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Another day, another muffin. Beverly sat in her car, staring straight ahead, trying to stay awake. Such a long, mostly sleepless night except for the few nightmares she’d had—with grinning skulls dripping with blood chasing her through Quechee where she’d fallen into the pond. She awoke with her heart pounding and never went back to sleep after that.
The remains of her scant half a bran muffin sat like a lump of clay in her stomach, and the black coffee hadn’t helped. But she needed the caffeine. Barely aware of what she was doing, she’d wandered out to her rental car. After driving around for hours trying to decide what to do, she’d somehow found her way to this place without consciously thinking about it. She dragged herself out of the car and entered the door to Tossed Treasures.
Seeing that Harlan was helping a customer, Beverly wandered over to a table of ceramics and absently picked up a Pointon vase, studying the hand-painted cartouches—a Cupid’s bow, a pastoral river scene, delicate blue flowers. So not representative of her life right now. She felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to see Harlan looking at her with concern.
“That’s a nice piece you have there, but you’ve been staring at it for five minutes without moving.” His eyes narrowed. “You look like you’re about to fall over. Come with me.”
He led her to a room in the back, herding her to a yellow tufted loveseat. He headed over to an urn of coffee on a hot plate, pouring out a cup, then adding a couple shots of something from a brown bottle. “Here you go. That’ll warm you up.”
She accepted the offering gratefully, aware for the first time she was shivering.
Harlan perched on the edge of his desk. “Want to tell me about it?”
She looked up, with a small shake of her head.
“Does this have to with Adam? He called earlier to see if you’d been by. If he’s giving you grief, he’ll have to deal with me. I may be his godfather, but that doesn’t mean I can’t give him a piece of my mind.”
Beverly took another sip of the soothing drink. “You said you were good friends with Adam’s father?”
“Adam’s mother died when he was a wee boy. Aggressive breast cancer. Shame about his father, too. A good man.” Harlan sighed. “I’ve wrestled with guilt over that.”
“Guilt? Why?”
“I was the one who told Adam’s father about that investment scheme. Didn’t realize it was one of those consarned pyramid things. Never would have told him had I known. The poor man lost everything.”
Beverly frowned. “But it’s not your fault. Look at all the people Bernie Madoff conned. High society people, rich enough to know better.”
“Cut from the devil’s own piece goods, those types are, the Madoffs, the Zuneys.”
“I can add another one to that list. Reggie Forsythe.”
Harlan folded his arms across his chest. “Forsythe and his father may be the devil and his son. Never seen two men as morally bankrupt. Their coat of ethics is filled with moth-eaten holes. Not much coat left after that.”
“Did you have direct dealings with them?”
“Used to belong to the Northeastern Antiquities League, so I bumped into them now and then. When they took the League in a dangerous direction and attracted others of their type, I gave up and left.”
“By dangerous direction, you mean their shady deals, the thefts, the price gouging?”
Harlan scanned her face. “Sounds like you know them well.”
“My grandmother owned an antiques shop. A lot like this one.” Beverly smiled briefly at the memory. “Forsythe used a loophole in the state code enabling him to shut her down. After the bankruptcy and selling everything off, she was never the same.”
“Who was your grandmother? Surely I know her.”
“She died a few years ago following a stroke. But her name was Guinevere Glas.”
Harlan spread his palms out on the desk as a broad smile dawned across his face. “Guinevere was your grandmother? Well, I’ll be. I should have known since you’re every bit as beautiful as she was. I had a crush, you know.”
“You . . . you did?”
“Indeed I did. Fine woman. Met her about fifteen years ago, I think it was. Yes, that’s about right. Even considered asking her out.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“She didn’t seem interested, quite honestly. Told me she’d had a bad relationship once and didn’t want to risk it. I never saw her after that.”
Beverly bit her tongue, and it wasn’t from the coffee. She knew exactly what Grammie meant by that remark. And the reason for it Beverly had just seen lying dead on the floor of his son’s dining room with his head bashed in. “My grandmother married her husband when they were young, only eighteen. He wasn’t a villain then, but it didn’t take long for her to witness his true colors. She was heartbroken.”
“Sorry to hear that. She deserved better. But she got some children and grandchildren out of it.”
Beverly got up to pour some more coffee, pleased to see her hand wasn’t shaking. “Her daughter, my mother, stayed with her. Her ex-husband insisted he take their son with him. Turned him against us, too. She never saw her son again after that.”
“Oh, dear. To be separated from your child in such a cruel fashion. The man must be a monster.”
They sat without talking for a few moments. The only sounds in the room were the quiet humming from the vintage popcorn machine’s motor and the ticking from a roulette wheel clock on the wall. It was a surreal duet, so ordinary and so far removed from murder.
Beverly spoke up, “You weren’t too far off when you said Adam Dutton was part of my problem. I might be a target of one of his investigations.”
“Are you now?” Harlan cocked one eyebrow, making him look like a cross between Santa and Yoda. “Nothing too serious, I hope.”
Beverly curled the hem of her jacket with her non-coffee hand. “He’s just doing his job. And he’s good at what he does, isn’t he?”
“The best. Not the flashy type. Doesn’t like attention. Unfortunately, he had more than he could handle of that two years ago.”
“The drug bust gone bad you told me about? With the torture?”
“Ayah. The same. Adam was pushed into therapy afterward by the department. A condition of him staying on.”
“It was that much of a nightmare?”
Harlan hesitated, then replied, “You could look it up in the local library archives, so I might as well tell you. The man who kidnapped him was a fan of ancient Greek philosophy. He thought it would be great sport to torture Adam with the four elements. You know, the ones Greeks believed made up everything—earth, water, air, fire. The air and water part involved waterboarding. The fire part was a branding iron. And the earth part . . . he buried Adam alive in a coffin in the ground.”
Beverly gripped the mug in both hands. As horrible as the fresh image from the senior Forsythe’s bloodied body was in her mind, the mental images conjured up by Harlan’s description of Adam’s torture were worse. “Who found him?”
“His fellow detective, Eliot Jinks. But there lies some controversy, too.”
“Why? She should be given a medal.”
“She forgot to double-check her radio before they went out on the drug bust that night. She and Adam got separated, she saw him being taken, but it was too fast for her to react. She tried to radio for backup.”
“But the radio didn’t work.”
“Exactly. The other cops on the force started writing her name as Jinx after that. To this day, I’m not sure some of them trust her. Except Adam. He’s loyal that way.”
Beverly made a note to add Eliot Jinks to her cellphone list. She’d added quite a few names recently, Adam, Harlan, Mr. X, even Reggie Forsythe.
Harlan refilled his cup, adding four shots from the brown bottle, which Beverly now saw was labeled Irish whiskey. He asked, “You coming here this morning—and that investigation you referred to. Wouldn’t be tied to that drug thing?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“You and he should have a nice sit-down and work all this out.” Harlan slurped more of the coffee. “He’s a good catch, you know. Despite what his gold-digging, social-climbing ex-wife might tell you.”
“He’s divorced?”
“Zelda’s her name. Zelda Lehmann. She married our wealthy mayor. Wanted Adam to run for office, but that’s not his style. She decided to marry an office instead.”
“Does she have short red hair?”
“That she does.”
Perhaps that’s who Adam was talking to the other day. She ignored the feeling of relief that swept over her at the knowledge. After all, maybe they were trying to get back together? She needed to be like Grammie and foreswear relationships with men. Too much trouble. Too many wasted years.
Relationships—something her late grandfather wasn’t particularly good at either. Beverly didn’t know anything about Reginald Forsythe’s second wife, but it was hard to believe any woman would want to live with a snake. But then, how did you explain women attracted to serial killers in prison?
She asked Harlan, “Reggie Forsythe, the younger, was divorced recently. Do you know why they broke up?”
“Near as I recall, it was due to those ‘irreconcilable differences.’ It’s been a few years now, you see. I think it was the same woman who came with him to one of the NAL meetings. Heard a friend say it was Forsythe’s missus, anyway. Never saw her after that.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“Reckon I might. One of those famous names. You know, that dictator’s wife. Irina, Ivana. No, it was Imelda. Yes, I’m sure that’s it.”
“What was she like?”
Harlan scratched his chin. “I don’t like to speak ill of folks. Let’s just say they were made for each other.”
The sound of a bell tinkling at the front door alerted them to a new customer. Harlan made his excuses, and Beverly thanked him for the coffee and the sympathy. She told him it was because he had such a cherubic face, but what she didn’t say was that his was the only friendly face she had to turn to right now.
Why, oh why, couldn’t her grandmother have married him instead of Reginald Forsythe the Third? But then, Beverly would never have been born. Would she really wish her existence away just like that? She laughed at the irony of that. Here she was getting sucked into an existential crisis when she’d just found her own grandfather murdered. No, what’s done was done.
But that didn’t mean Beverly was done. Not at all, not by a long shot. She wasn’t going to just sit around and wait for the walls of justice to close in and suffocate her. She wasn’t a con artist for nothing.
