Characters in A Good Marriage

But after the Moore murder—and after I talked to him—he traded for a Suburban.” “Not immediately,” Darcy said with a smile. “He had that 4Runner of his well after the turn of the century.” “I know. He traded in 2004, not long before Andrea Honeycutt was murdered down Nashua way.

Darcy didn’t know him, but did know his wife, as it happened; Arlene Shrewsbury was a Knitting Knut. He talked to her in the kitchen while the EMTs first examined Bob’s body and then took it away, not knowing there was another corpse inside him.

“I know,” he said. He did, too. Her sister’s death wasn’t the reason she’d fallen in love with Bob Anderson, but his understanding of her grief had tightened the connection. Brandolyn Madsen had been struck and killed by a drunk snowmobiler while she was out cross-country skiing.

It didn’t seem likely on the face of it, she would have said Bob was as lousy at making friends as she was, but men who did such things sometimes did have accomplices. Wolves hunted in packs, after all. “Brian Delahanty,” he said. “Don’t tell me you forgot Brian.

That might get him on the road at first light, all solicitude. “You do and I’ll punch you in the eye,” she said, and was relieved when he laughed. “Charlie Frady told you that estate sale in Burlington was worth going to, and his contacts are good.

Is this 911?” She took out the box of plastic GLAD bags, the storage-size ones she used for the leftovers when they had chicken or roast beef, and pulled one from the box. “This is Darcellen Anderson, I’m calling from 24 Sugar Mill Lane, in Yarmouth! Have you got that?”

“Long before those Columbine oafs were even a twinkle in their daddies’ eyes. There were these girls that snooted us. Diane Ramadge, Laurie Swenson, Gloria Haggerty... there were a couple of others, too, but I forget their names.

Developing new interests. “Upright and sniffin the air,” she said. It was one of Bob’s favorites, and it made Donnie laugh. She loved to hear him laugh. “And Pets?” “Call her yourself and see, Donald.” “I will, I will. I always get around to it. In the meantime, thumbnail me.”

“Thanks,” he said when she brought it to the table. “Thanks very much. You’re kindness itself. Hot coffee on a cold day—what could be better? Mulled cider, maybe; I can’t think of anything else. Anyway, where was I? Oh, I know. Dwight Cheminoux. Way up in The County, this was.

According to the medical examiner, she had been dead three to five days. Scrawled across March tenth to twelfth in Darcy’s appointment book for 2004 was Bob to Fitzwilliam, Brat. George Fitzwilliam was a well-heeled client of Benson, Bacon & Anderson. Brat was her abbreviation for Brattleboro, where Fitzwilliam lived.

I used to go up there to Mickleson’s Coins, remember? You even went with me a couple of times, when Pets was at Colby. This was before George Mickleson died and his son sold off all the stock so he could go to New Zealand or somewhere.

“Long before those Columbine oafs were even a twinkle in their daddies’ eyes. There were these girls that snooted us. Diane Ramadge, Laurie Swenson, Gloria Haggerty... there were a couple of others, too, but I forget their names.

“I think we can stand the expense of a few long-distance calls,” Harry Shrewsbury said. “And listen. Do you have something you can take? Anything of a, you know, calming nature?” “Nothing like that,” she whispered. “Only Ambien.” “Then Arlene will loan you one of her Valiums,” he said.

George Fitzwilliam was a well-heeled client of Benson, Bacon & Anderson. Brat was her abbreviation for Brattleboro, where Fitzwilliam lived. An easy drive from Keene, New Hampshire. Helen Shaverstone and her son Robert had been discovered in Newrie Creek, in the town of Amesbury, on November eleventh of 2007.

When she straightened, she saw that the elderly gentleman was holding out a leather-cased identification folder. In it was a gold badge and a picture of her caller (looking quite a bit younger) on a plastic card. “Holt Ramsey,” he said, sounding apologetic about it. “State Attorney General’s Office.

In 1982, Joe Ransome hired a Portland accounting firm to help him figure out his tax situation, which had become complicated (“The kind of problem you want to have,” Darcy overheard him …

Kellie Gervais, of Keene, New Hampshire, had been discovered in the woods behind the local landfill on March fifteenth of 2004. According to the medical examiner, she had been dead three to five days.

Darcy didn’t know how much Ken Hayward had invested, but Donnie was all in the pot. That didn’t amount to such of a much in cash, but there were other things you invested when you were starting out on your own voyage. Your heart, your brains, your sense of self-worth.

“Long before those Columbine oafs were even a twinkle in their daddies’ eyes. There were these girls that snooted us. Diane Ramadge, Laurie Swenson, Gloria Haggerty... there were a couple of others, too, but I forget their names.

The top one was a Red Cross blood donor’s card belonging to someone named Marjorie Duvall. Her type was A-positive, her region New England. Darcy turned the card over and saw that Marjorie— whoever she was—had last given blood on August sixteenth of 2010. Three months ago.

Below it, in Magic Marker, Bob had printed THE HOME TEAM, 1999. The other, much newer, showed a grown-up and just-short-of-beautiful Petra standing with Michael, her fiancé, in front of a clam shack on Old Orchard Beach with their arms around each other.

Some of the other fellows invited me to lunch at that Thai place, Eastern Promises, and I almost went, but I was working the goddarn Vision Associates account—you know, the private bank I told you about?—and so I gave Monica ten bucks and told her to get me a sandwich …

- 18 - Robert Emory Anderson was laid to rest in Yarmouth’s Peace Cemetery two days later. Donnie and Petra flanked their mother as the minister talked about how a man’s life was but a season. The weather had turned cold and overcast; a chilly wind rattled the leafless branches.

“So much.” “How long were you married, Mrs. Anderson?” “Twenty-seven years,” she said. “Twenty-seven,” he marveled. “God. I am so sorry.” “So am I,” she said, and lowered her face into the dishtowel. - 18 - Robert Emory Anderson was laid to rest in Yarmouth’s Peace Cemetery two days later.

It would help if she could sleep, even a little—sleep had a way of resetting the mind—but it was out of the question. She would drift a little, then think Marjorie Duvall or Stacey Moore or (this was the worst) Robert Shaverstone, ten years old. HE DID NOT “SUFFER!”

It could be that. Nice try, but the IDs she’d found squirreled away in the garage made the idea of coincidence seem a lot less likely. Beadie’s seventh victim, the first of what the paper called “the new cycle,” had been a woman from Waterville, Maine, named Stacey Moore.

Bob was forty-nine, and still doing Cub Scouts with Stan Morin, a construction contractor who lived half a mile down the road. She thought her balding husband looked rather amusing in the khaki shorts and long brown socks he wore for the monthly Wildlife Hikes, but never said so.

And I give back to the community. That’s why I took the Town Treasurer’s job for two years, gratis. That’s why I work with Vinnie Eschler every year to put on the Halloween blood drive.” You should have asked Marjorie Duvall to give, Darcy thought. She was A-positive.