The Snow White Christmas Cookie

CHAPTER 11

Paulette Zander’s house was a dreary little raised ranch, just like a lot of the other houses on Grassy Hill Road, a blue-collar enclave up near Uncas Lake. The door of her two-car garage was open. Her Nissan Pathfinder was parked in one space. The other space was empty. No cars were parked in the driveway.

Des rang the doorbell and stood in the rain listening to the thudding of footsteps as Paulette came to the door. She did not relish this. Delivering bad news to loved ones was the hardest thing she had to do-especially when the circumstances called for her to be less than completely candid. At this stage of the investigation she had to paint Hank’s death as the suicide that it was meant to look like. She couldn’t let on that they felt sure he’d been murdered. Not when there was a chance, however remote, that Paulette was mixed up in it herself.

When Paulette opened the door she had on the same sweater and slacks that she’d been wearing at the Post Office that morning. “He still hasn’t shown up,” she told Des warily. “Have you heard anything?”

“May I come in, Paulette?”

The house was even drearier on the inside-the ceilings low, the harvest gold shag carpeting worn and dingy. The stale, overheated air smelled like dirty laundry. Des removed her wet slicker and hat and hung them on a peg rack by the front door. The living room, which was right off of the entry hall, was crowded full of Hank’s tubas-three of them, to be exact-a Christmas tree and an elaborate electric train set that looked as if it dated back to the 1950s. Paulette led Des down a short hallway to the dining room, which had been converted into a TV room. A matched pair of huge plush recliners sat parked in front of a sixty-inch flat-screen TV. Paulette seemed to be watching a reality show about hoarders. Des had always wondered who watched such shows. Now she knew. On an end table between the giant recliners there was a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi Chablis, a half-empty wineglass, an ashtray and a pack of Marlboros. Des could smell spaghetti sauce simmering through the open kitchen doorway. And see that the kitchen table was set for two. The lady was still waiting for her man to come home for dinner.

Paulette flicked off the TV and flopped down in one of the recliners, motioning Des toward the other one. “Can I get you anything?”

“I’m all set, thanks.” Des perched on the edge of the recliner while Paulette took a big gulp of wine, then lit a cigarette, pulling on it deeply. “I don’t recall seeing you smoke before.”

“I quit two years ago,” she said with a casual wave of her hand. The lady was more than a bit tipsy, Des realized. “Found these down in Casey’s room. Not my old brand, but who gives a crap. You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

“It’s your house, Paulette. Where is Casey?”

“At the Rustic, same as every night. He and all of the other boys. It’s their little clubhouse.”

“When did he leave?”

“After dinner, same as always.”

“You were saying on the phone that Hank didn’t come home from work?”

“No, he came straight home.” She flicked her cigarette ash in the general direction of the ashtray. “Fiddled around with his train set for a while. He drags the silly thing out of the attic every Christmas and sets it up and watches it go around and around. He’s had it ever since he was a little boy. You wouldn’t believe how happy it makes him. Then he put on his coat and told me he had to check on something at the firehouse before dinner.”

“Such as what?”

Paulette let out a hollow laugh. “How would I know? He’s in and out of there all of the time. They all are. The firehouse is their little clubhouse. It’s where they go when they want to get away from us. That’s how men are. But Hank’s Mr. Reliable. He’s always back in time for dinner. You can set your watch by Hank.” She stubbed out her cigarette, her face tightening. “I gave Casey his dinner at 6:30 so he could take off for the Rustic. When Hank still wasn’t back by 7:00, I started to get ticked off. It’s a rotten night out there and I’m sitting here all by myself. I tried his cell phone, but it was turned off.”

“Did you leave him a voice message?”

“I sure did. And when he didn’t call me back I started getting worried. I was going to try him again when I noticed the text message that he’d sent me. It sounded so unlike him. Also kind of … scary. That’s why I called you. Maybe I’m making something out of nothing. If I am I’m sorry to drag you out like this.”

Des cleared her throat. “Actually, you didn’t. I was already out. There’s no easy way to say this, Paulette, but we’ve found Hank’s Passat by the boat launch at the end of Kinney Road. He hooked up one end of a garden hose to the tailpipe, stuck the other end through his window and-”

“Oh, no…” Paulette’s eyes bulged with fright. “Are you telling me he’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry.”

Paulette groped for another cigarette and lit it, her hands trembling. “That’s why you didn’t say anything on the phone, isn’t it? I knew it. As soon as you told me you were coming by I knew it was going to be bad news. I–I thought maybe he’d been in an accident. The roads being so bad and all. But not something like-like this.” She shook her head slowly from side to side. “That text message … that was his suicide note, wasn’t it?”

“It certainly appears that way. Shall I call Casey for you at the Rustic? Have him come home?”

“No, I’m fine,” Paulette said softly, reaching for her wineglass.

“Was Hank acting unusual this evening? Did he seem depressed?”

“He’s been upset about those thefts on his route. I wouldn’t say he was depressed. Hank doesn’t … didn’t get depressed. He was real even tempered.”

“And how were things going between you two? Were you happy?”

Paulette stared at her blankly. “Happy? You’re kidding me, right? I haven’t met anyone who’s happy in a really, really long time. But I thought we were doing okay. We enjoyed each other’s company. Laughed a little. Made love a little. Not as much as we used to but that’s to be expected, right?”

“Was Hank a big drinker?”

“He liked his beer.”

“How about bourbon?”

“Not real often. Why?”

“He smelled strongly of it when we found him.”

Paulette furrowed her brow. “There’s a half-bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the kitchen cupboard, I think. It’s been in there for at least a year.”

“Would you mind checking to see if it’s still there?”

Paulette got up out of her recliner and went into the kitchen. “Still here,” she called out, returning with it. “I guess … he must have bought a bottle somewhere.”

“Must have.”

Paulette put the bottle of Jack Daniel’s down on the kitchen table and retrieved her wineglass, swaying slightly as she stood there. “Hank was the grinch, wasn’t he? That’s why he did himself in-because you were closing in on him. That text he sent me, when he said, ‘It’s all my fault. I messed up.’ That was him confessing.”

“It’s too soon to know at this point. Anything I say would be speculation, and I don’t like to speculate. May I see the text message?”

Paulette fetched her cell from the arm of her recliner, found Hank’s text message and held it out to her. Des studied it carefully. It was just as Paulette had reported it, word for word. “It’s all my fault. I messed up. Sorry for everything. Take care of yourself.” All very neat and correct. No typos. No text speak. And she’d received it when she’d said she had-at 7:13.

“You said you left him a voice message?”

Paulette nodded. “It should be on my call log. There it is, see? I called him at 7:07.”

“Paulette, I’m going to need to borrow your phone for a day or two.”

“Fine.” She sat back down in her recliner, sighing morosely. “It’s not much to grab on to, is it? He didn’t say he loved me or he’d miss me. He just said ‘Take care.’ Like I was one of his firehouse buddies.” Paulette gulped down some more wine. “What happens now?”

“The postal inspectors will be contacting you in the morning, I imagine. They’ll no doubt want to look into what’s been happening on Hank’s route. Try to determine if, say, he had money troubles.”

“Tell them to talk to his bitch of an ex-wife,” Paulette said angrily. “Her and that lawyer of hers. They tormented the poor man constantly about money. All because his mother committed the cardinal sin of dying. He sold her house and made a few dollars. Worked day and night and made a few dollars more. And for that they hounded him and hounded him.…”

“Paulette, do you think Hank was stealing his own mail?”

Dorset’s postmaster considered her reply for a long moment. “It wasn’t like him to pull something sneaky. Hank was the ultimate Boy Scout. His friends and neighbors felt safe having him coach their teenaged daughters. That’s saying something, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is.”

“But it sure looks like he was up to no good,” Paulette admitted. “I’d have to be an idiot not to see that. I just find it hard to believe, that’s all.”

“If Hank was stealing prescription meds then he must have had a buyer. Do you have any idea who he might have been dealing with? Did he make regular trips to New Haven or New London during the course of the week? Mention a friend who he visited? Anything like that?”

Paulette shook her head. “Nothing like that. But he did know a lot of people here in town. Maybe one of his firehouse or marching-band buddies put him in touch with someone. And he worked at John’s barber shop every Saturday. God only knows what sort of riffraff slithers in and out of there.” She heaved a pained sigh. “We could have licked it together. Taken out a second mortgage on this place. Sold one of our cars. Who cares? It’s only money. But Hank wouldn’t let me help him. He just kept saying, ‘It’s my baggage, not yours.’ He was a stubborn bastard. They’re all stubborn bastards.”

“Paulette, are you positive you don’t want me to call Casey for you? I’m sure he’ll want to come straight home.”

“The Rustic is his home. This is just where he sleeps.”

“Is there anybody I can call for you?”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“So someone can be with you. You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”

“I am alone,” she said, reaching for her wineglass. “I’m going to be alone for the whole rest of my life. I may as well start getting used to it.”

“So how’s my good friend Yolie Snipes?”

“She’s been happier. An entire boxed set of Feds will be swarming all over this by tomorrow morning. Yolie doesn’t play well with others.”

“Is she still partnered with Toni the Tiger?”

“She is.”

“Which one of them has started wearing patchouli?”

“Mitch, how on earth did?…”

“You reeked of it when you walked in that door. And I happen to know that there are no head shops in Dorset.”

Des shook her head at him. “I swear, sometimes you terrify me.”

All she’d wanted to do when she walked in that door was shuck her wet uni, jump into a hot shower and then into Mitch’s nice, warm bed. But Mitch, who was seven-tenths Jewish mother, had insisted she eat a late supper after her shower. So now she was seated on a blanket in front of the fire stuffing herself on the world’s most gigantic, delicious meat loaf sandwich. Clemmie and Quirt were crouched next to her, sniffing at her plate with keen, busy-nosed interest. Outside, the rain was still coming down. It was good to be warm and dry in front of this fire with Mitch and the cats. It was good to be Des Mitry tonight-as opposed to Paulette Zander, who was sitting in that dingy house with only a gallon jug of cheap Chablis and her dead boyfriend’s electric train set for company.

“You’re positive that Hank’s death wasn’t a suicide?”

“Couldn’t be more positive.” Des set aside the remains of her sandwich and took a sip from her glass of milk. “Someone staged the suicide scene, sent Paulette that text message and then took off in a second car. Whoever did it had a partner. We’re looking for two people.”

Mitch gazed thoughtfully into the fire for a long moment before he said, “Are you going to finish that sandwich?”

“It’s all yours.”

He dove in, continuing to stare into the fire. She knew that stare. His wheels were turning.

“What are you thinking, doughboy?”

“That I should have put some of Sheila Enman’s bread-and-butter pickles on this. Also something truly crazy. What if Bryce’s suicide was staged, too?”

“That’s not crazy at all. Yolie’s already fast-tracking Bryce’s autopsy. Although I don’t understand why someone would want to kill Bryce.”

“Why Josie would want to kill him, you mean.”

She frowned at him. “Josie?”

“No one else was out here this morning when he died. There were no tire tracks in the snow, no footprints.”

“Okay, let’s say you’re right about that.…”

“Oh, I’m right.”

“Why would Josie do it?”

“I can help you when it comes to a motive,” he said, shoving the last of her sandwich into his mouth. “Mighty big one, too.”

“Well, don’t be bashful. Let’s hear it.”

“Josie showed up here not long after you left with some very interesting news-Bryce asked Glynis Fairchild-Forniaux to draw up his will for him last week. He hadn’t had one before, apparently. Guess who he left his house to? Go ahead, take a wild guess.”

“Um, okay, somebody who has long blond hair and isn’t named Preston?”

“Bingo. Glynis phoned Josie to warn her that Preston totally freaked when he found out. Glynis thinks Preston will contest it in court. She wants Josie to hire a lawyer and stand her ground.”

“Is she going to?”

“Too soon to tell. Josie seemed genuinely stunned by the whole thing. Swore to me that she didn’t know a thing about what Bryce had done.”

“Did you believe her?”

“Honestly? When it comes to Josie I’m not sure what to believe.” Mitch gulped down what was left of Des’s milk. The man did not know how to leave any food or beverage untouched. “Let’s just riff here for a sec. Let’s say Josie killed Bryce so that she could score his megamillions house, okay?”

“Okay…”

“Why would she need to kill Hank, too?”

Des settled back against a big throw pillow. It had been a long, grueling day. Her body was starting to relax. Not her head though. “We know that Hank was a client of hers a couple of months back.”

Mitch nodded. “And let’s say Hank was stealing that stuff from his route. What if he supplied Josie with the prescription meds that killed Bryce?”

“Bryce had perfectly legit prescription bottles.”

“That Josie told us were full at the time of his death. Let’s say she lied about that. Let’s say those bottles of Vicodin, Xanax and Ambien were actually empty. For all we know, Bryce was still using them on a daily basis. We only have Josie’s word for it that he was drug free these past weeks. Besides, we don’t know that those are the actual drugs he swallowed this morning.”

“Agreed. That’s why we need his toxicology results. We also need to take a good, hard look at that suicide Post-it of his.”

“What about it?”

“Josie told us that ‘Just an awkward stage’ was a pet phrase of Bryce’s. That he used it a lot.”

“So?…”

“So we’ve been assuming that Bryce wrote it this morning when he was preparing to do himself in. But he could have written it days or even weeks ago. Stuck it on the fridge or the bathroom mirror. Our lab people can determine how long the ink’s been drying on the Post-it. If that ink’s more than twenty-four hours old, then right away this gets way more interesting.”

Mitch looked at her in astonishment. “I didn’t know they could do that.”

“Maybe Josie doesn’t either.” Des lay there, her mind working through it. “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say Josie convinced Hank to supply her with some of his stolen prescription meds. Hell, let’s go all the way in and say she’s the one who convinced him to steal the damned stuff in the first place. How did she manage that? We talking about role-playing exercises on her office sofa again?”

“She could have offered Hank something a lot more enticing than her body.”

“Like what?”

“Like a healthy share of the proceeds once she sold Bryce’s house. More than enough money for him to get out of the mess he was in with his ex-wife. He and Josie no doubt talked about his financial problems when she was helping him quit smoking. Mind you, that would mean she knew weeks ago that Bryce intended to leave her his house and that she lied to me about it tonight to cover her tracks. But I have no problem believing that.”

“I don’t either. I also have no problem believing she was doing Hank just for good measure. It’s still the world’s best form of persuasion.”

“Then she bumped him off tonight because he could implicate her in Bryce’s death.”

“And because she didn’t need him anymore,” Des said. “It’s nice and neat. Appallingly so.”

“Wait, I just thought of something. Josie never left the island tonight. I would have heard her car.”

“What if she walked across the causeway and got picked up? Hank’s killer had a partner, remember? Someone else was waiting in a getaway car.”

He tilted his head at her. “Someone like Casey Zander?”

“He’s certainly a likely candidate. I also have my eye on Pat Faulstich. Everywhere I go I keep tripping over him. He was rummaging through the mailboxes when I had Dorset Street staked out this afternoon. And tonight he showed up on Kinney Road-supposedly to plow the neighboring driveways.”

“That’s interesting. I wonder if he has a connection to Josie.”

“So do I.”

“Any idea where Casey was tonight?”

“Paulette told me he was at the Rustic, same as every night. I offered to call him for her but she didn’t want me to call anyone. The woman went totally Garbo on me.”

Mitch beamed at her. “That was totally an old movie reference. I’m rubbing off on you, admit it.”

“It’s true, you are.” She sighed. “Won’t be long now before I’m talking for hours on end about the pulsing cinematic muscularity of Mr. Stan Fuller.”

“It’s Sam Fuller. And just for that I’m going to make you watch The Steel Helmet.”

“Yum, can’t wait. What was she wearing?”

“Who?”

“Josie. You said she showed up here not long after I left. Just wondered if she was wet or muddy or whatever.”

“Her slicker and rain boots were wet. Her hair was dry. So were her jeans and her socks.”

“She could have changed clothes before she came over here. She didn’t happen to smell of whiskey, did she?”

“No, she didn’t. I pumped her a bit about her childhood in Maine.”

“And?…”

“She got surprisingly defensive, bordering on hostile.”

“Mitch, we have to take a good, hard look at her. Will you be okay with that?”

“Sure I will. Do what you have to do. I just have one small problem.”

“What is it?”

“Think about where we’re going with this. We’re suggesting that Josie Cantro is a cold, calculating predator who’s been using her life-coaching practice to troll for juicy prey. That she targeted Bryce, bedded him, killed him and picked him clean. That she’s the proverbial black widow-an evil bitch who has no sense of morality and zero conscience. I’ve spent a decent amount of time around Josie and, well, I’m not there yet. Are you? Do you really think that’s who she is?”

“I don’t know. But I can guarantee you this-starting first thing tomorrow morning, we sure as hell are going to find out.”