Honestly Dearest, You're Dead

Thirty-one

I’d already had my Wal-Doughnut and coffee when Dillard called at nine the next morning. Since there was nobody on the streets in West Haven, I got to the sheriff’s building in ten minutes.

Dillard’s office was almost misting with the smell of newly brewed blueberries. He’d set up a telephone on the middle of his desk, for a speaker call. After a sip of tea, he punched in a number, and a phone rang through the speaker.

“Lieutenant Dillard, Mr. Elstrom,” Patterson greeted, from the other side of the Mississippi River.

“It’s John Doe’s teeth inside the charred skull lying on our medical examiner’s table,” Dillard said to the phone.

“Damn.” Patterson said it with no conviction, and no surprise. I realized that he and Dillard had already talked and were making a show of going through things again so Dillard could watch my reactions and describe them later to Patterson.

“What was the cause of death?” I asked Dillard.

“Did you hear that, Sergeant?” Dillard asked the phone. “Elstrom here asked what was the cause of death.”

“Good point for me?” I said, extra loud, for the phone. “Because not asking would imply I already knew?”

“Now, now, Mr. Elstrom,” Patterson’s voice said.

“You must admit, you didn’t think to ask about cause yesterday.” Dillard smiled across the table.

“I’m asking now: What is the cause of death?”

“Gunshots to the skull, exacerbated by fire.”

“Popular cause of death, isn’t it?” I asked the phone. “Gunshots followed by torching?”

The phone in the center of the desk was silent.

“Like what happened to your Officer Severs?” I went on.

Patterson cleared his throat. “Officer Severs was badly burned.”

“Bad enough to require dental verification?”

“He was very badly burned, Mr. Elstrom,” Patterson said.

“You hear back from the Windward Island police about those Kovacs photos? Did either the hostess at the Scupper or the woman at the Gulf Watcher identify either brother as the man who came around asking about Carolina Dare?”

From the phone came the sound of a chair scraping on a floor. There was no answer.

“Tell us, Sergeant Patterson, do you think Lieutenant Dillard here ought to take the Kovacs photos to Woodton, show them to the postmaster to see if it was one of the brothers who tried to get at Carolina’s mail?”

“Why not?” Patterson asked.

“For openers, because you’re finally getting around to thinking it might be somebody else.”

“Come on, Elstrom,” Patterson said.

“What bothers you the most about Officer Severs’s death, Sergeant?”

“I suppose the fact that there was no motive for anyone-”

I cut him off. “Tell us again: How badly burned was Officer Severs’s body?”

Dillard sipped tea, but his eyes, too, were on the phone at the center of the desk.

“Sergeant Patterson?” I asked.

“Very badly burned.” Patterson’s voice was faint.

The silence that followed got to Dillard after a minute. He turned to me. “What’s going on here?”

I shrugged.

“Elstrom’s shrugging,” Dillard said to the phone.

“Sergeant Patterson knows he has to look beyond the Kovacs brothers,” I said.

Dillard leaned toward the phone, as if it were hard of hearing. “Elstrom says you’re going-”

“Damn it, Lieutenant,” Patterson’s voice cut in, stopping the parody.

“What game are you two playing?” Dillard snapped, glaring at me. “Neither of you is asking about Carolina Dare. She lived in that cottage. She could have killed the man, then torched the house to destroy the evidence.”

“If so, she did it in self-defense,” I said.

“I thought you didn’t know her,” Dillard said.

“I don’t.”

“What’s her real name, Mr. Elstrom?” Patterson’s voice was strong now.

“Carolina or Louise; Louise or Carolina,” I said.

“Elstrom isn’t smiling, but he wants to, serving up that bullshit,” Dillard reported to the phone.

Patterson spoke, “Elstrom, you need to tell us-”

“Who’s serving it up, Sergeant?” I said to the phone. “You’re the one who’s not being straight. You don’t like a damned thing about the way Severs died.”

Dillard’s fist slammed down on the table, jarring the telephone. “You’re protecting a woman who you think has skedaddled with over a million bucks, a woman who might share all that with you, once this charade is over.”

I met his eyes. “Carolina or Louise, I don’t know her.”

“Like hell. You know she’s a killer, Elstrom.”

“You’ve got better suspects, Lieutenant.”

Dillard leaned closer. “She killed before, Elstrom.”

“I don’t know-”

“One August, many years ago.”

I stared at the teapot on the file cabinet and tried not to blink.

Dillard spoke softly. “A couple of old-time Rivertown cops remember you real well, back when you fought with a girl who disappeared right after her father was murdered.”

“That has no bearing on what’s going on here,” I said.

“He’s not grinning, Sergeant,” Dillard said to the phone. Then he turned to look through my eyes, right into the center of my head.

“Maris Mays,” he said.