The Disposable Man Read online

  They both shook their heads, Ron adding, “A few vehicular citations—DWI, speeding, a minor accident or two. Two of the women I checked live together and got cited for disturbing the peace after an all-girl party a few months back. Nothing stands out, though. What did you find?”

  I didn’t even bother opening my file folder. “Nothing, really. Same as you—parking tickets, whatnot. John Rarig seems to be legit. Career Washington bureaucrat. Like he said: gray office in a gray building.”

  I asked Sammie, “How long before the Mounties report back on Doug DeFalque?”

  “Should be today—noon at the latest.”

  “Okay. Let’s get more background on him in the meantime. Locate any co-workers or neighbors who might be willing to talk. If he’s as smooth as you say, he’s either rubbed a few people the wrong way or titillated the gossipers. Ron, I don’t want us to forget that a guest might’ve been involved in this thing. See if you can find out who was staying there at the time. And don’t just interview the employees. If we can find a chatty guest who’ll rat on the others, that would help, too.”

  · · ·

  Ron Klesczewski appeared at my door several hours later, a smile on his face. “I may have discovered the snitch from Heaven.”

  I peeled off my reading glasses and tossed them with relief on a pile of paperwork. “Do tell.”

  “Dottie Delman, eighty-three years old—rules the counter at the general store just outside West Townshend. Her brother owned the inn before it was an inn, her family tree rivals Moses’, and from what I heard, she’s both wailing wall and oracle for half the people in a ten-mile radius, meaning she probably knows more about what’s happening at the inn than the owner.”

  “You haven’t talked to her yet?”

  “No, but I will unless you want first dibs. I got a lead on somebody else, too.” He checked a note he was carrying. “Marcia Luechauer—however you pronounce it. She’s a teacher at Deerfield Academy, in Mass. She was a guest during our time slot. Rumor has it she was very outgoing, made a lot of friends, and might be willing to talk.”

  “You take one, I take the other?” I suggested.

  “That’d be great, if you have the time.”

  It was a typical equivocation, and a glimpse of the self-effacement that was also his best asset. It disarmed the very people who clammed up before the likes of Willy Kunkle, or even Sam, and gave Ron the upper hand in any interview demanding a delicate touch.

  “I’ll go down to Deerfield,” I said.

  · · ·

  Deerfield Academy epitomizes the blue-blooded image of the Yankee aristocracy. Like Eton in Great Britain, or a dozen other WASP-sounding schools around New England, it has stood for generations as the springboard to the Ivy League and the world of high finance beyond. I’d heard from a southern friend of mine that boarding schools in his neck of the woods were places to lock up rich juvenile delinquents, which had made him wonder why New England had so many of them. I’d set him straight on the difference, but the dichotomy had stuck with me. My interest in traveling the half hour to Deerfield was partly to discover whether my friend hadn’t been closer to the mark than I’d been led to believe.

  Initial impressions were mixed. The academy is located in the heart of a near-perfectly preserved historic village of the same name, both of which straddle a broad, straight, tree-shaded avenue. Taken together, they look like a cross between a movie lot and a museum exhibition—not bad for a reform school. But driving past one classic, cedar-roofed icon after another, I began wondering if so rarefied an atmosphere might not in fact be a little confining.

  The school itself, at two hundred years old, is more monumentally imposing than the village, with brick buildings, ancient beech trees, and acres of manicured lawns, so that as I parked in front of an Independence Hall look-alike, I was beginning to feel thoroughly intimidated.

  Getting out of the car, I caught sight of a skinny, mop-topped young man walking away from me, wearing gray trousers, a wrinkled blue blazer, and flaming red canvas high-top sneakers.

  “Excuse me,” I called out.

  He swung around and approached smiling, revealing himself to be a she—a perfect tomboy. So much for being confined.

  “Hi. Can I help you?” she asked, her lively, gleaming eyes making me smile in turn.

  “Yeah. I’m looking for someone named Marcia Luechauer. A teacher? She told me to ask for Mather dorm.”

  “Oh, sure—Ms. L.—that’s what we call her. She’s cool. Mather’s where I live. I can take you there, if you’d like.”

  I bowed slightly to this touch of courtesy. “I’d be delighted.”

  We fell in side by side as my guide headed for a crosswalk.

  “What grade are you in?” I asked.

  “I’m a sophomore.”

  “And you like it here?”

  “It’s neat. I wasn’t sure at first. I thought it might be too stuck up—two hundred years of grand tradition. But the teachers are cool, the kids come from all over, and I’m having a great time. They work your—” she abruptly paused and glanced up at me. “They work you hard, though.”

  We crossed the street to a pathway between two old wooden dorms.

  “I thought this was a boy’s school,” I commented.

  She let loose that infectious smile again. “Used to be. Girl-power won out.” She pointed to the building on the left. “That’s Mather.”

  We entered, and I followed her up one flight of stairs to a closed door with a hand-lettered wooden sign reading “Ms. L.—Knock if You Dare.” Behind us I could hear girls’ voices echoing down the hall, interlaced with snatches of music and the occasional slamming of doors.

  My companion knocked, saying as she did, “You’ll like her. She’s really nice.”

  The door swung back to reveal a small, round-faced woman in her fifties. “Scout,” she exclaimed to my friend, “who’ve you rounded up here?”

  Scout looked nonplussed for the first time. “I don’t know. I forgot to ask.”

  I stuck out my hand. “Joe Gunther. We spoke on the phone.”

  She smiled and ushered me in. “I thought so.” And she winked at Scout. “Just pulling your leg. Thanks for playing tour guide.”

  Marcia Luechauer escorted me through a colorful, sun-filled apartment to a living room facing the street where I’d parked, and pointed to a sofa under the window. “Tea or coffee?” she asked.

  “Tea would be nice,” I said. “I need a break from coffee. Cream and sugar, too, if you’ve got it.”

  She laughed. “They’re the only reason I drink anything hot.” She crossed through to a door leading into a small kitchen, still speaking as she set to work. “On the phone you said you wanted to ask me some questions about my trip to Vermont. That certainly was a mysterious invitation, especially from a policeman. I’m not in trouble, am I?”

  I spoke to her as she passed back and forth across my line of sight. “No, no. I’m actually hoping you can give me some help. It concerns your stay at the Windham Hill Inn.”

  She appeared at the door, looking startled. “The inn? What happened there?”

  “That’s what I’d like to ask you. I just found out by accident that you’d been there. Mr. Rarig would want me to make it clear he didn’t divulge your name, by the way.”

  “Oh, good Lord. I don’t care. I had a wonderful time.” There was a loud ding from behind her, and she vanished again.

  “I don’t know how I can help you, though,” her voice said from the kitchen. “I don’t remember anything happening that might be of interest to the police.”

  She reappeared carrying a tray, which she placed on a low table between us, perching herself on an armchair opposite me. “I’ll let you do the honors. There’s sugar, but I prefer maple syrup—one of my many Vermont afflictions. I love your state, incidentally. It’s one of the reasons I work here.”

  I poured both syrup and cream into my tea, having, like Ms. L., an unapologetic sweet tooth. “What dates
were you at the inn, exactly?”

  “The fifteenth through the eighteenth. I left at noon.”

  For simplicity’s sake, we’d settled on the sixteenth for Boris Malik’s death. “And which room did you have?”

  “It was a little thing on the top floor, facing the front.”

  “And the ginkgo tree?” I asked, startled.

  She paused, her cup halfway to her lips. “Yes. Why?”

  “John Rarig said he’d closed off all those rooms because of the smell.”

  She laughed, something I now realized she did all the time, obviously to the delight of her young charges. “I have almost no sense of smell left. That’s about the only time it’s worked to my advantage. I told him I really wanted the sun through my window, so he made an exception. It had the fringe benefit of making my room very quiet as well.” She cocked her head toward the dorm. “Not that noise is a big problem with me.”

  “On the night of the sixteenth, then,” I asked, “do you remember hearing anything unusual—voices maybe, a shout, the sound of a car very late?”

  She paused to reflect. “There was a car. I don’t know what time it was when I heard it, but it was the middle of the night. I’m afraid I didn’t look out the window, though. I just rolled over and went back to sleep.”

  “Was the sound familiar? Had you heard that particular car before?”

  She shook her head. “No. It was just a car. I am sorry.”

  “No. That’s all right,” I assured her. “We ask a lot of questions, but they’re not all important.” I handed her a picture of the rental car. “Was this car ever parked in the lot, or anywhere else that you noticed?”

  She made a face, considering the photo. “I’m not doing very well here. It might have been, but I’m not big on cars. They all look like this to me.”

  I passed her the retouched mug shot of Boris Malik. “How ’bout him?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Ooh. He doesn’t look very good. Is he dead?”

  “Yeah. Sorry about that. The photographer tried to fix him up a little, but it’s hard to do well.”

  She returned the pictures to me. “No, he doesn’t look familiar. I don’t suppose you could tell me what this is all about, could you?”

  I sighed involuntarily. “Don’t I wish. It’s a bit of a mystery, and to be honest, the Windham Hill Inn may not play into it at all. We’re doing a lot of fishing right now, hoping to get lucky. Rumor has it you got friendly with several of the other guests.”

  “Oh, yes,” she smiled, more comfortable now. “That’s partly why I take these trips. Every short vacation, I choose a different inn, usually in Vermont. Maybe it’s being surrounded by kids all the time, but to me a vacation means meeting other people, preferably from far-off places. And inns are good for that, especially if you can’t afford to travel far. The kinds of guests they get are often world travelers. They’re fun to trade stories with.”

  I thought of our hoped-for Russian connection. “Did you meet any globe-trotters at the Windham Hill Inn?”

  “Several. There were the Widmers, an elderly couple from New Jersey. They’d spent an enormous amount of time in Saudi Arabia. He used to be in the oil business—”

  “How elderly?” I interrupted as gently as possible.

  But she cocked an eye at me nevertheless. “Ah. I see what you mean. No geriatrics need apply. How strong a person are we talking about?”

  It was my turn to smile. “Pretty strong. On the other hand, we’re not sure we’re just talking about one person, either.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Well, in any case, better scratch the Widmers. They were both pretty feeble. Let’s see… There was Roger and Sheila Brockman. They were middle-aged, and in good shape, too. Played tennis all the time. Sheila had the eyes of a tiger, I thought. One of those professionally skinny women, complete with tummy tucks, face-lifts, and all the rest. Roger was the traveler there. Sheila mostly stayed home and shopped, from what I could tell. But he’d been to the Far East quite a bit—Hong Kong, Singapore, Beijing. An investment banker. Not what I’d call a nice man, but an observant one. He noticed things, and he had a wonderful way of describing them.”

  He mention Russia at all?”

  She frowned. “No, not that I recall.”

  “Anyone else?” I asked. She thought a moment. “There was another couple. I don’t think they were married, but they didn’t seem like sweethearts, either. I didn’t see much of her. She was either feeling poorly, or just not very social, but she kept to their room for the most part. Her name was Ann, I think. I never did catch a last name. His was Howard Richter, and he’d definitely been to Europe. We got into a long conversation about traveling the canals over there, and he was quite knowledgeable. Otherwise, he struck me as a little aloof. In fact, I kind of wondered why they were even there. They didn’t seem like the type.”

  “Does the inn serve breakfast?” I asked suddenly.

  “Yes.”

  “The morning of the seventeenth, did you notice any of these people—or anyone else, for that matter—acting differently, or missing altogether?”

  Marcia Luechauer had placed her cup on the table earlier and now steepled her fingers before her chin, her eyes fixed on some distant object out the window. “Let’s see, that would’ve been my last full day there. Ann didn’t show—no surprise there. The Brockmans were there, in tennis whites. Howard… Let’s see… He did come down—late—and I waved to him from across the room. He acted as though he hadn’t seen me. I remember thinking he and Ann must’ve had a fight, because he looked pretty ugly. But like I said, he was naturally a little moody.” Her eyes suddenly widened. “Actually, the one who struck me oddest of all that morning was Douglas, my waiter. He was French-Canadian, and normally as smooth-talking as a bad commercial—one of those God’s-gift-to-women types. He was downright cranky that morning and didn’t look as if he’d slept at all.”

  I couldn’t suppress a small laugh. “You have a phenomenal memory. You should be a cop.”

  Her eyes gleamed. “I think that would be fascinating. Has any of this helped?”

  “Absolutely. We may have gotten a little sidetracked, though, when we focused on the world travelers. Was there anyone else who stood out, for any reason at all?”

  “The Meades,” she said instantly. “They were from New York City. She was a lawyer, he was a doctor—Ed and Linda. They both had cell phones, briefcases, perpetual creases between their eyes. I’ve run into people like them, using the inn circuit to try to get back together—try a second honeymoon, I guess. I don’t think it works. It certainly didn’t in this case. They barely spoke to one another. He’d go hiking, she’d borrow a bike. Their dinners were almost totally silent. But there was an odd quality to them that really struck me. It wasn’t hostility. It was coldness. They treated everyone the way they did each other—no favorites. They gave me the creeps. They might have been robots.”

  A brief silence settled between us as I continued scribbling notes in my pad. “Other than that,” she resumed, “it was a pretty typical group—couples making the fine foods tour, people just getting away for a few days, some old folks enjoying their retirement… and me,” she added brightly, “the spinsterish busybody.”

  “Bless you for that,” I told her. “I wish everyone I interviewed was as observant.”

  I rose to my feet and headed toward the hallway. “Are there any last thoughts before I go? Anything more about Douglas, for instance?”

  She joined me, shaking her head. “No, I’m afraid not. Other than that one morning, he was his oily self from start to finish.”

  “And no one else with overseas baggage?”

  She laughed. “Not that I could tell, aside from John Rarig, of course. But him you know about.”

  I tried to pause as nonchalantly as possible in the doorway. “How do you mean?”

  She looked up at me, surprised. “That he’s been to Europe—speaks fluent German.”

  “He told you that?” I
asked.

  “He didn’t have to. We were talking about wine one evening, and he pulled out a bottle of Gumpoldskirchen Veltliner. It’s Austrian, from the Wachau district, and he pronounced it like a native.”

  “Sounds like you just did, too,” I commented.

  She burst out laughing, “With a name like Luechauer? I should hope so. I was born over there, and I’m the German teacher here. Anyhow, there’s all sorts of German, I suppose, like anywhere else. His wasn’t the school-taught kind. It was regional. He could only have picked it up by living there.”

  I reached for the door and pulled it open, letting in a flood of youthful noises from down the hall. “How did Rarig look the morning of the seventeenth?”

  She paused reflectively and then answered, “Tired. He had bags under his eyes.”

  Chapter 8

  “HOW DEEP DID YOU GO INTO his past?” Sammie asked me.

  “Usual paper trail, a couple of phone calls. Obviously, he could’ve gone to Europe on vacations, but nothing indicated John Rarig ever lived in Austria, or anywhere else outside the U.S. Marcia Luechauer said he spoke the language like a native. That takes time.”

  “Or intensive, intelligence-grade teaching,” Ron said softly.

  “If all this is CIA,” Sammie said, “then we’re up a creek. We’re not going to be able to touch them. They’ll just pull the shades like Gil Snowden did in DC and turn into the Cheshire cat.”

  I held up my hand. “Hold it. We’re getting ahead of ourselves.” We were back in my office, with the door closed—cramped but private—the only ones left after an already long day. “There’s obviously some CIA involvement here, but let’s not turn it into a full-blown conspiracy. If all this was really national security and cloak-and-dagger stuff, the FBI would be sitting here, not us. They sniffed around Hillstrom’s office and apparently didn’t take the bait. We are reasonably assuming a man was killed on our turf—a straightforward homicide. It would be nice to know who he was and what he was up to, but when you get down to it, our real job is to nail his killer. There’s no reason to think we can’t do that.”