Uprooting Ernie (Jane Delaney Mysteries Book 2) Page 4

  I waited. She took a healthy swig of her drink and said, “It was your basic stupid prank gone wrong. There was this guy Ernie knew in college. Tim something. Ernie took him out on his boat one night. They were both loaded. Tim dove into the ocean for a swim, and apparently Ernie thought it would be funny to head back in and leave his friend to swim to shore. They were less than a mile out, and Tim was on the swim team.” After a moment she said, “His body washed up the next day. Blood alcohol level was off the charts.”

  “Was Ernie just as drunk?” I asked.

  “Who knows? Took a while for the authorities to ask around and find someone who spied his boat in the vicinity around ten p.m. By the time they pounded on Ernie’s dorm door, he was sober. Didn’t try to deny it. Thought Tim had hitched a ride and made it back to campus okay.”

  “Where did they take the boat out?” I asked.

  “Montauk. Ernie’s mom used to have a little summer place out there, and that’s where he kept the cabin cruiser.”

  “Which brings us back to his murder,” I said. “Whoever killed Ernie took the key to his boat.”

  “And then left it out in the ocean with the fake suicide note and, what, rowed a dinghy back to shore?” Sophie said. “Also, the killer used Ernie’s typewriter. Cops were able to determine that the note was typed on it.”

  “Not handwritten?” I asked. “Isn’t that strange?”

  “Not for Ernie. He typed everything. Miserable handwriting. Used this big old antique typewriter that belonged to his dad.”

  I gazed at the house. Couldn’t help myself.

  “Yeah, I know.” Sophie’s expression was bleak. “He was probably killed in there since the killer used his typewriter and boat key. If so, the guy cleaned up after himself.”

  I shuddered, thinking about the mess that would have resulted from bashing someone’s brains in. Sophie had always loved her rambling old home. Now she’d never be able to enter a room without wondering if something unspeakable had taken place there thirty-two years earlier.

  “You know,” I said, “maybe I will try one of those cigars. A little one.”

  She grinned. “I’ve corrupted the Death Diva. My job here is done.”

  “A little one,” I repeated as she reached into the humidor. The cigar she handed me was petite, with a pale wrapper. I put it to my nose and inhaled the pleasant, mild scent. Sophie showed me how to clip and light it and warned me not to inhale. I leaned back against my chaise, sipping my mojito and smoking my cigar. It felt deliciously decadent.

  “So when did Tim drown?” I asked. “You said they were in college?”

  “Beginning of Ernie’s senior year. Peconic University out on the east end. He would’ve gotten kicked out—hell, would’ve gone to jail probably—if Teddy hadn’t stepped in. Hired a world-class lawyer. Donated a new library to the school. Managed to hush the whole thing up and keep it out of the news.”

  “What about Tim’s family? How could she keep them quiet about it?”

  Sophie’s look said, How do you think?

  “Oh.” I nodded wryly. “She bought them off.” Just like she’d bought off Sophie to stay married to her son.

  “She bought them all off.” She shook her head in disgust. “Her specialty.”

  “You said the fake suicide note blamed it on guilt over Tim’s death?”

  She nodded. “Guess the killer figured there’d be fewer questions if it looked like Ernie could no longer live with himself.”

  “Then whoever did it had to have known about the Tim incident despite Teddy’s cover-up,” I said.

  “I know, I thought about that.”

  I puffed the cigar, trying without success to make smoke rings like Sophie’s. “How much time elapsed between Tim’s death and Ernie’s?”

  She thought for a moment. “Three years. Almost. Meanwhile I met Ernie and married him. Had no inkling about the Tim thing till Ernie died.”

  “The story got out then?”

  She nodded grimly. “Hit the news big-time. It was right there in the suicide note, like I said. Reporters dug up all the grisly details—including how Teddy hushed it up, the whole gay thing. That more than anything gave her fits, that now the world knew her precious Ernie played for the other team. The press spun it into this big, sordid story, with little regard for the facts. Claimed Ernie had a thing for Tim and killed him out of rage at being rejected.”

  I had to ask. “Was Tim gay? I mean, were he and Ernie...”

  Sophie was already shaking her head. “Just college pals. Tim was straight. Left a pregnant girlfriend, as if this story could get more tragic. You probably know her. Lacey Vargas. Owns the lingerie store next to Janey's Place.”

  I gasped, which turned out to be not such a good thing while puffing a cigar. My coughing fit took me out of action for a minute. Sophie shoved my drink at me. It didn’t help. Finally I managed, “Lacey? I had no idea. I mean, not that I knew about any of this, but...”

  Over the years I’d occasionally shopped at Lacey’s store, called UnderStatements. Those purchases of pretty, pricey undies always coincided with a hot date. Considering the pitiful state of my checking account and the even more pitiful number of said hot dates—due to my beyond-pitiful longing for my ex-husband—my collection of fancy unmentionables would fit in a shoe box. With the shoes still in it.

  I said, “So Tim and Lacey were from Crystal Harbor too?”

  Sophie shook her head. “Some working-class town in Jersey. Tim got a scholarship to Peconic and that’s how he met Ernie.”

  I frowned, knowing UnderStatements had been in that spot on Main Street for decades. “You’d think Lacey would want to avoid the man responsible for her boyfriend’s death, not open a business right here in his town. Wait. I never knew her last name. You said it’s Vargas? Is she related to Porter Vargas?”

  Sophie tapped her cigar on the ashtray. “His wife.”

  “Ah, so that would explain... but some coincidence, huh? She meets and marries a guy from the same town as—”

  “Not really,” Sophie said. “Porter and Ernie grew up together here in Crystal Harbor. Lifelong pals. Both ended up going to school at Peconic. When Tim drowned, Porter went to the funeral. Felt bad for Tim’s family. Told me that later, after Ernie died. Said Ernie felt bad for them too, but of course, he wouldn’t be welcome at the funeral of the fella he...” Her expression was bleak. “Ernie was such a sweet, sensitive guy. The guilt had to be eating him alive.”

  “So Porter went to Tim’s funeral,” I said, “and that’s when he met Lacey. But you said she was already pregnant with Tim’s baby?” I noticed the inch-long ash on my cigar and swung it toward the ashtray, only to watch the ash plop into Sophie’s drink.

  She laughed. “There are more subtle ways of telling me I’ve had enough.”

  “Sorry.” I started to rise. “I’ll get you another one.”

  “Forget it. I really have had enough.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me back down. I sat on the edge of my chaise. “Yeah,” she said, “Porter and Lacey got married within a couple of months of meeting. Guess her pregnancy hurried the courtship along. Things were different back then. Unwed motherhood was still stigmatized and all.”

  “Porter’s fairly well off,” I said. “His grandfather started Vargas Sporting Goods, right?”

  “Yep. When he met Lacey he was already the heir apparent of a wildly successful multinational retail empire.”

  “That kind of thing’s got to grab a girl’s attention,” I said. “Even one who’s grieving for her baby daddy. Though I assume Teddy paid off Lacey as well? To keep her mouth shut about how her boyfriend died?”

  Sophie nodded. “Everyone close to Tim who’d been privy to the truth got a little windfall. In return they had to sign an airtight nondisclosure agreement drawn up by Teddy’s dream team.”

  My cigar was short now, the smoke hot, so I figured I’d had enough and set it on the ashtray. “You said Teddy never believed her son committed suicide.”
/>
  “She was convinced from the get-go that Ernie was murdered.” Sophie reached for her glass and made an oh-yeah face when she spied the cigar ash swirling in it. “By yours truly.”

  “Wait, what?” I sat up straight. “Teddy thought you killed her son?”

  “Sure did. Tried hard to get me arrested back then,” Sophie said. “Probably hectoring Bonnie this very minute to slap the cuffs on me now that the body’s turned up.”

  “Why on earth does she think you’d do a thing like that?”

  “Remember the three mill she gave me? Well, I had to sign a contract. If I divorced Ernie, I’d forfeit the money.”

  “But if he died?”

  Sophie shrugged. “The widow gets to keep the cash. Teddy was only concerned with my leaving him. Got it into her head that Dean had been in on it, too, once we got hitched.”

  “She thought your second husband helped you kill your first husband?” When she nodded, I asked, “Um, were you and Dean... I mean, did you two get involved—”

  “Before Ernie died?” Sophie said. “Nope. Dean tried, of course, but I was a married woman and I didn’t cheat, even under those circumstances. Try telling that to Lady Theodora. She sees the worst in everyone.”

  “So Teddy had you and your supposed lover conspiring to eliminate your gay husband so the two of you could live happily ever after on her three million bucks.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Did Dean get any of your money in the divorce?” I asked.

  “Nah, we were married less than a year,” she said. “I bought him a house, though.”

  “Wow. That was generous.”

  “Not really. I own the place, I just let him live there. It’s over on Iris Street.” The flower-name streets were in the least desirable section of town, where you didn’t need to be a millionaire to live. “Dean was a poor kid from some one-horse town in Ontario. More than anything, he wanted a Crystal Harbor address. I wanted a swift divorce with no drama. In the end we both got what we wanted.”

  “You bought his cooperation, in other words,” I said.

  “Hey, I was willing to do whatever it took,” she said, “once I realized what a schmuck I’d gotten myself tied to. Anyway, now my problem is Teddy Waterfield and her renewed vendetta. I’d thought all that was long over. Turned out it was just lying dormant, waiting for Ernie to turn up under a tree.”

  We sat in silence as yesterday’s harrowing discovery replayed itself behind my eyes. I shook off the memory and said, “Apparently the ground was oversaturated from the storm. A bunch of trees fell over, not just that one.”

  “I remember when they planted those saplings at the cemetery,” Sophie said. “Next day they discovered Ernie’s boat drifting in the Atlantic. Until yesterday, it never would have occurred to me to connect those two events.”

  “The killer must have snuck into the cemetery that night, pulled up one of the newly planted saplings...” I stopped, thinking Sophie might not want to hear my mind’s grisly meanderings. But she picked up where I left off.

  “He’d have had to enlarge the hole.” She deposited the stub of her cigar on the ashtray. “Which meant sneaking not just a body into the cemetery, but some kind of shovel as well.”

  “Maybe he had help,” I suggested. “It could have been more than one person.”

  “Anything’s possible. We’re talking about a thirty-two-year-old crime. Detective Hernandez has her hands full with this one.”

  “Was Bonnie even born when it happened?” I calculated Dom’s ex-fiancée to be in her early thirties at most. “Let’s just hope she doesn’t focus solely on the most obvious suspect.”

  Sophie waved her hand as if to say, That would be me.

  “Yeah, hello to you too,” a grumpy male voice called. I turned to see a man approach us from around the side of the house. He was middle-aged, moderately tall and of average build but soft around the middle. He wore a short-sleeved white shirt and tie over gray dress slacks. He did not look happy.

  Sophie groaned. Out of the side of mouth, she muttered, “Speak of the freakin’ devil.”

  The man stalked up to Sophie, gesturing toward the house. His spicy cologne overpowered the lingering cigar smoke. “I’m standing out there on your front porch ringing that damn doorbell for ten minutes, eh, like some idiot. Where’s that Puerto Rican girl you had working for you?” I detected a Canadian accent.

  Sophie gave him a flat stare. “That ‘Puerto Rican girl’ is a forty-seven-year-old Mexican-American grandmother who’s been a U.S. citizen for decades. And she goes home to her own family at the end of the workday.” She turned to me. “Jane, allow me to introduce my ex-husband, Dean Phillips. Dean, this is my good friend Jane Delaney.”

  Dean was about to dismiss me with a quick nod, but my name caught his attention. “Hey, you’re that Death Diva girl, right?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Huh.” He studied me a moment as he extracted a lighter and pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. I studied him back. Dean’s head bore the aftermath of what had to be the world’s worst hair transplant. Reddish brown crop rows marched back from a severe, slightly lopsided hairline. The whole mess had been meticulously blow-dried and sprayed in a swept-back style more appropriate to the 1980s.

  He tapped out a cigarette. “You make money doing that?”

  “Why, yes I do,” I said. “That’s kind of the point of it.” That’s the number-one question I get asked.

  “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done, eh?” The number-two question, right on schedule.

  Sophie interrupted. “Cut to the chase, Dean. This is about Ernie, right?”

  “You know he turned up?” He lit his smoke and took a drag. “His bones, I mean.”

  “I’m the mayor. What do you think?”

  “Well, I want to know what the hell you’ve been telling the cops about me. Some girl detective shows up at my work—at my work, Sophie!—asking all kinds of questions. I don’t need that crap.”

  “For the record—” Sophie slapped a mosquito on her arm and wiped her hand on a paper napkin. “I did not tell the cops to talk to you. I didn’t have to. Bonnie Hernandez is detecting. That’s what detectives do. If you want to—” She raised her palm, traffic-cop style, when he tried to interrupt. “If you want to bitch at someone, go bitch at Teddy Waterfield. I’ll bet she’s chatting with Bonnie right this moment, telling her all about how you and I offed her son and threw his body in a hole.”

  “Huh. I wasn’t even in the same state when her precious pansy got himself killed.” He shifted on his feet, eyeing the half-full pitcher of mojitos. Sophie didn’t offer him a drink, nor did she invite him to sit. He said, “Same song, second verse. The old broad’s still alive, eh?”

  “And as sweet-natured as ever, from what I hear. Why don’t you pay her a visit, tell her exactly what you think of this vendetta of hers?”

  Dean grunted. His gaze flicked around the huge backyard. “I just might do that.”

  Yeah, right, I thought. The onetime bad boy was afraid of the little old lady on Wallings Drive.

  He tried to cover his trepidation by standing over his ex-wife and jabbing his cigarette at her. “You’re the damn mayor,” he barked. “Do something about that nosy bitch.”

  “I have no control over what my former mother-in-law says or does.”

  “I’m not talking about the Waterfield woman and you know it.” Red patches mottled his face. “That detective will back off if you order her to.”

  “You know it doesn’t work like that, Dean,” Sophie said. “For crying out loud, she considers me a suspect too. Get a grip.”

  “It’s the same old story.” He got in her face. A speck of foamy spittle decorated the corner of his mouth. “You were never willing to help me when we were married. Why start now?”

  I said, “I need a car.”

  They turned to me in unison. Dean blinked. “What?”

  “Sophie says you sell used cars
. I need a car.”

  I watched outrage war with greed beneath the cultivated calamity that was his scalp. Guess which instinct won out.

  Dean smiled. “I sell pre-owned cars, yes.” He straightened both his spine and his grease-spotted necktie while his ex-wife settled back on her chaise with a knowing grin. She lifted my glass, raised a toast to me behind his back, and polished off my mojito. “What are you driving now?” He started to flick his cigarette butt into the grass until Sophie barked, “Nope!” and pointed to the big ashtray.

  “Eleven-year-old Civic,” I answered. With a worn timing belt and an unnerving tendency to sob and shudder when I pushed it past thirty. So no lie, I really was in the market.

  “Well, not to worry, Jane, I’ll put you in something real nice,” he said. “We have a one-year-old Lexus convertible on the lot. A hair over six thousand miles on her. Loaded. She’s a beaut.”

  And no doubt out of my price range, but there would be plenty of time for him to learn that although, by a fluke of fortune, I lived in Crystal Harbor, I wasn’t from Crystal Harbor.

  I stood and extended my hand. “Sounds great, Dean. I’ll come by the lot tomorrow. Let me walk you back to your car and we can talk about it.”

  4

  Back to the Stone Age

  I shoved a fat straw through a plastic cup lid and sucked in a mouthful of cold papaya-ginger smoothie. My eyes drifted shut as I savored the sweet, creamy, pale orange concoction. When I opened them, Cheyenne O’Rourke was holding out my change, her plain adolescent face fixed in its customary bored stare.

  The girl was on probation for second-degree assault related to an incident last spring. That meant she had to hold down a job, but no one said she had to like working at Janey's Place, Dom’s health-food joint. Sometimes when my biological clock howled like a rabid werewolf, I’d think of Cheyenne and feel a little better at not having added another sullen Long Island youth to the world.