Death on the Mississippi (20 page)

“That's impossible! I saw Dalton's wedding ring. It was the one I gave him. You saw him on the boat. What kind of game is this? What are you trying to do to me?”

“It occurred to me that this might be very important information for Dalton. Call it interest on my debt.”

“I don't believe you. This is some kind of get-Pan game.”

“They have the evidence even after cremation.”

“You're ticked off because I told your wife we made it together. You snickering bastard, I have a death certificate. The insurance company has paid death benefits. You were the one who put everything together.”

“And now the Medical Examiner is taking it all apart.” Lyon ticked off points on his fingers. “One, the Medical Examiner attempted to match the severed finger to the hand on the cadaver. It did not fit, Pandora. It was not from the same body.”

She held both hands to her face as if obliterating his image would stop him from continuing. “They released the body to me.”

“Two: a lab analysis of the body fluids exclude Dalton.”

“They told me it was Dalton.”

“In haste, and before completion of the other tests. The Medical Examiner takes full responsibility, but claims we pressured him for results before he completed the work on the body fluids and X-ray examinations.”

“This is crazy.”

“You have to come to terms with the fact that Dalton is alive.”

She unraveled the turban and threw the towel into a corner. She shook her head until blond hair cascaded over her shoulders. A lock fell over the side of her face and partially covered one eye. Veronica Lake, Lyon thought, and wondered why such movie trivia sprang to mind. She haphazardly ran her hand through her hair. It was a transparent subterfuge to gain time.

“The body might not be his, but he could still be dead somewhere else,” she said.

“That's possible.”

“Or he could be a prisoner.”

“That too.”

“Or you could just like talking to naked ladies,” she said in one of her strange, abrupt emotional shifts.

“As a matter of fact, I find it disconcerting,” Lyon said. “I noticed that you have a good many photographs in some of those boxes. I know Dalton liked to have a picture record of his pranks … do you have any that show him hanging in a harness?”

“I don't know that trick,” she said slowly. “It might have been one he did before we met.” She crossed to a cluttered chair where she put on a rumpled white blouse and buttoned the two middle buttons. After a sly look at Lyon, she ripped open the blouse. “I'm going to scream rape in about two seconds, duck butter. You had better get your ass out of here, because when I yell, I yell loud.”

“My message was for Dalton,” Lyon said as he left the small cottage and the naked woman who looked after him with such hate in her eyes.

“She phoned the Medical Examiner's office as soon as you were out the door,” Rocco said as Lyon got into the car and leaned back against the seat cushions.

“Did she scream that I attacked her?”

“Not yet. I didn't think you were in an attacking mood this morning.”

“I'm not, but that doesn't discourage her. What did she say to the ME's office?”

“She wanted to know where in the hell he was and why the report on Dalton was changed. Naturally, no one in the office knew what she was talking about. She ended up yelling mean words at them. That little Southern lady has really got a foul mouth on her.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What now?”

“Can you radio for a car to take me to my next stop?” Lyon asked.

“While I sit here and watch her?”

“Something like that,” Lyon said. “Do you mind?”

Rocco sighed. “Does it matter?”

Rocco Herbert wondered how many years of his life had been spent sitting in cars watching for other cars, or looking at store fronts, houses of all descriptions, woods, sewer culverts, school yards, or a bunch of other strange locales. He'd had enough foresight to ask the driver of the car who picked up Lyon to bring a container of coffee and a couple of large meatball grinders. The grinders were messy to eat but helped to pass the time.

Pan Turman made several more calls to the Medical Examiner's office until the receptionist recognized her voice and hung up before the yelling began. Another call had been made to the State Police barracks, where she was informed that Norbert had taken a personal discretion day and was probably on the golf course. There were three calls to his own office, and luckily each time she was informed that he was still out in the field. Thank God for small favors, he thought. It was a wonder that his communications clerk hadn't informed her that the chief was on a surveillance of the Turman cottage at the Pincus resort.

No one had entered the cottage. He yawned and belched a regret at the grinders. It was late afternoon when Pan opened the cottage door and stepped outside. She started up the walk, and then, as if subliminally warned, retreated back inside. She had been wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and Rocco wondered what had spooked her.

At dusk he would have to move the car. His sight lines would be obscured, and it would be necessary to actually drive onto the resort property and park in the shadows of a building nearer her cottage.

The sound of the start of a powerful engine startled him. He glanced around without seeing a moving vehicle, and then snapped binoculars to his eyes. “You little bitch!” he said aloud. She had outsmarted him.

The sleek cigarette boat, with 400 horse under its long inboard canopy, darted from the pier behind the cottage and turned in a long sweep that would carry it toward the open waters of Long Island Sound. Rocco's binoculars gave him a quick glimpse of Pan, hunched intently over the controls, as she guided the powerful craft.

He should have had water backup, he thought. He pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “Damn!”

The uniformed male clerk looked at Lyon with opaque eyes. “You heard me, buddy. Three hundred thousand dollars. This ain't no bazaar, we don't bargain and haggle over price. So, take it or leave it.”

“In other words, if I kill several people and bail is set at a million dollars, and I happen to have a million, I can leave here without spending a day in jail?”

“If the judge sets bail, and you got the scratch, you walk.”

“If I hold up a convenience store,” Lyon said, “and I don't have twenty thousand for bail, I could wait in jail for a year or two until my trial.” He was answered by a cold stare that signified that the clerk divided the world into two parts, those that were either in jail, going to jail, or leaving jail; and the other half of the population who were the designated keepers.

“That's the deal, buddy. You want to make bail, or you want to talk judicial philosophy?”

“I don't have a choice.”

“Not if you want your buddy out of the slammer, you don't.”

It was another half an hour before Bobby Douglas was led into the Correction Center anteroom where Lyon waited. One half of his face was covered with a bluish-purple bruise, and a long cut ran down the other cheek. “What happened?” Lyon asked.

“I'll tell you about being in jail, Mr. Wentworth—never play Ping-Pong with seven-foot guys who hate to lose.”

Bea looked puzzled, but she automatically smiled and shook hands with Bobby Douglas. “They must have dropped your case, Bobby?” she said.

“Not yet, but the public defender says that if I plead to manslaughter, she can get me off with a seven-to-life. I can't tell you how much I appreciate Lyon putting up bail for me. I was going ape in that place.”

She looked at Lyon. “I put up my half of Nutmeg Hill,” he said in answer to her unspoken question.

“You did what?'

“I put up my half …”

“That was a rhetorical, you did what? Do you realize that if Bobby takes off, the State of Connecticut gets half the house? That means that I would share a dwelling with the Governor, who would then become my significant other.”

“Gee, Mrs. Wentworth, I'll be back as soon as I play in the Dublin Doubles,” Bobby said with a smile.

“Can't we slash his Achilles tendon?” Bea suggested.

“Put your things in the guest room at the top of the stairs,” Lyon said to Bobby.

Lyon mixed Bea a martini and poured a Dry Sack sherry for himself while Douglas took a leisurely shower and changed. “By the way,” he called to Bea on the patio, “Bobby is not allowed to leave the state, and what happened to Doctor Mellin?”

“He was retrieved by his wife about three this afternoon. She tells me that at home, she doesn't even allow him to have rum cake or use shaving lotion.”

Lyon answered the phone with one hand while gently stirring martinis with the other. Rocco succinctly told him about Pan's evasion of his surveillance, and described the speedboat in detail. Lyon thanked him and went out on the patio.

“Did you know that Dalton bought something called a cigarette boat for the resort?” Lyon asked Douglas when he came downstairs.

“Sure. He asked my advice on what sort of speedboat to get, and I suggested a couple of models. He wouldn't have any part of my ideas. He had to have something that had power. I never could figure it, that thing was too fast to pull water-skiers, much less take old ladies sight-seeing. It was better suited for shooting torpedoes at aircraft carriers than as a launch for a resort.”

“Or maybe to run cargo from a mother ship,” Bea said.

“Yeah,” Bobby agreed. “You see a lot of them in Florida, and that's exactly what they're used for.”

“Speaking of boats, Bobby,” Lyon said. “What sort of dinghy did the houseboat have?”

“It was designed to pull a launch, but he hadn't gotten one yet. There was a small runabout lashed on the roof.”

Lyon remembered the small boat stored behind the bridge. “Did it have a motor?”

“A small outboard.”

“Tell me its speed and range,” Lyon said.

“It had two hours' time with a full tank, but you could always carry a spare five gallons and increase the range. The top speed was maybe seven or eight miles an hour.”

“Interesting,” Lyon said.

“Did it ever occur to you that you are still operating without any hard information?” Bea asked.

“Pan ran,” Lyon said. “She went to warn Dalton.”

“That's ridiculous!”

“Is it?” Rocco said from the doorway. He took the small radio transmitter from his pocket and centered it on the patio table. “The message started a few minutes ago. Listen.”

They stared at the transmitter as Rocco turned the volume as high as it would go.

“I know you're out there somewhere, Wentworth. Sooner or later you will hear this and know that Prankenstein has struck again. Guess who?”

The laughter was unmistakably Dalton Turman's.

15

The message transmitted over the small receiver continued, “My only regret is that I don't have a picture of the look on your face. It was thoughtful of you to plant the bug in such an obvious place. It made this message easy to transmit. But enough, let us meet at the resort ballroom at seven tonight. I have recorded this message and it will be repeated.” The message ended, and for a few moments all they could hear was static, until it started again. “I know you're out there somewhere, Wentworth …” Rocco snapped it off.

“He's got to be kidding,” Bobby Douglas said as he lurched from his chair and rushed toward the door. Rocco grabbed his arm. “Let me go! I'm going to kill the son of a bitch!”

“There goes the family homestead,” Bea said.

“Keep this guy here,” Rocco ordered. “I've got to get down to the office and start the paperwork. It's going to take a hell of a long time just to type up the warrants.”

“Warrants for what?” Lyon asked.

“I'm going to start with page one of the felony statutes and keep going until I have a fistful of charges against Dalton. It's going to take me a while to sort it out,” Rocco said, “but all that I know is that Dalton didn't just cross over the line, he obliterated it, and I'm going to crucify him.”

Willey P. Lynch, attorney-at-law, had a physique constructed in concentric circles like the preliminary body sketches drawn by cartoonists. His head, torso, and lower body were, if not circular, at least elliptical in shape. Many years ago he had decided that his girth could not be camouflaged, and had discarded any pretense of dress that did not accentuate his proportions. His suits were dark, and he always wore a garish gold chain that looped down his vest and over the protrusion of his stomach. His complete lack of hair did not disturb the symmetry.

He considered himself the Friar Tuck of litigators, except that his mission in life was not limited to cudgels with the Sheriff of Nottingham, but to battles with all the sheriffs in all the jurisdictions. “The great defense attorneys are leaving the field of battle, and therefore we must fight harder,” he periodically announced to new associates when they joined his firm. “The Percy Foremans and the Clarence Darrowes are gone, but we shall lift the banner and carry it forward.” Sometimes the younger lawyers smiled at these remarks, in which instance their tenure was short.

Willey had never lost a criminal case in open court, although he would sometimes secretly admit to resorting to some creative plea bargaining prior to trial.

He glanced at his newest client sitting across the table in the ballroom of the Pincus resort. Willey nodded appreciatively. It was going to be an interesting case with future legal skirmishes that could be savored in anticipation. “You understand that I guarantee nothing?” he said softly to Dalton. “However, there is one small matter …”

Dalton smiled and handed the cashier's check across the table. Willey made a tiny gesture at his young associate sitting by his side who immediately took the check. “I count on your reputation,” Dalton said.