Foursome (32 page)

“And the people inside can’t open the doors.”

“Right. Hydrostatic pressure, and if the windows are electric, forget winding them down. That system shorts out as soon as the car’s in the water.”

“Jesus.”

“I talked to a state police scuba guy once. He told me the cold water would seep up through the vents and the undercarriage as the car’s going down, gloves and cups and whatever starting to float around your head. Even if you had some air around your face, though, you’d lose lower body function after about three or four minutes on account of the temperature. The victims, he always finds them without their fingernails.”

“Their nails?”

“Yeah.” Gates stopped a moment. “They always break them off, trying to claw their way through the windows as the water comes up around them.”

I thought of Blanca and the other girls from the convertible and set down my fork.

Dag said, “I’m sorry, John. I guess I didn’t realize how bad that story sounds.”

I took a little beer. “It’s not the story, it’s me.”

“How do you mean?”

I gave him a very short version of the incident outside the condo building.

Gates chewed thoughtfully, then drank from his can. “I can see how the ice story could get to you, John, and I’m sorry for bringing it up. But it seems to me you had plenty of reason to kill those three, and that’s all that matters.”

“Not quite.” I stood up. “But thanks for lunch. It was great.”

Dag looked like he was going to ask me to stay, then said, “Can I run you back in the canoe?”

“No, thanks. I think the walk will do me good.”

And it did. Some.

L
YING ON MY BED
at the Marseilles Inn that Sunday afternoon, I tried to figure out what else I could do. The answer was, not much from the Maine end. I didn’t know what Steven Shea’s “secret” was, and he wasn’t about to tell me. I called DRM, on the off chance that Anna-Pia Antonelli might be there. She wasn’t, and one of Schoonmaker’s people manning the switchboard actually laughed when I asked him for her unlisted home number. He said to try back again on Monday.

I hung up and called Nancy’s home number, but got no answer. Instead of worrying over that, I dialed the Lynches downstairs in her building. Drew told me that she was catching up on some research at the district attorney’s office. I was able to reach her at her desk.

“Oh, John, how are you?”

“I’m fine. The case isn’t going so well, but I haven’t seen any sign of trouble from Las Hermanas.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“Neither did I.”

Nancy lowered her voice. “I called Area B today. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I like thinking of you thinking of me.”

“A detective named Yolanda King said she’d talked to you.”

“What’d she have to say?”

“Apparently the Anti-Gang Unit threw a net and caught everybody but the queen bee.”

“I think you’re mixing your metaphors, Nance.”

“Whatever. Lidia Quintana’s dropped out of sight.”

“They check with Calem?”

“King said they tried, but other than a car stopping at the house—I think she said of the dead sister’s boyfriend?”

“That’s right.”

“Except for a uniform knocking on the door, nothing from Calem, and no sign of Lidia there or here.”

I thought about it. “Then I’m coming back.”

“John, she knows where you live.”

“If King says the troops are all accounted for, Lidia can’t be receiving any information. Either she’s in a deep hole with the cover down tight, or she’s parked on my doorstep. Whichever it is, I can’t live my life hiding from her.”

“Well, this Lidia certainly doesn’t know about my doorstep.”

“Nancy, no.”

“John, I’ve never prosecuted any of her gang, and even if I had, she has no reason to think that I know you, much less that you’d be staying with me.”

“Look, my car—”

“So leave it five blocks away and walk to my place. The exercise should do a man your age some good.”

“Nance—”

“Or would you rather stay at some cheap motel and have me, an officer of the court, seen lurking around its darkest corners?”

I had to laugh.

Her voice lost the bantering tone. “It’s good to hear you laugh, John Francis Cuddy.”

“It’s better in person, I’m told.”

“When can I expect you?”

“About five hours from now.”

“Five? I thought it was only a four-hour drive.”

“It is, but I have at least one stop to make along the way.”

“Mr. Zachary?”

The wiry man set down the heavy maul he’d been holding as the Prelude pulled into his driveway. The house was a small saltbox on some wooded acres, a detached garage half built to the side of the gravel. I’d interrupted Zachary as he was using an old stump to support smaller-diameter log sections for splitting into stove-sized hunks.

Zachary tugged at the brown work pants he wore under a riverboat shirt and over what I’d bet were steel-toed shoes. “You the one called the wife about my ad in
Uncle Henry’s
?”

“That’s right.” I got out of the car and walked toward him. “John Cuddy.”

Zachary stropped his hand on the thigh of his pants before shaking mine. He was about thirty-five, dark-haired and clean-cut. “I’m not sure about selling a weapon on the Sabbath.”

I looked at the wood. “You need to work on the Sabbath to bring in fuel for the winter. I need to buy a gun on the Sabbath to protect me in my work.”

He looked skeptical. “What work would that be?”

I held up the Maine private investigator card, my thumb conveniently over the August expiration date.

Zachary compared the photo on the card with my face. “That’s you, all right.”

I put the card away and waited.

He made a decision. “Stay right here.”

Zachary walked briskly into the house. When he came out a minute later, he was carrying in his palm something wrapped in cloth. Behind him, a woman stood at the front door, watching us.

When the man reached me, he pulled on the string that crossed over the package like a bakery box. Then he delicately unfolded the wrapping.

Zachary said, “Go ahead, heft her.”

It was a Chiefs Special Airweight, the aluminum dull, the walnut handle a little nicked. Using the release button on the lefthand side, I swung out the cylinder. Empty.

He said, “I don’t have any ammunition for her.”

“That’s all right. You know how old it is?”

“The wife’s father bought her new back in ’sixty-eight, when he moved down to Portland.”

I examined the chambers and barrel. “Any idea how many rounds have been through it?”

“No, but I don’t think many. He had her for protection in his night table. When he died, we found her there. Too light for my taste, so I’ve never shot her.”

I closed the cylinder. Pointing at the ground, I dry-fired five times. Everything seemed to work right.

I said, “I have some ammunition with me. I’d like to try a few bullets.”

Zachary seemed nervous. “On the Sabbath?”

“You wouldn’t buy a used car without test-driving it, would you?”

He looked around his yard. “Where?”

I picked up a flat-faced piece of split wood and set it down upright against a big hemlock beside the unfinished part of the garage. I stepped back twenty feet and reached into my pocket. Coming out with three bullets, I opened the cylinder, slipped them into the chambers, and closed the cylinder again.

“Mr. Zachary, could you move back a little, please?”

He did.

I held the gun in a combat stance, pushed the rising memory of Blanca and her friends from my mind, and fired one round single-action, the other two double-action. The piece of wood shuddered three times against the hemlock.

I opened the cylinder and ejected the shells, putting the casings back in my pocket. “I’ll give you two hundred for it.”

Zachary got indignant. “My ad said two-fifty.”

“Two hundred cash. Today, right now.”

“Seems low.”

“Mr. Zachary, there were two other handguns in
Uncle Henry’s
that’d suit me just fine. I called them, too, but I stopped here first because you were the closest. If I have to drive to them, I won’t be back.”

He wet his lips. “Lumber to finish the garage’ll cost near four hundred. That’s why we’re selling the gun.”

“Take my two hundred, and you’re halfway there.”

Zachary looked at me hard, then turned toward the figure in the doorway. He held up two fingers to her. She nodded vigorously.

Zachary returned to me. “Done.”

More than three hours later, I left the car at a parking lot near South Station and waited for the irregular Sunday night bus. I took it a couple of miles down Summer Street to the stop on L Street past Nancy’s corner. Then I walked back, a baseball cap down to my ears and an old fatigue shirt over the chambray one, the Airweight like a bulky stone in the side pocket of my chinos.

I made a pretty easy target, but nobody tried me.

After ringing the bell, I heard Nancy loping down the interior stairs. She opened the door for me with a dish towel draped over one arm down past the hand and a blue turtleneck over white tennis shorts as the leisure outfit.

I looked down at the towel, picturing a snub-nosed revolver with a little scored button atop the shrouded hammer. “The Bodyguard.”

“Yes.” She kept her smile in place. “Despite the fervent hope that I won’t have to use it.”

As we climbed the steps, Drew Lynch stood outside the second-floor door, a large-caliber revolver in his right hand, the long barrel lying against his right thigh. He nodded to us and went back into his place.

I said, “He’s been watching out his window, right?”

“I called him from the office, only to find out you’d already checked on me with him. That was good of you, John.”

Nancy opened the door to her apartment, Renfield’s back claws clicking on the linoleum as the rear legs churned like the linkage arms on a locomotive.

“He’s glad to see you, too, John.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

“Oh, come on now. You know you love him.”

I bent down to tickle Renfield behind the ears. “Anything more on Lidia since this afternoon?”

“It’s Sunday, remember? Everybody rests sometime.”

I suddenly realized how tired I was, partly from the hiking that morning and the drive that afternoon.

Nancy said, “I have marinated country spareribs in the broiler.”

I stood back up. Moving forward, I closed my arms around her. “Can they wait?”

A sly grin toyed with me. “I started the ribs because I thought you’d be too weary.”

“I was thinking of a nap, Nance. Just a plain, real nap.”

The grin lost its slyness. “Only if I get to tuck you in.”

The next morning, I waited until Nancy left for work, watching her walk safely to her car. Then I got on her phone.

A regular receptionist at DRM put me through to Antonelli’s office, but her secretary said she was out of the office until noon. I didn’t leave a message.

Dead end on Shea’s secret, at least until after lunch. “Dead end” reminded me of the cul-de-sac in Calem. When you’re blocked off, sometimes it helps to go back out the way you came, maybe see or hear something you missed the first time. I defrosted a couple of English muffins for breakfast, then cleaned up and found a fresh shirt I’d left at Nancy’s. Without benefit of disguise, I made my way to the bus stop, rattled with six other people and a surly driver for three miles, and redeemed the Prelude for just under the national debt of Chile.

I made one pass on the cross street before the cul-de-sac. Everything looked the way it had the prior week except for one thing. Hub Vandemeer’s candy-apple convertible sat in his dead brother’s driveway, the chrome bulb of the trailer hitch thumbing its nose toward the sidewalk. The kind of hitch you might use for towing a boat, come to think of it.

Parking a block away, I decided to try Mrs. Epps before Nicky and his uncle. It was a good decision.

She answered her door right away, letting me in this time without even asking for the password. The pale blue dress was almost identical to the first one I’d seen her wearing.

The eyes fixed on me. “I trust this is somehow important?”

“It could be. How long has that red convertible been in your neighbor’s driveway?”

“I don’t keep a journal of such things.”

“Ballpark.”

“Perhaps since some time on Saturday.”

“Saturday.”

“Yes. As in two days ago.”

“Did you see who drove up in it?”

“No. I have better things—”

“Anyone used it since?”

Epps didn’t like being interrupted, and let me know it by taking her time answering my last question.

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“Have you seen anyone else around the house?”

“The Vandemeer house?”

“Yes.”

A slight smile. “No.”

I looked at her. “What question should I be asking you, Mrs. Epps?”

The smile grew bigger but colder. “There is more than one house within sight.”

“My client’s place.”

Nothing from her.

I said, “Have you seen anyone around the Shea house?”

Epps let the smile take over her face. “Yes, as a matter of fact I have.”

“Who?”

“The house-sitter.”

“House-sitter?”

“Yes. She introduced herself to me, said Steven Shea had hired her to look after things.”

“Can you describe her?”

“Spanish girl, quite tall, in one of those ghastly parochial school uniforms.”

Here we go. “She have a scar on the left side of her face?”

“Rather a prominent one.”

“All right if I use your phone?”

That terminated the smile. “I trust for only a
local
call.”

H
ALF AN HOUR LATER
, I walked up the path to the Vandemeer house, just putting one foot in front of the other and keeping myself from glancing at the picture window. Instead of even trying the bell, I started banging on the door. When it opened partway, I bulled through it, my hand lingering on the lock plate before closing the door behind me.

Nicky Vandemeer faced me, empty-handed, in jeans and the U2 sweatshirt. The first time I’d met him he’d seemed cool and confident. Now he looked strung out, his color bad, the hair matted instead of just mussed.