After practice, when they were at the Lobster Claw drinking beers and moaning about all the things that ached and speculating about how much worse they would ache tomorrow, Molly came into the Claw to join them. A few months back, Jesse thought, he would have dreaded Molly showing up unexpectedly. But after a few rough weeks of grief and regret, she had returned to her old self. And he was glad of that. It wasn’t only Molly who had returned to normal. Paradise itself had been quiet through the winter and now seemed to be the same little town it was before the trauma of the fall. It had put the murders and scandal behind it and resumed the natural rhythm of things. In L.A., he understood how that worked. Big cities are rife with tragedy so that one just swallowed up the next. Then he recalled Healy’s words about small-town secrets and shame. And now Jesse guessed he understood about that, too.
Molly waved for Jesse to come over to the end of the bar to talk.
“Beer?”
“Sure,” she said.
Jesse grabbed a pitcher and poured her a pint of Harpoon lager. “What’s up?”
“I heard from Drew Jameson today.”
Jesse asked, “How is he?”
“He says he’s better and asked me to have you thank your friend Dix for getting him into the program.”
“I’ll do that. What did you guys talk about?”
Molly smiled that sad smile he hadn’t seen on her face since the fall. “Warren. It feels good to be able to talk about him again. He was lost to me and Jameson brought him back.”
Jesse was hesitant to say it but, in the end, didn’t hold back. “Warren covered up a murder for twenty-four years.”
“I know he did,” she said, sipping her beer. “I’m not excusing that.”
“I guess in the end he tried to do the right thing. He sure paid for it.”
“A lot of people paid for it, Jesse. But what Jameson brought back to me was the Warren I knew for those few weeks before the world went upside down. Those were special days that are mine again.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
They clinked glasses and finished their beers in silence. When he was done, Jesse said his good-byes. Molly caught up to him at the door.
“Jesse, I almost forgot.”
“What?”
“Remember the missing cabdriver?”
“Wiethop? Sure. What about him?”
“The Connecticut State Police called. They found him dead in his car in a small lake that thawed early. They e-mailed over the full report as an attachment.”
“Drowned?” Jesse asked.
“Broken neck.”
“Broken neck, huh? Just like Maxie Connolly.”
“Maxie Connolly threw herself off the Bluffs, Jesse.”
“Or not.”
“We back to that again?”
“It’s suspicious. Thanks, Molly.”
Jesse felt as achy as the rest of his team and his shoulder was killing him. Nothing like the combination of stabbing pain and burning to let you know you’re alive. He didn’t go home. Instead he walked back to the station and looked at the report from the Connecticut staties. It was all there: the written report of the troopers, the detective’s report, the ME’s report, autopsy photos, photos of the car, photos of the items found in the car with Wiethop’s body. If he hadn’t been a little buzzed from the beers, he would have spotted it the first time he looked at the photos. Then, when he scrolled through the photos a second time, he saw it. When he saw it, he knew. And the last unexplained bit of business from last fall fell cruelly into place.
88
The Parmenter House was one of the most beautiful houses in all of Paradise. People came from all over the States to see it. Unlike the muscular brick Victorians up on the Bluffs, the Parmenter House was a full-out painted lady. It had two turrets, a wraparound porch, a widow’s walk, eyebrow windows, all manner of gingerbread turnings, and a gazebo. There were at least four different kinds of siding used to adorn the outside, everything from fish scales to clapboards. And the color scheme involved an equal number of colors. It had once been home to Wexford Parmenter, a railroad man who’d relocated from Boston in the 1890s. He’d left the house to his son Wexford Junior, who had left it in turn to his daughter Corrina, who had left it to her daughter Martha. Martha had willed it to her husband.
Jesse knocked on Stu Cromwell’s door. He supposed he could have bluffed his way through it and not waited for the lab results to come back. But to his way of thinking, Maxie Connolly’s justice had already been months delayed and he wasn’t willing to risk losing an arrest because of his impatience. So he’d gotten a comparison sample and sent it to the state forensics lab to make sure it matched the DNA from the unknown contributor’s hair and skin evidence they found on Maxie Connolly’s panties. As he waited on the porch, he noticed some hints of green on the confused hedges that lined the property. If the weather stayed this warm for another week, he wondered if confused bees would come out and join the party.
Stu Cromwell came to the door, and when he saw it was Jesse standing at his threshold, his body sagged, but he smiled.
“I suppose I’ve been waiting for you to knock since the day the weather turned warm. Come in,” he said. “Go into the parlor.”
Jesse didn’t step in. Instead he pointed to the cruiser parked at the curb. “There’s another car parked on Hemlock behind the house, so don’t make this difficult.” The nine-millimeter in Jesse’s hand still felt odd to him, though he had owned one for many years and had occasion use it. He showed the semiautomatic to Cromwell. “And Stu, no martial-arts heroics. I’ve got a black belt in bullets.”
“There won’t be any trouble, Jesse. I give you my word. Please step in. I’ll come out as soon as we’re done talking.”
Jesse went into the parlor and sat on a fussy brocade sofa with frills and tassels. The house looked a mess. Cromwell noticed Jesse notice.
“Since Martha passed, I haven’t seen the point,” he said. “Drink?”
“I’ll pass.”
“Then I’ll drink alone.”
Cromwell poured some rye into a cut-crystal tumbler. He didn’t make any silly gestures or toasts. He just drank it. Quickly poured himself another and drank it, too. He sagged even more. “How did you know?”
“They found Wiethop’s body in his car in a lake in Connecticut.”
“I know that!” He slammed the glass down against the marble fireplace, smashing it to pieces. “I put him there, for heaven’s sakes. I just needed to buy time until Martha died. How did you know it was me?”
“You left a bottle of rye behind in the car. That was sloppy and it made me curious. Wiethop was a vodka drinker, and frankly, Stu, you’re the only person I know who drinks rye. Once I got curious, it was easy for me to find out that you and Martha owned a cottage on another lake less than two miles from where they found Wiethop. Did you think you were going to get away with it?”
“The bastard was trying to blackmail me, Jesse. He had the letter.”
“The letter?”
“The one I wrote to Maxie all those years ago. There were things in that letter I couldn’t have come to light while Martha was still alive. After all she had done for me and with how she was suffering, I just couldn’t have it. I wouldn’t have it! I suppose if I had any money to pay that scummy little man, I would have paid for his silence, but the cupboard was bare.”