Outfoxed: An Andy Carpenter Mystery (6 page)

“What cabin is that?”

“I owned a place in Maine, way up near Belgrade Lakes. But I sold it long ago; I tried to call and tell her that, but she wasn’t answering her phone. That’s when I decided I had to escape; I was scared for her, and I panicked. Whatever she was facing, I couldn’t let her do it on her own. Not after I used her like I did.”

“So you concocted that escape plan almost in the moment?” I ask.

He smiles. “Not really. It’s a fantasy I had; probably all prisoners have it. I planned a way to do it years ago, not ever thinking that I would. This place is not exactly Alcatraz.”

“So you broke out and went looking for them,” I say.

“For her … yeah. But I was too late.”

“What were you going to do if you weren’t too late?”

“I have no idea, but I just couldn’t let her face it alone. She sounded scared to death. It was my responsibility.”

It’s amazing to me that a smart guy like him put himself in this situation because of what amounted to chivalry. Chivalry toward a woman who dumped him. “You could have come to me,” I say. “I would have helped.”

He nods. “Well, now’s your chance.”

Lenny Butler’s plan was to move into a much nicer place. Not that his Englewood house was a dump, not even close. But now he could afford more, and he saw no reason why he shouldn’t go for it.

Well, there was one reason, but it was a short-term one. A sudden sign of affluence on Lenny’s part could prove to be a detriment to his health.

They had warned him once, and he had considered himself lucky to have gotten off easily. In a way, that was a good thing: it impressed upon him the need to be more careful. And he had taken heed and conducted his business in such a manner that they would remain in the dark.

Lenny smiled just thinking of darkness. This was his favorite time of year; the clocks had just been adjusted to the point where it got dark before 5:00
P.M
. He loved the dark, literally and figuratively.

This was Tuesday, a night that Lenny conducted much of his business. He did so carefully, making sure he wasn’t followed, and meeting his clients in places that he knew to be secure. He made more money this night, and every recent Tuesday night, than he had ever made in a month holding a real job.

Real jobs were for suckers.

When he got home, they were waiting for him. He didn’t know that their names were Tony and Richie; they hadn’t told him that when they warned him the first time. He also didn’t know how they had gotten into his house, since he had an alarm system that he thought was effective. It must not have been, because Richie and Tony were sitting on his couch, smiling when they saw him enter.

“Hello, Lenny,” Richie said. “Where you been?”

They couldn’t know; there was no way they could know. So he had to assume they didn’t and bluff, because if they did know, then all was lost. “Out having a few drinks. What are you guys doing here?”

“You pay cash for those drinks?” Richie asked.

“Yeah. Twenty bucks. Why?”

“Empty your pockets on that table.”

“Come on, you guys. What’s going on? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Your pockets,” Richie said.

Panic setting in, Lenny walked to the table. They knew what he had done, and if they didn’t then it would be clear when he emptied his pockets, or they emptied them for him. He probably had six thousand in cash, way too much to explain away.

The answer was in another pocket, not the one the cash was in. He had a .22 in there, and he would kill them with it. He was opting for the lesser of two very bad evils. If he did it, his life would never be the same. He would have to start running, and might never stop.

If he didn’t do it, he would himself be killed.

That made the decision fairly easy.

Lenny walked over to the table and started to empty his pockets. Richie walked toward him while he did so, but Tony maintained his position on the couch. First Lenny emptied a pocket of some papers and change.

Then, using his body to shield what he was doing, he took out his handgun. Finger on the trigger, he turned slowly, in a manner designed not to provoke any reaction.

The bullet entered Lenny’s forehead before he had a chance to fire his weapon. It came from Tony’s gun, the sound cushioned by the silencer. He was dead before he hit the floor. He was dead before he even starting falling to the floor.

Richie finished the job of searching Lenny’s pockets, finding the money and keeping it. Tony, meanwhile, was searching the house for an appropriate weapon. He found it in Lenny’s bedroom, a baseball bat signed by a member of the New York Mets.

He brought the bat back into the room and proceeded to crush Lenny’s arms and legs with it. They could have done it while Lenny was alive, but then there would have been all that screaming. Besides, Richie and Tony were hit men, not torturers.

The bat wielding was only necessary because the word would get out about it. People would assume that it was done while Lenny was alive, and the thought of it would deter “future Lennys” from doing what he did.

But there would be others, there always were, and they would pay the same price that Lenny did.

I need to accept that what Brian is saying is true. It very well may not be, but at this point I get nowhere by questioning it. If he’s lying, if he broke out of jail and stabbed those two people to death, then I will come up empty in my investigation, and he will go down. Our only chance is if he’s telling the truth, which means there’s something out there to find.

My preliminary assumption is that the answer has to involve Starlight Systems, the company that Brian and Gerald Wright founded and built. If someone framed Brian, the likely reason I can see for doing so would have been to get him out of the company.

Starlight provides equipment that Wall Street companies needed, and that I assume helped them make barrels of money. When it comes to motivations for murder, money always ranks high up on the list. It’s on a par with sex, but without the sweating and panting.

Also, Starlight is a company that specializes in computing, and if Brian is right, then his arrest and conviction were accomplished through computer sleight of hand. That is another reason to think that the company is at the center of this whole thing.

Of course, Gerry Wright had the computer expertise and the financial incentive to put his partner away. He also appears to have been interested in Brian’s soon-to-be ex-wife. All of this gives Wright a reason to have framed Brian and gotten rid of him.

Unfortunately, that would also have given Brian a motive to kill Gerry. So Brian could well be not guilty of the embezzlement but guilty of the murders.

Ugh.

I do what I always do in these situations and call a meeting of our legal and investigative team. We’ll convene in my office tomorrow morning, so I can tell them all that I know so far, which isn’t a hell of a lot.

The thing I do first is visit the scene of the crime. I clear it with Pete Stanton, who really has no choice but to allow me in. He knows that if he doesn’t, I can have a judge order him to, and he’d look bad for refusing.

Since Ricky is in school, Laurie is able to go with me, as she always does. And as an ex-cop, she knows her way around a crime scene better than I do.

On the way there, she says, “Ricky really seems to be into football.”

I nod. “Like father, like son.”

“Today he asked me about the line on the Giants game this Sunday. I asked him if he meant offensive or defensive line.”

Uh-oh.

She continued, “But he meant the betting line.”

I don’t say anything, because in the moment nothing comes to me. I’ve got a hunch that if the moment lasted until next August, nothing would come to me.

“Andy, I don’t believe in pushing a child into a career path, but I would be unhappy to see him become a bookmaker. It would hurt his chances to become president.”

“I’ll talk to him,” I say.

“What are you going to say?”

“Trust me. I’ll take care of it.” She doesn’t look terribly trusting, so I say, “What are you worried about?”

“That the two of you will switch our vacation from Disney World to Vegas.”

We arrive at Gerry Wright’s house, and the area looks much different from the last time I was here. Then there were all kinds of police vehicles, cops everywhere, and neighbors milling about trying to get a look at what was going on. Now there is just one police car, one cop standing on the front porch, and not a neighbor to be found.

Pete has cleared the way for us to enter the house, but it probably wouldn’t have been necessary. The cop on the front porch greets Laurie like a long-lost best friend, though he sneers at me. Her former colleagues on the force cannot seem to grasp the concept that she is married to a defense attorney. It’s a shame she may never live down.

Everything about the inside of the house says luxurious living, from the clearly expensive furniture to the fine art hanging on the walls. I know zero about vases, but there’s one sitting on a stand that I would bet could be traded in for a Porsche.

This is a room that was meticulously and carefully designed; great thought must have gone into every piece, and money was no object. The kind of money represented here makes me think about Brian, Wright’s partner and former business equal, who has spent years living in a seven-by-ten-foot cement cell. Of course, at this point, given the chance, I’m sure Wright would happily trade places with him.

All of this poshness makes the bloodstains all over the floor even more incongruous than one would expect. They are still more jarring because the carpet is so white. Two people died violently in this room, but the considerate killers seemed not to have disturbed so much as an ashtray.

I always find it weird and very disconcerting to be at the spot where lives were snuffed out, but when I turn to mention something like that to Laurie, I notice that she’s not in the room. “Laurie?”

“In the kitchen,” she responds, and while I have no idea where the kitchen is, I move toward an open door, since that seems to be the direction her voice was coming from. Sure enough, my detective skills are intact, and I reach the kitchen.

Laurie is on her knees, near another open door. I walk over and see that the door is to a walk-in pantry. Plenty of people live in apartments smaller than this pantry.

“What are you doing?”

“The female victim—”

“Denise,” I say.

“Denise was hiding in here. They went and found her, and brought her into the other room, where she was killed.”

“How do you know that?”

She holds up her hands, with something apparently squeezed between her fingers. “Was she blond?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll bet she was, though it’s not her natural color. I found at least five hairs; I’d bet they grabbed her by the hair.”

“Couldn’t five hairs be there because she lived here, or spent a lot of time here? Brian is sure they were having an affair.”

“Possible, but forensics would have already picked up a lot of them. The fact that five were left behind means there were many more. And this door was open, which is not consistent with how neatly this house was kept. And look at this.”

She points to a small streak or stain of some kind on the floor.

“What is it?”

“I’d bet it’s from her shoes. She was dragged.”

“That backs up Brian’s story,” I say.

“How?”

I think Laurie knows the answer to her own question, but it’s a technique she and I have come up with, without ever acknowledging it. We get each other to talk about stuff, even when it’s obvious, because the act of discussing it seems to help us think more clearly.

“If Brian was the killer, he would have killed her where he found her. There would have been no reason to drag her in there. Especially if he was in a jealous rage.”

“Why would the killer have wanted to kill them together?” she asks.

I shrug. “Hard to know. Maybe he wanted to get information out of Wright, and he threatened to kill Denise to get him to talk.”

“Why do you think the killer used knives? To make it look like a crime of passion and set up Brian as the patsy?”

I shake my head. “Doesn’t seem possible. As far as anyone knew, he was in prison. That’s a pretty good alibi. It’s more likely he just didn’t want neighbors to hear the gunshots.” I don’t mention it, but the use of knives has troubled me because it doesn’t fit with my theory. It is not the way Petrone’s people normally operate.

We don’t talk for a couple of minutes. I’m digesting the horror of what went on in this room, and I suspect she’s doing the same.

She breaks the silence and says, “This guy is the definition of a cold-blooded killer. Not the way you think of cybercriminals, or computer nerds.”

I nod. “Let’s find him.”

It’s my turn to walk Ricky to school. Laurie and I basically alternate doing so, though she probably winds up doing it two-thirds of the time. I’m going to utilize this morning’s walk to have my talk with Ricky, and I’m a little nervous about it.

“Rick, do you know what gambling is?” is the way I start.

“Sure, it’s what you do on football. If your team wins, you win money.”

“Right, but I can also lose.”

“I know,” he says. “You lose when you take the Giants.”

“Rick, gambling is not a good thing.”

“Why not?”

“Because people can lose money that they need.”

“Do you lose money that you need?” he asks.

“No. But it’s still not a good thing.”

“Then why do you do it?”

“It’s a bad habit I picked up.” This is not going well, and it’s aggravating. The truth is I don’t bet very much on games; it’s just a way to keep me interested. But having this conversation is making me feel like Jimmy the Greek. “But you’d be better off going outside and playing sports, rather than staying inside and watching them.”

“So you can’t stop?” he asks.

“I can stop.”

“So it’s a bad thing, and you can stop, but you keep doing it?”

Mrs. Dembeck is right; this is one smart kid.

“I’ll tell you what: Let’s both stop,” I say. “No more gambling for us.”