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I AMBLED DOWNSTAIRS the next morning and marched across Dom’s air mattress, accidentally kicking him in the head when he flopped into my foot.
Nothing. Not so much as an eye quiver. He was, as always, blissfully comatose. Sexy Beast paused, as always, to sniff his beloved Dom and make sure he was still breathing as I shambled into the kitchen. Martin was, as always, on his tenth or twelfth mug of high-test and working his way through most of a newly opened box of Fruity Pebbles.
He turned the Times crossword puzzle in my direction, as always, so I could admire the fact that every last one of the little boxes was filled in, and in ink, while I grunted something meant to sound encouraging and made tracks for the coffee carafe.
By now we had our routine down, like an old married couple whose special-needs but somehow high-achieving adult son would remain unconscious until precisely 7:38 a.m., when he’d suddenly bound out of bed, eerily alert and ready to tear another huge bite out of the natural, organic, and sustainably produced foodservice industry.
Dom had always been that way. Made no difference when he hit the hay or where he laid his head. It was one of those quirks I used to consider lovable.
I’d made it through one and a half mugs of black coffee and was lingering over the Times Style section ($179.99 isn’t too much for a designer salt-and-pepper set, is it?) when my cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number.
“Jane, it’s Porter Vargas.” His voice sounded strained.
I checked the wall clock. Barely eight o’clock. Dom was getting ready for work, which is what I assumed my caller should be doing at this hour of the morning. “What’s up, Porter?”
“I want to hire you for an assignment.”
“Okay.” So. After having engaged me anonymously for the past two decades to deliver flowers to Tim Holbrook’s grave, he had something else for me to do. “What do you have in mind?”
“I need you to come here this morning to discuss it. I’m staying at my mother’s house here in town.” He told me where she lived.
“Sure thing.” I grabbed a pen from the junk drawer and scribbled the address on a napkin. “What time?”
“Please arrive promptly at nine,” he said.
I saluted the arrogant man. Sir, yes, sir! “Nine it is,” I said. “You working from home this morning?”
“What? Oh. Yeah.”
We said goodbye and I hung up. Martin asked about the call. “You’re not going there alone,” he said, when I told him about Porter’s request.
“Oh, please.” I was already heading out of the breakfast room.
“I’m serious, Jane.” Martin was out of his chair, catching up to me. “You’re responsible for Vargas being accused, arrested, and possibly spending the rest of his life in jail. He’s got to have it in for you.”
“He sounded civil enough on the phone.”
“How about the fact that the man is very likely a murderer?” he said.
“Nah, my money’s on Lacey.” When I realized he was following me up the stairs, I swung to face him. He bumped into me, which turned out to be more agreeable than it sounds.
“In which case Porter disposed of the body to cover his wife’s crime,” he said. “If you’re right, he’s still protecting her, pretending he killed Ernie in self-defense. You know how irrational he is when it comes to Lacey. He’s capable of anything. It’s blind, obsessive love.”
My tone was arid. “Yeah, that’s irrational, all right. I’m not having this discussion, Padre. And you’re not allowed upstairs,” I reminded him as I sprinted up the steps. For all the good it did me.
He trailed me into the master bedroom. “I’m going with you. No argument.”
I opened my underwear drawer. “Do you mind? I have to shower and dress.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stood his ground. I sighed. “I’ll be careful, I promise, but I have no intention of showing up at a client’s house with a bodyguard.” My gut told me I had nothing to fear from Porter.
“I’m not giving you a choice, Jane. I’m going with you.”
After a moment I tossed my hands in defeat. “All right, all right. Be ready to leave in forty-five minutes.”
The instant he left the room, I threw on yesterday’s clothes and hurried down the stairs, finger-combing my hair. When I entered the kitchen, I saw Dom standing over the stove, boiling water for his slow-cooking steel-cut oatmeal. A quick good-morning, a couple of scritches for SB, then I silently crept down the hallway, past the laundry room to the garage entrance opposite the maid’s room where Martin was bunking. I heard the shower running in his bathroom and smiled to myself.
In less than ten minutes I pulled up in front of Mama Vargas’s enormous, brick Tudor-style home with half-timbering and steep gable roofs. I was half an hour early, but if I waited to ring the bell, Martin would have time to figure out I’d given him the slip and come roaring up on his Harley before I got inside the door. Porter wanted prompt? Try thirty minutes early.
I made my way up the long brick walk and punched the doorbell. And waited. I rang it again. After a minute I tried the big brass door knocker. Porter could have been in the shower too, but then where was his mother? I couldn’t ignore my tingling nape. Was it my imagination or had he indeed sounded stressed on the phone?
I descended the front porch steps and ambled around the house, peering as casually as I could into the first-floor windows and hoping none of Mama Vargas’s neighbors decided to phone the local gendarmerie about a suspicious character casing the joint. There was nothing to see through the open drapes except traditional furnishings with an emphasis on genuine-looking antiques.
I rounded the back of the house and went straight for the multipaned bow window which projected into the backyard. Peering through the leaded-glass panes, I saw what appeared to be a great room, with a gigantic wood-and-stone fireplace mantel, Oriental rugs, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a steeply pitched, half-timbered ceiling with a couple of heavy timber cross pieces. A sturdy rope hung from the nearest timber, located some dozen feet from the window, with a dainty Louis XVI armchair positioned directly under it. Or maybe it was Louis Quatorze. I’m pretty sure it was some Louis.
Porter Vargas stood on the chair with—you’re way ahead of me, I can tell—a noose around his neck.
He faced me, his expression clearly indicating that in fact he did not appreciate my early arrival. We locked eyes and I stood paralyzed for a long moment until he made his move, kicking the chair out from under his feet.
Acting on pure reflex, I spun around, not even knowing what I was looking for. I sprinted across the sprawling stone patio and lifted an ornate iron patio chair. In that instant, with my muscles marinating in adrenaline, that chair could have been made of Styrofoam. I got a running start and used my momentum and the aforementioned adrenaline rush to slam the chair through the bow window.
I followed the chair, leaping over the low sill through the shower of glass shards and lead fragments to reach Porter in about two seconds that felt like as many hours. Furiously he kicked out at me as I struggled to reposition the chair under him. His sneakered foot caught me in the temple and I went down with a cry of pain. Immediately I sprang up, wrapping my arms around his flailing legs while trying to drag the chair with my foot.
“Porter, don’t do this,” I shouted. “It won’t solve anything.”
His face was purple, his body twitching as he clawed at the noose—a reflexive action, I knew, and not a change of heart, since he still twisted and kicked and fought my efforts to save him.
Suddenly another pair of arms materialized, effectively trapping Porter’s legs and lifting him several inches.
“Get the chair!” Martin barked.
I didn’t pause to wonder where he’d come from but shoved the chair into place. Before Porter could mount a counteroffensive, Martin stood on the chair, restraining the other man with one muscular arm while slipping something out of his own back jeans pocket.
Sunlight flashed on steel as the switchblade sprang open. Martin sliced through the rope in one swift motion and caught Porter as he sagged. Together we lowered him onto the carpet. I loosened the slipknot at the side of his neck and pulled the rope over his head.
Porter gulped air as tears slid from his closed eyes down his temples. “Damn you,” he rasped. “Damn you, Jane.”
I slumped onto my butt, my own chest heaving, my heart jackhammering my ribcage. I looked at the padre and breathlessly mouthed, Thank you.
He placed a hand on my back. Had anything ever felt so good? So reassuring?
“Where... how...?” I said.
“You thought I didn’t know what you were up to?” Martin wore a wry half smile. “‘Be ready to leave in forty-five minutes’? Seriously?”
“Thank God you’re sneakier than I am,” I said. “But how did you get into the house?”
“I heard you holler as soon as I pulled up. Front door was unlocked.” He glanced at the smashed bow window and gave me a once-over. “Hold still.” He took my hand in his, which seemed a surprisingly tender if not unwelcome gesture until he turned my forearm to pluck a good-size piece of glass out of it. He frowned as I pulled tissues from my pocket to try and soak up the blood. “You’re a mess,” he said.
I looked down at myself. It was true. I’d been so fixated on saving Porter, not to mention the adrenaline high, that I hadn’t felt anything as I’d hurled myself through the broken window. That numbness was fast fading. When I touched my stinging scalp, my fingers came away red. A cut on my sandal-clad right foot and another, larger one on my shin dripped blood onto the velvety carpet, which was probably antique silk. I didn’t even try to count the myriad smaller lacerations which made it look like I’d gone one-on-one with a giant blender. It could have been worse. At least I wore full-length jeans and not shorts.
Porter tried to sit up. Martin pushed him back down and said, “You owe this woman big-time, Vargas. You don’t think so now, but you will.”
I wasn’t so sure. “Where’s your mother, Porter?” I asked.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. A dark ligature mark encircled his neck, as well as scratches from his own fingernails. He took a breath to speak and coughed instead. His voice was hoarse as he said, “Breakfast meeting. She’s on the board of a cancer charity.” After a moment he added, “Didn’t want her to be the one to find me.”
“I get it,” I said. “You figured a workable alternative was to let Jane Delaney, local Death Diva, discover your lifeless body swinging from the rafters.”
Porter took note of my acerbic tone. He looked at me for the first time since we’d cut him down. “I figured you’re used to... Anyway, I left payment.” He indicated a small piecrust table on which lay two envelopes. He’d written my name on one and his wife’s name on the other. I assumed mine contained a check, and Lacey’s his suicide note.
He glanced at Martin. “I’m going to get up now.” The padre made no move to stop him as he slowly sat up and looked around. His bloodshot gaze lingered on the smashed bow window as he told me what I’d already figured out. “I left the front door unlocked for you, Jane.” Yeah, well.
When he took in the sliced-and-diced condition of yours truly, his expression morphed to something close to chagrin, as if it only just occurred to him what I’d gone through to save his ungrateful carcass.
Shakily he came to his feet. We did, too, and followed him to the other end of the spacious room. He slumped into an overstuffed armchair, tossed his hand toward me, and told Martin, “First-aid stuff’s in the bathroom three doors down.”
Martin hesitated, silently asking if I was okay with him leaving the room. I waved him away and went to Porter, gently touching his throat where the rope had dug in. He didn’t seem to notice. I felt obliged to say, “You should go to the emergency room.”
He ignored that. Big surprise. Well, his breathing seemed okay and he hadn’t lost consciousness, so I didn’t press the issue.
I said, “Porter, have you been drinking?”
He shook his head. “I want to die sober.”
I believed him. He didn’t smell like booze and I saw no telltale bottles. I suspected that at the first opportunity, he’d take another crack at dying sober.
Martin returned with the first-aid box. He pointed to the sofa across from Porter’s chair. “Sit.” I did. “How’d you get this?” he asked, running a finger over my bruised temple. I declined to answer and was grateful when he didn’t pursue it. I doubted Porter even remembered kicking me.
The padre examined the cut on my scalp and declared it no biggie, adding that scalp wounds bleed a lot. He dabbed it with an alcohol wipe while I managed not to flinch, then began plucking shards of glass out of my hair, collecting them in an impressive little pile on the lamp table. He moved on to the gash on my forearm, digging around in the box for butterfly bandages to close it.
“When will your mother be home?” I asked Porter, who sat staring at nothing.
He flapped his arm in a gesture meant to convey the passage of a goodly length of time.
“Porter.” I waited until he looked at me. “Why?”
His expression was heartbreakingly bleak. “I killed them, Jane. I killed them both.”
If a heart can stumble over itself, mine did. Martin’s fingers tightened on my forearm, ever so slightly, as he cleaned the cut. I willed calm into my voice. “Tim was a terrible accident, Porter.”
“You were right what you said a couple of days ago. I was no kid, I should’ve known better than to get wasted on that boat, to get Tim wasted. I never should’ve let him dive in, much less...” He squeezed his eyes shut and barely managed to choke out, “I left him out there to die. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
He did mean, however, for his good buddy Ernie to take the blame, by capitalizing on Ernie’s unstated feelings for him.
I waited while Martin finished bandaging my arm. He then gently tugged up the right leg of my jeans and went to work on my lacerated shin. I’d been thinking I might need stitches, but the butterfly bandages seemed to do the trick.
I wondered how to ask the obvious next question. The padre did it for me. “So when you say you killed them both. Can I assume the other one is Ernie?”
Miserably Porter nodded. Martin and I exchanged a look. One of us was going to have to quietly leave the room and phone Bonnie.
“How did it happen, man?” Martin asked. “Did you guys have a fight?”
Porter didn’t answer. Absently he touched the livid streak on his throat as if he’d forgotten what he’d just tried to do. His gaze was unfocused; he was somewhere else.
I decided a bluff was in order. “Okay, I have to tell you, Porter, the police already know Lacey did it.”
He straightened and shot me a look of alarm. “That’s not true. It was me, not her.” He pointed to the piecrust table. “Read my note. It’s all in there—my complete confession.”
“Your statement to the cops had holes.” I shrugged. “They know you’re protecting your wife. They have evidence she was at Ernie’s house the day he died.”
“How could they know that?” He clamped his lips shut as if belatedly trying to take back his words. “I don’t believe you. Bonnie Hernandez brought me in again last night. They’re following a different lead now. Dean Phillips, Sophie’s ex, concocted a story about me and Sophie—that we had a fling back then and killed Ernie. It’s bull, of course. That loser’s just trying to stick it to Sophie.”
So that’s what Bonnie wanted to talk to her about. They were meeting at that very moment. “You know Dean’s story is bull,” I said, “I know it’s bull, and the cops know it’s bull. They also know your story is bull, Porter. You might have disposed of Ernie’s body and faked his suicide, but Lacey did the killing. You were trying to protect her, just like you were trying to protect her by hanging yourself and taking the blame for the whole thing in that note you left.”
I watched conflicting emotions duke it out behind his bloodshot eyes, erasing any lingering doubts I might have had about Lacey’s guilt. “If you really want to help your wife,” I said, “you’ll stick around and support her through the trial and whatever comes after. She needs you, Porter.”
He held my gaze for long moments, then slowly sank back down in his chair. “She doesn’t need me,” he muttered. “I’d only get in the way. She has Colin.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, not knowing whether it was a lie. “She’s going to need you every step of the way.”
He looked at us beseechingly, as if we were judge and jury. “It wasn’t her fault. I drove her to it.”
Martin said, “How?”
“I killed Tim and let her think Ernie did it,” Porter said. “I let her think he got away with murder. When we got married she insisted I cut off all contact with Ernie, and I agreed.”
“You didn’t do it, though,” I said, recalling Teddy’s account of their ongoing friendship.
“The guy had been my best friend since kindergarten,” he said. “And he hadn’t actually done what she thought he did, so I figured, you know, what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.” He gave a weak shrug.
“But she found out,” I said.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “It was almost three years later and I was working from home one day, and Lacey gets a call from a friend who saw Ernie and me playing tennis the weekend before at this obscure club about ten towns away. I mean, what were the odds? Anyway, she hit the ceiling. Demanded I end the friendship for good.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I felt like a slimeball for having deceived her, but what I did was act all puffed up and macho, like it’s my business who I’m friends with and all that crap. Hoping to put an end to her tirade. She says, ‘Well, if you won’t take care of it, I will.’ And she jumps in her car and takes off.”
“This was the day Ernie died, right?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Porter pushed his fingers through his disheveled black hair. “We’d just had lunch. Leftover lasagna and salad. Lacey makes amazing lasagna.”
I recalled what Sophie had said about strong emotions sharpening memory.
“What then?” Martin asked.
“I waited a bit, hoping she’d cool down and come home. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a jerk I’d been. I mean, she didn’t know Ernie wasn’t responsible for Tim’s death. I shouldn’t expect her to tolerate our being friends.”
“Did you ever consider fessing up?” I asked. “Telling her that it was really you and not Ernie at the controls of the boat that night?”
Porter averted his gaze. I had my answer.
Martin had finished bandaging my shin and the cut on my foot. He now took a pair of tweezers out of the kit and began extracting tiny glass splinters from my face. Yeah, I was a mess, all right.
“So is that when you headed over to Ernie’s house?” I asked.
He nodded. “It wasn’t Lacey’s job to tell him our friendship was over. It was something I had to do myself. Only, by the time I got there... it was too late.”
“What do you mean?” I was pretty sure I knew, but I needed to hear him say it. Martin paused in his tweezing.
“I found him in his backyard. His head...” Porter swallowed hard. I’d never seen anyone look more haunted. “It was caved in. The blood...”
“Was Lacey there?” Martin asked.
Porter shook his head. “She must have freaked out and bolted. I know she hadn’t gone there intending to kill him. I think they argued and she snapped. I wish I’d gotten there in time, but the fact was, there was nothing I could do for Ernie. I had my wife to think of. I had to protect her.”
“Did you notice a weapon?” I asked. “I mean, did you see what she used to, um... what she hit him with?”
“He was lying close to the patio. I assumed she pushed him down and slammed his head against it. She was pretty athletic back then. Strong. Still is, in fact. You could tell there’d been a fight—furniture knocked over, stuff like that.”
Martin asked, “But his head wasn’t actually in contact with the patio?” His tweezers were busy again, having moved on to my right arm. “There was no blood on it?”
“No, the blood was on the grass. Figured she moved him. I hosed it down but didn’t stop to straighten the furniture or anything. I was just trying to hold it together, figure out how to get rid of his body before a neighbor saw or Sophie came home early or something.”
“So you put him in the trunk of his car,” I said.
Porter nodded. “His car was in the old carriage house—they used it as a garage. Then I ran into the house, grabbed the boat key and wrote the suicide note on his typewriter, and drove to my folks’ house. I told them Lacey and I had a fight and could I stay there overnight.” He added, “It’s not like it was the first time.”
Martin said, “Didn’t they ask why you were driving Ernie’s car?”
“I parked it out of sight behind the guest cottage. Mom and Dad were snoring by ten. I stayed awake, working out what I had to do. Sometime after midnight I grabbed a shovel, a flashlight, and my old ocean kayak out of the storage barn and drove to the cemetery. I knew how to sneak in. Back in high school, Ernie and I used to do it for kicks.”
“Why didn’t you do the obvious thing?” I asked. “Tie something heavy to Ernie and dump him in the ocean when you took his boat out?”
“I wanted him... I know it sounds lame, all things considered, but I wanted him laid to rest in a real cemetery, not get turned into shark food in the ocean. It was dumb luck that they’d just planted those willow saplings. I buried him under one of them and said a prayer.”
“The boat was discovered pretty far off Montauk the next morning,” I said. “Did you go straight there from the cemetery?”
“Yeah. I took the kayak aboard so I could paddle back to shore. I left Ernie’s car parked at the marina like he’d left it there.”
Martin said, “Weren’t you afraid someone would find blood in the trunk?”
Porter shook his head. “There were tarps in the carriage house. I put one under Ernie and tossed it overboard later.”
“What did you do once you got back to shore?” I asked.
“I carried the kayak across Montauk Highway to Fort Pond and paddled to the northern end. The moon was nearly full. There wasn’t another soul around. It was almost...” He gave a little shake of the head, his eyes glistening. “It was almost peaceful.”
“How’d you get home?” Martin asked.
“It wasn’t that far from the pond to the Montauk train station. I ditched the kayak in the woods and caught a train. Had to wait a couple of hours for it, and the ride itself was another four or five—it wasn’t direct. I walked from the Crystal Harbor station back to Ernie and Sophie’s street, where my car was parked.”
“What time did you finally get home?” I asked.
“Around five p.m. I could tell Lacey didn’t want to talk, so I figured I’d give her a little space till she was ready.”
“How long till she was ready?” Martin asked.
Porter took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I assumed she’d put two and two together after the ‘suicide’ news broke. She had to know what I’d done for her, but she never mentioned it, and neither did I. Things eventually got back to some version of normal and I was afraid to rock the boat. In the end, we never talked about what happened.”
Not a peep in all those years. Talk about the proverbial elephant in the room. This was a whole darn herd of them perched on your chintz upholstery and sipping tea from your best china.
“Why didn’t you go along with the story Dean spun for the cops?” I asked. “If you could get Lacey off while you and Sophie took the heat, why not go for it?”
“It’s bad enough I faked Ernie’s suicide, made Sophie believe her husband killed himself,” he said. “For more than thirty years she thought that. I’ll be damned if I help convict her of a murder she didn’t commit. She doesn’t deserve that.”
“But you do?”
With heartbreaking sincerity he said, “I finally know how Ernie felt.”
“What do you mean?”
“The huge favor he did for me all those years ago,” he said. “Lying for me, saying he was the one who left Tim out there in the ocean. I never appreciated it at the time—his sacrifice, what he was willing to risk for me.”
“You both knew his mother would take care of it,” I said.
“We knew she’d try. There were no guarantees. Ernie could have been arrested. Done time.” He took a deep breath. “Lacey will not go to prison. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
