The Killing Club Read online

  “You’re perfect.” I kissed him.He tasted like sugar.I ate only one of the buns, and felt virtuous.He studied the copy I’d made of the second note.Forensics was working on the original.

  “Baby, I still think it’s a sick joke.” Rod had brought me the state patrol file on Shawn Tarrini’s DOA.“Just so you’ll give this up.No way it was a hit-and-run.” He had the emergency room report with him as well.

  “His head went through the windshield.A trucker headed south saw Tarrini’s Chevy Tracker totally lose control, go into the embankment, solo.

  Poor guy was history on impact.”

  “Was he drinking?”

  “They got a postmortem blood alcohol point oh six.Really that’s not so bad.But the autopsy they did was minimal.We wouldn’t go to court with it.No vitreous, no UAC.His mom was screaming for the body.Said he’d suffered enough.”

  “His mom? What about his wife? What about Amanda?”

  Rod sat in white shirtsleeves wearing a tie with tiny blue diamonds on it that I’d given him two years ago.As chief of detectives, he felt he ought to set a tone with a jacket and tie.The jacket stayed in his office at the Dixon Building, looped over his chair.“You’re going to like this, but don’t go wild.” He opened a folder from the Jersey highway patrol, turned it to face me.“The night Tarrini died? Two couples went to A.C.Trump Taj Mahal.There on the boardwalk?”

  “I know it.Who?”

  “Tarrini and his wife, Amanda.And another couple.The other couple? The Tymoszes.Your friend Ben and Megan.”

  Quickly I scanned the report.Amanda had told the patrolman who’d talked to her after the car crash that she’d quarreled with her husband 1 0 5

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  because he was drunk.She’d declined to go home with him and he’d left the casino in a rage.Also interviewed, Ben and Megan confirmed Shawn’s drinking with words like “staggering” and “smashed.” In Megan’s view, Shawn had drunk “more than his fair share”—whatever that would be.

  Ben was quoted as saying he’d offered Amanda a ride back to Gloria because he was reluctant to have her return in a car with her intoxicated husband.

  Now frankly, as I tried to get Rod to agree, personally, if I’d just written up a million-dollar life insurance policy on someone who was about to drive off totally plastered onto the very fast and very busy Atlantic City Expressway, I wouldn’t worry so much about giving the man’s wife a lift as I would about taking his car keys away from him before he left in a drunken rage.

  On the other hand, a BAC of only .06 and a big guy like Shawn Tarrini is “staggering”? I figured I’d make a few calls about that accident report.

  After breakfast, Rod and I walked from the bakery back toward the Dixon Building.Heading across the green, I heard my name.

  Pudge was calling out from the door of Dante’s that he had some fresh almond biscotti and would make me an espresso.Okay, it would be my third breakfast, but then I did have some questions I wanted to ask Pudge.As far as Weight Watchers goes, I’d have to watch later.

  Rod walked on across the green, past the shuttered and padlocked Christmas manger, swooping down occasionally with a long open swing of his arm to pick up litter along the diagonal path to Dixon.He looked like he was bowling.Two by two, a line of maybe fourth-graders skipped up the steps of the old white Federal courthouse next to the police 1 0 6

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  station, to see how justice was done.Their teachers looked younger than Dino.

  The day was cold but sunny.I watched the town hurry by, rushed by the fast approach of Christmas—only weeks away.I waited in a window booth in Dante’s for Pudge to bring my espresso.My cell phone vibrated in my jeans pocket.Weirdly enough I knew it was Garth, just from the warm throb of the stupid phone.

  “I’m leaving on the next train,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Isn’t that a song?”

  “I think the song is more, ‘tonight I’m gonna stay here with you.’ ”

  He chuckled in a way that sounded like we were in bed, but maybe I was reading things into it.

  “I thought you already did leave.”

  “Nope.Tonight, sad to say, I’ll be at a press conference in the city.”

  “I’ve got to ask you.What does Ashley do?”

  “Money Matters.”

  “What?”

  “She’s one of the anchors.That show that hypes the stock market twenty-four-seven? Money Matters? They do it every day.It can’t be easy.

  She’s the early-morning anchor.I’m the late-night news.” He laughed.

  “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her awake.”

  “Sounds like a basis for a relationship.”

  “Yeah, well ...Anyhow, just wanted to say, I’m glad we got to see each other.And I wouldn’t worry about this Ben-Shawn thing anymore.

  They just died.Forget about it.You and I could always get it going.”

  What the hell did that mean?

  Garth read my mind.“I mean, the two of us, seeing murder all 1 0 7

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  around.Your fiancé’s right, a couple of freak accidents.Bad luck.You take it easy, Jamie.It really was, I mean it, good to see you.” He asked me to promise to stay in touch.He vowed to do the same.We admitted neither of us would do so unless it turned out somebody really was trying to kill us.

  I asked him if he remembered whether people in the club had ever made copies of the old Death Books.He said he did recall Xeroxing them once, but he’d thrown his copies away after Lyall died.By now no doubt everyone had tossed them.

  Thinking he was still at Katie and Sweets’s, and unable to stop myself, I asked, “Would you like a lift to the train station?”

  “Got it covered.Left something on your desk, by the way.Take it easy.Bye.” He was gone.

  Dante’s hadn’t actually opened yet; it didn’t till noon.It was strange to be there in the quiet, drinking coffee.Pudge’s espresso was the best in town; even the Ironworks Inn at four dollars a single cup couldn’t get the crema the way Dante’s did.

  Pudge and I talked about Ben’s cancer and how Ben’s father had died of cancer too—but not so horribly young.“He should have come to me and told me.Or gone to talk to Connie.Connie would have been there for him.Or gone to a shrink.Somebody.You shouldn’t carry those things on your own.You need help.”

  “You think there’s any way Ben committed suicide?”

  “No way.He’s not going to do that to himself.Come on, Jamie, he was Catholic.”

  I shrugged.“Me too.You too.You really believe you’re going to damn your immortal soul if you commit suicide?”

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  Pudge’s large eyes looked fretfully around his empty restaurant.“I guess I believe it, I don’t know.”

  The truth is, few of us went to church anymore, yet all of us were still programmed to spook if we broke the rules.If I eat a hamburger on Friday in Lent, I’m aware of it.That imprinting comes early and it lasts.

  We talked about the fact that Barclay had just bought the playhouse from Ben’s widow and his mother.“Yeah, I heard that,” Pudge said.

  “That’s fine if all he wants to do is fix it up.You know how those preservationist-types like Amanda are around here.It’s old, it’s sacred.”

  I told him I thought I’d actually seen Barclay writing the check to Ben’s mother.

  Pudge pulled out his gold lighter, then noticed his wife come out of the kitchen and go to the cash register and he dropped it back in his pocket.“Well, he has to get past the planning board.” His cheeks filled with stubbornness.“Somebody killed Ben.I know it.”

  “If you’re worried it was Megan, don’t.She’s got an alibi.”

  When he looked at me, I could see the relief that he wasn’t keeping a secret anymore.“Is the alibi Sam?”

  I shrugged, not committing myself.

  Pudge pushed forward the little plate stacked with b
iscotti.“Yeah, I knew about it.Don’t blame Megan.Ben ...well, a while ago, he wasn’t perfect in that particular department either.I know of one little fling he had early on.” Was there anybody in Gloria (besides presumably Pudge) who wasn’t cheating on a spouse?

  When I didn’t take a biscotti, he raised the plate, prodding me.“So, ask.Why’d you want to see me, Jamie? Did I kill Ben? No, I didn’t.”

  “I know you didn’t.” I surprised him by asking if he knew what the 1 0 9

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  relationship was between Amanda and Barclay.He said he hadn’t heard that specific rumor, but she wasn’t “Snow White” and Barclay was “in a league of his own.” They’d keep it quiet if they were involved; they both had a lot at stake.

  Pudge couldn’t answer my second question either: Was there something, in the recent past, or even the distant past, that bonded Garth with Connie and Ben, maybe with Barclay as well—something they’d need to keep arguing about over this past week? “I don’t know, but I sort of think there was something way back,” Pudge said, slowly nodding.“I always thought some of those guys had something they were keeping from the rest of us.I don’t know what, it was just a feeling, but I’d see them huddled up like that a lot back when the club fell apart.”

  “So something way back in high school?”

  “But I don’t know what.I used to think it was serious drugs they’d gotten into.That they were dealing or something.You know, Lyall sold everything there was, pot, blow, uppers, downers, and where was he getting it? Maybe they took over from him.”

  “It wasn’t much of a business for Lyall.Wasn’t it just to friends? I remember the police searched his house but they never found anything.

  ’Course, I figured the Hilliers dumped whatever they came across so the news wouldn’t get out what their son was up to.”

  “You thought that? I guess that’s why you became a cop, huh, Jamie?”

  “I guess.”

  We sat for a while.

  He frowned.“It doesn’t sound like Ben would be a part of drugs.Or Connie either.I can’t see it.”

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  “How about Shawn?”

  “No way.Shawn never used drugs of any kind, absolutely not.And he was never a drinker either.Never.” Pudge added that back at Hart High, Shawn had been apparently the only member of the football team who’d actually followed the coach’s orders and didn’t touch alcohol.

  “So if he did drink, he might get wasted?” I explained why I was asking—what had happened that night in Atlantic City at the casino.

  “No way.The few times I saw Shawn drink, he could definitely hold it.He didn’t ‘stagger’ around.”

  “Well, his blood alcohol content on the autopsy wasn’t that high.But Amanda and Ben both said he could hardly stand up.And why, if they thought he was so drunk, they let him get in a car ...”

  Pudge pulled me toward him across the booth.“Jamie, what are you thinking? That Shawn wasn’t an accident either? You think somebody’s murdered two of us?”

  “Take it easy, Pudge.Let’s just take it easy.”

  THERE WAS A DARK RED ROSE lying on top of an old vinyl record album on my desk.The album was the jazz drummer Billy Cob-ham’s Spectrum.My name was carefully written on the back, Jamie Ferrara, right where I’d always signaled ownership of my albums.But the signature was not in my handwriting.Long ago, I’d accused Garth of borrowing Spectrum and not returning it.He’d always denied being guilty.I still didn’t know whether he was lying or not.

  In seven minutes, I made it to the Gloria train depot, which is where you get the local connection to Philly or Trenton so you can catch the 1 1 1

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  Metroliner to New York.Parking in the taxi stand cut my time even more; one of the perks of my GPD plates.

  Garth still stood there on the platform.The train was just pulling in.

  People gathered their luggage.The announcer called out the stops the train would make along the way.It could have been a beautiful moment.

  I could have been thanking Garth for remembering Spectrum.We could have been chatting about how we’d always shared that love of jazz and how maybe we still did like the same music or maybe we didn’t anymore but maybe there were new ...

  It was a lot of maybes.None of them happened because Garth was kissing Amanda Morgan like something out of the end of a movie, his hands lost inside her mink.

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  IF I HADN’T STUMBLEDover some jerk’s large duffel bag on the train platform, right where I’d have to dance sideways for ten feet to catch my balance after tripping over it; if my cell phone at that exact moment hadn’t rung its ridiculous Beethoven’s Ninth melody that I keep meaning to get rid of; if Garth and Amanda hadn’t seen me; if Garth hadn’t turned around and said, “Oh hi, Jamie,” and Amanda hadn’t asked, “Leaving town?” with her twenty-thousand-dollar smile; if all those things hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have gotten so mad at myself that I almost rear-ended a tour bus pulling out of the train station with forty jolly women from the senior citizens center crowded onto it.

  The seniors were headed up to Radio City Music Hall, dressed warmly enough to be dropped off in Antarctica instead.My great-aunt Betty Wurtz was waving at me from the rear window, looking like a trendy Eskimo in a huge purple parka with a big fake-fur hood, and if I 1 1 3

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  hadn’t realized she was actually frantically warning me with her hand to hit the brakes, I might have smacked right into the bus.

  Then when I arrived back at Dixon, my “partner,” Danny Ventura, had angled his Corvette so it used up half my parking space at GPD and I sideswiped his bumper.

  The entire rest of the week didn’t get any better.

  Rod said no to the court order I’d requested so I could have Shawn Tarrini’s body exhumed.Rod said he couldn’t justify where I was going.

  Well, okay, I was going to Amanda, to the thought that she had involved Ben in some plot to kill her husband Shawn for that million-dollar insurance policy.I was thinking that maybe Ben had started feeling guilty about what they’d done.That when he’d found out he had a terminal disease, maybe it had felt like God’s punishment.Learning that Megan was fooling around with Sam Deklerk might have felt like God’s punishment too.Maybe the sicker Ben felt, the stronger his remorse had grown, until he’d told Amanda he was going to come talk to me about what they’d done to Shawn.Maybe Ben had been planning to tell me how Amanda and he had arranged things somehow to ensure that Shawn crashed that car in the concrete embankment on the Atlantic City Expressway.

  Rod pulled open his tie and looked at his watch.They were both signs that I wasn’t going to get his help in opening up a homicide case.He sighed in a way that made me want to choke him.“Are you suggesting that Ben Tymosz killed Shawn Tarrini as a favor for Amanda?”

  All right, put that way it sounded a little far-fetched.“Not a favor.I think maybe Ben was in love with her.”

  Rod kept slowly shaking his head as if trying to follow a drunk or a 1 1 4

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  child.“Amanda went over to Ben’s house, rigged a wire in his basement doorway and shoved him over it down the steps and set fire to him?” The slowness of his voice made it even more infuriating.“Amanda Morgan killed her husband and then a few years later she killed her insurance agent so he wouldn’t tell you about it? Then she sent you those notes?

  Amanda Morgan who’s married to the retired CEO of Kind Lady?”

  I was getting angry.“Now rich women don’t kill people?”

  “Amanda Morgan who’s in the paper every other Sunday because she’s saving this and saving that for the town?”

  “Preservationists don’t kill people?”

  “The biggest donor to help out Deep Port River? That Amanda?”

  I threw a file folder in the air.“O
h, okay! You’ve got your kayak, so I don’t get my court order.” (Rod owns his own kayak; he keeps it on top of his Jeep so he can throw it in water whenever he sees any, and every Saturday morning he’s on that 140-mile section called Deep Port Scenic and Recreational River that Amanda saved for him.) Rod crossed his arms.“Boy, you sure don’t like her.Makes me wonder.Where’s your friend Garth today?”

  I crossed my arms too.“What? He left.He took the train back to New York this morning.What’s that got to do with anything?”

  Rod tilted his head to study me.“I don’t know.I figure you do.”

  My dad used to say, “When Jamie gets steamed, her hair curls.” Well, I probably looked like Little Orphan Annie by now.

  “Okay, Rod, so you’re saying, close this case?”

  “Jamie, come on.What case? We never opened a case.Your dad invited me to dinner Sunday.Still okay if I come?”

  “Did he say I was cooking?”

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  “Yeah.Fegato Veneziana.”

  “Great.”

  Rod walked away from me, calling over the shoulder of his crisp white

  “I’m Chief of Detectives” shirt.“Get the evidence.You’re just fishing.”

  Maybe I was.Ice fishing, when you didn’t know what the hell was down there, and you just had to wait.But you knew something was down there.Because fishing is what you did and you were good at it.At least that’s what I was telling myself while I was picking up the papers that had flown out of the folder I’d tossed in the air.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, our medical examiner, Gert Anderssen, agreed with Rod that there was no reason to dig up Amanda’s second husband even if I could have gotten a court order, because nothing looked out of the ordinary about the autopsy report on Shawn Tarrini.As far as she could tell from reading the coroner’s analysis (and the coroner, Herbert Steinway, was a friend of hers—“A good man with a head always on his shoulders”), Shawn hadn’t been shot, or poisoned, or drugged or anything else suspicious before heading home on the Atlantic City Expressway.

  “Why was he staggering around, Gert? He was a big man.He hadn’t had that much to drink.And he wasn’t a drinker.”