Beach Wedding(39)

I smiled as I watched the first cars disembark into the shadowed old whaling town.

Because I was really finally doing this, I thought as I came down the steps and off the ramp.

I was finally reopening my dad’s old case.

It took ten minutes of winding through New London’s funky narrow streets past old brick buildings and art galleries to find the neon lights of the bar I was looking for on Green Street called Joe’s Tavern.

The joint really made pains to put the old back in old-school, I soon realized. Not only did a blast of classic Cheap Trick hit me as I pulled open its door, but the empty barstool I found a moment later was on the back wall between the restrooms and an old Wizard of Oz pinball machine someone had managed to get through a 1983 wormhole. Even the waitress who came over and asked if I wanted to see the pub grub menu had high eighties hair.

As she went off to get me one of the three-buck Schaefer cans that were being advertised, I perused the photographs on the dark wainscoting beside me. They featured a lot of sailors as well as some submarines from the base that was just across the I-95 bridge in Groton, CT. There was also a bunch of photos of some old-timey dude with a mustache who turned out to be Eugene O’Neill, the great Irish American playwright. According to one of the photo captions, he had a house outside of New London and had done a lot of drinking right here at Joe’s.

After I was done with the decor, I checked out the people. There were maybe two dozen in the tiny place, which made it pretty packed. There were college-aged kids in the rows of booths beside me, but most of the guys at the bar seemed older.

The J. Geils Band replaced Cheap Trick on the radio as the waitress brought my beer. I gave her a five and popped the top and sipped, watching the patrons glued to the BoSox-Rays game up on the TV to the left of the door.

I was three-quarters through my beer, imagining that the seasoned folks at the bar were all tortured struggling playwrights contemplating our long day’s journey into night, when I suddenly spotted a guy I hadn’t noticed before, sitting at the bar up near the door.

My can of beer made a clicking sound as I placed it on the windowsill beside me and smiled.

Because it was Darren Ross, Noah Sutton’s old limo driver, the man I had come here to see.



51

Target acquired, I thought as I watched Darren watch the game.

I’d done my homework on him from Xavier Kelsey’s folders. Ross had been sleeping in the staff apartment in the basement of the Sutton house on the night of the murder. He had been on my dad’s interview list, but like most of the staff, he had had massive amounts of legal representation from the get-go, so it was never pinned down what he may or may not have seen that night.

Xavier Kelsey’s detective agency notes about Ross said that the New London resident was a regular at the tavern and talkative. I was hoping they were right.

Each dossier contained an extensive background preliminary on each of the interview targets. It seemed like they had all been surveilled extensively, but none of them had actually been contacted. Kelsey himself, like any other good investigator, insisted on making that initial contact personally so that he could get their first crucial reactions. But he had died before he’d ever had the chance.

With that in mind, I sat and observed Darren. He was a short yet kind of tough-looking character, stocky, in a long-sleeve black T-shirt and camo shorts. He had a sharp kind of GQ sidewall-style haircut that was definitely younger than his forty-four years of age.

Darren was originally from Boston, his file said, and he had gotten the job working for the Suttons through an uncle who had worked on one of their estates in Wellesley.

Darren had left Hailey Sutton’s employ six months after the trial and seemed to have done a bunch of bouncing around after. Suspiciously expensive bouncing around. Photos posted on his Facebook wall showed him backpacking through Europe, Asia and even New Zealand. He’d lived for over a year in Bali, it said.

In 2008, he’d come back to the States and owned a small bar in Hoboken, New Jersey, for a while before it went belly-up. The lifelong bachelor had one bust, a possession with intent to sell some weed back in 2012 down in North Carolina, where his sister lived.

I thought that the best angle of attack on Darren was the implication of him making some money by talking to me. The riskier side of the appeal-to-greed approach was that the file said some of Darren’s family members still worked for the Suttons up in Beantown. Another sister of his was a lawyer attached to a Sutton law firm also in snooty Wellesley.

But what was in my favor, at least maybe, was the fact that in every workplace there are factions. Some people like the boss, some people hate him. If Darren had liked Noah and disliked Hailey, then maybe he would talk to me for that reason alone.

I stood and headed toward the bar.

I had to find out.



52

When I was finally able to sidle my way in between Darren and one of the playwrights at the bar, I saw that the Sox’s five-run deficit was in danger of ballooning now that the Rays had two on and no outs.

“Are you kidding me?” I said loudly up at the screen. “Take the guy out already! What’s the holdup?”

“Exactly,” Darren said. “Exactly.”

In addition to the beer in his hand, I saw there were a few empty shot glasses in front of him. So far, so lubricated, I thought.

“Hey? Darren?” I said as I offered him my hand. “Darren Ross?”