FrostLine (28 page)

West of Ancram started signs for Gallatinville, which billed itself, “A Great Little Town.”

I had my doubts. Even with my windows up I could already smell A & D. A smell that got stronger and stronger until, when its barns and stock pens hove into view, I feared for the Oldsmobile's paint.

One side of the road were stock pens, crowded with large, rounded pink animals with active snouts and calculating eyes. Like a herd of Dennis Chevalleys. A nicely kept farmhouse was on the other side, a rambling building added onto over the years. It had a little front porch, and on it sat a white-haired guy in a rocker. He had a view of the pigs, and a B-B gun across his knees.

I pulled into his drive, which was bordered by a spectacular perennial garden, as good an advertisement for pig manure as one was likely to see. The wind—and I assumed they had planned it that way—blew the pig smell away from the house. Most of it.

“You the guy with the brick?”

“Left it home.”

“Lucky for your windshield.”

“I've got to ask you something. Why didn't you make a delivery you promised to Richard Butler?”

“You have driven all the way from Newbury, Connecticut to remind me of a town I never want to hear of again.”

“You're mispronouncing it. It's ‘New-brie,' like the cheese. Why didn't you deliver?”

“Do you know a state trooper named Oliver Moody?”

Ah. “Trooper Moody and I have been mortal enemies for twenty years.”

The old gent smiled. “Can you stay for dinner?”

“Thank you, but I can't. I'm under the gun. What did he do to you?”

***

When I got home an unmarked Connecticut State Police car was waiting in my drive. In it, Marian Boyce drumming her big fingers on the steering wheel and drinking coffee from a paper container.

“You win. I'll bite. Why do you want to know Trooper Moody's whereabouts between ten and one the day of the explosion?”

“I already know 'em. Come in the house, I'll make you some real coffee and trade you Trooper Moody's whereabouts for J.J. Topkis'.”

“No way,” she said, but followed me into the kitchen.

I said, “But I won't accept any Trooper Moody ‘facts' you can't back up with witnesses who were wearing clothespins on their noses.”

Marian's very pretty mouth dropped open. “You bastard.”

“Let's not be a sore loser.”

“I keep forgetting how much time you have on your hands. Tell me, do you ever sell a house?”

“Sold a cute little cape, last week. There's an even cuter one coming up right here in the borough if you'll bail out of that condo. At a price you could handle.”

“Thanks. Would that make your second sale for the year?”

“Sold the Yankee Drover in May.”

“Really?”

I said, “Trooper Moody spent those three hours that morning on traffic patrol. He pulled over A & D's fertilizer tank truck for a broken taillight, charged it was overloaded, and commanded the driver to follow him to Plainfield where he wasted an hour setting up the portable scales. It was not overweight by much, but he ticketed it anyhow and threatened to impound it if the driver didn't go straight back to New York State. Where, quote, ‘They may not care about overweight vehicles threatening the lives of law-abiding motorists.' Now, can you add anything to this that might interest me?”

“Why do you believe pig farmers with a grudge?”

“They're not exactly your average pig farmers. They sold A & D Communications for a ton in the late Eighties, became lady and gentleman farmers and bought two pigs. The rest is history. Now come on, pay up. Give me something back.”

“Why, Ben?
Why
did you want to know about Trooper Moody?”

“I'll give you a hint. The manure truck was headed to Mr. Butler's farm.”

“So?”

“It never got there.”

“I don't get what all this has to do with Trooper Moody.”

“Well, it tells me that Mr. King has probably tapped Mr. Butler's telephone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“But mainly it tells me that Trooper Moody took a bribe.”

Marian looked suddenly unfriendly. “From whom?”

“Henry King.”

“To do what?”

“To stop that truck from dumping pig manure at his party.”

“That son of a bitch.”

I figured she meant both of them.

“Mr. Butler had threatened to do something to King's party. The reason I think King tapped Butler's phone is that Ollie was waiting for the truck on the Morrisville Road. The pig guy thinks Ollie broke his brake light when he pulled him over. You know damned well King didn't bribe him with a check. But add it up and it's clear he paid Ollie to keep that truck from getting through.”

“
Goddammit
.”

“I suppose Ollie could tell himself he was bribed to
enforce
the law, as opposed to the more traditional looking the other way.”

“You think that's any different?” Marian shot back. Her father had been a Bridgeport beat cop, shot and on disability for his pains. Lord knew how he had conducted himself in a city suffering dying industry and middle-class “Abandon ship,” but Marian was as straight an arrow as Robin Hood ever fletched.

“It's not as bad as what I thought he did.”

“Which was?”

“I thought he killed Dicky.”

“Dicky killed Dicky,” she snapped back, a little too fast.

“Sure of that?”

“Positive. With his father's help.”

“Oh, get off the party line, Marian. You had to consider Ollie. Dicky's lawsuit could have got him fired.”

She gave me a bleak road cop stare. But I wasn't speeding. “It's payback time. Fair trade, not to mention gratitude for confirming Ollie's ‘alibi.'”

“What do you want?”

“What's the status of your other suspects?”

“There aren't any.”

“You're sure it wasn't somebody else.”

“Who else?” she asked with elaborate patience. “Henry King was three thousand miles away—”

“Ohhh, you were wondering about King too?”

“Of course, you jerk. We're clearing every ‘obvious' suspect Butler's lawyers would wave in our face. God, I hate amateurs.”

“Then you've looked into Josh Wiggens, who was not three thousand miles away.”

“None of your business.”

“How about Bertram Wills?”

“What about him?”

“What if he had a thing for Mrs. King?”

“I hate amateurs.”

“I just told you a lot of good stuff. Tell me, have you put any thought into Dennis and Albert Chevalley?”

“You saved me a drive to New York State. Big deal.”

“The least you could do—”

“They're your cousins, Mr. Real Estate.”

“I'm not a blood-thicker-than-water person when it comes to murder.”

“You've got a self-esteem problem, Ben. Too much of it.”

“You've got worse problems.”

“Like what?”

“While you grace my kitchen with your pretty face, Tim Hall, Mr. Butler's lawyer, is depositing in the Butler defense fund a check for twenty-five thousand dollars. Guess whose check?”

“Twenty-five
thousand.
Who can afford—you're kidding.
King
is backing Butler?”

“He wants an innocent man set free.”

“He wants me and Arnie off the case.”

“He wants me off the case, too.”

“
Too
? That ‘too' reminds me of a five-dollar hooker parking her ass on a Cadillac to improve her image. Anyway,” she confirmed Ira's gloomy prediction, “he's too late. No way we're dropping the case.”

I poured the coffee, wondering what I could pry out of her about Josh Wiggens. “You still owe me.”

Marian gnawed her lip. “Here's your payback: J.J. Topkis is not a suspect.”

“Thank you, Marian….Do you happen to know how he paid for his new chopper?”

“I'd guess drugs or the armory job. Just a guess. But his alibi on the King dam is ironclad. From midnight the night before, when he and Dicky parted company at the White Birch, until the day after the explosion, J.J. was with that welfare witch at whose residence Trooper Moody arrested him.”

“Isn't she protecting her boyfriend?”

“I let her believe she was selling him out on something else. She's pissed he gave her crabs. Speaking of which, how's it going with Ms. Devlin?”

“Huh?”

Marian showed her teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Neat thing about being an amateur detective is you get to sleep with witnesses and suspects. If
I
started sleeping with witnesses and suspects, my bosses would get real mad. You know how distrustful those old cops are. They'd think if I slept with witnesses and suspects I might get confused.”

“Cynics.”

“Of course it's probably different for a guy. Guys don't get confused. I wouldn't know. I'm not a guy. But what's to get confused if you don't have feelings—Hey! I'm a police officer. What are you doing?”

“Groping you, officer.”

“She any good?”

“Very.”

“Better than me?”

“No one's better than you.”

“You had to say that.”

“No, I mean it. You're so beautifully endowed, gun, cuffs—Ow!”

I'd completely forgotten teeth, and there was considerable heavy breathing going on before I recalled the promise I'd made to stop lurching around like this and get my life in order. Whatever hopes I had of starting up with Julia Devlin deserved a clear eye and tight focus.

“Hellooo?” said Marian. “Where'd you go?”

“Sorry. Sorry, I just got confused.”

“About what?”

“Uh. About your boyfriend.”

Marian looked at me, more than a little suspicious for breaking the rules. “You know darned well I am not playing pocket pool with
you
to hear about
my
boyfriend—Oh, no, have you really fallen for that broad?”

Before I could utter some irrevocable reply, she said, “Have you gone and gotten yourself another Rita?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. Conveniently unavailable.”

“Hey, I didn't—”

“When are you going to grab a woman who can grab back?”

I took too long forming an answer. Marian looked at her watch. “Actually, I don't have time for this anyhow. Rain check?”

“Rain check.”

She gave me a friendly goodbye squeeze. We disentangled. A gleam in her eye hinted that her boyfriend, whom she described as low maintenance—a nice former professional tennis player turned Pratt and Whitney jet-engine sales engineer—was in for a real treat tonight.

I stepped into a real cold shower.

I was closing in. I'd earned J.J. Topkis for Trooper Moody. Two for one, not bad. Particularly, if over in Frenchtown, Dennis and Albert would make it three.

“Don't jump,” a voice said.

Chapter 27

I jumped anyway—practically out of my skin—as Julia Devlin drew back the curtain.

“
Where did you come from
?”

“I stopped at Happy Hour and snuck into your guest room to nap it off—well, look at you. Do you always take cold showers?”

“Only when I'm lonely.”

She reached back to bobby-pin her hair into a bun. My bathrobe fell from her shoulders and yes, I confirmed, she had the panther musculature to be a bodyguard.

A sliver of fear was a remarkable aphrodisiac.

***

Later, in my arms, she whispered, “I have to tell you, I heard you two talking downstairs.”

“I'm….”

“I'm a little jealous. I mean I don't have any right to be….I envy you and Marian—you sounded like such good friends.”

She seemed very sad and I debated saying that she was friends with Henry King. But she touched my lips and said, “No. Don't say it. Just let's be.”

“Did you hear me say I had fallen for you?”

“You can't do that, Ben.”

I finally had my answer to Marian's question about when I was going to grab a woman who could grab back instead of chasing the uncatchable: women who weren't free to grab back couldn't break promises they couldn't make. But though the revelation was freshly minted, and straight from the heart, it sounded like death.

Dicky Butler had learned to love life. Maybe I could learn to take chances again. In fact, I suddenly felt this was my last chance. “Leave Henry,” I said. “You deserve better.”

“No I don't.”

“You do.”

“Ben, you don't know.”

“I know you're way too young for him. You're bright and special and something tells me you're ready to break out.”

“I love him, Ben.”

Wondering was one thing. Hearing it was like crashing the Olds into a tree. I must have flinched, because she reached out to comfort me. “He saved my life.”

I had heard those words before, Mrs. King uttering them lovingly to Bert Wills kneeling before her. “Saved your life?”

“Yes. He gave me purpose. A chance to make something of myself. I'm with him in everything.”

“Do you really want to play handmaid to an arrogant, unprincipled—He's a taker, Julia. That's all he'll ever be. And you're not. You can't win with him. You're an object, you're like property. He has you because he assumes he's entitled to a lovely young woman on the side. It's not love. It's power.”

“I like power.”

“For what?”

“I want it. I don't want to be helpless. I don't want to be afraid. I don't want to be dependent.”

“But you are dependent.”

“Not like my mother was.”

“Oh, come on. You're miles ahead of your poor mother.”

“Don't tell me, ‘Oh come on.' I tried it the other way. I spent years propping up a man who needed too much. It's my turn. Henry King is a great man.”

“At least you didn't say he's a good man.”

“Are you better?”

I asked myself if I was any “better” than Henry King. I wanted to take her away from him. But would I treat her better than he treated her? Better, for instance, than I had ever treated Vicky?

“Wasn't this what you meant about wasting yourself?”

This time she flinched. And I could have cut my tongue out for the pain I had flung in her face. I reached to her as she had reached to me.

“Please,” she asked. “I can't think now. Just hold me. Just let's be.”

And we were, again and again. Although she never opened her eyes.

We woke up early.

Julia left in silence.

I hurried out to Frenchtown to see whether my ridiculous cousins were murderous, too.

They were already out. So was their mom. Figuring Aunt Laura had gone shopping and wouldn't find it too amiss to discover me in her trailer claiming I'd found the door unlocked, I pried her spring lock with the flat blade of my pen knife. It wasn't much of a lock, but with Albert and Dennis in residence, she had as much to fear from thieves as a breeder of pitbulls.

I waved up the Chevalley hillside as if hailing an aunt, just in case other relatives were watching from their trailer homes, and stepped onto the wall-to-wall carpeting inside. The rain drummed on the roof. Laura Chevalley's kitchen and the living room were neat as a pin. But I could search Albert's and Dennis' little bedrooms with a backhoe and no one would notice.

Their beds were unmade, their clothing heaped strategically for third and fourth wearings. Reading material lay open on the floor, glossy magazines devoted to the female body, motorcycles, guns and Oriental weaponry, often simultaneously. Tools stood propped in corners. Towels hung from doorknobs. Mail—reminders of missed moving violation court appearances and “free introductory offer” CD club demands for payment—was scattered like a sore loser's poker hand.

None of this smelled as bad as it might have. Testament to their mother's efforts to at least keep it clean, a hypothesis supported by the absence of pizza boxes, empty beer cans, and the worst species of used sock.

Nothing I found stuffed beneath their mattresses bears telling. The shotgun and rifle collections under their beds, however, deserved life membership in the NRA. Hiding in the backs of their closets were illegal sawed-offs and some handguns they'd probably neglected to secure permits for.

The Holy Bible looked out of place on Dennis' night table. But slipped between Revelations and the Epistle of Jude was a dog-eared E.I. Du Pont pamphlet titled, “Ditching with Dynamite.”

The jacket photograph of a long line of dirt flying out of the ground like a Mohawk haircut didn't look at all like King's dam exploding. But the instructions were complete, everything from primers to blasting caps, to handling so-called safety fuse.

“Important: As soon as the fuse is lighted, the blaster should hasten to a place of safety.” (They just don't write manuals like they used to. My new Rollerblades instructions demanded, “Never skate in traffic. Observe all traffic regulations.”)
Hasten
. Copyright 1944. Very curious why Dennis had hidden Grandpa Chevalley's blasting manual in a Bible, I searched on.

The wall next to his bed was paneled with imitation walnut. I noticed a horizontal seam where there shouldn't have been, discovered a little door. I worked my knife into the crack. The paneling and the full thickness of the wall swung inward. I peered inside, thinking I'd find a stash of some sort and finding instead a portal to Albert's room.

Finished with their bedrooms, I checked the front door. Still alone, the Olds agleam in the slackening rain. I started on the living room. Here I had to be a lot more careful. It was a normal human being living room, fair-sized in the doublewide, and absolutely packed with the knick-knacks that junk shops dub collectibles, all of which were breakable.

I doubted Aunt Laura had heard of Tennessee Williams' Laura, but she could match her glass menagerie in a walk. China cats roamed her coffee table. Dog-painted plates covered the walls. Shelves were dense with Hummel-like figurines.

I went through her hutch, bright full of Fiesta Ware that might be worth more, according to a woman I knew who collected the stuff, than the entire trailer. Nothing to indicate her sons had killed Dicky Butler. The same, when I opened the glass doors of her bookcase. No more “Ditching with Dynamite” manuals, only a pristine set of the World Book Encyclopedia purchased before she had gotten to know her children well.

I closed the bookcase, stymied.

Having poked shamelessly through her personal belongings, I wondered why Aunt Laura had allowed Albert and Dennis to put the wooden end tables in her living room. Obviously, the boys themselves were not allowed in this place of pride. They had TVs in their rooms and if they wanted to watch their mother's huge color set, they did it from the hall or the kitchen door. While her tastes were not my tastes, the room had a certain consistency that the dynamite boxes seemed to violate.

They were actually pairs of boxes, stacked two-high on either side of the velvet couch. I started to remove a lamp so I could open the top. Then I noticed that the front had duct tape along the bottom edge. It made a hinge, in fact, allowing the front of the box to swing down like a door. I slipped my fingernails into the joint and started to pull, when I felt the floor move under my knees.

The rain had stopped. A heavy man had stepped into the trailer. A loud metallic clatter sounded exactly like a big-bore shotgun shell being chambered.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Dennis. Albert was behind him, still on the steps,
his
shotgun pointed skyward. Dennis'—a semi-automatic pump job—was pointed way too close in my direction.

“Hey! Dennis, don't point that gun at me.”

“What are you doing, Ben?”

“I'm looking what's inside this box,” I said.

“Ben, don't do that,” he said, and his shotgun drifted closer.

It was a little early in the morning for them to be drunk. But Albert belched and I realized that for them it was still late last night. Worse, they looked scared. What the two of them high as kites, scared, and armed might egg each other into, I didn't want to guess.

I said, “I am standing up, carefully.”

“Don't move.”

“I won't move.”

Dennis said, “Check out if he took anything.”

Albert squeezed past him, gun now pointed at the ceiling, and lumbered down the hall to the bedrooms. He came back almost immediately. “Naw, he didn't go in there.”

“So what's he doing here?”

“I don't know.”

“Let's ask him.”

“What are you doing here, Ben?”

It was difficult to see them as comical while they were holding pump shotguns.

“Guys, I really think you ought to put down the guns before somebody gets hurt.”

“You!” Dennis bellowed. “Not somebody.”

“You can't shoot me in your mom's living room. You'll mess the whole place up.”

Dennis proved a strategist. “Yeah, but what if we thought you was a burglar?”

“Your mom would still be pissed. And so would the cops. You're not allowed to shoot burglars. Come on, guys. Whatever you got in that box isn't worth killing me for.”

Albert said, “I don't want to get caught.”

“You
will
get caught,” I told them. “Count on it.”

They looked at each other, then stared at the dynamite boxes. “They'll fire us.”

“Why will they fire you?” I asked.

“They'll take back the truck,” Albert said mournfully.

“Why would they take back the truck?”

“You son of a bitch,” said Dennis. “It's all your fault.” He cocked his gun angrily and the shell he had chambered previously went flying across the room and knocked a knockoff Hummel from the shelf.

“Jesus Christ! Mom'll kill us.”

“Ben made me do it.”

“It didn't break,” I soothed. “Look! It landed on the rug. It's okay.”

“Where?”

“Rolled behind the couch,” I told them.

They lumbered into the room, crouched down on hands and knees like hippos in mud, and felt behind the couch. “Oh, no.” Dennis held up a coyly smiling fisherman's head. “It busted.”

“I misled you,” I said, engaging the safety as I picked up the shotgun he had laid on the carpet. Albert reached foolishly for it. There was no talking sense to them, so I popped him in the forehead with the muzzle, and smacked Dennis lightly on the rebound.

Then I retreated to the far side of the living room where I sat on Laura's La-Z-Boy, pointed both shotguns—safety secretly on—their way, and waited for them to accept the situation.

It took awhile. But time was on my side. Their heads hurt. Dennis was rubbing his right sideburn. Albert had a nickel-sized indentation in his forehead. Far worse, I was sure, were the hangovers closing in fast.

“Aw come on, Ben.”

“Don't ‘come on, Ben' me.”

“We was only kidding.”

“Like you were kidding when you killed Dicky?”

“Huh?”

“What?”

“Killed Dicky? Dicky Butler? We didn't kill Dicky Butler. You nuts, Ben?”

“Where were you between noon and two that day?”

“We was working.”

“Bull.”

“We was. We was. We told you, Ben.”

“I know what you told me. But I also know you were lying.”

“Ben, don't turn us in.”

“You admit you did it?”

“Did what?”

“Killed Dicky.”

“No,” they chorused.

“Then why did you lie about seeing Mr. Butler with the calf?”

“We didn't lie.”

“There was no calf. He made it up.”

“He did?”

“And you guys went along because you needed an alibi. Dennis, your face is all scabbed. Looks like somebody really did a number on you a couple of weeks ago. Dicky kick your ass, again?”

“No one kicked my ass,” he said sullenly.

“What happened? Who hit you?”

“No one.”

“Then what happened to your face?”

Albert started snickering.

“Shut up,” Dennis growled.

I pointed the shotgun at Albert. “What?”

“He was doing airbags.”

“What do you mean, ‘doing airbags'? You mean
stealing
airbags? From cars?”

“Jervises'll pay a hundred bucks for 'em. But they're kind of tricky.”

“The airbag blew up in your face?”

“Yeah, kind of—I was getting pretty good at it.”

Albert snickered, again. “He got a Allen wrench stuck in his head. I had to pull it out with pliers.”

“Come closer, Dennis—Not too close!…” I peered over the shotgun barrel. Damn. “Okay, back where you were.” The Allen wrench had left a distinctive right-angle blue scar.