Mrs. Million (22 page)

Fleishman shook his head. “Nope.” His voice sounded weak. The Cold Rock police rarely had to deal with dead people-farm and auto accidents mostly. This was different.

Gordon looked back at Sandra and Gretchen, who were standing a few yards off. “Either of you ladies ever seen this fellow before?”

Both women took a few steps closer. “He looks like he could be a boy from the college,” Gretchen offered.

“You’ve seen him there?”

“No, no, I wouldn’t say that.”

Gordon squatted down beside the body, forcing himself to stare into the dead features, driven by the same impulse that causes a man whose car has died to open the hood and look at the engine even though he knows absolutely nothing about auto repair. The boy’s face was exceptionally smooth and waxy-looking. His eyes were pale brown, his hair blond, and he had a prominent violet-colored depression on one side of his head.

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a homicide,” Gordon said, unable to keep the pride out of his voice. In a growing community such as Cold Rock, progress was measured in strange ways. This was the first murder to occur in Cold Rock since Klaus Hopfinger gutted his wife over a bad batch of sauerkraut, and that was twelve years ago. “Blunt instrument trauma to the left temple,” Gordon elaborated. “My guess is the body was dumped upstream.”

Pleased with his analysis, Gordon stood up and brushed off the knees of his trousers even though they had not touched the ground, looked around with a smile on his face. He was hoping that someone from the Gazette would show up, get a shot of him standing by the river in his uniform running a homicide investigation. He was wondering what he should do next, how he could make the photo op last, when his cell phone started ringing.

Frowning—even though he loved to take calls on his mobile unit—Gordon lifted the phone from its holster.

“Talk to me,” he snapped. He’d seen a cop answer a phone like that in a movie once.

“Dale? This is Mary Beth Hultman. I need you to do something for me.”

Gordon licked his lips. What was she doing on his cell phone? He said, “Mary Beth? Uh, I’m kind of in the middle of something here. Got a homicide on my hands.” It felt good to say it. “Got a body in the river,” he added, hoping to prolong the sensation.

“Yes, well, I’m sure you do. But I need you to help me with something. Now.”

“A college boy, it looks like. Hit on the head and dumped.”

“Are you listening to me?” said Mary Beth.

“Like I say, I’m in the middle of something here.”

“Well you’d better get out of it. I hear you and Sheila have separated.”

“We—what? No.”

“You told Barbaraannette you were separated. I’ll bet Sheila would love to hear about that.”

Gordon’s thoughts exploded like a covey of quail.

“Dale? Are you there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I need a favor, Dale. Are you listening?”

B
ARBARAANNETTE PARKED ACROSS
the street and observed the small, mouse-colored bungalow. It was an older, well-maintained home surrounded by hydrangeas and spirea bushes. They would be beautiful come June. The attached one-car garage was probably a later addition. Several large red-clay pots topped with dead foliage crowded the front steps. The front door had been painted blue, not a color she would have chosen, but it showed that the owner cared.

She looked again at the photograph of the man in the wheelchair. Would this man paint his door blue?

When Toagie had suggested a connection between the begging letter and the threatening phone calls, Barbaraannette had been sure that if she found the source of one she would find the other. But now, looking at this unassuming little house, she feared that all she would find would be an unhappy man waiting in his wheelchair for a few free Powerball tickets. A man who had perhaps hired a blond young man to run to the Post Office for him. The poor man was probably taking a nap or sitting on the toilet. Ringing his doorbell would put him to a lot of trouble.

Of course, there was still the possibility that her original instincts would hold true, and that the house contained not only the letter writer and the phone caller, but Bobby himself. And what if it did? How would the kidnapper respond to Barbaraannette on his doorstep? Would she be in danger? Probably not, she decided, since only she could produce the money the man wanted. There was only one way to find out.

She was about to open the car door when a van rounded the corner and pulled up in front of the house and Hugh Hulke got out. Barbaraannette felt the breath leave her body. Hugh! So, Hugh was involved. Was Bobby in on it with him? No, if that were the case, Hugh would simply have claimed the reward. A second figure got out of the passenger side of the truck—Rodney Gent, followed by a third passenger. With a paranoid thrill, Barbaraannette recognized Phlox. They were all in it together, Hugh and Rodney and Phlox. But if that was true, then who had called her on the phone? And why had Phlox approached her in person? And whose house was this? As she watched the three walk up to the blue door her bewilderment coalesced into anger. Whatever they were doing, they wouldn’t get away with it. She got out of her car and started toward them.

Hugh knocked on the door. Barbaraannette paused at the curb, waiting to see who would answer. He knocked again. Rodney was peering through the garage door window.

Barbaraannette saw a curtain tremble. Someone was home, but they were not answering the door. She heard Phlox say, “This is the third to last one, Hugh honey. I think we’ve been chasin’ wild geese.”

Hugh grasped the doorknob, twisted and rattled it to no effect. “You see anything in that garage, Rod Man?”

“There’s a car in there,” Rodney said.

Barbaraannette had come up the driveway and was standing a few feet behind him. “Whose car is it?” she asked.

Phlox, standing on the front steps, stared at Barbaraannette, her mouth open in a half smile.

Hugh said, “Whoever’s name we got on the invoice, I suppose.”

“What invoice would that be?”

Hugh jerked his head around. “Jesus Christ! Where the hell did you come from?” He looked for Phlox, found her still on the stoop, laughing. His brow lowered. “I don’t see what’s so goddamn funny.”

“Neither do I,” said Barbaraannette. “What are you two doing here?”

Hugh’s eyes slid away. “Why? What are
you
doing here?”

Phlox, joining them, said, “Honey, we’re just tryin’ to find Bobby for you.”

“But what are you doing
here?”
Barbaraannette asked. “Who lives here? Is Bobby here?”

Phlox rattled a piece of paper. “A man named Gideon lives here, and all we know for sure is he drives a green Taurus.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Hugh said, “If he’s here, we claim the reward. We got here first.”

“Now, Hugh,” Phlox chided. “Don’t you go getting all mercenary on poor Barbaraannette here. I’m sure she’ll do the right thing once we find him. I mean, I brought the man all the way from Arizona, and she knows that.”

Barbaraannette said, “Who is this Gideon? And what makes you think Bobby’s here?”

“Well…there’s the car,” Phlox said. “Hugh and Rodney here saw Bobby jump into a green Taurus, so we’ve been looking up all the folks drive green Tauruses.” She held up the handful of invoices.

“And?”

“And
you’re
here,” Hugh growled. “Only nobody’s home.”

Barbaraannette was beginning to get the picture. They were all here for the same purpose but for different reasons. And Hugh was wrong about nobody being home. She had seen the curtain move. Somebody was in there, someone who wrote peculiar letters, who drove a green car, and who refused to answer the door. Should she tell them about the curtain, or let them go check out the next green car on their list? If Bobby was inside, and if these three were present when she found him, would she be obliged to pay the reward? Barbaraannette considered what might lie inside the bungalow. A crazy kidnapper who might do anything. At the moment, the money did not seem important.

She said, “Yes there is.”

“Yes there is what?” Hugh asked.

“Somebody home.”

One of the best investments ever made by the people of Cold Rock had to be the new heated fully articulated Recaro seat behind the wheel of Dale Gordon’s unmarked squad car. If not for that seat—a mere twelve hundred dollars installed—the supreme commander of the CRPD might have had to spend far more at the chiropractor getting his back adjusted. His performance would have suffered, and the good people of Cold Rock would not be enjoying the benefits of his one hundred percent commitment to the job. That was how Dale Gordon saw it, and if Mary Beth Hultman and those other City Council cheapskates raised a stink over the outlay, that is how he would explain it to them. Since getting the Recaro, he had been spending a lot more time in his car, getting out amongst the people, staying in touch with the community.

Gordon turned up the seat heater and adjusted the angle of the back. The salesman had described it perfectly: like floating on a warm breeze. It almost made doing this favor for Mary Beth Hultman a pleasure.

Actually, he didn’t mind doing it at all. He’d left Fleishman back at the crime scene to wait for the county medical examiner. He hadn’t known what to do next anyway, and the call from Mary Beth got him off the hook. He’d told Fleishman to proceed with the investigation, whatever that meant. Fleishman would figure it out, he was a bright kid.

All Mary Beth wanted him to do was drive over to this address and make sure Barbaraannette didn’t get herself in trouble. “Just be there,” she’d told him. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything foolish.” He didn’t mind. He was happy to do it.

Turning up Pine Street, sure enough, there was Barbaraannette right there in the driveway with three other people. He didn’t know the other woman, but he sure knew that Hugh and Rodney. Was that who Mary Beth had been worried about? Just for the hell of it, Dale whooped his siren, causing the four of them to jump. He rolled up to the curb and very slowly, for dramatic effect, climbed out of the squad car, hitched up his belt, and walked up the driveway.

André had been dreaming about bugs on his face, trying to brush them away, thousands of tiny crawling bugs. A man with a hammer, pounding, offering to smash the bugs. Malcolm Whitly with a hammer, banging and laughing.

He sat up, disoriented, fingers clawing his cheeks. He was on the sofa, his Chesterfield, his neck sore from being jammed up against the high arm, his cheeks itching. What had awakened him? He started for the phone, but it wasn’t ringing.

Pounding. No, it was knocking. Someone at the door. He looked past the edge of the curtain, his heart thudding. A large man wearing a down vest. Standing in the driveway were two women and another man in a down vest. André backed away from the window, now fully awake. Who were these people? Jehovah’s Witnesses? It seemed unlikely given their casual garb. Whoever or whatever they were, if he ignored them they would go away. He took a few deep breaths. Nothing to worry about. He went into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror, at his shaven cheeks, now covered with unattractive little bumps and red from scratching. His poor face. He splashed witchhazel onto a washcloth and held it to his cheeks, listening to the sound of his breath against wet fabric, waiting for the knocking to repeat itself. Were they gone? He dropped the washcloth into the sink and patted his face dry with a clean towel. They must have left. Probably just some neighbors collecting for some worthy cause. Of course. André always contributed money when they came calling. He did his part for cancer research and the Boy Scouts and to save the baby seals. He had always been a good man, and he would continue to be a good man, but from now on he would be a good and a rich man. He smiled at himself, at his pink cheeks, thinking about all the good causes he would soon be able to support.

The whoop of a police siren pierced the wall of the house and shattered André’s moment. He ran to the front window, found a gap in the curtain, looked out to see a policeman getting out of his car. The police officer walked up his driveway. André pulled the curtain out a few inches. The two women met the policeman in the middle of the driveway, then the two men sauntered over. The four of them were talking, then all of them turned around and looked right at him. André let the curtain fall back into place, realizing as he did so that he had betrayed his presence.

“Well, there’s somebody in there and that’s for sure,” said Dale Gordon. He looked at Barbaraannette. “You want me to go check it out?”

Hugh said, “I already tried it. He’s not answering the door.”

“He’ll answer for me.” Gordon hitched up his belt, making sure she saw all the tools of his trade: his cuffs, mace, flashlight, baton, service revolver, and pager all in their individual black leather holsters. The entire apparatus weighed close to twenty pounds and was damnably uncomfortable, but he loved to wear it. “So you think Bobby might be in there?” he asked Barbaraannette.

“It’s possible,” said Barbaraannette. Though she hated to admit it, she was glad that Dale Gordon had shown up.

“What makes you think so?” Gordon asked.

Barbaraannette, Hugh, and Phlox exchanged glances. “It’s complicated,” said Barbaraannette.

“You know whose house this is?”

“His name is André Gideon,” said Phlox.

Dale frowned. “Gideon?” He knew about this André Gideon. The queer professor. He knew about this André Gideon because it was part of his job to keep track of all the perverts in this town, and André had come to his attention a couple of years ago when a runaway teenager had been found living in the professor’s home. This very place, Gordon now recalled. They hadn’t been able to prove anything at the time. The professor claimed that he’d just offered the kid a place to stay, that he hadn’t known the boy was underage, and that no illegal behavior had taken place. The kid told them nothing to dispute that, he was returned safely to his parents, and no charges were filed, but Dale Gordon remembered.

André Gideon and Bobby Quinn? He couldn’t see it.

Phlox said to Barbaraannette, “I just want you all to remember who brought him all the way from Arizona.”