Wicked Fix (20 page)

the equivalent of being a bank teller. Instead of listening

to my financial advice, he preferred to have his

stock accounts churned by a sweaty-palmed guy in a

cubicle somewhere out in East Omaha.

But Ellie and I had nosed rather thoroughly into

Eastport troubles, before--with, I might add, good results

--and although Victor had never indicated approval,

apparently he had noticed.

"Here goes." Bennet began reading, paraphrasing

as he went: "Death due to major hemorrhage, ligature

marks on the ankles, at least one sedative plus alcohol

in the blood. Details aren't in yet, so we don't know

what kind of drug it was."

So that was how someone had gotten Reuben up

on that gate: he'd been alive, all right. But maybe not

kicking. Which meant it would have been taken less

physical power than I'd envisioned.

"No blood on Victor," Bennet went on, "which

isn't so good. Seeing as he'd spent the previous evening

treating an injury from a bar brawl."

"Well, but that's reasonable. He would wash.

Victor washes if anybody looks at him cross-eyed, and

that wound he'd stitched up was pretty bloody."

"That's not how you'd play it if you were the prosecutor,

though. Could be the injured guy's blood

Victor washed off. Or ..."

Right. Or it could have been Reuben's. "What

about his clothes? Had he thrown them out, or washed

them?" Sam had said Victor ran the washing machine

and put out a bag of garbage, and the truck had come,

though it wasn't the regular day for pickup.

"Neither. Burned 'em in the burn barrel behind his

house. They think they're going to find blood evidence

on the remains of them, which he'd disposed of afterwards

in the trash."

Oh, criminy. "So the laundry was ..."

"Towels and whatnot from the shower he took.

Won't be able to type the blood, though, most likely.

Same with the blood in the traps," Bennet continued,

"under the sink and so on. Seems that according to

Victor, he regularly ran enough hot water and bleach

down there to sterilize the whole sewer system." Even

burning the clothes wasn't so far-fetched, for Victor;

once they were contaminated he'd have treated them

like any other medical waste.

"Sure," Bennet said resignedly when I explained

this to him. "I can see it. I couldn't say this to you

when we were on opposite sides, Jacobia. But Victor's

a strange little duck, in the hygiene department especially."

"Yeah, tell me about it. You only had him on your

agenda for thirteen months. I had him for a dozen

years."

"But," he went on, "try floating that Mr. Clean

stuff past a jury. They'll laugh in your face. Because

there's still the small problem of the weapon. How'd

somebody else get hold of it?"

Let's see, now: After explaining to the jury that

Victor was so fastidious that he actually carried antiseptic

hand wipes in his pocket in case he had to talk

on a strange telephone, we could go on to say that he

lived in a town where people didn't always lock their

doors when they went out, because for one thing they

didn't need to, and for another, they never knew when

someone else might need to get in. Thus, anyone could

have taken the scalpel.

Sure. And if pigs had wings, then smoky links

could fly. "So what's the plan?" I asked dejectedly.

"Tomorrow morning I'll be lining up my Maine

colleagues, see if we can try for bail. It won't work, of

course. And we'll try for a decent alibi. But I doubt

that'll happen, either. Sam say anything to you about

seeing Victor that night?"

My heart sank. "Uh-huh. Listen, Rennet, I don't

care what he saw. I don't want Sam testifying against

Victor."

A brief pause. "Well, we're not there, yet. Let's just

see how things develop, all right?"

I already knew how things would develop: like one

of the tumors Victor was so good at taking out. But

occasionally one of them was so fast and malignant, no

one could stop it.

"Bennet, did Victor say how he knew Reuben Tate

had been murdered?" It was the part that still bothered

me the most, that he'd known before he should have. I

could explain all the rest, but even I couldn't explain

that one.

Bennet's deep, unhappy sigh was the echo of my

own. "He says he got two phone calls early that morning,

the second from your town cop, Bob Arnold. Arnold

wanted to talk to Victor about the other guy who

died, with the tie in his throat. So they agreed to meet

at your place."

Which jibed with what Arnold had told me in the

cemetery. "And the first call?"

"Well. This is the difficult part. Victor says he got a

call from someone he didn't recognize. That the voice

was disguised; he couldn't even tell if it was a man or a

woman. A high whisper was the way he described it."

"Telling him Reuben Tate was dead."

"Right. Told him Tate wouldn't be bothering him

anymore, and enough more about what happened--

Victor says he doesn't remember the exact words--so

Victor knew how Tate had died. Then hung up."

"This was after Victor had done all his washing

and so on."

"Uh-huh," Bennet agreed unhappily. "And Victor

says he can't explain why the garbage guy came. Says

he didn't call him. What the garbage guy says, he

doesn't know who it was. His kid took a message, kid's

like five years old. So you see the problems."

My turn to sigh. "You bet."

"Jacobia," his tone was hesitant, "among your

complaints in the divorce was that Victor is a rather

skilled and habitual ..."

"Liar. Sure, there was that. But, Bennet, it was

about women. This is different. This is ..."

A set-up, I wanted to say, still trying to get used to

the notion myself. A deliberate plan to get Victor

blamed ... But I thought I'd better examine this idea

before talking about it.

Bennet, I noticed, wasn't mentioning it either. Your

honor, my client has been framed--

Right. And before that, he was abducted by aliens.

"Bennet, is there anything I can do right now to help?"

He cleared his throat delicately. "Well, Jacobia,

you can explain how I'm going to get paid. Sorry to

have to mention it, but Victor was vague on that

point."

Victor had put every cent he owned into his

trauma project: plans, a site workup, architects, regulatory

research. Getting a start-up medical thing going

was very expensive.

"Oh, I'll bet he was vague. Send me the bills,

Bennet, and I'll work it out with him when this is all over."

"Will do. And I'll keep you posted with any developments."

Hanging up, I found myself alone in the house.

Ellie had signed up to help make costumes for the children's

parade, part of the upcoming festival; she'd gone

off while I was on the phone with Rennet, and Sam and

Wade were out, too.

So I thought I might work on the windows; heaven

knew they still needed it. But the big old house felt

echoingly empty all around me, which was unusual for

it, and even from upstairs I could feel the presence of

that dratted Ouija board.

As a result I hit my thumb twice with the hammer,

then took a nick out of my palm with the cuts-all tool.

The weatherstripping would not lie flat, curling this

way and that like some bright copper snake, wriggly

with malicious willfulness.

So after half an hour of doing things wrong, then

making them worse by trying to fix them or do them

over, I called Bob Arnold and asked him to meet me at

Bay Books.

The bookstore on Water Street had been an

old-style pharmacy with a soda fountain, in

its previous incarnation. Bailey James had

kept the red leather stools and booths, the

beveled mirror behind the fountain's marble-topped

counter, the fizzy-water dispenser and the bottles of

syrups and flavorings. Then she'd brought in bestsellers,

the latest mystery novels, a magazine rack that

carried WIRED and The Drood Review, and a pay-by-the-half-hour

Internet connection.

The result combined the charm of old Eastport

with a modern hit of Y2K-and-beyond snazziness; in

one visit, you could satisfy your addictions to caffeine,

whodunnits, the World Wide Web, and of course that

most necessary Eastport commodity, local gossip.

Bob Arnold wasn't there yet. I slid onto a stool at

the counter as Bailey began making my regular drink, a

coffee frappe.

"So tell me," I said as she squirted whipped cream

on the concoction of coffee, ice cream, vanilla, and a

sprinkling of cinnamon, "about these musicians in

town for the festival, the Sondergards."

In one of the booths, Darcy Morrell from the

Women's Guild was explaining to Heather Banks how

to piece a log-cabin quilt; her canvas workbag was

open and bright fabric swatches were laid out on the

table between them.

"Heywood and Marcus," Darcy said, looking up

from her quilt pieces.

"Father's a minister. Son too, I think," Heather

added.

In the booth just behind them, Chuck Wilkes

broke off from insisting that Passamaquoddy Bay harbored

lobsters the size of Volkswagens but you never

saw them; they never came up from where they had

been spawning for a hundred years.

"Sing-along revivalists," he said. "Call themselves

Bible Belters, go around Maine in a big Winnebago,

singing for Christ."

"Snake-handling," Chuck's companion contributed,

peering over his coffee. He wore denim coveralls,

rubber boots, and a cap that said moose island marine.

"Speaking in tongues and so on. Falling down in religious

fits. That's their specialty."

"It is not. They're nice men," Bailey said

admonishingly. "I declare, that's the way foolish stories

get started."

She handed me my change from the old-fashioned

register. "They're up at the Heddlepenny House, staying

all week. Heywood has a piano-type contraption

and a guitar. And Marcus I believe plays the banjo."