Deadly Homecoming at Rosemont Read online

  Each room was topped with well-crafted crown molding and graced with a fireplace unique unto itself. Every surface was covered in sawdust, plaster dust, and regular dust. Half-started renovation projects abounded. Overall, the place looked like a satellite store for Home Depot. Clay seemed particularly adept at starting projects, then losing interest long before finishing.

  Still behind him, I spoke softly, directing my words to his ear. “I think you need a little stick-to-it-tive-ness.”

  From over his shoulder came this reply: “I think you need to remember who has the gun.”

  I followed him into the roomy kitchen at the end of the hall. It appeared to still have all the original furnishings. The workspace, appliances, and eating quarters were arranged to the right of the door. On the left, I saw the narrow broom closet and cellar door. Across the way, an opening led to the mudroom. We went there first.

  A chest-style freezer rested against the wall on my right, its mouse-nibbled cord thrown over the top. I saw a rare empty spot in the corner beyond the freezer. Two small windows and a row of coat hooks shared the back wall. Clay tried the door. Locked. He twisted the deadbolt out of the framing and stepped out to the porch to look around. He came back in, shaking his head, and re-bolted the door.

  Moving back into the kitchen, he noted the security chain in place on the cellar door. “I keep this chained as a reminder not to go flying down the steps. The three or four near the top are rotten. Too much pressure and they’ll snap.”

  We eased up the back stairs, found the connecting hall to the rest of the second floor, and repeated the process. We scoured the servants’ quarters, then the bedrooms. With less junk and hardly any furniture, the upstairs held a cavernous quality. Neither of us spoke. My footsteps echoed on the oak flooring. I tapped down the front staircase on my toes.

  Clay returned the gun to the tool chest, lifted his cell phone from his belt, and called in the crime: male, Caucasian, two bullet wounds, small caliber, point blank. He relayed the information as casually as ordering pizza. For pickup only. No delivery, please. There’s been a murder here.

  A peculiar sensation overcame me. I felt bad somehow about leaving Trey alone. After first gulping a lungful of cool morning air to steel myself, I stepped away from the open front door and went to look at Trey. I couldn’t get used to the flies. The scent of blood called them in from all points: off window screens, out of trashcans, away from the tropical warmth of the bare bulb in the back hall.

  Something caught my eye. It worked to counteract the rise of returning squeamishness. His shirt was sewn with two breast pockets. Blood completely soaked the lower one as gravity pulled the oozing red liquid to the floor. The upper pocket, only partially covered with the flowering stain, contained a small object. I bent closer.

  Clay ended his call and came over. “What do you see?”

  “He has a matchbook in his pocket. Can you read what it says?”

  Hands on knees and squinting at the square of cardboard, he said, “Yeah. Dooley’s Bar.”

  “Dooley’s?” I repeated quizzically. We straightened.

  “Well, that’s a fine howdy-do.”

  “What?”

  “The man comes back to town after a quarter of a century and downs a cold one before he comes out to see the old homestead,” Clay complained, feigning brief disappointment at being bested by the rundown establishment south of the interstate. “Well, we’d better be outside when Homicide arrives,” he said, moving me across the foyer. “There will already be hell to pay for walking all over their crime scene.”

  “They couldn’t truly expect anything else?” After all, he was a trained officer with years of experience.

  “They could, of course. The rule book’s one thing. Reality’s something else. I’ll just describe our actions to whoever gets the call. My grimy paw prints are all over everything, anyway. You didn’t touch anything, so all we added are your footprints. You did make note of the dust?” He raised an eyebrow with his question, but he knew I had.

  That’s when it hit me. “Oh, god, Clay. My butt-print’s front and center!” I pointed to the spot. Two spots, really. Not quite circles. But clearly visible. Two of my cheeks flushed while I brushed violently at the other two.

  Clay cackled and pushed me out to the stoop, where we waited, our backs to the closed door.

  Unnatural Compulsion

  Activity mounted at Rosemont like time-lapse photography: two cruisers, then four, an unmarked, a bunch of uniforms, followed by two suits, the evidence collection van, and the coroner’s wagon.

  Clay stared across the mansion’s generous front lawn. A ranking officer in a white shirt stepped out of a Crown Vic. His driver, an underling in standard blue, came around for instructions.

  “Looks like Elmore took the call,” Clay said.

  I knew the name, Lieutenant Frank Elmore, and probably could have matched it to the correct officer in a lineup if called on for such an exercise. “Who’s the other guy?” I asked.

  “Lucas Baines. Three-year veteran. Just made detective.”

  “You keep up?” I asked, surprised he was aware of recent promotions.

  “I do.” He gave the two men making their way up the walk a long look. Both were fit, lean, and just short of six foot. “Just so you know, if Pepper were here, she’d be turning cartwheels right about now.” Clay grinned with the reference to his ex-wife. “She always said I was riding a fast track to hell. She didn’t like me much. She’d be damn glad to know that someone’s here to grease the rails.”

  “What are you talking about?” I felt blindsided by his closing remark. I heard his sporadic retorts over the years as he revived Pepper’s exact words to assess his shortcomings. Most were comical. Today, I wasn’t amused.

  “If Monty had a hand in this, I can see why he’d do it just this way,” he said of Rueben Montague, Havens’ current police chief.

  Clay took the long way around without answering my question, so I tried again. “You lost me. What’s wrong?”

  “Think about it, Wrenn. A former chief. A murder. You wouldn’t send my best buddy to check it out.” He drew his eyes toward the approaching men. “You’d send the guy who hates my guts. Cuts any allusion of favoritism off at the knees.”

  “Elmore?” I whispered, astounded. “Why does Elmore hate your guts?”

  “That’s a long and ugly story. I’ll fill you in later,” he said, matching my low tone.

  “You can bet on it.” Then our conversation died. The enemy arrived with cold eyes and matching sneers.

  Clay and Elmore shook hands on Rosemont’s portico. The look that passed between them told me they did indeed have a history. The lieutenant introduced me to Baines in the context of my relationship with Mayor Tallmadge. That happened a lot.

  “Come on, Addison,” Elmore said to Clay. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.” He tipped his head toward the door, then moved that way. Baines followed. They huddled briefly in the open doorway, then Baines stepped aside. Clay and Elmore passed through. Inside the foyer, crime-scene techs were already at work. Elmore gave the body a perfunctory glance. I would have entered, but Baines stopped me with a raised hand and a smile. His outstanding feature was his perfect white teeth.

  “The lieutenant will interview you soon, and he asks that you wait outside for him. He shouldn’t be long.” The order he issued came with a curt edge.

  For a few seconds, I watched the activity in the foyer. A tech bagged the deceased’s right hand, then repeated the exercise by slipping Trey’s left hand into another brown paper bag. He secured it with a simple rubber band about the wrist. I hoped something the coroner scraped from beneath Trey’s fingernails became a good, solid clue leading to the murderer’s capture. On this thought, the door met the frame. That was the last I ever saw of Trey Rosemont.

  Ill at ease, I stood to one side on the portico, keeping silent company with a roll of yellow crime-scene tape laying at my feet. Baines stood guard at the top of the steps. F
our evenly spaced Corinthian columns supported the second-floor balcony which, in turn, created the portico’s ceiling. Wildly overgrown shrubbery lined the portico’s edge. In the distance, the hinged back panel of the coroner’s wagon now stood open, ready to transport the corpse when word was given.

  Two officers investigated the Cutlass, all its doors pulled wide. A policeman with stooped shoulders dropped a key ring into an evidence bag. He waved the bag at Baines and motioned him over. Baines heeded the call, and Officer Stooped Shoulders turned his back, listening to something the second, quite muscular officer said, just before turning his attention to the trunk. This was my opportunity to escape. I was not a fan of idleness, of waiting demurely. I bid farewell to the roll of tape and trundled down the steps.

  My feet scampered across a narrow path of concrete. It bent around to the sunny side of the house. When fully shielded from the evidence collection team, I slowed and took in my surroundings. A crescent of thick woods bordered the meadow and carriage house. A slightly canted weathervane topped the carriage house’s elaborately detailed cupola. It rested at the midpoint of a pitched roof. On my left, the sidewall of the house was a race course for vines of various kinds, rapidly laying down tracks to a finish line still out of sight. A renegade vine snaked a path up through the honeysuckle. I tugged it free and picked up my pace, both Trey Rosemont and Clayton Addison on my mind.

  It seemed impossible that anyone in Havens would possess a motive to kill Trey. As a first-year college student, he was packed off to New Jersey’s Ivy League school. Why, I wondered, as I absently wove the vine’s supple stem through my fingers, would his return twenty-five years later cultivate such a reaction?

  I was equally stymied by Clay’s teaser involving Elmore. Short on time and details, he revealed just enough to pique my interest. I appreciated his favoritism comment though. That was a nod toward public perception.

  I passed the generous brick terrace jutting from the rear of the house. A population of yellow-tipped dandelions grew between the rows. The walkway died off at the backyard, and I made myself stroll past the formal gardens, now a weedy mess.

  I have a penchant for “playing in the dirt.” Gideon stamped these words on my brand of gardening. My predilection for pulling weeds—one might say, an unnatural compulsion—was unintentionally instilled in me at a young age by my grandmother. You run into problems when you start pulling other people’s weeds. You stop to chat with neighbors, and, over the course of conversation, you find that you have a handful of their weeds freshly ripped from the yard. It’s awkward. Do you give them back to their rightful owners, or do you carry them home for disposal there?

  At the rear of the yard, I plodded down a grassy grade and was surprised to find a tumbledown gardener’s shack. I studied the little workshop licked by the morning sun and breathed in the heady scent of lilac. A giant hedgerow, heavy with dripping blossoms, shielded it from the house. Years of neglect were most noticeable here. Tossing away the vine, I peered through the shack’s dirt-streaked windows, afraid the roof might cave in if I yanked the door past the maple sapling growing at its edge. I gave the maple a double-take, then sidestepped for a closer inspection. The base of the tree held a gash, most likely caused by the door. The lone daylily next to it was trampled. The golden bloom wilted on its long, broken stem. The culprit I assigned to this crime against nature was one of Clay’s size-thirteens.

  With the damage already done, I glided my hand toward the old brass doorknob, tarnished dull and dark from weather. The word, “Ma’am,” sliced through the peaceful setting like an ax. Jumping, I emitted a shriek. My guilty hand recoiled. I swung around to find Baines up on the hill, looking down his bony nose. The ends of his mouth curled slightly. Evidently, he was pleased with his sneakiness, even if I was not. His eyes led mine over to the concrete walk’s terminus.

  Elmore stood there.

  I responded to the silent summons. I traveled to within ten feet of the lieutenant before realizing Baines crossed the yard diagonally in the opposite direction, purposely leaving me alone with Elmore in a secluded spot. Whatever he planned to do or say, the two men predetermined there should be no witnesses. This wary mindset existed solely as a result of Clay’s tantalizing prelude to having fallen into disfavor with Elmore. Stopped before the man, I took in the unruly patch of brown hair pitched forward on his forehead. He gave me a moment’s consideration, too, then spun on his heel. I followed in his brisk wake to the front of the house.

  “Why don’t you head for that swing. I need to talk to a couple of my men, then I’ll meet you.” His deep-set eyes traveled across the lawn to a small grove of trees. The bench-seat swing, our intended point of rendezvous, hung from the branch of a chestnut tree. Nearly a dozen chestnuts loosely covered a strip of land between a fully packed woods and the portion of the drive that meandered out to the carriage house.

  Since my passage with the man from the back of the house to the front left me unscathed and nothing was said about my wandering away from Baines, I considered the adoption of a haughty attitude: A defiant stare would be my reply. To my astonishment, he simply walked off, head high. I admit, sticking my tongue out as I did was less than mature. I looked around. No one saw, so I felt better for it.

  Regaining my composure, I quickly cruised after him. He angled through the grass toward the Cutlass. The front walk was as close as I dared venture to overhear the lieutenant’s exchange with Officer Stooped Shoulders. Dropping to a slow stroll, I strained to pick up a clue. I had picture, but no sound. Stooped Shoulders displayed the stained back panel of a dark blue, waist-length jacket he pulled from the back seat. Without the accompanying words, the meaning was lost.

  Discouraged, I continued down the sidewalk. The old cement was cracked and pock-marked, darkened by weather and age, stained by wet leaves and a century of footsteps, from horseman’s boots and dainty satin slippers to Clay’s loafers and my navy flats. I stepped down to the dusty drive, passing a cast-iron hitching post shaped like a horse’s head with a ring in its mouth.

  I settled myself on the wooden swing, pushed it into gentle motion, and studied Lieutenant Frank Elmore as he strutted my way. This was a cop who was all about the uniform and the power that came with it. That power would spike today in the shape of Clayton Addison.

  Speaking of Clay, where was he? I scanned the grounds. Still inside, I guessed, involved with the evidence collection crew.

  From several yards away, Elmore looked up, saw he had my attention, retrieved his notepad, and pointed a pen over his shoulder toward the arrangement of cars. Without preamble, he began, “It would appear you arrived here first this morning.”

  Finding no argument there, I ran down the timeline between my arrival and Clay’s.

  “Why were you out here so early?”

  “Clay asked me to come. I completed some research, and he wanted to pay me for my services.”

  “You had to come out? He couldn’t drop a check in the mail?”

  “I assumed he wanted some clarification on my report.”

  “Which concerned the Rosemonts?”

  “Yes, the family and the house.”

  “And did he?”

  “What?”

  “Pay you.”

  “No, not yet.” I wondered where he was going with this.

  “And you think the victim is…” He stopped to flip a page in his notes. “Trey Rosemont.”

  “Trey’s a nickname. His full name is Bentley Westchester Rosemont, the third.”

  “You’re the expert. Bring me up to speed on Trey.”

  “There’s not much to tell. He graduated from Princeton.”

  “Makes sense. Family had money.”

  “A few days after graduation, his parents got a call that he’d been arrested on drug-trafficking charges. They went back east to arrange for an attorney and bail. When Trey got out, he skipped.”

  “Fleeing the jurisdiction. Certainly makes him look guilty.”

  “His parents
were convinced he was innocent, just running because he was afraid of some drug lord who threatened him.”

  “How do you know what his parents thought?”

  “I looked up the Rosemonts’ housekeeper while doing research for Clay. She told me.”

  “Name?”

  “Ruby Griswold. Of course, you know the tie connecting Clay to the house is Jonah Rosemont. In 1865, he became Havens’ first police chief. But Ruby— Ruby’s the true authority on the Rosemont estate. She wasn’t just a servant, but a companion to several generations of Rosemont women. She’s eighty-one and outlived them all,” said I, the hometown history nut on a roll. Three weeks earlier, I brought Clay and Ruby together, like an odd version of This Old House.

  I took a breath and noticed Elmore’s absence of expression. I knew what that meant. I had long since passed the point of Elmore’s historical interest. He backed me up to a detail he did care about.

  “I’m not sure I buy that Trey ran because he was threatened, but I guess we’ll never know. In the meantime, though, his parents die and the estate passes to him.”

  “His mother outlived his father. She left Trey everything, even though he’d been missing all those years.” I noted the Rosemont family was represented by attorney Elias Attlee. Attlee and I spoke several times.

  “Did Attlee tell you why he decided to put the house up for auction?”

  “It’s been a drain on the estate, and non-productive in comparison with the farmland and the family business.”

  “Which he’s managing,” Elmore clarified.

  I confirmed that Attlee oversaw the Rosemont Manufacturing Company, a longstanding business in town founded by Trey’s great-grandfather, Matthew Rosemont. “The house needed constant upkeep and the estate was going bankrupt, so he set up the auction for the cash it would bring.”