In death, Guy Tolliver was nowhere near stylish.
The jaunty old society photographer lay on his back, his head against a granite fieldstone, his left hand still wrapped around the empty bottle of lye that he’d drunk down. The human body instinctively wants to regurgitate a powerful corrosive such as lye-even in the death throes. So there were heavy burns around Tolly’s mouth. The skin was eaten away, tissue underneath red and goopy. Lye had come foaming up through his nasal passages, too.
Des stood over the body with Soave and Yolie, their breath steaming in the chill, dry air. It had taken them nearly an hour to get down to Four Chimneys from their nice warm beds in their nice warm Hartford suburbs. The forensic nurse had beaten them, as had the crime scene techies. Everyone was hushed. It was barely seven in the morning, and this was an exceptionally not cheery way to start the day.
“What are you thinking, Des?” Soave asked, breaking the silence.
At first glance, Tolly’s death cried out suicide. It appeared he’d come down to these woods from the rose garden, chugalugged the lye and keeled over, hitting the back of his head against that granite. A scalp wound had bled down the back of his neck.
“Des?…” Soave tugged at his goatee as the techies hovered around them, snapping pictures. “What are you thinking?”
“It’s your case, Rico,” Des responded, thinking that she could have, should have prevented this. But she hadn’t. They hadn’t.
And now Guy Tolliver lay dead on the cold, muddy ground. The forensic nurse believed that he’d been there for about twelve hours, placing his time of death at around dusk-the same ap-proximate time when they’d been interviewing Poochie and Gly-nis in the parlor.
Soave began humming tunelessly under his breath, which was a thing that he did whenever he was shook. He had reason to be. Rico Tedone would have a lot of explaining to do in Meriden. “How about you, Yolie? Run with it.”
“No way in hell this is a suicide,” she declared, shivering in her belted leather jacket. Yolie was strictly a warm weather girl. “Someone whacked this man on the back of his head, okay? And while he was semiconscious forced him to drink down that lye.” Yolie crouched next to Tolly, studying him closely. “We have finger marks on his neck and jaw here and here,” she added, using her Bic pen as a pointer. “Somebody pried his mouth open. And there was a struggle. His scarf thing… girl, what do you call these again?”
“It’s an ascot,” Des said softly.
“Yeah, the knot’s yanked halfway around his neck, see? And check out these bloodstain patterns on his neck. They’re all wrong.”
“He bled down his neck,” Des agreed. “Which means he was either standing or sitting when he incurred the head wound. He was positioned here after the fact. There’s a bit of blood under his head, but no soak pattern, no drainage. The scalp injury didn’t happen here.” Des knelt next to Tolly’s grotesque body for a closer look at his left hand. “I see no lye on his wrist or sleeve. If he’d been holding that bottle himself when he drank the lye it would have streamed down his hand like a melted ice cream cone. Somebody positioned it in his hand after they killed him.” She stood back up, swiping at her muddy knees. “One more thing, and I can’t emphasize this enough-Tolly lived for style. Absolutely no way does he leave such a vile-looking corpse behind. Not even within the realm of possiblity.”
“So we’re all in agreement,” Soave concluded. “What we’re looking at here is a staged crime scene.”
“I’m betting he got it in the rose garden,” Yolie said. “The man’s bent over, working away at his pruning. Somebody bops him from behind, then carries him down here-out of sight, out of earshot-and forces him to drink that lye.”
“We’ll search the ground up there,” Soave said. “If that’s how it happened, we’ll find the blood.”
“This man was plenty good-sized,” Yolie went on. “One person couldn’t have horsed him all of the way across that field. And I’m seeing no wheelbarrow treads or whatever in the mud. That makes this another two-man job. We’re looking for the same pair who took out Pete Mosher, am I right?”
“That’s a slam dunk.”
Des said nothing. She was too busy playing it out.
“What’s wrong with it, Des?” Soave asked, studying her warily.
“It’s tight, Rico. I’ve got nothing.”
“Yeah, you do. Something’s still bugging you.”
“Nothing I can put my finger on. But this all just feels clanky to me. Too obvious. Too clumsy. Too… I don’t know, as if someone smart wants us to think they’re really stupid. Does that make any sense?”
“Not so much.”
“It appears to be a clumsy attempt to mask a murder as a suicide-the kind of thing somebody small time might try to pull off. Somebody like the Kershaw brothers. Except that whoever pulled this had to be calculating and cool. Check it out: If they’d waited until pitch dark they would have needed flashlights or lanterns. Way too risky. So that means they killed Tolly no later than six, six-thirty. For all we know, we three may still have been on the premises at the time. Plus we’ve got a cruiser stationed at the foot of the drive. And yet, somehow, they murdered this man right under our noses.”
“I’m with my girl,” Yolie said. “We are not talking lame-assed raggies.”
“What we are talking is desperate,” Des said. “They took an enormous chance. Tolly must have known something.”
“This one’s on us, isn’t it?” Soave’s shoulders slumped defeat-edly. “We let it happen.”
This was not something that a younger Soave would have admitted out loud, Des reflected. “We’re dealing with some serious customers here, Rico. And they’re totally messing with our heads again. But we’ll nail them.”
“Who had access to this site? Run it for us, will you, Des?” “Claudia was around, as were Eric and Danielle. Bement got home by six, so he’s in play. And he made a point of telling me the Kershaw brothers were leaving for the day when he got here. So they’re in play, too.”
“Don’t forget Glynis,” Yolie said. “And the old lady.” “So we know where to focus our attention.” Soave rubbed his hands together briskly. “We’ll go at them, one by one.”
“Pull over to the curb, wow man,” Des cautioned him. “I didn’t know this until a half-hour ago, but there’s more.”
She continued down the footpath through the trees, Soave and Yolie trailing along behind her, until she emerged at the hard, frozen shallows where the Connecticut River met its eastern bank. Here, all was icy winter calm. And here, things got considerably more complicated. Because the footpath didn’t end at the water. It hugged the bank for as far down river as the eye could see.
“I discovered this while I was waiting for you to get here,” Des explained to them. She’d also phoned Mitch on her cell to tell him about Tolly. Things weren’t real until she’d shared them with him. He’d sounded upset by the news. Also strangely preoccupied. “After a half-mile or so it comes out at a state-run boat launch at the foot of Kinney Road. During the summer, people put in their kayaks there. This time of year, it’s pretty much deserted. Someone could have parked there yesterday afternoon and hiked in and out, totally unseen.”
“There’s no fence to keep people out?” Yolie asked, stamping her feet against the cold.
“It’s posted to keep the hunters out, but no fence.”
Soave shook his head disgustedly. “Who’d know about this?”
“Anybody who’s ever spent time here. Claudia’s husband, Mark, for one. And Milo Kershaw used to be caretaker here. They’re in the mix, Rico.”
Soave tugged at his goatee. “What’s the link, Des? Why have Pete Mosher and Guy Tolliver both turned up dead in the last twenty-four hours? Why did they have to die? What did they have in common?”
“Rico, I honestly…” She broke off, her memory suddenly tweaked by something that had bothered her earlier. “I have no idea. But I think I know who will.”
Poochie’s KitchenAid power mixer was in high gear, roaring away on the counter like a jumbo jet as it creamed together butter and brown sugar.
Dorset’s first lady was in high gear herself. “I crave gingerbread this morning,” she exulted as she raced around the kitchen, flinging flour and baking soda into a bowl, followed by ground ginger, powdered mustard, coarse ground pepper, cinnamon, cloves. “Tolly loved my gingerbread. The secret is adding one cup of hot, strong coffee for moisture. And good molasses, of course. God, how I love the smell of molasses!”
Glynis Fairchild-Forniaux sat at the table with her briefcase before her, looking very somber. Claudia sat there with her, as did Bement and Danielle.
“Mummy, please sit down, won’t you?” Claudia said anxiously.
Poochie pulled a pair of loaf pans out of a cupboard. “I can’t sit.”
Eric couldn’t either. Or wouldn’t. The gangly farmer was pacing around the kitchen like a restless, petulant teenager, heaving his chest and making it abundantly clear that he wanted to be somewhere else. Pretty damned juvenile, Des felt, considering how upset his mother was over Tolly’s death.
Danielle was well aware of this. Her eyes repeatedly made contact with his, silently pleading with him to park his geeky self at the table.
He refused, clomping back and forth in his work shoes. “We’ve got soup kitchen detail,” he complained over the whirring mixer. “How long will this take?”
“Not long,” Soave said, standing there with Yolie and Des.
“Eric, would you kindly show some basic human consideration?” Claudia said reproachfully.
“Would you kindly buzz off?”
Claudia abruptly got to her feet and shut off the mixer, leaving them in blissful silence. She took Poochie firmly by the shoulders and steered her toward the table. “Mummy, these officers need to speak with you. Sit down for a minute, will you?”
“There’s no need to manhandle me, Claude,” Poochie said indignantly, perching next to Bement. “What is it, Des?”
“Poochie, something you said earlier this morning struck me as a bit peculiar. Mr. Tolliver was missing, and at that point we were operating under the assumption that he’d skipped town.”
“You were operating under that assumption. I never was, as you and Bement will recall.”
“She’s right,” Bement acknowledged, hands gripping his coffee cup.
“I asked you if any works of art were missing,” Des went on. “You insisted that Tolly would never take anything of yours. I believe you said, ‘There would be no point in it.’ What did you mean by that? Have you made specific provisions for him in your will?”
“I don’t wish to discuss it,” Poochie said dismissively. “Ask Glynis.”
“Poochie did amend her last will and testament in November to provide for Mr. Tolliver,” Glynis offered guardedly.
“Provide for him how?”
“Poochie, you’re under no legal obligation to answer this,” Glynis advised her. “The contents of your will are confidential.”
“Lady, we will be right back here in an hour with a warrant and you know it,” Yolie huffed at the lawyer. “Right now, all you’re doing is impeding an investigation into two murders.”
“Two murders?” Poochie gaped at them in astonishment. “But I thought… you told me Tolly swallowed poison.”
“We believe he was struck on the head and forced to drink it,” Des said.
“Oh, I am so relieved to hear that.” Poochie’s blue eyes puddled with tears. “Not that I mean to suggest I’m happy Tolly was murdered. I simply refused to believe he was despondent. He was happy with me.”
“Of course he was.” Claudia reached a hand out to her mother’s. Poochie instinctively pulled away. Claudia’s face tightened, a mask of anguish.
Poochie was unaware of it. Or appeared to be. She got up and went back to the counter and began greasing the two loaf pans with a stick of butter. “Four Chimneys is for my children,” she said in a firm voice. “Father wanted it that way. The house and the land will be theirs. Likewise my stock holdings. Poor Peter’s as well. But I did what I could do for Tolly. And there you have it.”
Des shook her head at her. “How did you do what you could for him?”
“Why, by leaving him the contents of the house, of course. Those are mine to distribute as I choose, and I chose to leave them to Tolly.”
Des’s jaw dropped in disbelief.
Soave looked at her blank-faced, still not grasping the hugeness of this.
“She left him her art collection, Rico,” Des explained.
“And do not overlook the furniture,” Claudia added in a muted voice. “Some of those antiques are priceless.”
“You knew about this?” Des asked her.
“Of course she did,” Poochie said. “Both of my children did.”
Eric had nothing to say. Just lurked there by the back door like an impatient kid who couldn’t wait to go play ball with his friends.
“I wanted them to understand how much Tolly meant to me,” Poochie explained.
“Tolly told me about it himself,” Claudia said quietly. “He hoped it would bring the two of us closer together, I believe he said. I just thought he was lording it over me.”
“You had no cause to feel that way,” Poochie chided her.
“Well, I’m sorry, Mummy.”
“And what did you think?” Soave asked Eric.
“About what?” The farmer’s attention seemed elsewhere.
“Poochie leaving Tolly her art collection,” Danielle said in a patient voice.
“A bunch of meaningless adornment,” Eric responded, shrugging his shoulders. “Who cares?”
“Know what strikes me as odd?” Soave said. “Mr. Tolliver made zero mention of this when we interviewed him. All he did was cry poverty.”
“Because he was afraid you’d think exactly what you’re thinking, Lieutenant,” Poochie said. “That he was nothing more than an aging gold digger. I told him to hell with what other people think. But Tolly was terribly sensitive. Surely you can understand that.”
“I guess. Only, why didn’t you tell us?”
Glynis answered, “We complied with you fully yesterday, Lieutenant. We granted you access to Peter Mosher’s last will and testament. We answered your questions regarding the estate of John J. Meier. My client’s own bequests were outside the scope of your inquiry.”
“Damn, lady,” Yolie fumed. “If you weren’t being such a nit-picky lawyer that man might still be alive. Don’t you get that?”
“I was doing my job.”
“Girl to girl, your job stinks!”
“You have no call to speak to me that way, Sergeant,” Glynis responded coldly. “It’s highly unprofessional, and I resent it. Lieutenant, I do not care for the adversarial tone this conversation is taking.”
“Duly noted. Can we please move on?”
Glynis continued to glare at Yolie.
“I’m no art expert, Mrs. Vickers,” Soave said. “Can you give us a ballpark figure on how much your collection is worth?”
“Why, I would have no idea. I’ve never placed a dollar value on it. That’s not what art is about, is it, Des?”
“Poochie, I’m afraid that’s very much what it’s about right now.”
“Well, that’s just fine then,” the grand old lady declared. “If you people insist upon being so vulgar I shall be in the conservatory with my plants and other living things.”
“Mummy, please don’t go,” Claudia protested.
But Poochie had already barged out of the kitchen, leaving them and her unfinished gingerbread behind.
“If she’s gone, I’m gone.” Eric flung open the back door. “Come on, hon.”
Danielle got up from the table and followed him, mustering an apologetic glance at Des.
“I’ve got to open up the shop,” Bement said as he, too, headed out.
Only Glynis and Claudia remained there at the table.
“In response to your question, Lieutenant,” Glynis said crisply, “the value of Poochie’s art collection has been placed at one hundred million dollars. And that is a very, very conservative estimate, considering the prices that modern pieces have been fetching at auction lately. It could easily be worth four or five times that much. A representative of Sotheby’s phones me regularly to convey how anxious they are to get their hands on it.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Soave said to her. “You’re telling us that the ‘contents’ are worth more than the house, the land, the stock and everything else put together, am I right?”
“Unquestionably,” Glynis confirmed.
“So this explains it,” Des said to Claudia. “Why you’ve been so anxious to gain power of attorney over your mother’s business affairs.”
“I was concerned,” Claudia conceded coolly. “And why not? Some of those pieces belong in a museum. There’s no telling what Tolly might have done with them. If she wanted to leave the man a chunk of money, fine. But the family’s art collection? I couldn’t accept that. Because I love my mother and I’m worried about her.” Claudia trailed off, her eyes cast down at the table. “Is that so hard to believe?”
“Not at all. You’re not the only one who’s worried.”
“Meaning what, Des?” Glynis asked, frowning at her.
“Would you ladies please excuse us?” Des was already on her way out the back door. “We’ll be leaving you now.”
“Certainly,” said Glynis, saving one final glare for Yolie.
“That blonde ball of fluff better hope she never tangles with me again,” Yolie growled as Des led them across the courtyard toward their Crown Vics. “I will kick her skinny pink ass.”
“Don’t mess with Glynis, girl. She’s got major juice.”
“Not to mention some shifty moves,” said Soave. “Yesterday she fails to disclose Guy Tolliver’s huge windfall on a technicality. Today the man turns up dead. Was she just doing her job, like she said, or was she doing a job on us? How do we know she’s not a part of this thing herself?”
“We don’t know, Rico,” Des acknowledged as they arrived at their cars. She leaned against hers, gazing up at the magnificent brick hugeness of Four Chimneys. “What we do know is someone is after the grand prize-this place and all that comes with it. A calculated, systematic master plan is taking shape. And they aren’t done yet. There’s still one more step. Mighty big one, too.”
“The old lady,” Yolie said in a hushed voice.
“You think her life is in danger?” Soave asked.
“I know it, Rico,” Des said. “Poochie’s bound to be their next target. They won’t have everything they want until she’s dead, too. And these are not patient people.”
“We’re putting an armed guard on her right now,” Soave said with grim determination. “She needs protection around the clock.”
“I’m guessing she won’t like the idea much,” Yolie said.
“Count on it,” Des agreed. “But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll do what we tell her.”
“We can keep her safe, Des,” Soave promised. “But you’ve got to help us out here. Haven’t you got any idea who we’re after?”
“I wish I did, Rico. But I’m still a million miles from nowhere, and getting more damned frustrated by the-”
Her cell phone rang. She glanced down at the home screen. It was Mitch. She took his call.
“Your troubles are over, Master Sergeant,” he said to her excitedly. “I’ve just figured out how we can blow this whole thing wide open.”