Dead Winter (17 page)

She shook her head. “No.” She sighed and slumped her shoulders. “And I never will. So I’m right back where I started from.”

“Don’t worry,” said Victoria. “Somebody else will take your case.”

“For nothing?”

She nodded. “Don’t worry.”

On the ride back to Asheville, Victoria explained the policy of Slavin, Jones on
pro bono
work. “Twenty percent of the company time must be billed to
pro bono.
It works out evenly for all of us over the long haul. Nate Greenberg did less than his share, actually, so Mr. Slavin thought this would be a good one for him. We handle an awful lot of custody and abuse stuff as well as all sorts of small criminal things. These are mountain folks out here. Good, smart people, but they aren’t that sophisticated in the law. They forget to pay their taxes, ignore summonses and subpoenas, smack around their kids and wives, and end up getting arrested and hauled to one court or another. Or we get referrals. Like Lanie’s doctor calling us.” She glanced sideways at me and grinned. She had a wide, expressive mouth, and her smile took ten years off her looks. “I don’t know why I should lecture you on what attorneys do.”

“I have a different sort of clientele,” I said, “but I’ve done
pro bono
now and then. More or less by accident.”

“Anyway,” she said, “I suppose we’ll get someone else on Lanie’s case, now that Nate’s off it. Probably me.”

“Well,” I said, “If you’re ever in Boston…”

I thought about it that evening while I had barbecue at Hawgie’s, the little restaurant next door to my motel in Asheville. Shredded smoked pork, hot tangy sauce, with hush puppies and barbecued beans, washed down with beer.

I thought about it Saturday afternoon while my Piedmont jet circled over Logan International Airport in Boston awaiting landing instructions.

I thought about it while I watched the Red Sox beat Chicago on the black-and-white television set in my apartment Saturday night.

I thought about it before I went to sleep that night, and when I awoke the next morning, and in my car as I drove to Belchertown, Massachusetts, Sunday afternoon.

I thought about it while I sat on the bank of the Swift River and watched my own personal two-foot brown trout fin in the shade of a partially submerged treetrunk and tried to calculate how I might fool him into trying to eat an artificial fly.

Every time I thought about it, it came out the same way.

Maggie Winter was Lanie Horton’s mother.

I got to the office early Monday morning. The first thing I did was load up the Mr. Coffee machine and switch it on.

The second thing I did was call Zerk Garrett.

He was still home. I knew he would be. The curse of insomnia hadn’t hit him yet. I kept telling him to wait until he turned forty.

“Yo,” he said cheerfully into the phone.

“Yo, yo self,” I said.

“Hiya, bossman.”

“I got some news for you.”

“Me too,” he said.

“Me first. I figured out what happened. Ready?”

“Shoot.”

So I told him about my trip to Asheville, about Lanie Horton’s search for her biological parents, about Nate Greenberg’s mission to Boston, about Maggie, and about how I figured either Maggie killed Greenberg, or Greenberg killed Maggie. Then I said, “What do you think so far?”

“Real interesting,” said Zerk. “But so far, I don’t see how all this helps my client.”

“I guess it doesn’t,” I admitted. “Since Greenberg and Maggie couldn’t have killed each other, it does seem to leave Marc as a logical suspect for one kill or the other. Of course, if Andy Pavelich is telling the truth, Marc’s off the hook anyway. You had a chance to talk to her yet?”

“I said I had news for you,” said Zerk.

“Okay. Let’s have it.”

“Andy Pavelich got shot to death Saturday night.”

I took a deep breath. “Oh, Jesus, Zerk.”

“Yeah. Young kid. Little babies at home.”

“Who? Not—?”

“No, not Marc. Marc’s covered on this one. They’re holding the girl’s husband.”

“Big Al,” I said. “Mean-tempered son of a bitch. Figures. Did he beat her up?”

“Nope. Shot her in the chest and the throat.”

“They got the goods on Al, huh?”

“He called the cops himself, is how I hear it. They showed up, he was stomping around the house, drunker’n a hootie owl. That’s all I hear.”

I was silent for a minute. Then I said, “Oh, my God, Zerk.”

“What, boss?”

“If Al killed Andy…”

“What?”

“If he killed her, it could be—see, I talked with her. With Andy. At the restaurant, where she works. About the night Maggie got killed. And Al came by and saw me talking to her. And he jumped me in the parking lot. Marc dragged him off me. He threatened me. And—and he threatened Andy. See what I mean?”

“You think this guy murdered his wife because he saw you talking to her?”

“Maybe. Or maybe after he saw us talking he got her to admit she had been fooling around with Marc Winter. Either way, it’s my fault, Zerk.”

“Now, listen, you dumb shit,” he said. “Listen good. Either way, it’s Al’s fault, not yours. Hear me? Al, or whoever killed the lady, it’s their fault, not yours. And don’t give me any of your for whom the bell tolls horseshit, either.”

“You’re right,” I sighed.

“Course I’m right.”

“It doesn’t change how I feel.”

“You’ll get over it.”

“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “They got the goods on Al, then?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t inquire. All I know is that Marc’s alibi is down the tubes. Not to be insensitively objective about the whole thing.”

“Assuming she was telling the truth.”

“Yeah,” he said, “and not lying for him.”

“Or involved herself.”

“Or that.”

“The way I see it,” I said after a minute, “is we have three murders. Maggie, Greenberg, and now Andy Pavelich. And we’ve got three different murder weapons. Blunt instrument, serrated kitchen knife, gun. Three different motives, probably. And it looks like three different murderers.”

“One of which might be my client,” he said.

“Yeah. Unless we’re missing something.”

“We are missing something,” said Zerk.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“The hole in your scenario.”

“What hole?”

“Hey. Don’t get touchy. The problem with all this is Maggie. One way or the other, she’s at the center of all this. And nobody seems to know much about her. Not even her husband. Okay, so she got knocked up when she was a kid, and this Lanie Horton is her daughter, and Greenberg tracked her down, and maybe one of them killed the other one. But maybe—”

“Maybe none of those things is true,” I finished. “Is that it?”

“I’d just like it better if I knew more about her.” Zerk paused. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose,” I said.

“Don’t sulk.”

“I wasn’t sulking. I was thinking.”

“Oh-oh,” said Zerk.

T
HE PARKING LOT AT
the Night Owl was packed on that midsummer Monday evening—predominantly pickup trucks and four-wheel-drive wagons bearing almost as many license plates from Maine and New Hampshire as from Massachusetts, but a respectable smattering of Ford wagons, Toyotas, and here and there a Mercedes and a Porsche.

Strippers do have a democratic appeal.

Inside, smoky haze hung thick from the low ceiling. A rectangular stage jutted into the middle of the big brightly lit room. On three sides of the stage, randomly placed tables and chairs crowded close. Those nearest the stage were jammed with people. All men. Above the stage, a glass ball rotated slowly, breaking the lights into a million multicolored pieces and swirling them around the room. A low wrought-iron railing ran around the three sides of the stage—a symbolic separation of the audience from the performers. The loud insistent beat of rock music buzzed and whined through an overstimulated amplification system, distorting the words that were being sung beyond any possible comprehension, had anybody cared, which did not seem likely.

The girl on the stage was mouthing them, however. It was startling to walk from a soft, starry summer night into a room where a beautiful young girl clad only in a thin gold ankle bracelet gyrated mindlessly, her eyes closed, her face blank, with maybe a hundred men gathered close to the stage, staring up at her.

An L-shaped bar stood to the right of the stage. Two girls in jeans and T-shirts sat side by side at one end, ignoring the performance. Otherwise, all the patrons of the Night Owl were clustered near the stage. I went over to the bar and perched on a stool. I assumed this was the same bar where a black-haired stripper named Maggie had scared away two bikers with a hatpin, so impressing Marc Winter that he married her.

I cocked an elbow on the bar and half-pivoted my body so that I could watch the show. The song ended. The girl on stage flashed a quick insincere smile, made a short bow, and ducked behind the curtain. A moment later another tune, using the term loosely, exploded from the speakers. The girl came back. She began to parade slowly in front of the guys who were leaning their forearms on the wrought-iron railing. Every few feet she stopped, spread her legs wide, and bent her body backwards until her long blond hair touched the floor behind her. She certainly was limber. The boys in the front rows got an eyeful and showed their appreciation by whistling and clapping. The audience response was similar to the one Larry Bird got whenever he canned a three-pointer from the corner.

“Beer?”

I turned. The bartender was large and black-bearded and squinty-eyed. He sported a short ponytail in back. He wore a black T-shirt. On it an owl winked lasciviously.

“What’ve you got in bottles?”

“Bud.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s what’s cold. Want one?”

“Sure.”

He plunked it in front of me a moment later. No glass, not that I would have used one anyway. “Two fifty.”

I fished out a five and gave it to him. He put the change on the bar in front of me. I left it there. I rotated to watch the dancer. She was doing a new trick. She turned her back to a pod of guys in shirtsleeves and loosened neckties who might’ve driven over from one of the high-tech outfits in southern New Hampshire. Stiff-legged, she shuffled backwards toward them until her heels touched the railing. Then she bent forward at the waist so that she could look at the computer guys upside-down through her legs. I saw her reach between her legs toward the railing, pause to say something to one of her admirers, wiggle her ass a couple times, then stand up. She repeated this odd dance several times before the song ran out.

I turned to the bartender, who had his chin propped in his hands, his elbows on the bar near me. “What’s she doing?”

“Selling them a peek.”

“I don’t get it.”

“They put dollar bills on top of the railing. She’s retrieving them. Gives them a good look at her snatch.” He shrugged. “You ask me, you seen one you seen ’em all.”

“You worked here long?”

“Couple months is all. Not that much work for a thirty-five-year-old guy who keeps changing his mind about what he’s going to write his doctoral thesis about. So I’ve been bouncing from one job to another. This one here pays pretty well, considering about all I have to do is open beer bottles and put them on the waitresses’ trays.”

“What’s your area?”

“’Scuse me?”

“Your thesis. What is your academic specialty?”

“The transcendentalists.” He laughed. “Emerson would’ve loved a place like this. Imagine Thoreau coming into the Night Owl.”

The music throbbed to a stop, the stripper waved at her fans, and a harsh woman’s voice rasped over the speakers. “Dusty Knight, ladies and gentlemen. Ain’t she a beautiful girl? What a dancer! What a great body! Let’s give Dusty Knight a big round of applause.”

The boys by the stage responded enthusiastically.

“Don’t forget,” continued the woman’s three-pack-a-day amplified voice, “Tuesday is amateur night at the Night Owl. So you fellas bring your gals on down here so you can show ’em off. Who knows? Maybe one of ’em’ll be a star, get herself a job here at the Night Owl. And Thursday is ladies night at the Night Owl. Tell your girlfriends and wives and tell your grandmothers. We’ve got a batch of hunky men on our Night Owl stage every Thursday. Straight from
Playgirl.
Out of the class of all you horny little wienies. Heh-heh-heh.”

“Who’s the one with the voice?” I asked the bartender.

“That’s Ray.”

“Ray? She is a woman, isn’t she?”

He laughed, a crude imitation of Ray’s wickedly suggestive heh-heh-heh. “She’s a woman, all right. She’s no lady, but she’s a woman. Owns this joint. Raybelle’s my boss.”

“How do I get to talk to her?”

“Unzip your fly. She’ll find you.”

“No, really.”

Raybelle’s voice was introducing the next performer, a “sweet southern siren” named Sally Flame, who turned out to be a redhead. She pranced onto the stage wearing a skintight sequined gown and stiletto heels. She made one mincing trip up the stage, one back, and then flicked a few snaps and the gown peeled off, revealing a black lace bra and G-string and a great deal of Sally Flame. She marched around the stage in this getup for a while, her movements completely uncoordinated with the music, offering no pretense at dancing. She chatted and exchanged wisecracks with her audience.

“What do you want to talk to Raybelle about?” said the bartender.

“Someone who used to work here.”

“I’ll see if I can get her for you. Want another Bud?”

“Sure.”

He plunked a bottle in front of me and disappeared. A minute later he returned with his arm around a tall, broad-shouldered woman I would have instantly assumed had been a guy before the operation, or at least a transvestite. She wore snug orange pants that stopped halfway down her muscular calves, spiky heels, and a V-necked T-shirt under which rose a monumental bosom. She had pitch black butch-cut hair and a craggy pale face thick with mascara, pancake, and fire-engine red lipstick.

The bartender ducked behind his bar. Raybelle took the stool beside me. “You lookin’ for me, honey?” she wheezed.

“I hope you can help me, miss.”