I don't recall my answer. It was something bright like, “What?”
“The kid started rattling his bars this morning and when the guards came he told them he killed Billy Tiller with a bulldozer.” Ollie laughed. “State's attorney is really pissed. There goes his TV trial.”
“I cannot believeâWait a minute, Ollie, if the guilty party was already locked up, last night, who exploded a flash grenade in my face?”
“You been screwing any wives lately?”
“I'll check my diary and get back to you.”
Ollie unfolded my airplane and spread it on my desk. “Better do it before the answer date on this ticket.”
He left. I lifted my shoes onto my desk and stared at them.
Mindblown, to say the least, I picked up the phone and called Ira Roth. I got his voice mail, left my name, and immediately dialed his cell. This did not seem possible. Why in hell would Jeff Kimball confess? And if he really did do the murder, then who tried to kill me last night? Who and why? Ira picked up, after checking his caller ID. “I can't talk, now, Ben. I'm with a client.”
“Did Jeff confess?”
“That's who I'm with. I'll get back to you when I can.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing.” He hung up. I looked up. Tom Mealy filled my door.
If this weekend had not already become my worst in memory, it was about to. Alison's father was almost as big as Oliver Moody and had more scars on his face because Trooper Moody fought his fights sober while Tom brawled when feeling no pain.
He rapped on the glass.
I returned my feet to the floor the better to move rapidly. “Come in.”
He opened the door and promptly stumbled over the sill.
“Hello, Tom. How are you doing?”
He came at me fast, crossing my office in a single bound, and thrust out a big hand with scarred knuckles. “I want to apologize, Ben. I behaved like a real jerk in the past and I promise you I won't do it again.”
Almost as mindblown as by Jeff's confession, but more inclined to smile, I stood up and took his hand. It was trembling and a little damp. He was very nervous.
“Great to see you, Tom. Sit down. Sit down.”
Nervous, but clear-eyed. His skin was smooth and he looked ten years younger than when I'd seen him last. I guessed he hadn't had a drink or a cigarette in months.
“I was just going to make some coffee. Want some?”
“Coffee would be great. Thanks.”
He lumbered after me, through the house, into the kitchen, and stood by, shifting foot to foot as I assembled the coffee. “How've you been?” I asked.
“Well, next week, I celebrate a year sober.”
“Congratulations.”
“I gotta thank you for what you've done for my family.”
“I will tell you in all honesty, Tom, it's a pleasure having them here. Alison is a fine little girl.”
“Man, I can't believe how much she grew.”
I sensed her presence and looked at the screen door. She was scrunched up on the granite slab that formed the low step, watching and listening. When our eyes met, she put a finger to her lips.
“Where are you living?” I asked Tom.
“I just rented a place down in Frenchtown. With an option to buy.”
“Excellent,” I said, wondering how. The high point of his employment record had been a brief stint plowing snow for the town, a job he lost for drinking and stealing. However he had pulled it off, I knew deep in my heart that I was going to lose my backyard neighbors. Had to happen some time, I thought. Right? Kids grow up, go to college, move to a city. Besides, Frenchtown wasn't that far away. Close enough to bicycle up the hill to ride Redman.
“It's a little ranch,” he said. “But it's got a barn I can fix up and some land. Two bedrooms and a nice kitchen designed by Home Depot. When I showed Janet that kitchen she cried.”
“That's great,” I said, pretending I could not imagine a rusted pickup backing a second-hand horse trailer into Scooter's barn. “You're lucky to find it. Prices are going nuts and builders are buying little places just to tear them down.” I was surprised I hadn't seen it listed. I'm always looking for a such a property for the grown children of many people I know who were dying to find a place like that so they can afford to stay in Newbury.
“Man, I know I'm lucky. I'm renting from the man I've been working for. He wants me to stay with the store, so he made it easy. I think he'll give me a mortgage if it keeps working out. Wants to make me manager so he can open up another one.”
“What kind of store?”
“Liquor store.”
I looked up from the coffee pot. “Isn't that tough on you?”
“Everybody asks that. But my sponsorâyou know, I joined AA.”
“Figured.”
“My sponsor, he's worked in a bar fifteen years. He said for him the only way he could stay sober was face it every day. He said when he sees all them bottles, he knows damned well he's not going to get in trouble skipping a meeting. That's what I'm doing and it's working out.”
“Good luck.”
“Thing is, Ben, I'm hoping to make a home. You know. For my wife. For my little girl. That's making it easier, too.”
“I'll bet.”
I drove the Fiat to Plainfield. A block from the courthouse, I got nearly run off the road by a jerk in a Cadillac. I only realized as he disappeared in my rearview mirror that it was Ira Roth, speeding home to spend the rest of Sunday with his horses. I presented myself at the jail. The guard checking ID said, “You're off the list.”
“I'm Kimball's attorney's investigator.”
“Attorney Roth just left. He said you're off the list.”
“What?”
“Sorry, man.”
I went outside and found a private spot across the street in the pretty Plainfield green, which had some healthy old elms and views of handsome Greek Revival mansions, to phone Ira's cell.
“What, Ben?” I could hear tires squeal as he bulled the big car through a sharp bend.
“What's going on, Ira? Jail says I'm off the list to see Jeff.”
“You got your wish, Ben.”
“What wish?”
“You're off the case. I don't need you anymore.”
“Did he really confess?”
“We're negotiating that.”
“What âwe'? You and Jeff or you and the state's attorney?”
“I don't need your services anymore.”
“Mind me asking why he did it?”
Ira barked a bitter laugh. “He says he did it for the environment.”
“Not revenge?”
“Revenge would be too easy. Hot-headed. Madness of the moment. Trauma revisited. Best case, I could knock an argument that got out of hand down to manslaughter. But âfor the environment' sounds way-in-advance premeditated. As in first degree murder.”
“Did you tell Jeff that?”
“Oh, yes. But he's a very principled young man. He would never hurt a fly for revenge.”
I said, “I don't get it. He told me over and over that ELFers don't kill.”
“I never met an anarchist yet who plays by the rules.”
“What are you going to do?”
“The way he's acting, maybe I can pull off an insanity plea,” Ira said with little hope.
“You mind if I talk to him?”
“I don't need you muddying the waters.”
“I won't muddy anything. Let me talk to him. This whole thing sounds way off kilter.”
“No. This is tricky stuff right now. Let me remind you, we still have the death penalty in this state.”
“Did you remind Jeff of that?”
“Oh, he knows. The little bastard knows that he'll get his trial. Even if the judge accepts his guilty plea, he'll get a death penalty hearing where he can spout his commitment to greenery. And again in the mandatory appeal. He's got himself a forum right up to the moment they slide the needle in his arm.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“Stay out of it. I don't need you on this case anymore. I don't want you in this case anymore.”
“Horse paid in full?”
“Not quite.”
“Then I'll keep looking.”
“No you won't. You're off the case.”
“Only if the horse is paid in full.”
“Ben, why are you so goddamned contrary?”
“Is the horse paid in full?” I gave him plenty of time to say yes before I hung up on him. But we both knew he was too greedy to allow that.
I had to laugh. If it was Billy's actual killer who tried to kill me last night, he should have waited a day for Jeff to confess. A Honda with NYP press plates pulled up to the jail and out jumped a guy with a camera and a woman scribbling notes on a pad, and I had to laugh again.
No wonder Ira had been driving like a maniac. The attorney who pleaded a Manhattan mover-and-shaker's son guilty of first degree murder was not the image he wanted splashed around New York City. Becoming known as the lawyer who won life in prison instead of the death penalty would not be much better.
Right behind the NYP Honda came a Saturn with Connecticut plates. It decanted a reporter I recognized from the Hartford
Courant
, the state's leading daily. And here came a TV crew in a satellite truck, which meant that a disappointed chief state's attorney must be lurking in the courthouse. Run, Ira, run. And weep, prosecutor, weep. No Senate race for convicting an eco-terrorist who has already confessed. The only good news today was a death penalty hearing would cost the taxpayers less than a long trial.
I got home in time to keep my Sunday appointments.
First I took a pair of house hunters out to see the old Richardson placeâa treasure of an old-fashioned weekend mansion that I had been trying to sell for years and was now even harder to sell since Billy Tiller had plunked a pair of McMansions across the road. Next was a couple that had been priced out of Manhattan. They wanted to convert a Connecticut tobacco barn into a loft-like artist's studio and home. Or, they wanted buy an authentic saltbox. Or, maybe something ultra-modern like they'd seen last week in the Hamptons. They were pretty much going to kill the rest of the day, I thought. But at five, when it was time to call it a day, Patrick said to Brenda, “You're not happy, are you?”
Brenda said, “I was hoping to get thrilled.”
“Ben?” Patrick turned to me with little hope. He had the glazed eyes and furrowed brow of a man who had seen too many properties in one weekend. “Can you thrill us?”
I was wishing I had a third arrow in my quiverâopen heart surgery or portrait paintingâas I was the batting the same zero real-estate-wise that I'd been batting detective-wise. Well, if I couldn't thrill them, I could at least entertain them so they'd come back smiling next weekend.
“There is a house that just came on the market. It's unusual.”
Brenda perked up. “Can we see it?”
“Unusual as in about to fall down?” asked Patrick.
“No. It's in perfect, move-in condition. Except the garden needs work.”
“What's wrong with the garden?”
“Needs a major weeding. It's unusual, too. Kind of a walled garden. Very unusual.”
“Come on, Pat. Let's look at it.”
“Let me find out.” I dialed Fred Gleason. “Sorry to call you so late, Fred. I've got a charming young couple here looking to be thrilled and I thought of the builder's house you just listed. Is it still available?”
Fred knew that I would be angling the cell, surreptitiously, toward the charming young couple, and he answered to the effect that some people who had looked this morning had told Sherry Carter that they were considering coming back for another look the middle of the week and that Sherry had a feeling they would put down a deposit.
I said, “Well, my clients saw a contemporary they loved in the Hamptons, but they want to give Connecticut a shot, before they commit.”
I tilted the phone again so they could hear Fred say, “I'd rather spend the summer in Abu Ghraib than fight that Hamptons traffic.”
“Thanks Fred. Talk to you later.”
“Builder's house?” asked Patrick.
“His own home. Built to his standards.”
“Why's he selling?”
“He passed away recently.”
“Oh. But's it's new. Modern?”
“Postmodern. Ish. Though more Wright than Gehry.”
“Pat. Come on, let's see it.”
By now, Pat looked like a man in need of a cocktail. I said, “Let me make a suggestion. If we can give it a quick look, now, we'll be just in time for drinks at the Yankee Drover.” I led the way in the Fiat. They glided after me, slick and silent in an electric hybrid.
“Wow,” they said when we climbed out of the cars. Then Patrick said, “It's kind of bright, isn't it?”
“The brick is glazed,” I answered. “I would imagine it's impervious to weather.”
I unlocked the front door as fast as I could get the key out of the lock box, but not fast enough for Brenda, who said, “I hate this door.”
I said, “I would replace it with a nice solid piece of oak.”
“This is the ugliest door I've ever seen in my life.”
“I would stain the oak a tobacco shade to play off the brick.”
I got the damned thing open and they chorused, “Oh my God.”
I kept my trap shut.
They stood in the foyer a while, repeating, “Oh my God.”
Then they started through the rooms. I remained in the foyer, tracking their progress by swellings and decrescendos of Oh my Gods.
What, I wondered, had it been like for Billy Tiller to come home at night to this monstrosity. He had built it as his dream house. But his wife had filed for divorce while it was still under construction. Within a year she had remarried and moved to Arizona. I hadn't seen anywhere in the house to cosy up on a winter evening. Maybe he sat in a closet.
At least he'd been lucky in divorce. Somehow he'd gotten the house. And the business. A lot luckier than most guys I knew. Though not all. Bruce Kimball had made out like a bandit, too. Despite what he had told me at the Yale Club, somehow I didn't believe that all of his new riches miraculously materialized the day after his divorce was official.
Patrick and Brenda returned, laughing. “What's that fireplace made of?”
“Some kind of art material.”
“I told you, Pat.”
Pat said, “Where's this walled garden?”
I led them into the master bedroom suite and hit the curtain switch.
“Oh my God.”
My thought exactly. For a different reason.
“I don't see any weeds,” said Brenda.
They were gone. Weeded.
“Some of those plants are kind of scraggly.”
Scragglyâleggyâbecause they'd been fighting the weeds for sun. But they had survived and were even lightly speckled with blossoms. Like the tentative laughter of suddenly freed prisoners. Camassia, blue bells, aquilegia, corydalis, allium, Jacob's ladder.
“Ben, do you know about flowers?”
“A bit.”
“What are those dark blue clusters?”
“
Baptisia.
”
The weeds had hidden a reflecting pool.
“This so cool. Pat, how would you like to see this when we wake up in the morning?”
“It is so peaceful.”
Brenda said, “I'd spend the whole day in bed.”
Pat perked up. “Sounds good to me. Ben, have you ever seen a garden like this?”
“Only once.”