Don't Cry Over Killed Milk (23 page)

“He had. With Aylin. About a month-and-a-half ago, he was taking his daily walk before the park opened. His route that day led him past the Tripping Falls parking lot. Daylight had broken, and Bertlemann saw Aylin and Dominic Freeze standing near a vehicle. Bertlemann said it appeared innocuous: he figured Dominic was a boyfriend dropping her off at work a little early.”

“But Aylin and Dominic saw Bertlemann?”

“Yes. Bertlemann waved to the pair of them. And Aylin, flustered, waved back. My guess is that she was too new to know Bertlemann flouted official park hours.”

“So Aylin knew that Bertlemann could link her to Dominic, and that made him a threat.”

“Exactly. A threat she had to act on when we arrested Dominic this morning. She couldn’t risk Bertlemann seeing Dominic’s face on the news and recalling their early morning encounter. I put out an APB on Aylin right after Bertlemann told me about it. Your eyewitness account of Aylin as the arsonist and the evidence inside her backpack will seal her fate.”

“What about Dominic?”

 
“With the information you provided me the other night about Dominic, we found a judge to issue a search warrant for his home. We acted on it last night and unearthed a stack of printouts on electrical wiring. We confiscated his computer, too. Our tech team will tear apart his files and search history. My guess is he taught himself how to blow the circuitry on the main floor of the shed.”

“Will that be enough to convict him?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure that alone would be enough. But once we catch Aylin, I’m willing to bargain with her in exchange for her testimony against Dominic. After we charge her with an attempt on Bertlemann’s life and as an accomplice in Jeremiah’s murder, hopefully she’ll open up to save her own skin.” Gerry paused, and then added, “I’ll let you know what happens.”

Damon allowed an ambulance driver to take him to the hospital. After a multitude of scans and probes, he was given a clean bill of health and a set of crutches. His ankle was badly sprained but not broken.

Chapter 23

It was early evening when Damon arrived home. His Saab was parked in the driveway—he’d given Gerry his keys before getting into the ambulance.

David Einstaff pointed at the open chair beside him on the porch. Without having eaten since breakfast, Damon felt famished. He managed a weak smile and sat.

“Rough day?” David asked, glancing at the crutches. David poured his neighbor a tumbler of whiskey to match his own. The man always seemed to have an extra glass on the porch.

“Painful but fruitful,” Damon said. “I’d rather not talk about it if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.” David clinked the two glasses together and handed the fresh one to Damon.

“David, I know it hasn’t been too long since you and your wife divorced,” Damon said.

“Not since it was finalized,” David corrected him. “But the marriage has been over for a while now.”

“Would you have any interest in dating someone?”

“Your mother?” David asked with a hint of hope.

Damon wasn’t surprised at the question. “No,” he said. “It would be a blind date.”

David sipped whiskey and studied Damon over the rim of his glass. “But you know her, right?”

“I met her for the first time today. Diane Ridgeway. She’s the assistant principal at Ashbury Elementary, and she’s full of life.”

David closed his eyes and titled his head back into his patio chair. His Adam’s apple bulged. “Okay,” he said quietly. Then he perked up. “I mean, yes. Thank you. I can’t remember the last date I was on, but it’s time I started getting out there.”

“Great,” Damon said. He set his drink on the small table between their patio chairs, rose with the help of his crutches, and clapped David on the shoulder.

Damon left David on the porch and went inside to fix himself a sandwich. The answering machine in the kitchen blinked with bright red pulses. He punched “play,” and Bethany’s voice filled the air, asking Damon to give her a call “whenever he had a chance.”

Damon picked up the phone and dialed. After exchanging pleasantries, Bethany apologized for not speaking with him at Mrs. Chenworth’s party.

“I was in a major rush,” she said. “I had a job interview.”

“I heard through Mrs. Chenworth’s grapevine,” Damon said.

“I’m not surprised. One of the network producers had just flown in from Atlanta and squeezed me in for a nighttime coffee at her hotel.”

“How’d it go?” Damon asked nervously. He wanted Bethany to succeed but certainly didn’t want her to move to Atlanta.

“Oh, Damon, I think it went really well,” she said with excitement. “I wanted to share the good news with you. The producer and I hit it off, and someone from the network called a few hours ago. I’m going down to Atlanta to interview with some of the executives!” Bethany made a sound that sounded like a tire screeching on wet pavement—it was one of pure exhilaration.

After hanging up, Damon sank into an armchair. He was physically and mentally exhausted. The chase after Aylin and long crawl through the woods had drained his body, while Bethany’s news deflated his spirits.

* * *

Damon spent the following day at home, recovering. Rebecca and his mother paid separate visits and lauded his efforts to track down Aylin. He spent the evening alone, watching back-to-back television movies. Ten minutes after crawling into bed, there was a knock at his front door. Damon roused himself, wrapped a loose-fitting robe around his body, and hobbled down the stairs. Gerry Sloman was standing out front with a big grin and a six pack of longnecks.

Damon invited him inside.

“Sorry I woke you,” Gerry said. He set the beer down on the kitchen counter and started to rummage through Damon’s drawers for a bottle opener.

“I hadn’t fallen asleep yet. Is this a final celebration? You found Aylin?”

“Yes. She was holed up in an apartment thirty miles east of here. Near Annapolis. Her real name of course is Michelle Walczak, and she lived for several years right here in Hollydale with her stepbrother.” Gerry upcapped two beers and handed one to Damon. “We found fingerprints all over the explosives kit in her backpack. They’re sure to match hers.”

“Did you speak with her?” Damon asked.

“Yes,” Gerry said and raised his bottle in the air. “She flipped on Dominic.”

“So you’ll be able to put him behind bars for sure?”

“I just spoke with the prosecutor. He’s aiming for premeditated murder. With Aylin’s testimony, I have no doubt Dominic will not only be convicted but get a life sentence.”

“And Aylin er, Michelle?”

“As I expected, the prosecutor agreed to knock down the charges against her. But she’s still looking at twenty years.”

Damon set down his bottle and shook Gerry’s hand. “Well done, Gerry.”

The detective laughed. “You did all of the hard work, Damon.”

The men sat at the kitchen table. “So what did Aylin say?” Damon asked.

“She basically confirmed everything you discovered. After Dominic accepted the plea bargain on the embezzlement charges, he went to work on finding the person who set him up. Dominic hired Marcus Pontfried. At first, they were both stuck. But then Pontfried asked Dominic about his fishing excursion on the day his computer at Trident was hacked. When Dominic relayed the details of his marital trouble as the impetus for the outing, it struck the private eye that there might be a connection.”

“So Pontfried went to interview Samantha Richter,” Damon said.

“Exactly. Samantha admitted that a man she knew as Kenneth Randolph contrived the sham affair. Pontfried recognized Randolph’s name. Dominic had given him a list of everyone who worked in Trident’s office as well as its Board members and silent partner.”

“And Samantha told me that she described Kenneth Randolph to Pontfried, including his disfigured fingers.”

“Right,” Gerry said. He started to scrape the label from his beer bottle. “Pontfried passed along that description to Dominic who knew of only one person with fingers like that: Jeremiah Milk.”

“So Pontfried hunted down Jeremiah to confirm Dominic’s suspicions.”

“Yes. He found out where Jeremiah worked and went to the park. Veronica Maldive confirmed that the Jeremiah Milk at Tripping Falls had malformed fingers, so later Pontfried surreptitiously snapped a photo of him and went back to see Samantha Richter. When she verified that the man in the photo was Kenneth Randolph, Jeremiah’s goose was cooked, so to speak. Even though Dominic didn’t have much evidence, he was confident that Jeremiah was responsible for wrecking his marriage and his career.”

“Did Marcus Pontfried know Dominic was going to kill Jeremiah?” Damon asked.

“I doubt it. That’s why the prosecutor isn’t going after him.”

“Seems like Pontfried’s getting off scot-free.”

“He is,” Gerry said. “As will Matthew Katz-Atwater.”

“Did you get anything else out of Matthew?” Damon asked.

“No. We tried to speak with him, but Alistair Atwater hired a top notch legal team. Plus, the boy’s a juvenile. He won’t even get a slap on the wrist. But I suspect that Jeremiah’s death has scared him straight.”

Damon smiled. Despite acting in complicity with Jeremiah, he wished the teen well and hoped he could get his life back on track.

Damon finished his beer and opened a second. He went to the refrigerator, pulled out the remainder of a blueberry crisp courtesy of Rebecca, and set it in front of Gerry with a fork.

“No need for a plate, I suppose,” Gerry said with a smile. He began to eat from the tin.

“So were Dominic and Aylin so close that she just went along with his plan to murder Jeremiah?” Damon asked. “That seems pretty far-fetched.”

“They couldn’t have been too close. She just ratted him out to save herself a longer sentence.” Gerry wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, then frowned at the blueberry stain on his shirt.

As Damon rose to retrieve a washcloth, Gerry continued. “Aylin had been financially dependent on her stepbrother. Dominic earned a good living at Trident and he sent Aylin—or should I say Michelle—a check every month to supplement her income. She’d been working as a hostess at an Olive Garden and the extra money was invaluable. So when Dominic lost his livelihood, she took a financial hit.”

“That would’ve been tough,” Damon said. “But—”

Gerry held up a hand. “And, Aylin told me that Dominic offered her a six-figure payoff.”

“But he’d lost his job and was already paying alimony and child support,” Damon protested. “Was he lying to his stepsister or did Dominic have a horde of money somewhere?” He passed a damp cloth to Gerry, who scrubbed vigorously at the stain on his sleeve.

“Neither.” Gerry frowned at the stain which refused to go away. “But Dominic had access to a huge revenue stream. He only brought Aylin into his confidence after he learned that it was Jeremiah, acting as Kenneth Randolph, who set him up. In fact, I’m not sure whether Dominic would’ve killed Jeremiah if he hadn’t masqueraded as Kenneth Randolph—a man who only existed on paper, yet owned twenty percent of a midsize company. According to Aylin, once Dominic learned that Randolph and Jeremiah were one and the same, he realized that he could fulfill two goals with a single act. By killing Jeremiah, he could not only satisfy his lust for vengeance but also turn murder into a financial windfall.”

Damon shook his head in amazed understanding. “Jeremiah might be dead, but the fictional Kenneth Randolph lived on.”

Gerry tipped his beer bottle in Damon’s direction. “You got it. Dominic figured that not a soul on Earth knew anything about Kenneth Randolph other than himself, Marcus Pontfried, and Samantha Richter, who didn’t count in his book. Matthew Katz-Atwater knew, of course, but Dominic was unaware of him. Aylin said Dominic planned to lay low for a while after he killed Jeremiah. Kenneth Randolph, as twenty percent owner of Trident, received profit checks every month. And Dominic, the former chief accountant, knew exactly where those checks were sent. Dominic planned to create identification in the name of Kenneth Randolph, just as Jeremiah had, and cash the checks himself. After all, there’d be no one to complain. A year or two later, he’d sell the stake in Trident for a mint. Aylin didn’t have all of the details of Dominic’s plan, but that was his general idea. And he was going to give Aylin a cut.”

“Wow,” Damon said in disbelief. After a moment he asked, “So who’s entitled to the twenty percent stake in Trident now?”

Gerry chewed a mouthful of blueberry crisp, then said, “Dottie Milk. She’s Jeremiah’s sole beneficiary since he didn’t have a will or any other immediate family. Someone from our financial crimes unit is going up to Philadelphia tomorrow to explain the situation to the folks at Trident. And I’ve spoken with Alistair Atwater. He said he doesn’t want the money back. He gave it to Jeremiah for bringing Matthew ‘back to life’ and didn’t care how he had spent it.”

“Have you told Dottie about her rights to the stake in Trident?”

“I did this morning. She was beside herself. But I have to hand it to Dottie. After it soaked in, she told me that she was going to sell the stake in Trident. Dottie plans to live in Arizona on the $400,000 left over at True Capital but pass along the enormous sum from Trident. She said she’ll donate the majority to Tripping Falls, and use the rest to set up a fund to help provide for Dominic Freeze’s two children. Much as she hates Dominic, she recognizes that his children are collateral victims. When Dominic goes to prison, they’ll be left without his financial support.”

“That’s extremely magnanimous,” Damon said.

“I suspect it’s Dottie’s way of washing her hands. I don’t think Jeremiah’s lack of innocence sits well with her.”

Damon nodded in agreement. “What did Aylin have to say about Bertlemann?” he asked.

“It was just as we suspected. Aylin was relatively new to Tripping Falls when she showed Dominic the shed near Cherubim’s Run and Emmanuel’s garage. She didn’t know Bertlemann walked the grounds before the park opened in the morning, so she was caught off-guard when he waved to her and Dominic in the parking lot. When she found out Dominic had been arrested, Aylin knew she had to take action. As long as Dominic kept his mouth shut about Aylin, Bertlemann was the only person who could place them together. She calculated that taking out the old man was a safer bet than waiting to see whether the police would show him Dominic’s picture.”

“I wonder if she planned to continue working at the park after torching Bertlemann’s home or would have vanished into thin air.”