Donnie stuck his chin out. “Yeah, since when is being late a crime?”
“It’s not. But grand theft auto is.”
They stared at her in blank silence.
“Poochie Vickers’s Mercedes Gullwing is gone. Are you trying to tell me you don’t know anything about it?”
“You’ve got the wrong guys, lady,” Stevie told her. “We didn’t have nothing to do with that. No way.”
“Account for your time. Where have you two been?”
“With Allison at the Yankee Doodle,” said Donnie. The Yankee Doodle, a fading motor court on the Boston Post Road, was Dorset’s designated hot sheet motel. “We stayed the night.”
“All three of you? What did you, take turns?”
Stevie smirked at her. “You want details?”
“Now that you mention it, I really don’t.”
“Allison will back us up,” he said. “Go ahead and ask her.”
“Believe me, I will. Is she at home now?”
“That’s where we dropped her.”
“Can you remember what time that was? And don’t tell me you’re not a clock again or I will step on your nuts.”
Stevie shrugged his narrow shoulders. “We left the Yankee Doodle before dawn. Ran her right home, then started for Four Chimneys. Figured we’d just crash there in the van for an hour or two before work. Right, Donnie?”
Donnie nodded his cocker spaniel head. “But then we got the munchies so we came home to eat. Only we must have crashed.”
“We didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night,” Stevie explained. “Neither did Allison, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I’m hearing you, Stevie,” she said. “You’ve got the hugest johnson in Southern New England. She bounced, she hollered, she screamed for more. Does that about cover it?”
His face tightened. “Lady, you’re just plain evil.”
“Honey, if I were evil I’d be looking at the contents of that ashtray a lot closer. Know what I’m saying?”
“Not really,” Donnie replied, frowning.
“Shut up, Donnie.”
“Your father was here when you got home?”
“He was just leaving for work,” acknowledged Stevie, his tone considerably cooler since she’d made light of his johnson. “The old weasel’s demolishing a house on Whippoorwill. Had his truck all loaded up with stuff for the dump. He likes to make his dump runs when they first open, because when the guy on the gate’s halfasleep he’s not so particular. The old man’s always trying to lay off asbestos on him. Has no conscience when it comes to the ecology.”
“So you think he was going straight there?”
“Couldn’t do nothing else until he dumped his load.”
During the summer, the Dorset landfill opened at 7:00 A.M. This time of year it didn’t open until eight o’clock. It was a fifteenminute drive there from here. Which meant that it was entirely possible the boys didn’t get home until after seventhirty.
“What I’m hearing you tell me,” she informed them, “is that you have no one to vouch for your whereabouts at the time when the Gullwing was taken.”
“We can vouch for each other,” said Donnie, nervously licking at his lips with a rather brownish tongue. “We were together.”
“You’ll have to do better than that, sunshine.”
“But we didn’t do it.” Donnie was starting to get his whiny on again. “Why does everyone always blame us for everything?”
“You bring that on yourselves. A man like Eric holds his hand out to you and you slap it away. Don’t show up. Don’t keep your word. Instead, I find you here passed out and smelling, well, not so good. Don’t you see how this looks? Like you did show up for work. Saw Poochie tottering down the driveway with her recyclables, got to talking about that shaweet Gullwing of hers and decided to rip her off. Beats shoveling manure all day.”
“And we sure could use the bread,” Stevie acknowledged sourly. “For the sake of talking, let’s say we did jack it. Where’s it at now, lady? What’d we do with it, hunh?”
“That’s the milliondollar question. If the Gullwing is returned today, intact, I’m willing to bet Poochie will say she loaned it to you and just plain forgot. The lady’s a bit nutty that way. Thinks the best of people. But you’ve got to get out in front of it right now. An investigator is busy working this case, as am I. Not that I don’t enjoy hanging with you two, inhaling your rich, musky scents.”
“How come you keep talking about the way we smell?” wondered Donnie.
“Wait for it-it’ll come to you. But first, take me to the Gullwing.”
“For the fortieth time, lady, we don’t know nothing about it,” Stevie insisted. “We didn’t jack any car. We’re not about that stuff anymore. We’re workingmen.” He climbed to his feet unsteadily, reaching for his smokes. “And right now we’re splitting for work. That okay with you?”
“More than okay. But there is one other thing…”
“Now what is it?”
“Don’t you dare leave town.”
The Dorset Marina was situated in a horseshoeshaped cove at the mouth of the Connecticut River a halfmile upriver from the Peck’s Point Nature Preserve. As she drove there Des reached out to Allison Mapes, who answered her phone on the sixth ring, sounding even less with it than the Kershaw brothers had. After considerable prodding, Allison allowed that Stevie and Donnie had dropped her home from the Yankee Doodle some time around six in the morning, thereby confirming what Bement had told her. And the brothers as well-their version vaguely coincided with the truth, as far as it went. Which wasn’t very.
The marina was still completely shut down for the winter, its floating docks pulled from the water. The yachts and power boats were in storage, the boatyard’s parking lot crammed with their shrinkwrapped hulls. More were stacked inside the immense storage shed, where some sanding and sawing was getting going. Des could hear the whine of power equipment through the open shed doors as she eased her cruiser over near the commercial promenade that wrapped its way around the marina. The touristoriented businesses-Tshirt and postcard shops, ice cream parlor, the galleries that sold regrettable seascapes and shell art-were shuttered from Thanksgiving through Easter. The Clam House, a familyoriented seafood restaurant, stayed open year around, as did the Mucky Duck, a Britishstyle pub. Neither had opened yet for the day.
The Mucky Duck was located in the ground floor of a whiteshingled twostory building. Upstairs were the offices of a yacht broker, a marine insurance agent and Mark Widdifield, noted local architect. Des parked in back next to a smart blue Morgan Plus 4 roadster and got out, making her way around front to the promenade. It was very quiet. She could hear the water lapping against the pilings, the thwack of her own footsteps on the boardwalk.
Mark Widdifield’s office door was unlocked. She went in. Found herself in a small outer office. There was no secretary, nor a secretary’s desk. Just a sofa that was presently doubling as an unmade bed. A pair of suitcases lay open on the floor next to it, heaped with waddedup laundry. A coffeemaker sat halffull on the counter of the kitchenette along with an open box of Entenmann’s doughnuts. A doorway led into a big, bright office with windows facing the marina. There were drafting tables for two in there. One of the work stations also had a computer with a bigscreen monitor and an immense printer. Anchoring the center of the room was a work island heaped with books and documents and a pair of elaborate architectural models.
Mark was seated there, XActo knife in hand, fashioning Foamcore walls for one of the models.
“Excuse me, I need to have a word with you, Mr. Widdifield.”
“Some other time,” he said distractedly. “I’m really quite busy.”
“I’m afraid it can’t wait, sir. Someone stole your motherinlaw’s Gullwing out of her garage this morning. Do you know anything about it?”
Mark didn’t respond for a long moment. Just continued to measure out another piece of wall. “Such as? …”
