The Man Who Wasn't All There by David Handler (book recommendations website TXT) 📕

‘OK, now you’re just being lame. I didn’t kill Austin Talmadge. Why on earth would I do that?’

‘Because he was making your life miserable.’

Donna Willis let out a humorless laugh. ‘Trust me, if I killed everyone who was making my life miserable, the world would be a very empty place.’

It was dusk by the time I steered the Jag up Route 156 toward the farm. As I turned off at Hamburg Cove for Joshua Town Road I felt a wave of fatigue wash over me. Dr Eng had been right. I still needed to take it easy. Spending an hour in the combustible presence of Donna Willis definitely didn’t qualify as taking it easy.

I found myself glancing at Annabeth McKenna’s ramshackle saltbox as I drove by. Her Volvo wagon was parked out front. There were at least a dozen lights on in the windows, upstairs and down, and she was no doubt in there coping with what a woman with three teenagers had to cope with each and every day. Warning Max, her seventeen-year-old son, as tactfully as possible that if he brought home another D on an English exam he’d regret it deeply later in life. Tussling with her fifteen-year-old daughter, Sarah, over whether she could or could not get a nose piercing. Informing Gloria, age thirteen, that she could NOT go to the U2 concert at the Hartford Civic Center on Saturday night without adult supervision – and that her friend Heather’s eighteen-year-old brother, Axel, and Axel’s girlfriend didn’t qualify as adult supervision. Truly, I couldn’t imagine being a parent and having to put out such brush fires every minute of every day of the year. Lulu, who was dozing on her blanket in the passenger seat, was plenty for me.

Happily, the news vans had taken off as soon as Merilee had, as had the state trooper. All was quiet as I drove up the farm’s gravel driveway and the motion detector lights came on. Don’t misunderstand me, Merilee was awfully easy to get used to having around. But now that she was gone I welcomed the solitude of her empty farmhouse. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Didn’t want to see anyone. All I wanted to do was make a fire in the parlor fireplace, stretch out on the sofa with a Bass ale, and not move or think.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be. I did get the fire started and opened a Bass after I’d put down some 9Lives mackerel for my favorite nose bowl champ. But before I could stretch out on the sofa, a silver Crown Vic came up the driveway and parked. Lieutenant Carmine Tedone got out and plodded his way slowly toward the front door. He was by himself. No sign of Sergeant Bartucca.

I opened the front door and forced a smile on to my face. ‘Greetings, Lieutenant. I just built a fire and opened a Bass ale. Care to join me?’

‘Wouldn’t say no,’ he answered wearily.

I fetched him one. He parked himself in the wing-backed chair next to the fireplace. I settled on the sofa, put my legs up on the coffee table and took a long, grateful gulp of my Bass. I swear that neither one of us spoke for five minutes. Just sat there staring into the fire and drinking our beers. Lulu finished her dinner, wandered in and greeted Tedone by conking his knee with her head. After he patted her absently she made her way over to the sofa and climbed up next to me.

‘I stopped by an hour ago,’ Tedone said finally. ‘No one was around.’

‘Merilee’s on a six o’clock flight back to Budapest, and I was visiting Donna Willis.’

He glared at me. ‘You’re doing it again, aren’t you?’

‘Doing what, Lieutenant?’

‘Sticking your big, fat nose in my case.’

‘I prefer to think of my nose as a well-proportioned blade. And I wasn’t interfering in your case.’

‘Is that so? Then what were you doing there?’

‘Sharing my Austin Talmadge victimization syndrome with her.’

‘I’m from Waterbury. Smaller words, will you?’

‘Each of us suffered at his hand. I’ve got staples in my head and recurring nightmares that I’m still down in that tomb of a root cellar. Donna got pulled over and sexually harassed when he was playing cop. He also chased her away from the moss specimens she was collecting on Mount Creepy by throwing rocks at her. Bruised her shoulder with one. That qualifies as assault. She notified the Connecticut State Police twice and got ignored twice – because he was Austin Talmadge. She swore to me she won’t ever speak to you guys again, which means I can get information out of her that you can’t.’

‘And did you?’ he asked.

‘She’s a mass of contradictions. Not a happy person.’

‘Do you actually know any happy people?’

‘On the one hand, she was considerate enough to write Michael Talmadge a personal letter asking for his permission to do her botanical research on his family’s ancestral farm – even though it’s now a state park and she didn’t need to ask.’

‘Did he write her back?’

‘He did. She said he sent her a very kind and appreciative response. She was quite moved by it.’ I got up, put another log on the fire and poked at it before I flopped back down. ‘On the other hand, she sure does have a short fuse.’

Tedone puffed out his cheeks. ‘One more time – did you get any information out of her?’

‘I did, as a matter of fact. She has no alibi for the approximate time of Austin’s murder. Said she was alone in her parents’ house working on her thesis.’

‘OK, but how would she have known where Austin was?’

‘Interesting you should ask. Her father has a wide array of emergency response radios. It’s his hobby. She was listening in. Mind you, she insisted to me that she wasn’t. But I didn’t believe her. She was just a touch too vehement. This is an individual who knows the mountain well, is plenty strong