FrostLine (23 page)

He wasn't. Working, I was told. I bought a six-pack from Matthew Jervis, who owned the dive, being among the very few of the clan without a record. Then I drove rut tracks and lumber roads for an hour or so, and finally found Abe hard at work in an open-air bodyshop chopping some poor guy's Toyota four-by.

It was a clearing in the woods about the size of a suburban backyard, littered with skeletons of cars and trucks rusting in the bug-infested sunlight. Noise from their gas-powered compressor for the air tools masked my approach and I was inside the clearing before they noticed.

Skinny teenagers ran into the trees.

Abe stood up with a resigned expression that turned to relief when he recognized me. Pushing fifty, hard, he had a Willie Nelson ponytail, the scars and broken teeth of a fearless man who'd lost more fights than he'd won, and eyes used to groping through a chemical haze. It was even money whether he remembered he owed me a favor.

While his clansmen crept back suspiciously, debating whether it was worth trying to strip my car, I asked him about his arrest.

“How late, we talking?” I asked, after we had popped a couple of Buds and established month and day.

“Hell, I don't know.”

“Midnight?”

“Yeah, midnight.”

“Newspaper said Ollie released you on your own recognizance.”

“Yeah.”

“How'd you get home?”

“Hitched.”

“Lucky he didn't lock you up.”

“Yeah, I figured I'd be sleeping in Plainfield. 'Stead he just lets me go.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

“Did he beat you up?”

“Naw. Slapped me around a little—I could tell his heart wasn't in it—confiscated my keys and sent me walkin'.”

“I wonder why?”

“You know what I think?”

“What do you think?”

“I think Ollie's gettin' old. If he weren't gonna lock me up, he shoulda kicked my ass, 'steada just letting me go. Shoulda happened, right? A man used to know he gets caught alone by Ollie Moody, he's gonna get his ass kicked. Now a man don't know if he's coming or going.”

“Where'd he go when he left you?”

“Whole goddammed world's going to hell.”

I passed him another warm beer. “Which way did Ollie go?”

“Morrisville Road.”

“East?”

East to Morris Mountain, Fox Trot, and the Butler farm. “Midnight?” I asked again, and Abe Jervis said that sounded right to him. Though it could have been one or two. Or maybe three.

***

Back in civilization, I found Connie in her rose garden. She'd fallen asleep reading the
Wall Street Journal.
My shadow crossed her as I reached for the paper and she awakened with a puzzled smile. “…Loveliest dream…Hello, Ben.”

“Like some tea?”

I brought tea pot, hot water, china, and shortbread out to her. She put down the
Journal
with an indignant snort. “I cannot understand why this otherwise excellent newspaper puts the comics on the editorial page.”

“How'd you make out with your fast-lane friends?”

Connie snorted again. “No shame. They're
proud
! Trooper Moody spiced up their lives.”

“What did they say about Ollie?”

“His usual holier-than-thou self. A bit short. Very little time spent on lectures. What did your friends report?”

“The same. Except they're not proud. They're mad as hell.”

“What's this about, Ben?”

“Trying to figure out how he spent his time that weekend.”

“I wrote it all down.”

He had been very busy in the hours between the Thursday that Mr. Butler had turned his sticks and the Saturday afternoon King's dam exploded. Twenty-seven speeding tickets in three days—how his new laser toy missed me I'll never know—six accidents, traffic control at two fires, domestic disturbances, a scuffle of teens in the Big Y parking lot, burglary investigations.

Eventually, I could account for his waking hours. Except for one long, three-hour gap between ten o'clock Saturday morning and one o'clock when he issued an octogenarian a speeding ticket on 349, fifteen minutes from the Butler farm.

Waking hours. But while normal humans being slept, Ollie could have snuck up Morris Mountain and transferred Mr. Butler's dynamite to King's dam. Then, Saturday before one, killed Dicky Butler after Josie dropped him off, and carried his body to the lake? But where had he hidden his cruiser? The big gray Ford stood out like a lion on the prowl.

I was getting nowhere.

***

Mike's Hardware was between the dry cleaner and the Big Y.

If there's a happier man in Newbury I've never met him. Mike came home from the Vietnam War with medals he'll never discuss and a GI Bill accounting degree. For years he had commuted up to Pratt and Whitney's financial office. Then one day he seized his dream and leased the old hardware store.

In the teeth of the shopping mall warehouse home centers he kept it personal. You can buy a wing nut from Mike, a single cotter pin, or three lock washers. He'll beat Ag-Way on 17-gauge deer fence wire and NAPA Auto Parts on windshield wipers, and he discounts Makita power tools. You'll pay more than elsewhere for your wheelbarrow, but it comes assembled by the scads of relatives he's got working for him, and if it won't fit in your car they'll drive it home for you. On slow mornings, after the contractors have bought their supplies, Mike can be found crouched on a stool sorting his nuts and bolts drawers, happy as Silas Marner.

Happy, at least, until I asked him about his encounter with Sergeant Marian Boyce of the Connecticut State Police. “Ben, I swear I wouldn't have told her a thing, but she found some old biddy who'd heard it too, told her I was there and heard the whole thing. Which I did. She leaned hard, she knew she had me.”

“Who was the old biddy?”

“Edna Crampton.”

“Oh, no.”

Miss Crampton had branded the English language on fifth graders' brains for forty years. Steel bear traps were slower and gentler than her mind. And her hearing was as acute as a grand jury would expect of the choir mistress of the Newbury Episcopal Church.

“Did Mr. Butler really say he would blow King's dam?”

“Among other things.”

“Like what?”

“The only thing Miss Crampton heard was the dam and that's all I'm repeating.”

“I'm trying to get him out on bail. Can you help us?”

“Trust me, man. It won't help.”

“Trust
me.
Let me decide what'll help.”

Mike reached into the five-sixteenths hex nut drawer and extracted a three-eighths that some barbarian had returned there by mistake. “If I'm the only one who heard it, it's safer with me.”

“Mike. Give us a break. We're beating the bushes for anything. What else did he say? Look, did King hear it?”

“If he didn't he was deaf.”

“Wha'd he say?”

Mike sighed. “I hope you know what you're doing, Ben.”

“If I don't, I've got Tim Hall and Ira Roth backing me up. I have client-attorney privilege. You can talk to me and it doesn't go any farther. What did you tell the detective?”

“Just that Richard Butler threatened to blow the dam.”

“What else did he threaten?”

“He told King to buy a bag of clothespins.”

“Clothespins? What for?”

“He said his party guests were going to need them.”

“Did he say why?”

“Not to King.”

“What did King say?”

“The whole damned thing was King's fault. And lousy luck. I mean how often does a farmer come in here, right? He finds what he needs in his junk pile or he makes it. So that damned day had to be the one day Richard's in here trying to buy a Swiss Army knife.”

“A Swiss Army knife? What for?”

“Dicky's birthday.”

The knife display was next to the key-cutting machine. I'd peruse it occasionally, wishing it were as exciting as it had been when I was a kid.

“He told me, first time he'd bought a birthday present in twenty years. He was really getting into it. Anyway, King's in the next aisle raving to somebody about how he's going buy his neighbor's busted-down farm for back taxes. I mean how stupid can the guy get?”

“He probably didn't realize Mr. Butler was in the next aisle.”

“Even if he didn't know Richard was listening, it's pretty dumb to go around Newbury bragging he's going to rip off his neighbor. What kind of a jerk is he? It's gotta get back to the guy you're badmouthing.”

“Apparently he's not the most diplomatic diplomat.”

“Yeah, well anyhow, Richard goes postal down the aisle, so mad he's spitting, ‘It's not for sale. Not for sale.' That's when he said he'd blow the dam.”

“What did King say?”

“He sounded kind of scared, like he believed him. He said, ‘That's a very serious threat, Butler. I should report it to the police.'” Mike plucked an offending washer and restored it to its proper place. He looked up at me, a reflective expression on his face. “Richard seemed to catch hold of himself. I thought he was going to start screaming more, but he backed down a little. Mumbled something I couldn't hear. Then he said, ‘There's more than one way to skin a cat.' That's when he told him to buy the clothespins. Came back and stood staring at the knives until King left. Just blinking at them. You know, like when a kid's trying not to cry?”

“What's the thing about the clothespins?”

Mike looked around, confirmed we were alone in nuts and bolts and whispered, “I asked him, soon as King left. ‘Richard, what's with the clothespins?' He said if worst came to worst he was going to order a tank truck of liquid pig shit and spread it on that field he leased from old Zarega. You know the field I mean?”

“Oh, yes.”

“I'm not a farmer, but I hear it really, really stinks.”

“I smelled it once. It was a long time before I ate another BLT. But who keeps pigs around here? Enough for a tank truck? That's some kind of factory operation.”

“Over in New York. Columbia County.”

An hour drive. “Do you think he meant it?”

“Sounded like he'd already talked to them. Said he just had to call and they'd send a spreader truck right to the field. He said it cost almost nothing. They're glad to get rid of the stuff.”

“What did he mean by worst comes to worst?”

“I don't know.”

“I guess it didn't. Because he didn't do it….You hear about the flies?”

“Al Bell was telling me. It must have been funny as hell, till Dicky got killed.”

“Pig manure would have been a lot worse than flies. Wonder why he changed his mind?”

***

I walked back up Church Hill, thinking I'd grab breakfast at the General Store. Ollie went by in his cruiser. When he saw me on the sidewalk, he pulled a tire-squealing U-turn and shoved the passenger door open. It was amazing how he filled the big car.

“Get in.”

Very curious, I obeyed.

Chapter 22

The trooper was wearing his mirrored sunglasses, so God knew what was churning in his brain. The new laser speed detector sat on the seat between us. A night stick was clamped within easy reach and a locked clip held a stubby shotgun. Handy for fighting his way back to his main arsenal in the trunk. It occurred to me that the UN was missing a bet dispatching mere armies to enforce the peace.

“Hear you been checking up on me.”

Excellent. I said, “You were a busy man the weekend Dicky died.”

“Why?”

“You tell me.”

“Why are you checking me out, you son of a bitch.”

“You're calling me a son of a bitch because you wonder if I've figured out where you were between ten A.M. and one P.M. that Saturday.”

The sunglasses didn't hide the tightening of his mouth.

He covered quickly. “Stay out of my face, Ben.”

“Are you saying stop asking questions?”

“I'm warning you. Stay out of my face.”

“'Cause if you are, just tell me now where you were between ten and one.”

He amazed me by answering. “Traffic control.”

“Could I see your log?”

“You get a goddammed court order you can see my log.”

“Why not save us both the trouble?”

“Why you asking? What do you want?”

Instinct said now was the time to get out of his car. I opened the door. He stomped the gas. The cruiser leaped forward, shutting the door.

I counted the fingers I'd almost lost and said, quickly, “Ira Roth and Tim Hall are also curious. They told me I was taking a chance of riling you, but I said, ‘No, Ollie surely has some perfectly legal explanation for how he spent those mystery hours.'”

“I don't owe you any explanation.”

“‘Besides,' I told them, ‘a sworn peace officer isn't about to assault a law-abiding citizen who's already turned over his meticulous notes to the two lawyers who employ him.'”

“You think you're really smart, don't you?”

“No, Ollie. I don't. But I don't think you're that stupid.”

Maybe not, but he sped up. Which reminded me that one could go wrong forgetting that Ollie was a sociopath in uniform. I had a feeling I'd just gone wrong.

The big Ford took the turns like a train on rails. We went through Frenchtown at sixty-five, passed Chevalley Enterprises, the garage where Pink fed my Oldsmobile money, and north into the woods and farms.

I had turned pretty wild as a kid around the time I realized I wasn't going to be the upstanding and proper citizen my father had been. In a small town like Newbury, “wild” meant challenging the turf controlled by the resident trooper.

Ollie had tried to tame me. I had resisted. Pain and suffering had been shared about equally and it was largely a draw. My biggest win was the time I chained the rear end of his cruiser to a large tree, with enough slack to guarantee we would stay at each other's throats forever.

“You can slow down, Ollie. I won't jump out even at thirty.”

“You sure of that?”

Scooter would headline the front page story, “‘Prominent Local Realtor Found Dead On Frenchtown Road.' ‘…Thought it was some poor deer at first,' reported Newbury's Resident State Trooper Oliver Moody. ‘Saw what was left of the face and realized it wasn't.'”

Ollie swerved onto a dirt road. After a couple miles, he slammed on the brakes. The big Ford stopped fast and straight.

“Out!”

“Let me tell you what's going on.”

“Get out!”

“I think Dicky Butler was murdered.”

“Bull. He blew himself up.”

“I think somebody blew his body up.”

“You're dreaming.”

“I'm trying to clear suspects. Obviously, you're a prime one when it comes to motive.”

I waited. He said nothing. I couldn't see a thing through his glasses.

“On the other hand, you're a police officer. I don't think you go around murdering people.”

“Well, you're right about that, Ben.”

“So what I'm saying is, help me and I'll help you clear this thing up. You're vulnerable. You help me. I'll help you.”

“Out!”

I climbed out, wishing I had the brains to run and knowing pride would stop me. Ollie outweighed me by a hundred pounds and in the long run I didn't have a chance, even if he left his stick in the car. He knew it too. He sat there, making me wait for it. It would have been nice if someone drove up, but that wasn't likely in the middle of nowhere.

“Any more questions, Ben?”

“Same question. Where were you between ten and one the Saturday Dicky got killed?”

“Traffic control,” he repeated. “Any more?”

“Yes. What makes you think I'm not going to find out?”

“When you do you're going to feel pretty stupid. Could have saved yourself a long, hot walk.”

He stomped the accelerator. The Ford threw dust and gravel and a moment later was a loud roar fading fast.

“Son of a bitch.”

***

It would have been a pleasant walk without the humidity, the heat, the swarming gnats and biting deer flies. A hat would have helped a lot. So would bug spray. I got to Chevalley Enterprises in about two hours—midmorning there hadn't been a damned car going my way—my clothes soaked with sweat, my arms tired from waving off the gnats.

Pink thought it was the funniest thing he'd heard in weeks. I got a free Diet Coke and doughnut in the customer waiting room while waiting for him to give me a lift, and had a chat with Betty Chevalley, my cousin Renny's widow, who was making a go of the business in spite of Pink's help. I asked if she were seeing anyone, yet. She told me she didn't have the time. “Besides, who's going to go out with a working mom?”

“You're a pretty cute working mom.”

She was a redhead, a Butler girl, distantly related to my client. I assured her we had high hopes and that I was heading over to the Plainfield jail to see him now. She bagged him some jelly doughnuts.

***

A sly smile started to light up the prisoner visiting room when I asked Mr. Butler about his pig manure plan. But it faded as if wind had snuffed a candle.

“Damn truck never showed.”

“Is that why you ran the cows in instead?”

“My last shot.”

He chewed mechanically on the doughnuts, polishing them off one after the other after I swore I'd had lunch on the way over. “Pig shit would have been better. Or the other thing.”

“The ‘other thing'?”

“You know. What I told you about. What you said don't repeat.”

I'd been hoping he'd forgotten.

“So now what?” he asked.

“Tim's plugging away. And I'm going around asking questions for him.” No way I'd share my Dicky-was-murdered theory. He had too many theories of his own.

“Right now, I've got an appointment to pump Detective-Sergeant Boyce.”

“Yeah, you do that.” He tucked his chin to his chest. His hair curtained his face, and he curled inside a hopeless stare.

I hurried across the street to the State Police Barracks.

Major Case Squad Detective-Sergeant Marian Boyce looked lovely through the bulletproof glass, dressed for court in a pleated skirt that brushed her knees and a loose blazer that covered her gun. “You can buy me lunch.”

“How about the Hopkins Inn?”

“Room service? I don't think you're going to feel up to it.”

We found a booth in the courthouse diner. Lunching troopers eyed us curiously. After we ordered, I said, “I'm surprised you're hungry. You look like you've had the canary special.”

“For breakfast.”

“Tell me.”

“We had a deal: You tell me what you got from Josie Jervis. If it's not smoke, I'll tell you what I got from J.J. Topkis.”

I said, “Josie told me that Dicky was too drunk Saturday morning to
walk
, much less dynamite King's dam. He'd been drinking all night.”

Marian's gray eyes complemented her basic bored-and-cynical-law-officer look. “She's trying to protect him.”

“From what? He's dead.”

“Go on.”

“You want more?”

“Damned right I want more.”

“Josie and Dicky were planning a picnic that afternoon. He was going to crash for a couple of hours and then they were driving out to the picnic rock. By the covered bridge?”

“I remember it.”

“Fondly?”

“Right up there with First Communion. Is that all you have to trade?”

“That's a lot.”

“What's it supposed to mean?”

“It casts very strong doubt on the idea that Dicky blew up the dam. And even stronger doubt on your conspiracy case against Mr. Butler.”

“Oh really?”

“If they'd teamed up Mr. Butler certainly wouldn't have left Dicky holding the dynamite.”

“You're reaching.”

“Your turn.”

“I already knew that Dicky was drunk.”

“How?”

“His drinking buddy told me.”

“Who?”

“J.J. Topkis.”

“No way! J.J. hated Dicky.”

“They shook hands and went drinking.”

“You believe Topkis?”

“I believe the witnesses I interviewed who confirmed that J.J. and Dicky were very friendly.”

I couldn't believe I was hearing this.

Marian said, “J.J. says they told each other all their secrets.”

“What did Dicky tell J.J.?”

“Dicky got downright confessional.”

“What did he confess?”

“Oh aren't we excited? Big real estate deal pending?”

“Marian.”

Marian licked her lips. “Dicky Butler told J.J. Topkis that his father—your client—taught him how to make a detonator timer out of a wristwatch.”

“What?”

“And your client also taught his son how to guarantee that the bomb squad would never find the watch.”