The Kind Worth Killing (33 page)

“That's right.”

“Can you tell me about it? I know you've been through it already, but I'd like to hear it as well.”

She told me how she and Brad had had an on-again, off-again romance since practically forever, all the way back to Kennewick High, and that they both still hung out at Cooley's, and occasionally hooked up, and that the last time this happened was Friday. “I'm not proud of it, but we go way back, you know. Sometimes I thought we were destined to wind up together.”

“You sure it was Friday?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, leaning forward and plucking her pack of Marlboro Menthols off the table. “You don't mind if I smoke, do you?” she asked.

“No, of course not.”

“You want one?”

“Sure,” I said and leaned across to pull one of the cigarettes from the hard pack. I usually only smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, but I figured it couldn't hurt to bond a little with Polly Greenier. She lit her cigarette first, then passed the Bic lighter over to me. I hadn't had a menthol in years, and the first minty drag punched me in the throat. “How are you positive it was Friday?” I asked.

“It's the only day of the week I get off work early. I do the five-to-one shift at Manor House Nursing Home on Friday. Afterward I went to Cooley's for lunch and that's where I saw Braggett . . . I mean, Brad . . . we had a few drinks, then went back to his place.”

“Did you plan on meeting him there, or was it just chance?”

“Half and half, really. I'd seen him earlier in the week, and he'd mentioned it to me. Asked me if I still got off early on Friday and told me that he was planning on being at Cooley's, and maybe we could have a few drinks, celebrate the weekend.”

“Was that usual for the two of you. Making plans to meet?”

She blew a plume of blue smoke from her nostrils and rounded the ash of her cigarette against the edge of a glass ashtray on the coffee table. “No, not really. We didn't usually make plans. We'd just run into each other. It's a small town, you know.”

“Anything else unusual about that day, about Brad?”

“He was a little strange, I'll admit it. Like, he insisted on paying for my lunch and buying me beers. He was kind of all over me. I mean, that's happened a lot in the past, but not usually in the middle of the day. I thought it was weird, but I also kind of liked it. I thought maybe he'd gotten lonely since his marriage broke up and decided he wanted a girlfriend.”

I finished my cigarette, put it out in the ashtray. “Polly, Brad Daggett was positively ID'd as being in Boston on Friday night around six at night. Are you sure you want to stick to your story?”

“I don't understand. I was with him at his place.”

I paused, took a sip of coffee to try to get the taste of menthol out of my mouth. “I want to make this very clear, Polly. Brad is in big trouble. He's the prime suspect in two murders. If you're lying about Brad being with you that means you are willfully obstructing justice, and you will do prison time. No doubt about it.”

She clamped a hand around her mouth. Her eyes looked shocked but also confused. “Did Brad kill someone?”

“Were you with him on Friday night?”

“I was. I was with him, but I don't know. I can't remember much. I think I might have passed out.” Her voice had turned high-pitched. Jack the cocker spaniel lifted his head in concern but stayed in his bed.

“Just tell me exactly what you remember. If you tell me the truth you're not going to get into trouble, okay?”

“We were pretty drunk when we left the bar, doing shots and stuff like that. Back at his place, we kept drinking—”

“What time was this?”

“I don't know exactly. Three maybe? I got to Cooley's around one, and we were there a couple hours. I don't know the exact—”

“That's okay. Around three is good enough. So you were both drinking? What were you drinking?”

“Jaeger shots, mostly, then we started to fool around. We were pretty wrecked. Brad, he couldn't get it up. I remember that much. He said something like, let's sleep it off and try again, and then we went to sleep.”

“What time did you wake up?”

“It was late. I don't know. Around ten or something. I remember because I looked at the clock and didn't know if it was ten in the morning or ten at night.”

“And Brad was there in bed with you?”

“No, but he was there. Out in the living room watching TV. He drove me back to my car at Cooley's, and I went home. I felt like shit.”

“Polly, thank you. That is all very helpful. And you haven't heard from him or seen him since then?”

“God, no. Did he really do it? Did he kill them both?” Her hand was up around her face again, and her robe had gaped open. She had put her cigarette down on the ashtray without putting it out, and it smoldered away.

“That's what we're trying to find out. Did he ever talk with you about either of the Seversons?”

“No, never, but him and the man were friends. They used to drink at Cooley's together. I met him once.”

“They drank together?”

“At least once. I remember, he introduced me. He was the guy
building that big house out on the cliff, right? They kind of seemed like friends.”

“And Miranda Severson? The wife? Did you ever see her at Cooley's?”

“No, never. I'd heard of her, but . . . Jesus Christ, I can't believe all of this is happening.” She reached for her cigarette in the ashtray, saw that it was down to the filter, and crushed it out.

I left her my card, told her to call me right away if she remembered anything else, then got back into my car. It was close to noon. My original plan had been to swing by Cooley's, talk to a bartender, see if I could corroborate Polly's story, but now I didn't feel the need. She was telling the truth. Brad had gotten her drunk, made sure she passed out at his house, then driven to Boston to kill Ted. I called James and told her what I'd found out, that Brad's alibi was never going to hold up. She didn't sound surprised. She was still at the state police headquarters in Portland, Maine. I told her I'd pick her up there in an hour or two. That gave me enough time to grab some lunch. I drove south, back past the Seversons' house, still surrounded with official vehicles. I pulled into the driveway of the Kennewick Inn; I'd heard it was where Ted and Miranda stayed when they were in Maine. A wooden sign that advertised
VACANCIES
swung in the breeze off the ocean. I thought to myself that when the national press got hold of this story their vacancy issue was going to be solved.

There was a smaller hanging sign at the front of the inn's main building that advertised
THE LIVERY PUB
. I walked toward it along the narrow sidewalk, crunching through desiccated leaves, and went down an exterior stone stairwell to the basement entrance. Inside, the Livery was a long narrow space that smelled of woodsmoke and French fries. I took a seat at the bar. There were only a few people in the pub, but all of them were talking feverishly, no doubt spreading rumors about what had happened a mile up the road. I ordered a cup of coffee and a cheeseburger from the rotund bartender. While I waited, I pulled out my notebook and looked at what I had written earlier that morning.

Polly Greenier
—
why would she lie for Brad?
I now knew that she hadn't lied, that she'd merely been used by Brad as an unwitting alibi.

Why did Ted have a key for Brad's house?
I still didn't know, but I had learned from Polly that Brad and Ted had spent some social time together at Cooley's. Whose idea had that been? Could Brad have given Ted the key for some reason?

The final note I'd written was,
Why did Lily Kintner lie to me?
I still wondered about that, even though I didn't think she had anything to do with what had happened between Brad and the Seversons. Still, I pulled out my phone, checked to see that I had service, and pulled up the one image of Lily Kintner that I knew was online. A low-res photograph of her and her father from about ten years earlier, but Lily hadn't changed much since then. Same red hair in the same style. Same pale skin and intense eyes. When the bartender delivered my cheeseburger I turned the phone around on a whim and asked if he recognized the girl in the picture. He bent close, studied the phone's screen for about five seconds. I was so prepared for him to say no that I barely registered it when he said, “Sure. She was here earlier this week. Stayed a couple of nights. Pretty lady.”

“Why was she here?” I asked, trying to keep the surprise, and the excitement, out of my voice.

“Couldn't tell you. Drank Sam light, I think. Always remember a drink order.”

He moved away to greet a pair of customers that had just taken seats at the other end of the bar. I looked at Lily's picture on my phone—a few grainy dots that formed her face. Was it possible she had more to do with all this than I thought? I knew I would need to see her again, find out why she was lying to me, find out why she'd come to Maine after Ted had been killed. I didn't expect to find out much, but it meant that I'd get to see her again. Sooner rather than later. I took a bite of my cheeseburger, which was far better than a cheeseburger had any right to be. Life was looking up.

My father fidgeted and sighed on the entire drive from JFK out to Shepaug. “It's just Mom,” I said. “She's as full of shit as she ever was.” He smiled at me, but there was still watery fear in his eyes. “Give it a shot,” I continued. “If it doesn't work, then we'll figure something else out.”

“I could always come and live with you, Lil,” he said.

That was the inevitability I was hoping to avoid, of course, but I simply placed my hand on his knee and squeezed.

As we rolled over the low hills of Connecticut into familiar terrain, my father got quiet, looking out the window. The leaves on the trees were past their initial burst of radiant color. The reds had turned to rust, the yellows faded. Pulling into the driveway of Monk's my father said, “I can feel my balls going into hiding—now I know I'm coming home.”

As we removed my father's two unwieldy suitcases from the trunk of the car, my mother came to the door, aproned and paint-splattered. She had applied two slashes of bright red lipstick to her mouth. “The patriarch returns,” she said, and it sounded rehearsed. It made me realize she was a little nervous herself.

“Sharon,” my father said, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead
so he could see her at a distance. “You look the same.” It was probably the nicest thing he could have said to her under the circumstances. She nodded and went back into the house.

After helping my father unpack his things and get set up in the first-floor guest room toward the rear of the house, we took a quick walk around the property before the sun disappeared completely. “It gets dark early, here,” my father said. “I remember that.”

“Only in the fall and winter,” I said. “Not all year round.”

“I suppose I could do some raking tomorrow.”

“Mom would like that. She hates to rake.”

“I remember that. She always had me do all the raking.”

“Well, you or that boy across the street.”

“Right.” My father tightened the scarf around his neck, even though it was warm for a late October evening. “Remember when you were little you used to crawl into the pile of leaves?”

“I don't know,” I said.

“Other kids always wanted to jump on leaves, apparently, but you used to burrow into them. Stay inside them for hours. You don't remember that?”

“Kind of.”

“You were such a strange little girl. Before you got your nose into books we used to think we'd given birth to a wild animal. You barely smiled. You'd creep around outside for hours. You made animal sounds. We used to call you our fox girl, and say that you were being raised by humans. Hope we didn't cock you up too bad.”

“You did okay,” I said as a little bit of rain began to fall out of the sky. “You're letting me get my parents back together. The dream of every child of divorce.”

“That wasn't your dream, was it?” my father said as we turned and headed back to the house, dark except for the light coming from the kitchen.

“God, no. I was only joking. Besides, you're not getting back together, I hope. Just living together. Mutual parasitism. Isn't that the plan?”

“Yes, that's the plan. Peace and quiet. Maybe write one more book.
Maybe not. I just want to live out the rest of my life and not hurt anybody. That's all I'm really hoping for.”

Dinner went well. My mother roasted a chicken and my father didn't say anything bad about it, even though it was overcooked. We drank a single bottle of wine among the three of us, and, afterward, my father offered to clean up, saying he'd clean up after every meal. “I can't cook, Sharon, you know that, but I'm happy to clean.”

She rolled her eyes, but just at me. My father was already clearing the table, making careful stacks by the sink. We went to the living room; there was a television in there now, something we'd never had when I was a child. I mentioned it. “For PBS,” my mother said as we sat on opposite sides of the worn-out couch. I thought we'd talk about my father, but my mother told me in exhaustive detail about a glowing review of some artist she used to know. “I never thought much of him, but I guess I was wrong all along, at least according to the
New York Times.
” I listened to her, and I thought that this crazy arrangement between my mother and father just might work, at least for a little while. Over their years of separation they had come to mean less and less to each other, and that might allow them to live together. They didn't love each other enough to hurt each other.

I left the following day after breakfast. I was in no rush and turned north at Hartford to drive up through the Pioneer Valley, eventually connecting with Route 2 and driving back to Winslow along more scenic routes. It really was my favorite time of year, the blustery air filled with dead leaves, the houses decorated for Halloween. One week ago I had learned of Ted Severson's death, and now that whole sordid chapter of my life was closed. Miranda and Brad were gone as well, and I had gotten away with it. Any anxiety I had had about being caught was gone. Now, I just felt relaxed, and full of power. I had even enjoyed spending time in my parents' company.