Nelson DeMille - Plum Island

I nodded. "That's what we figured."

"Right. The rest of the autopsy…" She glanced at the report. "… Toxicology — no drugs, legal or illegal, found. Stomach contents, almost none, maybe an early and light breakfast. No marks on either body, no infections, no discernible disease…" She went on for a minute or so, then looked up from the report and said, "The deceased female was about a month pregnant."

I nodded. What a nice way to celebrate sudden fame and wealth.

Neither of us spoke for a minute or so. There's something about an autopsy protocol that sort of ruins your mood. One of the more disagreeable tasks that a homicide detective has to perform is to be present at the autopsy. This has to do with the chain-of-evidence requirement and makes sense legally, but I don't like seeing bodies cut open, organs removed and weighed, and all that. I knew that Beth had been present when the Gordons were autopsied, and I wondered if I could have handled seeing people I knew having their guts and brains plucked out.

Beth shuffled some papers and said, "The red earth found in their running shoes is mostly clay, iron, and sand. There's so much of it around here, it's not even worth trying to match it to a specific site."

I nodded and asked, "Did their hands show any signs that they'd been doing something manual?"

"Actually, yes. Tom had a blister on the heel of his right hand. Both of them had been handling soil, which was embedded in their hands and under their nails, despite attempts to wash with saltwater. Their clothes, too, showed smudges of the same soil."

I nodded again.

Beth asked me, "What do you think they were doing?"

"Digging."

"For what?"

"Buried treasure."

She took this as another example of my smart-ass attitude and ignored me, which I knew she'd do. She went through some other points in the forensic report, but I didn't hear anything significant.

Beth continued, "The search of their house, top to bottom, didn't turn up too much of interest. They didn't save much on the computer, except financial and tax records."

I asked her, "What's the difference between a woman and a computer?"

"Tell me."

"A computer will accept a three-and-a-half-inch floppy." She closed her eyes for a second, rubbed her temples, took a deep breath, then continued, "They had a file cabinet, and there is some correspondence, legal stuff, personal, and so forth. We're reading and analyzing it all. This may be interesting, but so far, nothing."

"Whatever was relevant or incriminating was probably stolen." She nodded and continued, "The Gordons owned expensive clothing, even the casual clothes, no pornography, no sexual aids, a wine cellar with seventeen bottles, four photo albums — you're in a few pictures — no audiotapes, a Rolodex which we're comparing to the one in their office, nothing unusual in the medicine cabinet, nothing in any of the pockets of their summer clothes or their stored winter clothes, no keys that don't belong, and one that seemed to be missing — the Murphys' key, if you believe what Mr. Murphy said about giving the house key to the Gordons…". She turned a page and kept reading. This is the kind of stuff that gets my undivided attention, though so far, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

She went on, "We found the deed to the Wiley land, by the way. All in order. Also, we can't find any evidence of a safe deposit box. Or other bank accounts. We found two life insurance policies in the amount of $250,000, one on each of them naming the other as beneficiary with secondary beneficiaries of parents and siblings. Same with their government life insurance. There is also a will, very simple, again naming each other, parents and siblings and so forth."

I nodded. "Good detail work."

"Right. Okay… nothing interesting on the walls… family photos, reproduction art, diplomas."

"How about an attorney?"

"On the wall?"

"No, Beth — an attorney… who is their attorney?"

She smiled at me and said, "You don't like it when people are smart-ass with you, do you? But you — "

"Please continue. Attorney."

She shrugged and said, "Yes, we found the name of an attorney in Bloomington, Indiana, so we'll contact him." She added, "I spoke to both sets of parents on the phone… This is the part of the job I don't like."

"Me neither."

"I talked them out of coming here. I explained that as soon as the medical examiner finished, we'd send the remains to whatever funeral home they wanted. I'll let Max tell them we may need to keep a lot of personal stuff until we, hopefully, wrap it up, go to trial, and all that." She added, "It's all so rough, you know, when you have a murder… death is bad enough. Murder is… well, hard on everyone."

"I know."

She pulled another sheet of paper toward her and said, "I made inquiries about the Spirochete with the DEA, Coast Guard, and even Customs. Interesting that they all knew this boat — they pay attention to these Formulas. Anyway, as far as everyone was concerned, the Gordons were clean. The Spirochete was never spotted in the open Atlantic as far as anyone recalls, and there was never any suspicion that the boat was engaged in smuggling; drug running, or any other illegal activity."

I nodded. "Okay." Not quite true, but not worth mentioning right now.

Beth continued, "For your information, the Formula 303 SR-1 has a draft of thirty-three inches, which will get it into reasonably shallow water. It carries eighty-eight gallons of fuel and has twin 454 cubic inch MerCruiser engines putting out 350 horsepower. It can reach speeds of seventy-five miles per hour. Cost, new, is about ninety-five thousand dollars, but this was a used one and the Gordons bought it for seventy-five thousand." She looked up from the report and said, "This is a top-of-the-line craft, much more than the Gordons could afford to buy and maintain, and more than they needed to commute — sort of like buying a Ferrari for a station car."

I said, "You've been busy."

"Yes, I have. What did you think I was doing?"

I ignored the question and said, "I think we can rule out drug running and all that. As for the Gordons buying a performance boat, it may be that they didn't need the performance on a daily basis, but they wanted the capability, just in case."

"In case of what?"

"In case they were chased."

"Who would chase them? And why?"

"I don't know." I took a cinnamon donut and bit into it. "Good. Did you make this?"

"Yes. I also made the creme-filled donuts, the eclairs, and the jelly donuts."

"I'm impressed, but the bag says Nicole's Bakery."

"You're some detective."

"Yes, ma'am. What else do you have?"

She moved some papers around and said, "I got the DA to subpoena the Gordons' phone records for the last two years."

I sat up. "Yes?"

"Well, as you'd expect, a lot of calls back home — parents, friends, relatives, and so forth — Indiana for Tom, Illinois for Judy. Lots of calls to Plum Island, service people, restaurants, and on and on. A few calls to the Peconic Historical Society, calls to Margaret Wiley, two to the Maxwell residence, one to Paul Stevens at his Connecticut home, and ten calls to you over the last twelve weeks."

"That would be about right."

"It is right. Also, about two or three calls a month to Tobin Vintners in Peconic as well as Fredric Tobin in Southold and Fredric Tobin in Peconic."

I said, "The gentleman has a house on the water in Southold and keeps an apartment at the winery, which is in Peconic."

She looked at me. "How do you know all that?"

"Because Emma — the president of the Peconic Historical Society, who just left — is a close friend of Mr. Tobin. Also, I was invited to a party at His Lordship's waterfront home tomorrow night. I think you should be there."