Well-Offed In Vermont Part 20

"Well, not necessarily; I just know the type. But if you feel you need to dig deeper and find out what made this guy tick, you know I'll go with you."

"Even if it means breaking and entering?"

"You had to go there, didn't you?" Nick sighed. "Yes, even if it means breaking and entering. My G.o.d, I can't believe I just said that. That's exactly what I said when you talked me into going to Guadalajara. What the h.e.l.l is wrong with me?"

"You're standing by your wife. I don't see anything wrong with that."

"Of course you don't."

Stella merely shrugged.

"Have you happened to give any thought as to how you're going to find Weston's house?"

"Josh Middleton said that Weston lived on Windsor Hill. There's only seven or eight roads in this whole town. I figure if we pick the one that leads to Windsor Hill, we'll-aha!"

Nick looked up to see a street sign that read Windsor Hill Road. "Unbelievable. If I had tried that, we'd be driving for hours."

"That's because you don't have the skills," she teased as she navigated the Smart car onto the narrow dirt road and followed it uphill.

After approximately a mile of twists and turns, they encountered a driveway marked with a white rock upon which Weston had been stenciled in bold, black letters. Given the descriptions of the Weston residence, one would have thought he had built himself a 4,000-square-foot mansion. At the end of the driveway, however, stood a brand-new, vinyl-shingled, two-story home built in the Colonial style. Surrounding it stood acre upon acre of pristine forest.

Although not large from a New York City perspective, it was quite lavish by Vermont standards. In addition to neocla.s.sical columns that flanked either side of the front door and rose to support the roof of a wide portico, and beyond the verdant front lawn outlined with shrubs and trees of varying heights, colors, and textures, the most impractical feature of the Weston residence, by local standards, was that its cathedral ceilings would have required a good deal of oil or firewood in order to retain heat during the long New England winters.

Stella parked the car outside the two-door garage and, with Nick at her side, walked along the marble-lined path to the front door. Like their farmhouse well, it had been cordoned off with yellow police tape.

"What now, Columbo?" Nick posed.

"There must be a window we can jimmy open."

"Okay, hold on. You're talking about breaking and entering again."

"Yes, why? Do you have a better idea?"

"Uh, yeah. How about we stand outside and look through the windows?"

Stella sighed in exasperation. "We'll never find anything useful that way. I'll just see if I can find a way in. If not, we'll leave, and I'll forget about the whole idea."

"Okay. But did you happen to think that the police might have taken everything pertinent to the case out of the house?"

"Yes." She stopped along the breezeway that ran between the house and, suddenly bending down, emptied a two-foot square blue recycling bin of its contents and placed it, upside down, beneath a small first-story window on the side of the house. "But what they think is pertinent and what I think is pertinent might be two different things."

"Of course." He rolled his eyes.

Stella stepped onto the recycling bin and pushed in on the metal frame of the window screen. The entire unit popped out and fell onto the blacktop driveway, spurring her to swivel her hips in a victory dance and laugh maniacally. "Maybe I missed my calling! Maybe I should have been a cat burglar!"

"Yep, you're a regular Grace Kelly."

"Grace Kelly wasn't the thief, Cary Grant was," Stella corrected as she opened the bottom sash of the window. "Okay, keep watch. I'm going in."

"I can't believe we're doing this. You have seriously lost your mind."

Stella stuck her head through the open window and found herself peering into a futuristically styled powder room. Gleaming with stainless-steel fixtures and industrial gray tile, the only concession to traditional design was an enormous vanity mirror encased in an intricately carved silver-leaf frame.

After shimmying her hips through the narrow s.p.a.ce, Stella sat on the window ledge, swung her legs inside, and jumped to the ground with a proud grin.

Let's see Miss Marple or Jessica Fletcher do that, she thought to herself before heading out of the powder room and into the pristine whiteness of the main foyer. There, much to her surprise, she discovered Nick, arms folded across his chest, waiting for her.

"What the-? How did you get in?"

Nick hiked a thumb toward the heavy, six-paneled front door. "It was unlocked. Apparently not even the cops bolt their doors around here."

"Are you serious? It was open the whole time?"

"Yep. Gotta love crime in rural areas, don't you? Some hunter could mistake us for turkeys, shoot us in the chest, and leave us to die, but, hey, at least our DVD player is safe."

"Fabulous. I know I'm relieved. I'm also ecstatic to learn that I crawled through a bathroom window for nothing."

"Eh, I don't know. You were kinda like Catherine Zeta-Jones in that thief movie-only blond, of course."

"Finally, a reference I can get behind."

"So can I-the view was quite nice. So, where are we headed?"

"Upstairs. Weston's bedroom. I figure if Weston was hiding anything, that's where we'd find it."

"No argument there, but may I remind you that Weston was a bachelor. It could be scary."

"I'll take my chances," she a.s.serted before leading the way up the bare wooden staircase. At the top, she turned right, into a medium-sized bedroom with beige walls and clean white furnishings that felt altogether too feminine and small in scale to be the lair of such a dominant personality as Allen Weston.

Turning on one heel, Stella went back into the hallway and examined the bedroom to the left of the stairs. With its imposing size, dark walls, black padded leather headboard, and graphite-colored comforter, this s.p.a.ce could most certainly be dubbed a man cave. But possibly the biggest clue to the gender of the room's primary inhabitant was the number and quant.i.ty of technological gadgets that occupied every visible surface: satellite clock radio with an iPod docking station, a white-noise generator, flat-screen television with surround sound, and a Bose audio system.

"Sweet," Nick exclaimed.

"I'll have our bedroom hooked up like this just as soon as we can move into it."

"Really?"

"Sure. Just as soon as I can hire a full-time manicurist, ma.s.seuse, and refrigerator cleaner."

"Refrigerator cleaner?"

"Why not? I don't mind vacuuming, dusting, and all the other stuff, but I truly hate cleaning the refrigerator."

"Aim high, honey."

Stella ignored him and went directly to the master bathroom's medicine cabinet. "Hmmm ..." she said aloud while taking mental inventory.

"What? Something interesting in there?"

"Oh, the usual: Tylenol, toothpaste, toothbrush, dental floss ..."

"There you go. You were looking for something positive to say about Weston, and now you have it. The guy might have been a jerk, but he was a jerk with great dental hygiene."

"Retinol cream, minoxidil, personal trimmer ..."

"He was also getting wrinkles and fighting male pattern baldness while, ironically, combating nose and ear hair." Nick's eyebrows furrowed. "d.a.m.n, how old was this guy?"

"Tums, Rolaids, Mylanta, lorazepam ..."

"Stress. And for obvious reasons: he was losing his hair, youth, hair, good looks, hair ..."

"Male enhancement cream, v.i.a.g.r.a ..."

"No, seriously, hon. How old was this guy?"

"Forty-eight," she replied without missing a beat. "Condoms ..."

"Ah, okay, so he was. .h.i.tting something younger. Good ... good."

Stella glared from around the corner of the bathroom door.

"No, no, I don't mean it that way. It was just getting kind of depressing there for a while, that's all."

"And, finally, Axe deodorant and Axe body spray."

"Axe? Maybe I should get some of that."

Stella lifted the cap of the deodorant and inhaled. "No. No, you shouldn't."

Nick took the can from Stella's hand and sniffed it. "Whew. You're right, I shouldn't."

Meanwhile, Stella had moved to Weston's closet. "Look at this. Do you see anything strange?"

"Yeah, it's all suits, dress shirts, and khakis."

"Meaning ... ?"

"Uh, Weston was a metros.e.xual?"

"That was a gimme considering the medicine cabinet. Apart from that?"

"He had a bigger wardrobe budget than you do?"

"Again, yes, but not the answer I was looking for. My first observation was that everything here is either a suit, dress shirt, or khaki. My second observation? Everything here has a designer label."

"So?"

"So, why was Weston's body found wearing a no-name flannel shirt and jeans?"

CHAPTER.

14.

THEIR SEARCH FOR the painting having turned up empty, Stella and Nick replaced the bathroom window screen at Weston's home and drove directly to Perkins in search of an AC car adapter.

The elderly clerk was once again on duty. "A what?"

"An adapter that fits into a car cigarette lighter," Nick explained.

"Nope. Can't say I have one of those."

"Can you think of anyplace else I could check?"

"There's a small electrical shop twenty miles from here."

"Great."

"But they're closed on the weekends."

Nick ran a hand through his short-cropped dark hair and sighed. "Okay, here's the deal. My wife and I bought the old Colton place-"

"Yup, I know."

"But, since we can't stay there-"

"Yup."

"We bought an air mattress and pump here, in your store-"

"Yup."

"Only to discover that-"

"Ray Johnson's place don't have electricity!" The clerk completed the sentence with a boisterous laugh.

"You knew that all along and yet you didn't say anything?"

"If I had, you wouldn't have bought the mattress."

"How neighborly of you."