name.

Suddenly that door was inched open and Len was looking back at them, his eyes narrowed in a squint as always, a truculent expression on his face as always, and a power saw in his right hand. Rossetti did not like this one bit.

“Hey, Len,” Harry said easily, giving him a half salute since he obviously could not shake the man’s hand, already occupied with the Black & Decker power saw. “Long time no see,” he added, searching for a response.

Len’s dour expression did not change. “I keep to myself,” he said. “More folks should be doing that, there’d be less trouble.”

Harry had known Len—that is, he’d seen him around, passed the time of day, seen him fishing, and like that, for years, but they had never gotten beyond that point. Now, though, he had questions.

“I see you’re busy,” he said, indicating the saw and the wood shavings swirling in the breeze, out of the cracked-open door. “I’m sure you know some things have been happening here, at our lake.” He carefully put the “our” in front of the word “lake”; he wanted Len to feel they were comrades in arms against anything that disturbed their peaceful retreat.

“Bad things.” Len put down the saw and carefully closed the door behind him. He wore a T-shirt that had once been gray, and smelled strongly of sweat. Rossetti took a step backward though Harry did not flinch.

“Why not let’s sit down a while, Len,” he said. “Here on your good bench, you and I need to talk.”

“That bench is not mine,” Len said, standing right where he was while Harry took a seat then immediately felt wrong for doing so. “It’s that Havnel woman’s. I guess she won’t be needing it now.”

Harry hoped his jaw had not dropped at the mention of the name Havnel. He ran a hand through his dark hair, adjusted his dark glasses, gave Rossetti an inquiring glance out of the corner of his eye.

“Didn’t know you even knew her,” he said casually.

Len’s face twisted into what might have been a skeptical grin, though under the beard it was hard to tell. “If you’ve come here to ask about her, you’ve come to the wrong place. All I did was take her order for a bench and a table for her terrace. She didn’t look like the kind of woman that sat on redwood benches admiring the view but,” Len shrugged, “she offered good money and I took it.”

“Have you seen her since?” Harry asked.

“No, sir, and I won’t, not now she’s dead. All burned up in the fire they said.”

“A fire you could see easily from here, Len, but you didn’t bother to come down the hill to ask if you could help, until it was too late. Remember? When you and I met?”

Harry watched Len’s face close, his eyes narrow into slits, his mouth become a tight line.

“Wasn’t none of my business.”

“Did you see the girl, the young daughter, run into the lake?”

“Didn’t see her.” Len looked straight at Harry as he said it.

“Then you didn’t see her hair was on fire, see her throw herself into the lake to save herself?”

Len shrugged and turned away.

Harry said, “Len, I’m asking you as a cop now, did you see anyone else on that lake that night? It was three
A.M.
Len and I know there were two boats because I was there and I heard them. I saw them. I know who was in one, but I’m still puzzled about the other. Now you and I know you miss nothing. If anybody would know who that person in that second boat was, it would be you. I’m talking murder, Len. Better tell me if it was you.”

Len wiped his hands on his shirt, stood looking up to the sky for a long moment, as though seeking inspiration. “I saw the one boat,” he said finally. “It was Wally Osborne.” He glanced back down at Harry. “Don’t know nothing about a second boat.”

“And the girl with her hair on fire?”

Len shrugged. “Too far for me up here on my hill to save any swimmer, besides you did a better job, the helicopter and all that.”

Harry got to his feet. So did Rossetti. The dog gave an impatient yup from the car.

“Thanks, Len.” Harry did not give a little salute goodbye. “I’ll need to talk to you again, later.”

The two men walked to the car, both aware of Len’s eyes on them.

Rossetti got in, found a tissue, and wiped the dust carefully from his shoes. He handed Harry one and told him to do likewise. “Not fuckin’ up my car for a truculent bastard like that,” he said. “What did he tell us anyway?”

“Not as much as he knows,” Harry replied. “I’ll bet even money it was him in that second boat.”

15

Len watched the two detectives drive off down his hill. When the cloud of dust raised by the car settled, he went back into his shed and shut the door. There were no windows. The inside was lit by a single hundred-watt lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. A hand-carved worktable occupied the far end, with tools for gardening hung neatly along the left wall, power tools attached by clamps to the right. A collection of knives fronted the workbench, behind which were stretched the drying skins of two small animals, a badger and a coyote, both shot and dismembered by Len.

It was a kind of hobby with him. Amateur taxidermy. The smell was terrible at first but it disappeared after a while into a kind of mangy fustiness he barely even noticed. A third skin hung on twin cables from the slatted wooden ceiling, a larger rougher pelt, which, since it still had its head, was immediately identifiable as a German shepherd dog whose thick coat and erect ears closely resembled Harry’s malamute, Squeeze.