Murder in Wonderland (9 page)

              The town of Verdenier, for most of its 212 years of existence, survived chiefly on a steady supply of rock cutters, farmers, poulterers, and little else. Then, in the summer of 1996, an article appeared in the New York Times declaring Verdenier, "The USA's best-kept secret," effectively ending any such aspirations the town had toward maintaining that particular superlative status. Manhattanites then "discovered" Verdenier, not realizing that the writer who penned the article for the Times had stopped in Verdenier on his way to Burlington and recalled the place when he needed a piece of filler for the Sunday edition, and that the town was basically a clone of many small towns in northern New England. It had the dubious honor of serving as the location for a poorly produced romantic comedy five years later. Ten years later the population had doubled. Three years after that, there was little left of Verdenier's original population. A few farms went fallow. And the New York transplants realized there was little more to the town than the cannon in the park.

              Enter an enterprising real estate mogul, whose name any reader of tabloids would know. Pouring a ton of money into the town, he developed it into a hamlet of gingerbread and rustic chic, and invited (some say cajoled) some of his richest friends to invest.

              Invest they did.

              Everyone benefitted, especially those natives who'd stuck it out since before the appearance of that dreadful Times article. Those natives thrived only because of a single, salient fact: Small towns aren’t for everyone.

              Soon, Verdenier was autonomous again, thanks to the self-sustaining nature of farmers, rock-cutters and poulterers, who understand that you don't run when you can walk, you don’t talk when you can agree with a single "a-yup", and you don’t trust anyone that you can't hold off at arm's length. None of this was known by the transplants. And so, those who grew to love the town and adapted to it with ease reaped the benefits of natural selection, opening businesses of their own. It was them, and the farmers, rock-cutters and poulterers. The town was theirs now.

              Allie Griffin was one of them.

              As much as she'd felt like an outsider at times, she was connected to everyone, as everyone was connected to everyone else. They were all in this thing together, like the clinging inhabitants of a lifeboat or a Long Trail shelter during a microburst. They knew each other's business, although any one of them would swear to a foreigner passing through that they didn’t. It wasn't dishonest; it was part of the small town's code.

              She walked the pristine sidewalk of Main Street, with its aromas of freshly baked goods and fruity candles, its far-off sounds of industry—the roar of distant trucks hauling off newly-chiseled granite, and the rush of the falls through the old water works, like a screaming ghost howling to be remembered by the present; and she said hello to everyone she passed, because that's what you did in Verdenier. Now, however, there was something a little bit sinister in the way in which they returned her greetings, as if at any moment she was capable of letting off, like a geyser, a fountain of sordid details concerning the town's latest scandal. She often wanted to turn to these folks, whom she pictured looking back as they passed so as not to miss the show when she finally spouted, and tell them that she was not a part of this thing, this murder.

              But she couldn’t do that. Because she was a part of it. She was a suspect. Not officially, of course, unless the ferret-like Detective Tomlin were to get his way.

              She needed to prove him wrong just as much as she needed to finish what she'd started, to scrub her mind of all the details and the burning questions without answers, the ravens, the writing desks, the mock turtle parts.

              She walked now, somewhat aimlessly, with the thousand and one questions and clues all racing past one another in her mind, and no two of them stopping and colluding with one another. She walked and walked until she was in a part of town she rarely went, a place toward the border.

              This was the part of Verdenier most like the way it was back before the New York Times got ahold of it. Main Street gave way to winding roads out of town, some of which turned to dirt after houses stopped being numbered. Speckled along the road were bars catering to the quarry-parched throats of those who poured in from just beyond the neighboring forest at the end of their workday.

              She stopped in front of one of these bars. She hadn’t heard of this one. Was it new? Possibly. It looked like a holdover from a time very long ago, when its kitschy Floridian décor was meant to invoke the manly leisure of movies like The Godfather Part II and Scarface, instead of what it looked like now: a gay bar for senior citizens.

              It was the old animated neon sign that depicted sea birds in flight amidst flickering palm trees that did it. And it was the name of the place, which made Allie Griffin blink twice after reading it, just to make sure she was reading it correctly—simply because it brought into vivid focus a scene from Mr. Dodgson's masterpiece. The name of the place was, simply, "Flamingos.”

              She stepped in. It was just before the five o'clock rush.

              "Hi there," said a jovial face cratered with pockmarks. "What can I getcha?"

              "Gin and Fresca on ice with lime, please," she said, returning the man's smile.

              Twenty-odd years behind the bar had obviously educated the man on how not to look stumped when he really was. "We don’t have any Fresca. I can make you a grapefruit gin fizz. Similar."

              "Please," she said, getting a good, hard look at her surroundings.

              The place was worn. Old wood starving for polish. Signs that advertised defunct products—still hanging either due to ignorance of their current status or because they were covering up some hideous stains on the walls, but most certainly not out of any reverence for the past. The Floridian theme had faded somewhat over time, she gathered. She'd deduced this by the haphazard way the décor flowed. Signs advertising Miami (do they do that in Florida?) and depicting the bar's aviary namesakes in all their monopedal precision gave way to an attempt at a sports theme, but a sports theme featuring the faces of long-gone athletes she couldn’t recognize. Not that she was any sort of sports enthusiast, but Tom had been, and she'd gotten pretty good when it came to recognizing the major players of the last three decades or so.

              "Here you go," said the bartender, gingerly placing the drink before her. "Passing through?"

              "No. Well, sort of. I live in Verdenier. I've just never been down this far." She studied the man's features while she spoke to him. He honestly didn’t seem to recognize her. There was something extremely comforting about this. She might as well have been back in the library among all her friends from the centuries past, warm and safe and trustworthy.

              She took a sip and held up a finger while she did, to let him know she wanted him close by. After swallowing, she said, "You probably know some of the things that go on around here."

              "You'd be surprised how much I don’t know," he said.

              "C'mon. Really? Don’t bartenders know everything?"

              "I know a few things. The folks who come in here are not the talkative type. I mean, they talk. But they don’t talk. You know what I mean?"

              "I think so."

              She sipped again, and this time it was he who was studying her.

              "You're that girl," he said with a squint of recognition.

              So much for the comfort of anonymity. "That's me."

              He must have sensed her sudden unease. "Don’t worry. I don’t judge."

              "I know. Neither does anyone else."

              "No, I really don't. I don’t even follow the news much."

              "What do you know about the case," she asked. Whatever alcohol had entered her system was already imbuing her with a bit of nerve.

              "Well," he said, picking up a bar rag and swabbing the bone-dry counter. "You don’t look like a murderess."

              "Murderess?"

              "Yeah... I'm sorry."

              "It's ok, go on."

              "I know a certain type of person. The guys who come into my place. I can point to a couple who I can see offing their wives just for the sake of it. But they'd never do it. I think it really takes something to kill with a plan. You know, not in the heat of argument or anything. It's something you don’t see often and I think a relatively few people can pull that off. And what's the likelihood you're gonna run across one of them?"

              He sounded as though he was being extra careful with his words.

              "What's your name?"

              "Call me Dougie."

              "Well, Dougie, we did run into one of them. She's not sitting in front of you, but he or she is out there, because that woman was murdered. And to be honest with you, I think there might be a clue in here somewhere."

              The alcohol was definitely loosening her up, because she heard the words coming out and had tried to stop them and then cared very little that they'd come out in the first place.

              Dougie the bartender bit the inside of his lip. "I can't say you're gonna find anything here, except in a few minutes this place will be packed with rock-cutters."

              "Well then, I best be on my way." She left a five-dollar bill on the bar and told him to keep the change. "Dougie, you make a mean cocktail, but if I were you, I'd stock the joint with Fresca."

              He smiled. "Will do."

              Allie grabbed a cocktail napkin and then fumbled in her bag for an awkward moment looking for a pen. Something caught her eye. Dougie was holding a pen toward her.

              "Thanks."

              "That's what you were looking for, right?"

              She took the pen with a sheepish grin and scribbled on the napkin. "Listen. I want you to call me if you learn anything about this case from anyone. Anything. Even if it's just an odd opinion. Can you do that for me, please?" She looked directly into his eyes to convey her sincerity. They were bloodshot blue, dry and hard, but they hid the secrets of a tiny little world behind them.

              "Sure thing... I'm sorry...what was your name again?"

              "Allie Griffin. It's on the napkin. Oh, and don't give that out to anyone, I beg of you."

              But something had already told her from the beginning that she wouldn’t need to tell him that.

              On the way out, she whipped out her phone and dialed Del.

              "Yeah?" the girl answered, slightly out of breath.

              "Heya ol' pal ol' buddy o' mine."

              "You got me in the middle of a workout."

              "You're working out now?"

              "Don't start with me."

              "I'm not starting with anyone."

              "Are you drunk? You sound drunk."

              "Merely basking in the pleasant effects of a well-crafted beverage."

              "When you call me after a drink it means one of two things: You're either trying to get rid of a guy or you've got a crazy plan."

              "You up for a crazy plan?"

              "Anytime. The workout can wait."

              "Great. Meet me at my house at around six tomorrow evening. You're driving."

              "Can I ask where we're going?"

              Allie breathed in scents of the coming spring on the sweet March air. "I think it's high time we pay chez Cardinal a visit."

              "Uh...ok."

              "Oh, and wear something black."

              "Ok..."

              "Great! See you then!"

              A semi drove by, tooted its air horn at her, gave her the thumbs up, and left her to bathe in the hideous wake of noxious fumes it released as it passed.

              So much for sweetness. And so much for spring.

              She hiked up forty-seven feet of the forty-five degree incline and nearly gave up. She wondered how on earth anyone could deal with a driveway like this. You had to have a pretty decent car to be able to make the trip from the road to the house without any substantial wear and tear on your machine. There, at the summit, sat a battered 1973 Volkswagen Beetle, faded yellow with one blue fender on the driver's side. This belonged to the person she'd come here to see. Next to this was a Chrysler Imperial from the same vintage, although in much better shape. Tenant and landlord were both home. Not good, as she'd have to convey her purpose here in least in discretionary tones, if not in code altogether.

              She braced herself to walk up the six concrete steps to the house.

              The alcohol had completely worn off, leaving her with a feeling that what she was embarking on was probably not in the annals of the best ideas of the century.

              She rang the bell anyway. The door opened and a little old woman appeared there. She smiled upon recognizing Allie Griffin.

              "Hello Mrs. Needleman," Allie said, leaning on the words for the slightly deaf woman.

              "Well hello! Come in."

              "I'm in the neighborhood here. Is Jimmy around?"

              "Yes, he is. Would you like me to call him?"

              "Please."

              The old woman went to the bottom of the staircase and called, "Jimmy?"

              No answer.

              "Jimmy?"

              No answer.

              She gave Allie an apologetic look. "I'm afraid he's asleep. Would you like me to wake him?"

              "If it's no bother."

              "It's no bother. Make yourself at home."

              Allie entered the old woman's living room and did what she always did when she came here: she looked at all the old photos that were scattered about. Mrs. Needleman had been married for fifty-two years to a former military man. She herself had been in the navy. Her husband bragged that she could "use tools as good as any man." There were pictures of the two of them everywhere, each one more ambered and splotched than the last, and each one a postcard from some universe in another time. After her husband died, Mrs. Needleman lived alone for eight years with these memories and nothing else, until Jimmy Welles came along, courtesy of Allie Griffin.

              Jimmy had fallen into Allie's life quite by accident. The young man, twenty-one years her junior, was the son of a friend of a friend of her husband Tom's. The fact that a separation such as this could yield an enduring acquaintance with someone like Jimmy Welles was testament to the fact that, for Allie, it was purely an accident that she came to know him. And it started because Tom's cellphone was rebooting on its own, sometimes right in the middle of conversations.

              This friend of a friend overheard him complaining about it at a party they'd attended. Tom's contract end was six months away and he had not gotten insurance, meaning that he'd have to shell out for a new phone. For six months, he said, it wasn't worth it. The friend of a friend apologized and said she couldn’t help but overhear and that her son Jimmy was pretty handy with electronics and would gladly take a look at it.

              Tom, the unwavering skeptic, declined her offer.

              The woman was persistent, explaining very carefully how Tom had nothing to lose now, that his phone needed to be replaced, and that she wanted this for her son. He was a lost soul, she explained, needing direction in life. This would mean so much to her if she just humored the boy and gave him the phone to look at.

              Tom agreed and asked Allie to take the phone to the boy's house.

              When she got there, she found him hunkered down in his bedroom.

              It looked like the control center for an underground military organization; one of those secret cadres that launches drones and floods enemy skies with black helicopters. There were so many metal boxes, wires, LEDs, and bits and pieces of every kind of electronic part—some as small as ants and sticking out of the carpet—that Allie found herself with a growing paranoia that her body was being X-rayed as she stood there. She was unnerved by a persistent hum in the room, and it was at least five degrees warmer in there than the rest of the house, and she had a pretty good idea that this was not due to the boy having his own thermostat in his room.

              She gave him the phone. The boy took it without looking her in the eye and immediately got to work, using tools she'd never seen before.

              He rattled off things that were equally as obscure, all pertaining to the guts of Tom's cellphone that he was now handling with the greatest of care. He rummaged through a medium-sized box that someone had decoupaged with the cut-out panels from comic books and pulled out a tiny little electronic whatever-it-was, obviously the thing he was looking for, the thing that would fix Tom's phone. After a few more minutes of chatter, he handed her the phone back, telling her it was now good as new. No charge, he said.

              A year later, Jimmy's mother was struck and killed by a drunk driver. Allie took it upon herself to help the boy find a place of his own. Mrs. Needleman's house would be perfect. And Mrs. Needleman would be perfect. It was as if they were meant for each other.

              With frequent visits, Jimmy Welles warmed up to Allie. She had him over for dinner often, usually with an understanding that while he was there he'd take a look at a busted DVD player or laptop or toaster. He was always happy to do it, and Allie suspected he had a small crush on her.

              Mrs. Needleman came downstairs and called to Allie that she was going to make coffee for everyone.             

              Jimmy came down two minutes later, bleary-eyed, disheveled and ravaged by sleep. He had two or three days' growth that sprouted thin and unevenly across his nineteen-year-old face. He wore ripped jeans and a black T-shirt with the word "NERDCORE" emblazoned across the chest in bold white letters.

              "What time is it," he asked, lifting said shirt, scratching his belly and looking out the window at a darkening sky.

              "Five-thirty," said Allie, barely suppressing a laugh.

              "I was up till seven this morning."

              "Doing wha— never mind. I don’t want to know. Listen, Jimmy."

              She took the boy by the arm, leading him back toward the stairs, and felt his muscles tighten reflexively. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "We have to talk. I don’t want Mrs. Needleman to hear."

              "She won’t hear us," Jimmy said at normal volume.

              "How do you know she won’t hear us?"

              "Because I'm completely deaf," yelled Mrs. Needleman from the kitchen."

              Allie's jaw fell open.

              "You see? Totally deaf," said Jimmy. "Now what do you need?"

              A bit reticent, Allie licked her lips and explained that she needed the boy to do a couple of things that some folks in some positions in some places may interpret as breaking the law. And that she needed him to do them within the next twenty-four hours.

              The boy answered without hesitation. "Can you make that awesome mac-n-cheese you make?"

              "Penne alfredo?"

              "Yeah. And I want a nice Sauvignon blanc with it. You choose the brand."

              She acquiesced.

              "Then I'm all yours. What do you need?"

              "I need to check if Tori Cardinal texted her lawyer, or received any texts from her lawyer."

              She handed him Tori Cardinal's cellphone.

              He stared at it, as if she'd just offered him a brown recluse spider. "You don’t expect me to touch that, do you?"

              "Jimmy."

              "Um...that is evidence."

              "Duh."

              The boy moistened his lips. "You probably should have turned it over to the cops by now."

              "It slipped my mind."

              "And who's going to believe that?"

              "Anyone who knows me." She waited for the youth to respond. "Don't tell me you're getting cold feet."

              "Just a second."

              He beckoned her to follow him up to his room.

              He went over to his desk and, after rummaging through the drawers for a minute, he pulled out a pair of white surgical gloves. He then plucked out a disposable rag from a box he kept atop the desk. He took the phone from her hands and proceeded to wipe it clean of prints. He gave her a disapproving look as he did so, which she returned with a shrug. And then, Jimmy Welles went to work.

              He looked like a surgeon, with a very thin instrument poised above the phone, presumably getting ready to pry it open, when he stopped just before doing so and looked at Allie. "I'm going to ask a really stupid question and I don’t want you getting mad at me for it."

              "Shoot," she said, taking a seat on the edge of his bed.

              "Did you bother to look at this girl's text messages to see if she'd texted her lawyer?"

              "Yes."

              "Do you know the password to her wireless account?"

              "No."

              "Any ideas?"

              "Nope."

              The boy exhaled a heavy, disgruntled sigh. "Hang on."

              Allie got up and walked over to get a better look, for this was like watching some sort of advanced surgical technique by a world-renowned specialist. The boy rummaged, pulled up wires, shoved aside a soldering iron that immediately began to smoke as it tumbled over onto the desk, something that might have resulted in tragedy had he not casually slid back and yanked the plug out of a power strip on the floor. He then plugged a cable into the phone and the other end into his computer, a desktop PC complete with a giant PCU tower that Allie didn’t think people used anymore. A few clicks, some cursing, then a few more clicks, and the boy said, "Here we go. 'Torihearts94&&'. That's her password. Now all we gotta do is log in to her account and have a look at her message history."

              "You can do that?"

              "As long as it's within the last thirty days, yeah."

              "Huh."

              The boy clicked furiously and accessed the woman's wireless account online.

              "They can’t see you, right?" Allie said nervously, feeling a bit queasy about the fact that she was violating a person's privacy, and how easy it was to do so.

              "No, I'm completely invisible," the boy said flatly, perusing the screen. "Here. These are the numbers she texted to and received from. Anything ring a bell?"

              "You can’t see the actual texts?"

              "You didn’t ask to see the actual texts. I'm sure that info is stored somewhere. It could take a while for me to find it."

              "That's alright. There aren’t any texts the day of her murder. I mean, nothing at all. Right? Am I missing something?"

              "No. These are the days of all the texts. Well, there you go. Now, why exactly do you need to know this?"

              She caressed the boy's back. "You're into this thing deeper than you should be. I'd rather you didn't know any more."

              "Suit yourself. Now, about dinner."

              "Hold on. There's one more thing."

              It was a tall order she gave the semi-bearded youth. But he put up his hand, as if even suggesting that he couldn't rise to the occasion was an insult of the highest caliber. Allie kissed him on the forehead. And then she left to get ready for her date with Bryant.