occasionally risky.
“Okay, let’s narrow down the possibilities. We keep saying ‘he.’ Are we even sure it’s a man?” I asked.
There was only one other woman who’d been involved with the case, and she wasn’t talking. Unless it was from the grave.
“I can’t tell you anything about Kate,” Caroline said. “The subject is off-limits.”
Thirty-two
Apparently, only a few people had shown up for Kate Gustafson’s funeral. Even her mother hadn’t gone, although maybe she was too heartbroken to watch her only child being put in the ground. Kate and Caroline were seven years apart in age, but had had a lot in common. They were pretty, smart, and from single-parent homes where there was never enough supervision.
Kate had always wanted to be on the stage, ever since her first beauty pageant at age six. She hadn’t won, but she’d stayed on the local pageant circuit until her late teens, when being named Miss Atwell Air Filter was about as much fun as being named Miss Jiffy Lube. Some people just didn’t respect the beauty pageant community. To hell with them. The Atwell prize paid for six months of tuition and they couldn’t laugh at that. In contrast to what her lawyer tried to claim at the trial, she did well in school and finished college in three and a half years because she had calculated exactly when her financial aid would run out.
Originally, she had hoped to be a teacher, but there were no jobs available since residents were leaving Newtonville and insisted on taking their kids with them. One of the public schools had even shut down and the overflow of teachers were subbing and waiting for their colleagues to either retire or die.
Kate had had a succession of part-time jobs including tending bar. She was reading the obituaries, looking for job openings one night when Eddie Donnelly came in.
She went back to bartending after her release and was found dead in the bar’s basement after a fire caused by faulty, nonlicensed wiring on a neon sign. Arson investigators were suspicious but found nothing.
“Kate was a good person,” Caroline said. “People thought it was odd that we became friends, but she was like an older sister to me. There was no jealousy over Eddie. We were all friends.”
Friends who were all criminals, or two friends who set up the third one? Caroline knew what I was thinking.
“You don’t understand. Kate tried to protect me.” Caroline fiddled with her tissues and looked longingly at the bottle on the table. Clearly she was deciding how much to tell me and I wondered how much more there was to tell.
“Three months into my freshman year, I sensed something was going on. I didn’t know what it was. I thought Kate had started seeing Eddie again. There had been a lot of big parties after the games. Sometimes they’d get lost in the crowd and leave me to fend for myself. We weren’t the Three Musketeers anymore, the way it had been the previous year. I confronted her and she denied it, but I knew they were hiding something.”
One night, Caroline overheard the two of them arguing. Kate said she was tired of sneaking around and hiding things from Caroline and the coach. That confirmed Caroline’s worst suspicions. Her mother was gone, she had no other female friends to confide in; by then Kate and Eddie had become her surrogate family. She was devastated.
“I went to Kate again. This time she swore to me that she and Eddie had no romantic connections anymore. She even laughed at the suggestion. She told me they were working for someone, and the less I knew the better.”
Kate had told her once football season ended, she was getting out and would make sure that Caroline was no longer involved either, but for the time being she should just keep going to classes and to the games and try not to think about it. That’s what she did until the day Kate and Eddie were arrested. Hours later, Caroline was arrested, too.
“I thought it might have to do with betting on the games. I wasn’t much of a football fan, but there were a few games we lost that everyone thought we should have won. Kate would never do anything to hurt me.”
“She would never do anything to hurt you? And you know that how?”
Caroline reached for the vodka and this time I let her. She poured us each a stiff one. I took a tiny sip and stared out at the woods through the shade, wondering what to do next.
“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “Do you get a lot of deer around here?”
“No. The reservoir and the dirt road are privately owned by a water company. They use some sort of organic deer repellent. I don’t know what kind. I had to sign an approval form, but it was so long ago I don’t remember what it was. Why?”
Now my eyes were glued to the shades. “Because if you don’t have a deer problem, there’s another large mammal prowling around outside that just ducked into those hemlocks.”
Thirty-three
“Reporters? Kids?” Caroline said. “No matter how many signs the water company puts up, teenagers do trespass. They outgrow it, it’s just kids’ stuff.”
“Kids’ stuff-trespassing-let me guess your name…Monica?”
Caroline asked if I was all right.
“I have a hunch I know who is out there. Some weird guy was in the diner recently asking a bunch of questions. He took a picture of Babe with his cell phone and then broke into her office later that night. He claimed the door was open and he just crawled in to sleep off a drunk, but I don’t think the cops believed him. I know I didn’t.”
Then I remembered what the man had been yelling when he was arrested-something about Babe being the one the cops should be taking in. What if Eddie Donnelley sent him to the diner to look for a blonde named Caroline or Monica, and he thought it was Babe? And after he sent her picture, Donnelley told him to keep looking until he found her?
“I’m calling the cops.”
Once he knew it was me, O’Malley took his time getting to the phone.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You’d like to have dinner? Sorry, I’m busy.”
“Mike, I think Countertop Man is trespassing again, this time on Caroline Sturgis’s property. I think he’s involved with some of the people Caroline knew in Michigan.” Mike told me to lock the doors and set the alarm. He’d be right over.
“Countertop Man?” Caroline said, pouring another one and wondering how much of the story she’d missed with one glass of vodka.
“It’s a long story.”
But it made sense. Jeff Warren sees Caroline at the diner and casually mentions it to a few people, including Leroy Donnelley, who must have told his cousin Eddie. Eddie sends C-Man to Springfield to find out if it’s really her.
“How could this man mistake Babe for me if he knew me in Michigan?”
“Maybe he’s a friend of Eddie’s or someone Eddie met later who owes him a favor. Eddie might not want to scare you off by coming himself.”
Ten minutes later, O’Malley was in Caroline’s kitchen, the shades were up and I was telling him what I thought I knew. I thought I laid out my evidence beautifully, but O’Malley was not convinced.
“That’s why he was yelling that Babe was a criminal, remember?” I said, my voice rising an octave. “He thought she was Caroline.”
“People say a lot of stupid things when they’re being arrested. Or when they’re agitated.” He eyed the bottle on the island. “Or when their senses are impaired.”
“We are not impaired. Can’t you at least confirm that the guy was in prison in Michigan at the same time as Eddie Donnelley?”
