IF I HADN'T BEEN SO EAGER TO GET BACK UP ON deck for air, I would have kibitzed with Lucky about the different MOs. Maybe the same badass bashed in one woman's head and then shot the other in the heat of passion. Armed properly and committed to the cause of extinguishing a couple of lives, I could damn well do both. The vase I could understand. Did Scott Boardman see the two women in bed, get pissed, and throw the first thing at hand? The shooting was the stickier problem. If the shooter was Scott Boardman in a jealous rage, why did he just happen to have a gun in his pocket that night—unless he suspected he would find his wife cheating on him? I mean, toting a gun with you to meet your spouse smacked a bit too much of premeditation. And of course, premeditated murder entitled one to a longer stay at the state pen than a heat-of-passion, whoops-sorry-I'll-never-do-it-again whack in the skull. But I wasn't ready to reserve Scott his room at the Adult Correctional Institution just yet.
I marched off the boat and into the salty night wind. Ten minutes later Marianna joined me in my car and I began an immediate expostulation.
“It wasn't Scott,” I said. “I know you're convinced, but it just wasn't. He was confused when he confessed. He saw it—the blood and shit—and went temporarily schizoid.”
“You know, Shannon, I thought I was the only one made stupid by love.”
I slammed the car into drive. “What's your point, genius?”
“I think you should lift your glance up from Boardman's crotch and start paying attention to what's behind his shallow gray eyes—”
By pounding my fist into the steering wheel, I signaled my preference for a silent ride home. Marianna, in response, banged the dashboard back, and we remained at a silent if not peaceful truce the rest of the way.
I dropped Marianna at her car, still parked at Al Forno, and I headed down to the police station, where I fought my way through the unruly press crowd camped at the front doors. I found Chucky Sewell holed up behind the locked doors of his glass-encased office. He was on the phone. I banged on the door and he let me in, as he always did, no matter what he was doing. Except this time we were both on business and he went calmly back to his phone conversation as he paced the windows of his office, peering out on his flock.
Chucky was big and I loved it. The mere girth of him gave me the chills. Since the age of thirteen, I'd felt like the gawky giraffe in a kindergarten production of Swan Lake. Being tall and skinny is good for models and California girls, but hey, I live on the puritan East Coast, where the average height for a female is five-four, and the last time I saw that height was third grade, and even then I was still a foot taller than the rest of my little friends. I'm always ready for that up-and-down thing strangers do with their eyes. I watch their eyes travel the long, exhausting distance from my feet to my head, as if they've just pulled out a yardstick and are measuring me for my coffin.
And there was my Chucky, a nice hefty six-four, a full head of salt and pepper hair, and the cutest twinkling blue eyes my love-biased gaze had ever seen. And except for that ever-so-slight little belly that he could never seem to shed, Chucky was as fit and tight as the strings on a shiny concert grand. He walked every day, everywhere he could. The guy's legs were like tree trunks; his shins as thick as my thighs, and believe me, I know because I measured them once during a rare weekend together in Martha's Vineyard while his wife was in Boondocks, Virginia, visiting her first, second, and tenth cousins. Chucky's kids, five in all, were grown and out of the house. I'd met them all at one time or another at social functions. One of them had guessed the true nature of our relationship—the youngest boy, about twenty at the time. He actually took me aside at a Christmas party and said, “I can tell by the way you two talk to each other. Dad's eyes go soft when he's standing around you. I never see his eyes like that anymore since my sisters moved out.”
I didn't bother denying it. What was the point? Chucky and I fit together like a charm to a bracelet, but he was a good Catholic boy who'd never divorce his wife unless she left him first. And at over two hundred pounds (at least that's how fat she looked to me), she wasn't going anywhere fast enough for it to mean anything serious for Chucky and me. So we just left our relationship where it was: a Hepburn-Tracy-type affair. We'd seasoned into an old married couple without ever signing the papers.
“Vince,” Chucky said over the phone, “let's just try to wrap this up fast and let the political fallout settle where it may. Murder. Premeditated. That's my take. You figure out the legal end.”
I couldn't hear Vince's end of the conversation, but I knew him well enough to know what he was saying. Vince Piganno was like Marianna; they had these idiotic consciences and thought the Code of Criminal Law was holier than the Bible. Maybe it had to do with being Italian. Like those Romans of yore: The social system will fail unless we follow a social structure and strict moral codes. And as far as politics was concerned? Vince said lying is a religion to politicians. They lie during confession, he'd say.
So I wasn't surprised when Chucky hung up with Vince and thrust his hands in the pockets of his loose trousers, shaking his head at me as if Vince was somehow my responsibility.
“Well, your boss wants to draw this out. He started quoting goddamn Cicero to me. Something like There's nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.’ What Cicero has to do with Boardman killing his wife I'd sure as hell like to know.”
I sat behind Chucky's desk and started straightening out papers for him. It was a little-known fact that I was a neat freak. Cleanliness I didn't give a crap about, but if everything around me wasn't in numbered piles, I was a raging lunatic.
Chucky flipped the blinds to his office closed so no one would see me behind his desk, messing with police business. Damned if all the cops didn't know about us anyway, but Chucky was annoyingly careful about not giving anyone any real evidence of our unlicensed and illegal coupling.
“I'll tell you what Vince means,” I said, “if you really want to know.”
“Nah, what's the point? That man and I are like two guys on the same debate team who speak different languages. We're always disagreeing for some reason or another neither one of us understands, but ultimately one of us defers, because winning is our prime goal.”
“Whew, that was a mouthful, Chucky. You're getting intellectual on me. What's up with that?”
He came over to me and fluffed my cropped hair into more of a tangle than it already was. “You're the brainy lawyer, honey. I'm just the testosterone-powered cop, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah… Well, Vince doesn't believe anything people say. That's what he meant with the Cicero quote. Vince'll want to wait for the evidence and the grand jury.”
“See what I mean? Piganno and I agree. My gut says Boardman's lying too. And if he's not guilty of killing his wife, he's a politician and guilty of something else, so ipso facto, he's lying about something. And the evidence'll bear me out on this. You just wait, darlin'.”
“See, Chuck, now you're talking Cicero too. Obtuseness among men in power is obviously a widespread epidemic.”
Chucky laughed. He loved playing Grade Allen to my George Burns, pretending he was the goof and I was the smart one. Of course I was the smart one, but I never knew if Chucky really believed it, or if he thought he was just humoring me by letting me think so.
I hate the tangled web of men's mucked-up minds.
“Well, whether you like it or not,” Chucky said, “we're looking at the Honorable Senator Boardman as our prime suspect. Dack called me right before you got here. One of the women—I'm guessing the wife—was shot point-blank to the back of the head. That ain't heat-of-passion. So unless the ME comes up with a finger pointing in a different direction, I'm liking Boardman for premeditated murder.”
Shaking my head, I walked to his door. “That makes me real sad, Chuck, real sad. Because I was kind of liking him too, if you get my meaning. He's just my type. Big and brawny.” I looked up at him, wide-eyed, as if the thought had just hit me. “He kind of reminds me of you, Chucky Bear.”
“Should I be jealous?” he said, tilting his head at me.
With a great big grin I said, “Depends on whether or not you care if you lose me.”
I loved dragging my fingers through those finely woven spiderwebs and wreaking havoc on the threadwork of lies that men create for unsuspecting flies. Especially the married spiders like Chucky who've managed quite efficiently to lead double lives. He'd managed to have a wife, kids, and a mistress who all coexisted—sort of— happily ever after. Sure, I was his enabler. Sure, it was my fault for letting it happen. (I was no unsuspecting fly) And because I was free to walk out on him whenever I wanted, I could never really get angry with him. And the truth is, I'm not sure I'd marry him if he did leave his wife. So yeah, I liked Chucky, maybe even loved him—in my weaker moments—but sometimes I hated his guts too.
I realigned my spine cocksure straight and chucked Chuck a kiss. But when I whipped open his door ready to blow into the sunset, I saw a humbly stooped Scott Boardman standing next to his lawyer, Ron Esterman. I'm guessing they were waiting their turn at Chucky.
When Scott Boardman looked up at me, staring for maybe a second too long, Chucky followed me out his office door sans that cute blue twinkle in his eyes.
“Thank you for dropping by, Miss Lynch,” the now seriously official Chief Sewell said to me. “We'll be in touch with your office.”
My cue to leave, so I briefly sized up the two men standing before me—Chief of Police Charles Sewell and Senator Scott Boardman. We were on Chucky's turf, so he was clearly the pack leader of our small group in attendance. I deferred to his authority and stayed quiet. But I zoom-viewed on Scott Boardman's face again, and like a cruise missile flying below radar, his downcast eyes snuck another longing stare at me, telling me something, or asking me something, or just plain looking for a chest to cry into again.
Bedroom confession notwithstanding, I still believed the guy was innocent.