Revenge Served Cold: A Novel

By James M. DiClerico

At dawn on an early June morning, a body lies on the tenth green of an elite golf club in the hills of New England. Golf balls fill the dead mans mouth; crusted blood encircles the bullet hole his forehead.

Vincent Nardi, once a homicide detective with the NYPD and now chief of police for town of Abenaki, sees his dream of a laid-back second career fading as he gazes at the corpse. Things get complicated when he learns that the victim was the son of the most powerful man in town andwhen the man insists Nardi use the services of his former partner, a woman with whom he shares a tangled sexual history.

As Nardi works to solve the murder, he finds himself encountering soldiers suffering the anguish of their combat experiences, a psychiatrist determined to help the young men and a priest with confessional knowledge of a second killing about to happen.

DiClerico deftly weaves together a cast of small-town characters who alternate between helping and thwarting Nardi as he races towards the explosive conclusion of this debut novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452097862

James M. DiClerico

James M. DiClerico is a resident of Florida who lives in Stowe, Vermont, during the summer months. A graduate of Lehigh University, he concluded after a few years of practicing engineering that the world would be safer without his involvement in bridges, dams and tall buildings. He reinvented himself as a public relations writer, eventually becoming an executive with one of the largest firms in the field; his postings included New York City, Brussels and Washington, D.C. He later owned his own company for ten years. Upon retiring, he began to pursue a lifelong ambition to write books. In addition to a non-fiction book on baseball and a memoir of his grandfather, this is his third mystery.

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Contents

Author’s Note

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

About the Author

Author’s Note

The fictitious town of Abenaki owes much to the real town of Quechee, Vermont, where I live. It imitates Quechee’s four-season recreational community and borrows, in a much altered way, that community’s backstory. It has a river, an old mill building and a covered bridge like Quechee’s. But there the similarity ends, for Abenaki is a much more self-contained place. Unlike Quechee, it has its own police and fire departments, its own town council, a thriving electronics manufacturer and a Roman Catholic Church, all of which figure importantly in the story. In short, Abenaki is sui generis. As for the people of Abenaki and other characters in the story, they stem entirely from my imagination. Any resemblance to real people is entirely unintended and coincidental.

Quechee, Vermont

September 2010

Prologue

The boy turned six just before his father came home from Vietnam. He hardly remembered the man. He hadn’t seen him for more than two years. But his heart swelled each time the man came through the door, and he thought it would burst when he saw the look on his mother’s face. The constant anxiety that had creased her face during the man’s absence -- gone. The occasional snappishness when he’d badgered her for an answer to a little boy’s curious question -- gone. All replaced by a look that mixed relief and joy in equal measures.

The boy would shyly ask the man to play catch with him, and the man did. But the man would hardly ever smile, and when he did, the smile would quickly fade as though caught doing something it shouldn’t have. And sometimes the boy would come upon the man standing at a window, staring off at the distant New England hills. Or he’d be sitting in a chair in front of the television, showing no sign of interest at all in the Red Sox game being shown. At times like this, his mother would tell him to leave the man alone, and a shadow would cross her face.

One day the man and the boy went downtown, aiming to pay a visit to the barbershop. They were dressed for the autumnal chill. The boy wore a light denim jacket already getting too small for him. The man had on a U.S. Army field jacket showing dark patches of original olive-green where he’d removed his sergeant’s stripes and unit patches. A stain on the right side near the waist had been reduced to a light reddish brown by laundering, but a hole the size of a dime had been left unrepaired.

After finding a parking space for his battered pickup truck a half-block from the barbershop, the man and the boy were walking down the sidewalk when a pair of young men approached from the opposite direction. A few years younger than the man, they were dressed in a way the boy had heard his mother call ‘hippie.’ As they came abreast of the man and the boy, one of them turned his head and shot a gob of spit at the man. It caught him on the arm of the field jacket where the sergeant’s stripes had been.

Murderer! the spitter yelled. Fucking child killer!

Yeah! the other chimed in, looking to his companion for approval. Fucking murderer!

The boy felt his stomach contract, his legs start to wobble, a wave of heat rise up from his neck and spread across his face and into his scalp. The man’s right arm came up and the two attackers began to shrink back, the second one scuttling faster, banging into a parking meter and stumbling sideways. But the man was only pulling at his sleeve, trying to see where the spit had landed. Then he reached into the hip pocket of his jeans, removed a white handkerchief and slowly wiped away the gob. That done, he tossed the handkerchief into a nearby trash basket. The attackers continued to retreat, keeping wary eyes on the man.

Let’s go, son, the man said, grabbing the boy’s hand and walking away.

But, Dad! the boy said. They spit on you.

I said, come on.

The boy looked back to see his father’s tormenters grinning and waving derisively. A bus was passing behind them, black smoke pouring from its tailpipe. Across the street a movie marquee was advertising The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He would always wonder at how vividly those few minutes on the sidewalk would replay in memory, filling him with rage. When two months later the man was found hanging from a rafter in the small barn behind the family’s rented house, something in the boy snapped.

One

As Vincent Nardi lifted the yellow crime scene tape and ducked under, a man standing back a few feet spoke up, Can you give me a minute, Chief?

Nardi waved him off. Need to see this first, he said, approaching a man on his knees in the middle of a golf green, facing away. To the man’s right, Nardi could see the lower halves of two legs, clothed in tan dress slacks, the toes of expensive-looking tassled loafers pointing skyward. The slacks appeared damp and the shoes had water spots, telling Nardi that the wearer may well have been laying there when a pre-dawn thunder storm raged through the area.

What have we got, George? Nardi asked the kneeling man. He noticed that George Balfour was wearing his usual attire of khakis and long-sleeved shirt. Unless it was snowing, raining or below freezing, the uniform never changed. On this Monday morning in June, just after dawn, on a day when the temperature was forecast to be in the mid-seventies, it was perfectly appropriate.

Without turning, the man, who usually wrote ‘M.D.’ after his name, said, A conundrum, for true. Uh, oh, thought Nardi. ‘Conundrum’ was Balfour’s favorite word for anything unexplainable. Usually it referred to a symptom that baffled him. But in this instance, he used it in his capacity as medical examiner for the small New England town of Abenaki, named for the native Americans who once held sway there. A few of them still lived scattered about the area.

How so? Nardi started to ask, peering over Balfour’s shoulder at the body. Before the slow-talking Balfour could respond, Nardi thought he saw the answer. For the man, who was laying on his back in the middle of the green, had his right arm outstretched, the hand gripping the bottom of the flag pin stuck in the hole in a macabre imitation of a caddy tending the pin for a golfer about to putt. The man wore a black golf shirt with the Abenaki Lakes Club logo -- the head of a native American in profile, not unlike the old U.S. five-cent coin -- embroidered on the left breast. The slowly drying shirt lay plastered to his chest. Blood congealed around a hole in the middle of his forehead. His hair, probably brown and thick when dry, was matted and looked more black than brown. He stared unseeing at a sky just turning bluer than the fading hue of his eyes. His lips were pulled back in a rictus grin. Nardi took all of this in in a quick sweeping glance.

Right, he said a few seconds later, nodding to himself as a rush of opposing thoughts surged through his mind. On the one hand, he welcomed the familiar feeling of anticipation at facing the challenge of a case that promised to be difficult. Since taking the job of Chief of the Abenaki Police Department, he had experienced only two homicides, both domestic affairs that essentially solved themselves. On the other hand, he felt decidedly troubled about dealing again with the dark side of humanity this bizarre killing represented; whoever did this clearly intended humiliation as well as death. Maybe, he thought, I should have gotten entirely out of police work.

He was jarred from his reverie by the sound of Balfour’s voice. Right, the medical examiner said, repeating Nardi’s word. But maybe something escaped your eagle-sharp detective’s eye. Balfour and Nardi, best of friends, delighted in besting one another, usually at poker or the pool table, but also when their paths occasionally crossed at work. Balfour’s bantering tone made Nardi think, If there’s anyone more hard-shelled than a homicide cop, it’s got to be a medical examiner.

Without giving Nardi a chance to score a point, Balfour drawled, Have a look at his mouth. At first, Nardi failed to see it. But then he noticed that the man’s clenched teeth didn’t quite meet, leaving a space filled with something even whiter. What the hell! he said.

Golf balls, Balfour came back, a bemused look on his face.

Balls? Plural?

You bet. Three of them, in fact.

Nardi’s hand went reflexively to his mouth, the thumb and index finger spaced approximately at the what he thought of as the diameter of a golf ball. Struggling up off his knees with a grunt, Balfour glanced at Nardi and said, Yeah, it’s a tight fit, but it can be done. Especially by someone with no big interest in being gentle. And there’s a chip in one of the middle uppers that looks fresh. Balfour’s khakis showed large wet spots from where he had kneeled on the green, and some short clippings of grass from the green’s last mowing clung to his cuffs.

Post-mortem? Nardi said.

Probably. He would have choked on them had he been alive, and there’s no sign of strangulation.

Cause of death that hole in his forehead?

Great deduction, Sherlock. But this isn’t the primary crime scene.

Nardi gave Balfour one of those ‘no kidding’ looks. He had noticed the drag marks leading down from the road to the body. And on the side of the body closest to the road, the green was speckled with bits of dirt and stone, obviously dragged along with whatever the killer or killers had used to transport the body. I bet there’s no blood to speak of under his head, either, Nardi said.

Balfour put his hand under the dead man’s neck and gently lifted his head. Nardi was looking at a dry spot about as big around as a saucer, where the victim’s head had rested. He’d been put there before the rain, which had commenced about three in the morning, and his head had kept the spot dry. Nothing there except what looked like a few flakes of dry blood.

Nardi grimaced. Okay, Mr. Medical Examiner. So what about time of death?

Well, Mr. Detective, rigor has set in. So? A little test.

So at least three hours ago, Nardi said without delay.

Very good. And now, by measuring liver temperature -- Balfour lifted the bottom of the man’s shirt to reveal the probe he had inserted -- we can say that rigor is still in early stage, say four or five hours in. So do the math.

Eleven to midnight last night, Nardi said. Balfour just nodded.

And do we know who the lucky fellow is?

We do.

Gonna make me guess?

Balfour grinned. Nah. Pause for effect. He’s Lance Bigelow Firestone the Third.

Oh, shit. The case had just picked up a new and most unsettling dimension. For Lance Bigelow Firestone the Third was the son of Lance Bigelow Firestone, Junior, better known simply as Big. The moniker certainly fit the man’s size, but it been bestowed more in recognition of what he’d done for Abenaki and his resulting position in the town. Big had come here thirty years ago, his fortunes soaring thanks to the successful electronics firm he had inherited from Lance Bigelow Firestone, Senior. Loving the bucolic environment and sensing potential in the town’s battered labor force and decaying buildings, he made an inspired decision, one that ultimately put the down-on-its-luck mill town back on its feet.

First he bought the empty building that had housed a thriving woolen mill until a few years before; the town had not been able to avoid the wholesale migration of the textile industry from New England to low-wage states in the South Then he transferred a division of his company into it and offered jobs to any of the former mill workers willing and able to be trained. Management and engineering transferees from the division’s former site moved into town, buying homes and pumping more money into the local economy.

Recognizing the four-season potential of the gorgeous surrounding environment, Firestone’s next step was to buy up parcels of land and put them together until he wound up with some thousand acres shaped roughly in a crescent west and south of town and bisected more or less by the pretty Abenaki River. He built a championship eighteen-hole golf course along the river and announced plans for a second course on the hillier section of his holdings. After that, he built the first of what would grow to several hundred upscale vacation homes on land overlooking the golf course sites and kicked off the marketing of the project he called Abenaki Lakes. The fact that the project included only one small man-made lake, created by flooding a meadow, and a couple of shallow ponds gave Firestone no pause at all in declaring the name. He also spearheaded a change in the name of the town, from the label based on its centuries-old industry -- Milltown -- to one he felt reflected its greatly improved status.

The upscale homes, the first-rate golf course and the other recreational opportunities in the area brought an influx of affluent families to Abenaki. Fancy cars with Mercedes, Lexus, Audi, Acura, BMW, Cadillac and Lincoln badges joined old pickup trucks on Abenaki roads. And it wasn’t long before those pickups and equally ancient sedans got traded in for newer models, thanks to the rising rate of employment in town. Meanwhile, restaurants serving the likes of veal cordon bleu and blackened tuna turned up not far from the sagging diner where old-time residents still congregated. And before long, even the old diner got a facelift. Not everyone liked what Big Firestone had made of Abenaki, name-wise or otherwise. But nearly everyone liked him personally and respected him, enough so that when he wanted to sit as a town selectman, he won election easily. And soon enough was voted chairman by the other members of the board.

Nardi was no genius, but it didn’t take one to understand that Lance Bigelow Firestone, Junior, was going to be a major factor in his life for the foreseeable future. He took another look at the victim and then asked George Balfour, You think anyone else noticed the golf balls?

You mean someone more observant then you? Balfour said with a grin. But then, sensing that Nardi had something serious on his mind, backed off. No, I don’t think so. Johnny Olson had a quick look before he started securing the scene, the doctor went on, referring to Nardi’s junior detective. And … surprise! … Joe Goodenough hasn’t shown up as yet. Goodenough, the Abenaki Police Department’s senior detective, never more than a plodder, had already retired mentally. Nardi couldn’t wait for his actual retirement and a chance to replace him; the Abenaki board of selectmen (which in fact included two women) kept resisting his pleas for a third detective slot.

The greenskeeper who discovered the body probably wet his pants when he saw it, Balfour was saying. These immigrant-types probably figure everything’s going to be blamed on them -- and they’re mostly right. Nardi had seen a dark-skinned man standing outside the crime-scene tape and assumed him to be the greenskeeper Balfour referred to; he had a deer-in-the-headlights look in his eyes. Nardi agreed with Balfour’s assessment of the man’s probable fear of being tagged with the crime -- but he had nothing to fear from Nardi unless hard evidence pointed the way. A bit dark-skinned himself, and bearing an Italian surname, Nardi wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with discrimination at the personal level.

And the suit? Nardi said, meaning the person who’d called to him minutes ago and who remained standing behind the yellow tape. Don’t think so, said Balfour. Have the impression he got just close enough to see who it was, then scooted off to make some phone calls. He paused, looking at the group behind the yellow tape. So the only other one who got up close, as far as I know, was maybe the club security guy. Pointing, Balfour said, That’s him.

Okay, said Nardi. "Let’s keep it to that. No one else gets to know about the golf balls until I say so. The last thing I need is to have some reporter start calling this ‘The Golf Ball Murder.’ Nardi remembered ‘Son of Sam,’ ‘The Zodiac Murders,’ and the ‘Boston Strangler,’ so he knew how a catchy label could drive media and public interest in a crime such as this. He knew as well how quickly ‘interest’ could explode into ’frenzy,’ helped along by a sound-bite label.

My people will make sure no one else gets close enough to see the golf balls, he told Balfour. And I’ll talk to the security guy. He paused, taking another look at the corpse and slowly shaking his head. And, George, can you please cover his face with something, just to make sure? Balfour nodded and Nardi turned, ducked back under the yellow tape and walked up to the man who had hailed him earlier: Geoffrey Sennett, general manager of the Abenaki Lakes Club.

What can I do for you, Geoff?

I’m sorry about Lance, Chief, but … uh … I wonder when I might get this green back. Sennett, short and several pounds overweight, was dressed in coat and tie, the jacket navy blue with the club’s crest on the breast pocket, the slacks very much the color of those worn by the corpse on the green. Tasseled loafers, too. Nardi thought it must be some sort of club dress code. Underneath the jacket, Sennett wore a blue dress shirt and a tie emblazoned with --what else? -- tiny replicas of the club’s logo, hardly bigger than polka dots. His graying hair, receding at the temples, was cut conservatively short and parted on the left. Nardi had heard that Sennett was brought in a couple of years before to straighten out a club in financial distress thanks to years of wimpy management by his predecessor.

I’ll give it back to you as soon as I can, Nardi said. The state forensics guys are on their way down, and since this doesn’t appear to be the primary crime scene, they shouldn’t be at it long.

Sennett started to say something about a charity tournament getting underway in two hours. He stopped in mid-sentence, sensing that Nardi had already described the best possible timeframe for re-opening the green. He could try again, with a tone halfway between demanding and pleading -- an essential skill for someone needing to satisfy several hundred members and herd dozens of employees of various educational levels and mother tongues. But he guessed Nardi wouldn’t find it very appealing, so he settled instead for a disappointed grimace.

Look, Mr. Sennett, Nardi said, shifting to the formal manner of address, you’ll get the green as soon as I can release it. Meanwhile, you’ll just have to make adjustments. Give everyone a par on this hole, or something.

Nardi didn’t play golf, considering it a monumental waste of time, so he wasn’t sure how a missing hole was going to affect things. But frankly, he didn’t care. He did know that this was the tenth hole and that it, as well as the ninth and eleventh, ran next to a town road. So it shouldn’t be hard to bypass it. Suck it up, Geoff. We’ve got a murder here.

Do you know who’s next of kin? he asked Sennett, unaware of the marital status of Lance Firestone the Third.

Yes, yes, Sennett said testily, looking to assert some control of the circumstances. I’ve already called his wife. Expect she’s been in touch with his father. I understand he’s overseas, due back here tomorrow. Nardi took that as good news. He could use a day without pressure from the great man. He knew enough about Big Firestone to figure that he wouldn’t sit back and let events take their course, his grief over losing his son notwithstanding.

Kids? Nardi asked.

No, thank God.

Does she have someone with her?

Sennett practically sniffed in disdain. Of course, he said. We wouldn’t let her be alone at a time like this. I sent my own assistant to be with her. Nardi noted the use of the royal ‘we’ as in ‘We do things properly, not like you peasants.’ Nardi had never had much use for the country club set, though he viewed the Abenaki Lakes Club as a somewhat benign version of the species. Possibly its rural setting took the edge off. He knew quite a few members of the club and generally thought of them as ‘okay.’

Giving Sennett a semi-salute, Nardi turned to locate Hank Sjogren, the officer first on the scene that morning. The body had been found at about 6:15 by the greenskeeper come to mow the green, who had walkie-talkied club security, who had called 911. Calls to 911 in this area went to a shared center in the county seat a few miles from Abenaki and were routed from there to the appropriate police, fire or rescue department. Hank Sjogren had gotten the call from the Abenaki dispatcher and had raced to the site to check it out, calling Nardi at home by cell phone on the way. Nardi noted with approval that Sjogren and Annie Sullivan, another of Nardi’s officers, had strung yellow crime scene tape not only around the entire green but also along both sides of the area leading back to the road, including the strip of dirt and grass over which the body apparently had been dragged. Anyone standing behind the tape would have difficulty in discerning details of the scene on the green. That suited Nardi just fine, though he knew that the greenskeeper had in all likelihood already conveyed what he’d seen to others on his crew, to Sennett, and to Pete Adario, one of Abenaki Lakes Club’s two security officers. The grisly news would already be spreading among Abenaki’s early risers. Nardi only hoped the greenskeeper hadn’t seen the golf balls.

When Nardi located Hank Sjogren, he was standing with John Olson and Pete Adario next to the club’s security pickup truck, which had been driven along a golf cart path and parked just outside the yellow crime scene tape next to Sjogren’s cruiser and Olson’s unmarked. Adario was leaning on the fender of the gray truck, which had ‘Security’ and the club’s logo painted on the doors. Nardi knew both Adario and his security-team colleague fairly well, having made a point of checking out the club’s security arrangements shortly after taking the Abenaki job. He’d wanted to know everyone in town with responsibilities resembling those of law enforcement. Pete Adario was in his late sixties and had been on the Abenaki force before Nardi’s time. Full retirement hadn’t suited him -- a problem Nardi completely understood -- so he’d looked for employment in the only line he knew and landed in security at the Abenaki Lakes Club.

You okay, Pete? Nardi asked, noticing that the normally dark skin of his face seemed drained of all color. Adario was a short, compact man with a small pot belly and exceptionally large hands for his size. Nearly everyone who encountered him remarked on the size of those hands, which at the moment he was nervously rubbing together as though to rid them of some irritating substance. Nardi noticed that the backs of his hands were starting to be mottled by those brown spots that announce the end of middle age and the start of elderly. He’s getting too old to be dealing with stuff like this, Nardi thought. Like me.

Never seen anything like it, Chief, Adario was saying. Maybe you did, down in the big city. But stuff like this doesn’t happen in Abenaki. Never seen anything like it, he repeated, continuing to rub his hands together. He had removed his baseball cap -- dark blue with an Abenaki Lakes Club logo -- and was wiping sweat off his brow. Splotches on the crown of his bald head gave it the look of a peach that had begun to spoil. The iron-gray hair along the sides of his head was moist and matted, as though he’d been sweating profusely, though the day had not yet begun to warm up appreciably.

How often do you pass this way on your patrol? Nardi asked, trying to get Adario’s mind off the body and on to something useful. He knew that Adario and the club’s other security officer, Lou Coty, shared the night duty, eight-to-eight, a week on, a week off. If there were security problems during daylight hours, the police department would be called, but incidents of that kind were extremely rare.

What? said Adario

Nardi repeated the question, thinking the man might be in worse shock than he figured at first. C’mon, Pete, focus! Nardi noticed John Olson, standing next to Adario, raise his notebook, signaling that he’d already covered the same ground with the security man. But Nardi