Nine Man's Murder (4 page)

“The wood furnace in the basement stopped working,” Carter explained. “Damien chose an updated heating system that wouldn’t clash with the decor.”

At length, the novelty of their surroundings could no longer distract them from the one unsettling issue.

“So where’s Damien?”

“Outside?”

“There’s nothing out there but snow and trees.”

“Maybe he went home,” Reeve suggested. “Perhaps this is all just a big joke.”

Carter shook his head emphatically. “No. Damien always comes here for two weeks. The second week’s not over yet.”

Bill addressed Carter in his hoarse, guttural voice. “Your brother wanted me to tell you that if he wasn’t here by supper, you should eat without him. There’s plenty of food in the kitchen.”

Enough for several days, in fact, the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator revealed.

“You’re in Aaron’s hands from here on,” Bill concluded. “I’ll be back to pick you up on Sunday. Say about noon.”

With that, Bill returned with Max to the van and drove cautiously over the wooden bridge, which shuddered fearfully under the vehicle’s weight. The van seemed to slow almost to a stop as it disappeared around a bend.

16

“S
o now what?”
Reeve asked in the parlor room, casting fitful glances at the brown wallpaper depicting the deserted wooden buildings of a Wild West ghost town.

“I knew there was something fishy about that invitation,” Hatter muttered. “Getting it at the last minute like that. Mine came just a day or two ago.”

“Mine too,” Jill said.

A general assent. They had all received invitations within the last two or three days.

“And isn’t it more than a bit odd to be told not to RSVP?” Amanda asked.

“Damien must have sent the invitations from Owen’s Reef, just before—or after—coming to Moon’s End,” Carter suggested. “No RSVP, because he wouldn’t have answered the phone, anyway.”

“I thought your brother came here to get away from everyone,” Gideon objected.

“Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now,” Reeve said. “I’m going to my room.” He consulted the room assignment chart. “Upstairs. Just past the staircase. Next to yours, Hatter.”

Reeve chose a labeled room key from the table and studied it.

“Security keys,” he observed. “Keys that can’t be duplicated.”

“The inn came with security locks,” Carter explained. “The owners didn’t want anyone duplicating the guests’ room keys. Damien broke the master key in one of the locks and never bothered replacing it—not intending to entertain guests.”

Suitcase in hand, Reeve lumbered toward the stairs. At the foot of the staircase, in the shadow of the bottom step, something on the floor arrested his progress.

“What is it?” Carter asked.

Reeve picked up the item and examined it. “A cigarette lighter.”

“Damien must have dropped it,” Jill suggested. “Guess he never gave up smoking.”

“Yes he did,” Carter replied, taking the lighter and studying it. “Years ago.”

With a shrug, he turned to Aaron, who was casting restless glances at his wristwatch.

“Why don’t you hold this until Damien arrives?” Carter placed the lighter in Aaron’s outstretched left hand. Aaron dropped the cigarette lighter into the left front pocket of his white overalls.

After checking the room assignment chart, Amanda and Hatter followed Reeve toward the staircase. Gideon, glancing at the chart, guided his wheelchair toward the corridor leading off the parlor room to the downstairs bedrooms.

“I’d better go have a look around,” Carter said. “Make sure everything’s in order. With Damien gone, I guess that puts me charge.”

Aaron peered one last time at the ornate timepiece on his right arm. A Rolex watch, Jonas noticed, inconsistent with Aaron’s blue-collar garb. Furtively donning his jacket, Aaron stole a parting glance at the remaining guests—Bryan, Jill, and Jonas—before making a stealthy departure out the front door of the inn. Jonas wondered briefly what business could be taking Aaron outside.

“Well, I guess I’ll leave you two alone,” Jonas said awkwardly, grabbing his room key and valise before departing.

Bryan shifted his weight uncomfortably once he and Jill were alone. “Look, Jill, I—”

Jill looked away and shivered. “It’s cold in here.”

“What do you want from me? What do you want me to do?”

“I want back what you took from me.”

“Every time I try to fix something, it just breaks something else.”

Jill looked down. “I’m sorry about your sister. I really am.”

Bryan fumbled with the leather cord around his neck. “I got down on my knees and begged Prissy’s forgiveness. She had no idea what I was talking about, of course.”

Jill said nothing.

“Does the wrong choice really make you a bad person?” Bryan continued. “At least I tried. I’ve kept my distance from you all these years.”

“You kept your distance even when we were together.”

When Jill left with her luggage and room key, Bryan consulted the room assignment chart. He noted his assigned room. Downstairs. Next to Jill’s.

How was he going to survive the weekend?

17

I
t was very
odd about Damien. Where had he gone? Carter was not the only one who so wondered, as he discovered when Jonas joined him in the kitchen.

“Carter, level with me,” Jonas said. “Do you have any idea where Damien is?”

“You know Damien.” Would Jonas accept that as an answer? Why was he concerned? After all, Damien could simply have driven down to Owen’s Reef for supplies. But all the supplies they’d need were already here. Of course, Jonas didn’t know that. Perhaps he was thinking about that cigarette lighter Reeve had found. Perhaps he realized what it meant: that they had not been the only visitors here.

Why did Damien have to make everything so difficult? Even when they were young. Carter had always assumed his destiny lay in accounting, as had Dad’s. Until a series of poor decisions drove Dad’s firm into the ground. Dad fell apart, relying on Mom’s support. But while Carter felt abandoned and orphaned, Damien simply stepped into Dad’s shoes. Damien had, after all, taken after their mother; it was Carter who seemed to have inherited so many of Dad’s traits.

Then Damien established the detective agency, adopting Carter, taking him under his wing. Blazing the trail for Carter: like brother, like … No, that’s not right.

None of them knew about Rodriguez. None would understand, if they did. To what does a man owe his loyalty? Family? His profession? Upholding justice, as Carter had sworn to do? Which one has the strongest claim?

The only answer to reach Carter’s ears was a faint click, like the closing of the inn’s front door. Peering from the kitchen through the billiard room, Carter caught a glimpse of Aaron making his way down the entry hall toward the stairs. The caretaker had come in from outside. His tan down jacket and white overalls appeared ruffled. What could he have been doing out there?

Carter heard the sound of Aaron’s footfalls echoing up the staircase.

* * *

R
eeve was opening
the door to his room when Amanda appeared at the top of the stairs. She stopped before him.

“Reeve, we need to talk.”

Reeve did not look at her. “Isn’t it a little late for that? Six years too late?”

“Look, I get why you’re mad at me. I do. And I don’t blame you. What I did was wrong.”

“Which part? The affair, or just walking out without a word?”

“Maybe both. It was complicated. If I could just explain—”

“What’s to explain? I’m a bodyguard for a thug, and you’re a high-class attorney—”

“I work for the city. That’s hardly high class.”

“You were raised in Beverly Hills. I was raised in a slum. Guys like me don’t end up with broads like you.”

“It had nothing to do with that, and you know it.”

“Really? Then what did it have to do with?”

Amanda had never been good at masking exasperation. “Reeve, please don’t make this harder than it has to be.”

“For who, Amanda? Me or you?”

Before Amanda could make things worse by replying, Reeve disappeared into his room. Once inside, he took the gun from his suitcase. The gun his father had given him. Good old Dad, hammering his faded green punching bag—one, two, one two—especially, Mom said, on days Reeve was not around.

Detective work was exactly the chance Reeve had needed to escape from Dad’s world. It had been easy to prove himself smart enough to enter a detective school. He’d had friends who could forge a high school diploma with no difficulty at all. Now he was a bodyguard for a powerful public figure, making better money than any of them.

Downstairs he had noticed a billiard table. Just what he needed to relax. He tossed the gun back into his suitcase, closed the lid, and opened the bedroom door.

Aaron appeared at the head of the staircase, out of breath. Now there was a bizarre one for you. Always avoiding your eyes, turning away nervously whenever you looked at him. For once, though, Aaron looked Reeve straight in the eye, unflinching. That was a first, this surprising newfound boldness.

Reeve descended the stairs and entered the billiard room. He was good at billiards. He considered himself good at many games.

* * *

B
ryan laid the
bed-pillow over the gun. Strange to think of a gun as a symbol of innocence. Yet he still recalled the excitement of purchasing his first handgun. A .357 Magnum, like the one buried under his pillow now. Innocence buried by time.

An eight-year-old boy might have felt rivalry toward his four-year-old sister, but not Bryan. He had always felt protective of Prissy. Which was why Mom, a psychiatric social worker, had felt comfortable leaving Prissy alone with Bryan when the emergency call came in that morning. Dad was at work with no time to make other arrangements, and it would only be for an hour.

It was in every newspaper in Los Angeles. The four-year-old daughter of Nathaniel West, district attorney of Los Angeles running for mayor, kidnapped two months before the election. Though half the LAPD was assigned to the case, Mom also hired a private investigator. Paul Templar.

Four days later Prissy was found. At first she seemed unharmed. But there must have been a struggle, for her head had struck something, damaging the prefrontal cortex. She was never the same after that. And it had all been Bryan’s fault. She had been his responsibility.

But that was only the beginning. Under a counter in the abandoned tobacco shop where Prissy had been held hostage, police found Prissy’s inhaler. Not only had the kidnappers known about Prissy’s asthma, but they had also provided her medication. The police found this circumstance suggestive. They obtained a warrant to search the West family home. Bryan watched as they removed from a shoebox in Mom’s closet a slice of the rope used to bind Prissy in the tobacco shop.

Every newspaper in the country carried the story. How Mom had staged the kidnapping of her own daughter two months before the election, to evoke sympathy for her husband. But with the scheme exposed, Bud Meynor, Dad’s opponent, easily won.

Mom was acquitted; but Dad, never quite sure what to believe, could not bring himself to stay with her. The day he left was the last time Bryan ever saw him. Blaming Paul Templar for the loss of her husband and her daughter’s cognitive impairment, Mom visited the detective with Dad’s gun and came within an inch of blowing off his head. She died in prison two years later.

Dad, driven by guilt and shame deeper into the bottle, had miraculously remained sober enough to learn of his wife’s fate. He followed her eighteen months later, with a drinking binge that culminated in a fatal car crash.

Four years after that, halfway through his seventeenth year, Bryan visited Paul Templar, for the sake of closure. Until Templar mentioned “the rope the police found in the shoebox in your mother’s closet.”

The media had indeed reported on the rope found in Mom’s closet. But they had never mentioned the shoebox. The police had never released that detail. The only reason Bryan knew about it was that he had seen the police find it. And he had told no one.

So how did Paul Templar know about it?

That was when Bryan learned the truth. Bud Meynor’s corrupt campaign manager, Marcus Bride, had orchestrated the kidnapping. And after Mom hired Paul Templar to find Prissy, Bride got to the private detective, offering him a huge payoff to obtain Prissy’s inhaler and plant the rope in Mom’s closet.

Unfortunately, Bryan could prove nothing. But if he could never see Templar crushed under the wheels of Justice, there was still one thing Bryan could do.

He would become a private investigator. He would build up a clientele like Napoleon forging an empire, little by little, chipping away at the foundation of Templar’s livelihood, until he drained the lifeblood from his rival’s career. He would use any means at his disposal to crush his enemy.

Bryan smoothed the pillow covering his gun.

Any means at all.