Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (41 page)

Steven nodded toward it. "Nothing showy, just
for home defense. But effective enough. On Thursday night, Lana went
knocking next door, supposedly with a question about the condo
association. Andrew answered her knock and started to say he didn't
really have time just then. The sight of me behind Lana, pointing our
gun at his head, seemed to change his mind. With the four of us in
the living room, his ladyfriend became quite nervous. Fortunately, I
thought to search Andrew, much as Lana just did you. And what did I
find but this revolver? Andrew wasn't very coherent—I imagine the
stress of the situation was wearing on him—but he tried to talk us
out of killing the two of them, offering us cash. It turned out to be
. . . Lana?"

"More than sixteen thousand dollars, dear."

Steven's expression was almost rueful. "When the
money didn't do the trick, the poor devil even trotted out some
cock-and-bull story about being in the Witness Protection Program?

"He was telling you the truth."

Steven squinted at me. "No."

"Yes. Dees was planted here." I turned to
Lana. “Your C.W. Realty Trust stands for 'Cooperating Witness.'
Basically, the feds own the complex."

Lana looked to her husband, who was frowning at
first, then smiling. The first I'd seen of it, his teeth tiny, like
his sister's and at the same time like a child's.

Steven's head wagged slowly. "Ironic, isn't it?"

"Ironic?"

"Yes. All the time we lived next door to him,
Andrew was lying, and we believed him. Then, as we're about to kill
him, the man tells us the truth, and we think he's lying."

Very quietly, I said, "The killings happened in
Dees' unit, then?"

"Yes. Oh, we made up our own cock-and-bull
story, telling them we had to 'get away,' so would you both please
just go upstairs into the bathroom and we'll lock the door and then
give us an hour . . ." More head wagging.

I said, "What did you tell them you had to get
away from?"

Lana broke in. "They never asked."

I turned to her.

She shrugged. "I think they were so
frightened—and also so relieved, from what you've told us, that we
weren't whoever Andrew 'cooperated' against—that they believed us
without really caring about our reasons."

Steven said, "They wanted to believe us. You
could see it in their eyes. They wanted so very much to believe that
once they were in the bathroom, we were going to let them live."

Quietly again. "But you didn't."

He got indignant. "We've never killed anyone we
didn't have to. For whatever reason, that ladyfriend started you
investigating about us, invading our privacy."

Lana said, "We're not monsters, Mr. Cuddy. We
simply love each other." An affectionate glance toward her
brother. "We always have." Then back to me with, "Only
people wouldn't think we were normal if they knew. They'd report us,
like my roommate or our parents were going to."

"Or just discover the truth," I said, "like
Yale Quentin, and maybe try to . . . use it?"

Steven shook his head. "He never got that far.
We don't gossip or pry into anyone else's life. Why can't people like
you respect our privacy as well?" Stepanian reverted to the
matter-of-fact tone. "Anyway, we sent ladyfriend into the
bathroom first, then I hit Andrew from behind with the butt of my
gun, and he stumbled against her. They both fell, Andrew unconscious.
I was on the woman before she could scream." His fingers flexed.
"I choked her. She thrashed around some, but it didn't take
long. Then I did the same to Andrew. He never even woke up."

Lana said, "And there was very little mess."

I just looked at her. If Olga Evorova hadn't retained
me, if I hadn't thought to use the "questionnaire" as
cover, if Olga hadn't confronted DiRienzi with what Steven said, "Are
you wondering why we didn't kill you as wel1?"

I turned to him. "No. You wanted to make it look
like Dees left town, and you didn't believe him about being in the
witness program. So you had every reason to think it would look odd
to have me turn up dead right after they took their 'trip.' But that
still means you had to do something with the bodies."

"Correct. Can you guess?"

"No."

"Think about it. We have to dispose of Andrew
and ladyfriend, but we don't want to go very far with them, either.
We drove the Porsche to the airport, but why not use Andrew's car for
that?"

Steven was giving me hints, so I'd play the game.
"Because the Porsche stands out."

"Yes, but you're looking at the right hand
instead of the left."

"Because the Toyota hatchback can take the
bodies more easily?"

Steven grew impatient. "And?"

The left hand, not the . . . "And because the
Toyota doesn't stand out."

The tiny-toothed smile.

I said, "You used the Porsche for the airport
because you needed a drab car like the brown Toyota for the bodies."

Still the smile.

It came to me. “The bog."

The loving wife said, "And there's plenty more
room in it, too."

I looked at her. "Won't wash, Lana. You try to
sell me on going peacefully 'to the bathroom,' I'm not going to
believe it, and the neighbors will hear any shooting."

Steven said, "I've been thinking about that,
actually. It seems that your fingerprints are nicely on our sliding
glass door. What if you slipped in because we accidentally left it
unlocked, then found you here and shot you for a burglar?"

"Sitting in your chair?"

"You slumped there after I fired, but before I
realized the intruder was you."

Given Kourmanos and Braverman finding me breaking in
next door, Boyce Hendrix and Tangela Robinette might believe that.
Because, like Dees' "running away," they'd “want" to
believe it. And they might sell the Plymouth Mills police on it, too.

I said, "One problem, Steven."

"What's that?"

"You're holding the wrong gun.”

"Wrong?"

"The revolver belonged to Dees, may be
traceable. Lana would have to be the shooter."

"Oh, that's not a problem." She came off
the arm of the chair. "I don't enjoy killing, Mr. Cuddy, but it
is my turn." Now backing toward the staircase, glancing toward
her brother, "Would this be far enough, dear?"

Raising my voice and speaking sharply, I said,
"Primo."

The sliding glass door, which I'd unlocked, whistled
open. Shots blazed from the muzzle of my Chief's Special in Zuppone's
hand as I hurled a throw pillow at Steven. Lana being closer to the
door, Primo took her first, the weapon flying from her grasp and
somersaulting through the air. Rising, Steven got off two shots, but
my pillow hitting his wrist sent them high and wild as Primo's next
bullets nailed him to the sofa like spikes driven by a sledgehammer.

My ears were ringing from the gunfire. "You hear
what they said?"

"About the swamp and all? Yeah. Look, I gotta
get out of here." Zuppone tossed the Chief's Special to me.

"Primo, thanks.”

"Don't mention it." He went back to the
glass door. "And I fucking mean that."

Moving out onto the deck, he hopped over the low
railing and was gone.
 

=25=

I know where you can find Andrew Dees."

Tangela Robinette stared at me from the front stoop
of the Stepanians' unit. Empty-handed and arms raised, I was standing
in the entrance foyer after having answered her pounding on the door.
You could see the adrenaline surge in the whites of her eyes around
the irises, and in the way she gripped her weapon, combat stance and
chest high.

Robinette said, "Lace your fingers behind your
head and tum around. Slowly."

I complied.

"All right, now walk forward till I tell you to
stop."

Again.

"Jesus Lord," said Robinette behind me.

"They're both dead as far as I can tell from a
pulse. The revolver on the dinner table is mine."

"Sit in that chair there, hands where they are."

Taking a seat, I saw her going toward the telephone.

"You might want to hear me out before calling
the locals."

Robinette hesitated. Then
she moved toward my chair, stepping carefully around Steven
Stepanian's splayed legs in front of the sofa. "Short and sweet,
Cuddy."

* * *

The police chief of Plymouth Mills was named Niebuhr,
a human bowling ball in flannel shirt, uniform pants, and anorak,
hood down. A reed-thin detective named Hertel wore a turtleneck
sweater and khaki slacks the way a scarecrow wears its waistcoat. I
stood with them at the edge of the bog. Behind us, both Robinettes,
Kira Elmendorf, and Paulie Fogerty were among maybe twenty other
people from the complex and town. The two patrol officers who had
initially responded to the scene in the Stepanians' unit held the
rubberneckers back from the action.

A big tow truck with four rear wheels was parked nose
to road, the driver playing out metal cable from the winch in the bed
of it. A town diver and a State Police one in scuba gear buddied up
on parallel ropes to enter the chocolaty water.

Niebuhr said, "I don't envy those boys this
one."

Hertel spoke from the corner of his mouth. "Cuddy,
let's have your story for the chief, huh?"

I began the version Hertel already had heard, the one
Robinette and I had agreed upon in the Stepanians' townhouse. "A
banker from Boston named Olga Evorova hired me to look into the
background of her almost-fiancé, Andrew Dees."

Niebuhr said, "Whatever happened to romance?"
then spat. "Go on."

"I figured a good way of investigating Dees
would be to visit his neighbors, using as a cover story this
fictional condo complex that was thinking of changing management
companies to the outfit that oversees Plymouth Willows here."

Hertel spit too, not quite as well as Niebuhr. "Would
have been nice to let us in on that when you started asking around."

"I saw it as harmless at the time, and it would
have been, but for the two psychos who lived next door to Andrew
Dees. Apparently my questions about their background—so I could do
the same with Dees—pushed the wrong button in their heads, and they
came to think I was investigating them somehow. So, when they
overheard Dees and Evorova arguing about me questioning his
neighbors, the Stepanians decided to protect themselves the only way
they'd learned how."

Chief Niebuhr inclined his head toward the bog. "By
killing Dees and your client."

"Right."

Hertel said, "Which the Stepanians supposedly
did already to a college girl and their own parents in Idaho."

"That's what I realized from my trip out there."

"And you flew across the country on a hunch that
maybe this couple wasn't kosher?"

"All I had to go on was a school transcript and
the bad feeling I got talking to the Stepanians themselves?

Niebuhr said, "Bad feeling?"

"They were trying so hard to be normal, Chief,
they seemed off the beam."

Hertel followed up. "And you had yourself a
second client, right? This other banker who was willing to pay the
freight for the trip."

"That's right."

One diver surfaced, looking like a bug stuck in the
icing on a birthday cake. The town guy, I thought, but it was tough
to tell.

Taking the regulator out of his mouth, he said, "We
got a vehicle."

Niebuhr said, "How can you see anything down
there?"

"You can't, Chief." The diver caught the
clamp end of the cable swung out to him by the truck driver. "But
you can feel the bumpers and tires and stuff." Then to the
driver, "When I give this three tugs, start your winch, but
really baby it." Putting the regulator back in his mouth, he
slid beneath the surface again.

"Alright," said Niebuhr to me. "I get
why you thought the Stepanians were hinky. Off the record, I went to
one of the School Committee meetings, and the guy seemed to have a
rod up his ass the whole time I was there. What I want to hear real
slow and clear, though, is why you had to do a Wild Bunch routine
back there in the condo unit."

I took a breath. "All I had was a missing client
that another client was paying me to find, and some odd things
involving the Stepanians as brother and sister in Idaho when they
were playacting at being husband and wife here. I couldn't see your
department doing anything about that beyond charging them with
incest. Especially when the only evidence about what had happened to
Evorova was a nearsighted parking-lot attendant who saw a man and a
woman leaving her neon Porsche with suitcases outside an airline
terminal in Boston."

Hertel said, "So tonight you came visiting the
Stepanians to—what, bluff them into making a confession or
something?"