No Stone Unturned (37 page)

I put my soda down on the counter in the bathroom and promptly knocked it over into the sink. At least the bottle didn’t break. I rinsed the soda down the drain, opened the bathroom door wide, then went around back to put Julio’s statements to the test. Could what he had described truly be seen from that window? He hadn’t lied; I could see the bathroom, the lower third of the bed, but not the outside door. If Jordan had been murdered on the bed, as I suspected, then Julio’s camera probably wouldn’t have captured it, presuming he had placed it on the sill and pointed it through the louvered bathroom window in the first place. Even if the film existed, even if I found it, what would it show: Jordan’s bare legs kicking as someone off camera broke her neck and sliced a piece of skin out of her pelvis?

I came back around to the front of the motel and closed room 4. Drawing a deep sigh, I scanned the grounds, wondering if there might not be some forgotten corner we had all missed. I slid three more nickels into the machine and retrieved another soda before setting out into the woods in search of Jordan’s clothes, the postulated film shot by Julio, anything.

There were millions of wet leaves well on their way to decomposition, and there was mud, but little else. I tramped through the northern extreme of Wentworth’s Woods for about twenty minutes and was circling back toward the motel when I heard a car rolling over the gravel in the parking lot. I picked up my pace, careful, however, not to make any noise. My caution slowed me down, and I didn’t emerge from the brush until it was too late. But I did see Julio Hernandez at the wheel of an old, red Chrysler, burning rubber as he raced from the parking lot onto Route 40.

I made a brief and vain effort to run after him, giving up well before I had reached the huge, wooden Indian. I returned at a gallop to the motel and examined the tire tracks in the gravel. It was clear Julio had pulled into the space just in front of the registration office, and he hadn’t stayed long. He had left the engine running; I could see the sooty smudge left in the gravel by the belching exhaust pipe. I crawled on my hands and knees for several minutes, combing the gravel for an oil spot below where the engine had been idling. Nothing. It was uncanny. I had looked under every car I had come across for the past week and a half and had found no oil spots anywhere. The leaking crankcase was a phantom.

I brushed off my hands and checked the registration-office door. Julio hadn’t opened it, that much was sure, since the seal Frank Olney had placed on the door after the burglary was intact. By all appearances, the other doors hadn’t been touched, either, since the scuff marks left by Julio’s shoes were all bunched together in the vicinity of the office door.

I stepped back to think. What had Julio been looking for? The only explanation I could imagine was that he had hoped to get inside, saw the seal, and thought better of it.

As I considered Julio’s strange visit, I heard a car approach. It was Halvey, but he wasn’t alone. Surly-faced, slumping handcuffed against the door in the backseat, sat Julio Hernandez.

“I was coming back to get you when I saw him pull out of here like a bat out of hell,” explained the deputy. “I knew the sheriff didn’t want anyone snooping around up here, so I chased him down. Imagine my surprise to find the Puerto Rican at the wheel.”

“Did he have anything on him?” I asked, peering past the deputy at the youth in the cruiser.

“Naw. Just his keys.”

“Nothing else?”

Halvey shrugged. “Seventy-five cents.”

“Can I see the keys?” I asked.

“Have a look,” he said, pulling a key ring out of his pocket. “Two for his car, and this other one.” He showed me a long, thin, silver key unlike any one I’d ever seen. “I don’t know what it fits.”

“Obviously not any of these doors,” I said, handing the keys back to Halvey. “You radio Frank?”

“He’s on his way. He wanted you to wait here for him; says that guy he went to pick up checked out of the motel. He ain’t found him yet.”

Frank Olney arrived a few minutes later with two county cruisers on his tail. He climbed out of his car, hitched up his belt, and sauntered over to Halvey and me.

“What do you say, now, Ellie?” he asked. “Maybe the DA was a little too quick to spring Julio? Good thing we held Jean Trent on the obstruction charge. Course that won’t stick, but she busted my chops a little too hard and deserved it.”

“He was looking for something, Frank,” I said. “That doesn’t mean he’s guilty of murder.”

The sheriff waved a dismissive hand at me. “Halvey tell you that Indian guy checked out? I talked to the manager, and he told me what his car looks like. We’ll find him.”

Frank Olney questioned Julio for the next hour, trying to grill a confession out of him, while his deputies went through every room of the motel looking for evidence of tampering. The DA arrived a little later, interrogated the suspect, then held a private powwow with the sheriff.

“What do you think, Ellie?” asked the Thin Man, once he and the sheriff had finished. “You saw him tear out of here, right?”

“He couldn’t have been here for more than thirty, forty-five seconds, Don. I was off in the woods, over there,” I pointed for their benefit. “Then I heard a car, so I ran back. By the time I got to the parking lot, he was pulling out onto Route Forty.”

“Your boys find anything on him or in the car?” the DA asked Frank.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t think we can hold him, Frank,” said the DA. “In fact, I’d advise you to let him go and put a tail on him. He seems nervous about something. Maybe Ellie’s right; maybe he came up here to find something of value.”

“Pictures?” asked the sheriff. “Come off it, Don. There’s no pictures. Besides, we know he didn’t go inside. Maybe he was pining for the old days with Jean Trent.”

“I advise you not to arrest him, Frank. Take him in for questioning, but face it: he didn’t break the law here. He didn’t even break the seal on the door.”

The DA offered me a ride back to town, and I accepted without volunteering to return the motel keys to Frank Olney or Pat Halvey. No one asked. The Thin Man dropped me off at Ornuti’s, where my car was up on the lift.

“How does it look?” I asked. “Brakes still work?”

Vinnie Donati pulled his black hands from underneath the Dodge and wiped his sweaty brow.

“It ain’t your brakes, Ellie,” he said. “Alternator’s busted. I’m waiting for a rebuilt one from Freeman’s Auto Supply, so I don’t know if I’ll finish this today.”

I have the worst luck with cars.

“Don’t you have a new alternator you can put in there?” I asked.

“Nope. But keep your shirt on; I’ll give you a loaner in the meantime. Give me a couple of minutes.”

While Vinnie disappeared inside, I phoned Benny Arnold again from the phone booth outside.

“What’s this all about, Ellie?” he asked eagerly. “Some kind of international intrigue? The car is registered to the Indian consulate,” he explained. “I made some calls to a guy I know in the lower Manhattan DMV, and he helped me out. Said the car is assigned to the New York Consul General—a guy named P. V. Singh. Ring a bell?”

“Loud and clear,” I said, sure it was Roy’s father.

“So do you still find me too unattractive for a date?”

A few minutes later, Vinnie handed me a set of keys and pointed to an old, green Studebaker across the lot. It started, and I drove away happily. I stopped by Fiorello’s and found Fadge gazing up at the television. The after-school run on penny candy had subsided, and business was in its usual late-afternoon lull. I asked for an aspirin and washed it down with some carbonated water.

“At least your black eyes are fading,” he said.

“Makeup,” I explained.

He asked me how the investigation was going, and I described the day’s events: Roy and Julio.

“I thought you promised to take it easy.”

“I lied.”

“So who do you think did it? My vote’s for the Indian guy.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But if it is Roy, how do I prove it?”

When Roy disappeared from the Leatherstocking, I could only hope he would fall for my bluff, that he believed I had what he was looking for. I spent Wednesday evening at home. Nothing to drink. Something about the concussion had put a damper on my thirst. Instead, I hand washed some unmentionables, polished off several crossword puzzles, and waited for a phone call. Roy knew where to find me.

Charlie Reese called a little past eight to see how I was feeling. It was plain by his tone that there was something else on his mind, and I pinned him down on it.

“It’s Artie Short,” he said finally. “He wants to know when you’re coming back to work.”

“I was hoping to finish up this Shaw murder first.”

“Artie says it’s George’s story now. He got a big scoop the other night, you know. Someone called and gave him that big tip about missing evidence and pictures of the murder. You had a hunch about that, but he broke the story. He’s the golden boy again.”

I kept my mouth shut; despite my friendship with Charlie Reese, I couldn’t admit that I was the source of George Walsh’s phony information.

“Then why does Artie care if I come back tomorrow or next Monday?” I asked.

“Because we’ve got other news to cover, Ellie. He gave me an ultimatum. He said either you’re in the saddle Friday morning or you’re fired.”

“Doesn’t he know I just fell down a hill?” I asked, ashamed of myself, but in for a penny . . .

“He doesn’t know and wouldn’t care if he did.”

“Can’t you fix it for me, Charlie? Just a couple of days more.”

“Not this time. He means it.”

“I don’t have much of anything else besides this job, and I want to keep it. I like it. But I’ve got to see this Shaw story through to the end.”

“So what do I tell him?”

I thought a moment. “Tell him he’ll have his answer Friday morning.”

There was no time to wait around for a phone call from Roy. If he was still in the area, I would have to find him in one of the twenty or so motels in the valley. I grabbed the Yellow Pages and headed out into the cool, December night.

The AAA Motor Lodge, the Valley View, and the Sleepy Dutchman were inside city limits. The Pale Moon, the Half Moon, the Traveler’s Inn, and Georgette’s Lodge were west of town. The most fertile area was north and east of New Holland, where I quizzed a dozen innkeepers at such establishments as the Hayseed, the Route 5 Motel, the Adirondack Inn, and the Poole Hotel and Grill. No foreigners, no diplomatic plates.

It was after ten thirty when I threw the Studebaker into park in front of Fiorello’s. Fadge was alone inside, broom in hand, sitting on a stool and watching a werewolf movie on television.

“Say, Ellie, what am I, your social secretary?” he asked. “Your editor leaves messages, your boyfriends, the sheriff . . . And now some guy was looking for you about an hour ago.”

“An Indian guy?” I asked. “Beard and turban?”

“No, he sounded English, I think. I asked if he wanted to leave a message, but he said he’d find you later.”

“What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. Slim, about forty, forty-five. He was driving a light-colored car.”

“Is this him?” I asked, producing the photo of Jordan in India.