FROM THE HOWARD JOHNSON’S it was easier to drive to the car dealership than The Foursome’s former neighborhood. Following Paul O’Boy’s directions, I found the place on the southwest corner of the intersection. There were fifty or sixty shiny cars on the lot, all parked nose out except for a utility vehicle parked sideways that had a marquee on its roof reading MODEL OF THE MONTH. Above the front doors of the showroom was a painted image somewhere between a cartoon and a portrait showing a rosy-cheeked man with a store-bought smile bearing some resemblance to the crime scene photo of Hale Vandemeer’s bleached-out face. The caption was HUB VANDEMEER—FINE CARS, FAIR PRICES.
I drove past the premises without seeing any activity in the lot or showroom. Making a three-point turn, I came back, this time driving onto the lot and leaving the Prelude in a slot with RESERVED FOR CUSTOMER hand-lettered on a small picket sign. I climbed the two steps to the showroom, an all-glass affair on one level with six vehicles of differing functional appeal gleaming on the all-weather carpeting.
When I opened the door, a soft “bong-bong” sounded deeper in the showroom, and a pert, quick-stepping woman appeared from one of the Dutch window cubbyholes along the back wall. Maneuvering deftly around a sensible four-door sedan, she was about five-three, with two-inch heels, well-defined calves, and the expression of a weasel that hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Welcome to Hub Vandemeer’s,” she said eagerly. “I’m Emily Tollison. How can I help you?”
I didn’t introduce myself. “I’d like to see Mr. Vandemeer, if I can.”
“Sure, sure.” Drawing even with me, her eyes flickered over to where I’d parked my car. Not a bad idea, having the customer spaces where the sales crew could do a windshield appraisal of the old vehicle. “Only, he’s not in just yet. Is there something I can help you with?”
“Thanks, but I need to see him personally.”
“Sure, I understand. Can I get you some coffee while you wait?”
I don’t drink the stuff, but I said, “Yes, thank you. Regular, please.” I looked to some squash-colored easy chairs with little poofs of cottony stuffing edging out the seams. “I’ll just sit, if that’s all right?”
“Sure, sure. You make yourself comfortable, and I’ll get your coffee. Hub’ll be here shortly.”
I took a seat as Tollison went past her cubbyhole and out of sight. Behind her, I could hear the mechanical sounds of a service shop, which must have had a separate entrance off another street. Full-color brochures on the low table in front of me displayed cover photos of the two makes of machines I’d seen on the lot, one American, the other I thought Korean, though it had been a while since I’d been in the new car market.
Tollison came back with the coffee in a Styrofoam cup.
Thanking her, I added in a sincere voice, “How’s Hub doing with the loss of his brother?”
A shake of the head, Tollison crossing her arms under her breasts. “It’s been such a strain on him. I don’t think I even met Hale my first year here, but lately he was coming by, oh, once or twice a week, and he seemed such a nice man.”
“I don’t know the son, but it must be tough on him as well.”
She suddenly hardened, the arms closing on each other. “Yes, well, he has a number of strains on him, Nicky does. I’ll just leave you with your coffee, Mr. … ?”
“Cuddy, John Cuddy.”
“Mr. Cuddy. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Thanks.”
I watched her walk away and wondered why my neutral comment about Nicky Vandemeer had set her off.
Waiting, I leafed through one of the brochures. It managed to gush for sixteen pages over features both standard and optional without once mentioning price tag. Returning the brochure to the table, I saw a candy-apple red convertible, white top down, white upholstery visible, pulling onto the lot. If the vehicles in the showroom gleamed, this one blinded. The fantasy car of every teenager turned young adult with a down payment burning a hole through the money market fund. The driver backed and filled until the car was at exactly the angle to catch both the sun from the sky and the eye from the street. I noticed a chrome trailer hitch at the back bumper, which detracted just a bit from the street-car image.
The man who got out from behind the wheel was an older version of the image over the door, the hair scarcer and the cheeks not so rosy and the mouth definitely not smiling. Tall and lanky, he had an effort donning the jacket of a suit whose glen-plaid pattern was just this side of garish. Vandemeer snatched a leather portfolio from the backseat, tilting his head at my car in the customer slot. I got the feeling he’d categorized me as “Honda Prelude, pretty good shape but the old model, probably time for a new car.” Before he could have seen me, Vandemeer put on a yearbook smile and bounded up the steps to the showroom as though this were going to be our mutually lucky day.
Inside the door, he spotted me before the “bong-bong” faded and before Tollison was out of her cubbyhole.
Vandemeer said, “Are you being helped, sir?”
“Actually, I was waiting for you, Mr. Vandemeer.”
“Terrific.” A smile came out that put the polish on the convertible to shame, while his free hand adjusted the knot on a red tie with a beach-girl-and-umbrella design. “And it’s ‘Hub,’ please.”
“John Cuddy, Hub.”
“Great to meet you, John. Come on back to my office.” Vandemeer waved at Tollison, who waved back in a pleasant but distinctly “nothing much” way that probably captured the dealership’s morning pretty well. Vandemeer never broke stride or smile, saying over his shoulder, “More coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
He nodded as we entered his office, which was more a giant cubbyhole. One wall gave a view of the showroom. Another had a very soundproofed window onto the service department, men in jumpsuits working with wrenches and other hand tools on vehicles in maybe half the bays. On my side of his desk was a brass plate on a triangular tube of mahogany that read HUBBELL “HUB” VANDEMEER. The rest of the desk was covered by carefully squared stacks of documents that had the look of not being disturbed recently. There were some Little League trophies on the shelf next to his desk. Most of them were from the mid-eighties, none after 1988. The desk chair looked broken down rather than broken in, but he plunked himself into it and said, “Now, what can we do for you?”
I showed him my Massachusetts identification. “I’m here about the killings up in Maine.”
The smile weighed down, taking all the energy from his face and voice. “What’s your stake in it?”
When you first spring your profession on someone, it’s interesting to hear their reaction. In Vandemeer’s case, his question about my “stake” led me to believe he must have one, too.
I said, “I’m working for the lawyer representing Steven Shea.”
His mouth gaped before he remembered that he should be playing poker. “I thought the police there had things pretty well wrapped up?”
“My job is to find out how tight the ribbon is.”
“This happened in Maine, I don’t see where I have to talk to you.”
“You don’t. You wouldn’t even if it happened in Massachusetts. But you don’t talk to me, I have to talk to other people. Get things indirectly. Usually that’s like a game of Telephone.”
“Telephone?”
“Yeah, like from when you were little. Everybody sits in a circle, the kid on your left whispers something to you, you whisper what you thought he said to the girl on your right, then she whispers what she thought—”
“Until it all gets fouled up by the time it gets back around.”
“Usually.”
Vandemeer brought up a hand, rubbing his chin so laboriously that I thought the car dealer’s next words would be “Tell you what I’m gonna do.” Instead, he said, “So, I talk to you, and you get my story straight.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Okay, fine. I built my reputation here on being honest with my customers, I’ll be honest with you. What do you want to know?”
“The authorities in Maine see the crime scene as Shea setting up a triple murder, then losing his cool. If he didn’t do it, then somebody else did, and he just reacted predictably when he found the bodies.”
Vandemeer nodded without expression.
I said, “Were you close to your brother?”
A pained sigh. “Like best friends.”
“You know any reason somebody would want him dead?”
“None.”
“How about his wife?”
“Same.”
All of a sudden Vandemeer had gone concise on me. It could have been masked emotion over his brother’s death, but it didn’t feel right.
I said, “The three of you knew each other a long time?”
“Since we were children.”
“So, you knew Vivian pretty well, then.”
An impatient “Yes.”
I said, “Maybe if you explained your relationship with your brother, it would help me on what else to ask you.”
Vandemeer seemed to stall a little, maybe thinking we’d already covered that subject. “Like I said, growing up we were best friends, even joked about my name.”
“Joked?”
“You know. He was a couple of years older than me, so we joked that instead of ‘Hale’ and ‘Hubbell,’ our parents could have named us ‘Hale’ and ‘Hearty.’ ”
“I see what you mean.”
“At least now, I just get people thinking of me when they hear about that telescope that doesn’t work right.”
I looked down at the brass plate. “I think that’s spelled differently.”
“Whatever.”
“How did you come to be in this line?”
“Cars, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Our parents had some money, they died on the Andrea Doria back in the fifties. Remember that?”
“Just the newspapers.”
“Yeah, well, it was pretty scary stuff, being eight years old and thinking your folks were in a big tin can at the bottom of the ocean.” Vandemeer shivered. “Anyway, we each came into half their money when we hit twenty-one. Hale used his to go to med school, but he was the only scholar in the family. Me, I was a car man, just crazy about them, had this great Ford convertible in high school, aquamarine with power everything, when you used to see just Caddys and Lincolns like that. So when I was a senior, I came to the guy owned this lot then, and he hired me as basically an office boy. Well, I worked my way up, learned everything about how a dealership runs. When he decided to move to Arizona, I took my share of the estate and bought him out. Been here ever since.”
I wanted to keep Vandemeer in a talkative move. “How’s it been as a life?”
“Aw, I can’t complain. Not really. I got into it back in the early seventies, just before the Arab oil thing. It was tough, but the manufacturers adapted and everything was fine. Even did okay during the early eighties. That recession pretty much missed us in New England, at least as far as cars went. Hell, that Prelude of yours—what, an eighty-one?”
“Eighty-two.”
“Eighty-two, new it probably went for list, am I right?”
“I don’t know. I got it used.”
“Yeah, well, nothing goes for list anymore. Oh, maybe that convertible I drove in here, they don’t make enough of them with this nice June weather we’re having now. But most of the serious shoppers, they come in here with computer printouts yet, showing them how much I paid for the car and then expecting me to do no better than five hundred over invoice.”
“Which still gives you some profit, right?”
“Five hundred? How am I supposed to—”
“No, I mean the invoice itself. Isn’t there part of that you get back from the manufacturer?”
Vandemeer showed me a smile different from the yearbook one. “You know something about the trade, huh?”
“Just a little.”
“Yeah, well, let me tell you a little more, so you understand my position. I work six days a week now, just Sundays off. On my American cars, I get the dealer ‘hold-back’ from the invoice, but only at the end of the quarter, after my money’s been laid out for eight, maybe twelve weeks. And I’ve got to finance my inventory on the lot here, point and a half over prime, carry that as part of my nut every month. And it’s getting so I can’t move my inventory because if I don’t have in stock what—and I mean exactly what—the customer wants, the customer knows the dealer down the street will order it—order it, customized just the way the customer wants it—for maybe three hundred over invoice. You see what I’m saying here?”
“They can get the car they want for less if they’re willing to wait for it.”
“Exactly. That’s exactly right. Then on top of that I got tariffs on my imports that don’t hurt the Korean war orphan that makes the cars, they hurt us U.S. dealers. And I got rebates and APR financing offers from my American manufacturer that I have to juggle around what people read last year and expect me to still make good on out of my ‘profit margin.’ ”
“Which margin is tough to have without sales.”
“And nearly impossible to have without salesmen. I guess I should say ‘salespersons’ because Emily out there was the best of the four people I had on the floor, and she’s the only one I can still justify—”
Vandemeer stopped cold, as though someone had slapped him.
I said, “What’s the matter?”
He gave me a canny smile. “You ever been in sales, Cuddy?”
“No.”
“Cop?”
“Just military.”
“Well, I’ve done it to enough people, I should be able to spot it being done to me.”
“What?”
“Warming me up, drawing me out. You came in here, wanting to talk about that horror movie up at the lake, and I wasn’t feeling too cooperative, so you got me onto something I did want to talk about, and now you know I’m not in such great financial shape.”
“Wouldn’t take a genius to figure that out.”
“Yeah, well, I said I’d be honest with you, and I will be. Hale was helping me out here. With capital, I mean.”
“Bailing you out with cash?”
“He was a doctor, they make a fortune. He needed investments all the time; this was a good one because he knew me and knew the business. Better than throwing three large a month into some mutual fund run by an MBA brat who doesn’t return phone calls.”
“So your brother was happy to park three thousand a month in your lot.”
“Yes,” with the impatient edge to it.
“Investment or loan?”
Vandemeer waited, then said, “His lawyer drew up papers. I gave Hale stock, but it was all just on paper. For tax reasons, I think.”
Tax reasons. “Did his wife, Vivian, know about that?”
The car man balked. “Vivian? What’s she got to do with it?”
“She was killed, too.”
Vandemeer studied me, trying to see if there was anything more than the obvious behind my remark. “Vivian, she did fine with the charge card, but I don’t think she was much into numbers beyond that.”
“How well did you know Shea and his wife?”
“The wife, not much. Met her at a couple of cocktail parties at the house—my brother’s house, I mean. She seemed like a nice woman, kind of … aloof, maybe.”
“And Shea?”
“Steve? I sold him his last two cars, the one his wife drives—sorry, drove. And that new four-wheeler he had up there when … it all happened.”
“Any problems with him?”
“Utility vehicle was a gem. Same with hers, no complaints.”
“Any problems other than with the cars you sold them?”
His hands fidgeted on his desk near one of the perfect stacks. “Steve … I got the impression from Hale that Steve was under some kind of pressure.”
“What from?”
“Don’t know. I think it had to do with his job, though.”
“Just general stress, or something more?”
“Like I said, I don’t know. Hale just mentioned it to me, I never knew Shea well enough to talk with him about it.”
“When was this?”
“When?”
“When your brother mentioned Shea to you.”
“Oh, Jesus, I don’t know. Maybe two—no, I guess it must have been more like four weeks ago.”
“Do you remember your brother’s exact words?”
“I asked him how he was doing, and he said fine, and I asked about Shea’s car—you do that, you know?—and Hale said something like, The car’s fine, but Steve’s tighter than a drum.’ ”
“His exact words?”
“I’m not sure, except for the ‘tighter than a drum,’ part. That was one of Hale’s favorite expressions.”
“And you didn’t follow up?”
“Aw, maybe I said, ‘How come?’ and Hale said, ‘About work’ or ‘Over work,’ something like that. It was just an offhand comment, you know?”
“Was your brother under any stress?”
“Hale? He was the original duck.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Duck. Like water off a duck’s back. Nothing bothered him.”
I thought about Emily Tollison’s reaction to my mentioning Nicky Vandemeer. “How about his son?”
“What about him?”
“I understand the boy is something of a handful.”
“Yeah, well, we’re going to work that out, him and me.”
“Nicky and you.”
“Right.”
“Why is that?”
Vandemeer flared. “Why? Because I’m his uncle and only other kin, that’s why. The lawyer Hale used, he did wills for him and Vivian with me as guardian for Nicky.”
“How old is he?”
“Nicky? Seventeen.”
“So you’re guardian only until he hits his next birthday?”
“Well, technically, maybe. But somebody’s got to look after things for him. He’s a little … wild right now, you know?”
“I understood he’s been a little wild for a while.”
Vandemeer looked at me. “You mean the driving-under thing.”
“Good place to start.”
“What can I say? Nicky’s a kid. He gets his license and a few beers in him, he does something stupid.”
“Anybody hurt?”
“Just the car.”
“Which you sold him?”
“Which I gave him. Practically, I mean. Hale covered just my real cost on it.”
“But Hale’s in no position to cover things anymore.”
Vandemeer flared again. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t see a probate court judge approving any transfers from the estate to you to cover operating costs anymore.”
“Yeah, well, let me tell you something. Hale was a good brother and a generous man, Cuddy. Nicky’s just about rich, the way the lawyer explains it to me. But Hale took care of me, too, in that will somewhere, so in a couple of months, I don’t need any judge to get my money.”
“How much?”
“What?”
“How much is your share?”
Vandemeer didn’t reply.
“I can go to the registry and just look it up.”
He rubbed his chin some more. “Not to put you to the trouble. It’s two hundred thousand.”
“Does that about cover what your brother already kicked in here?”
No reply again.
“Even if it does, though, that doesn’t mean that you’re even with the board, Hub. If the stock you gave your brother doesn’t revert to you somehow, then you might get the two hundred thousand clear from the estate, but you also have your nephew as a partner in the business.”
“I can handle it.”
“You said before that you work every day but Sunday?”
“That’s right.”
“Including the weekend your brother was killed?”
“I already told this to the police here.”
“I could always ‘telephone’ them.”
Vandemeer started to flare again, then eased off. I thought about Hale’s phrase “tighter than a drum” fitting his brother pretty well. The car man said, “I decided to take a couple days for myself.”
“Doing what?”
“Just driving around in the convertible, kicking the leaves, you know?”
“Lots of leaves up in Maine, Hub.”
Vandemeer said, “Why don’t you go find your junkheap and drive it the hell off my lot, huh?”