Deadly Diamonds (22 page)

I went back inside the restaurant. I took Terry back from the sheltering protection of John and the rest of the staff. She was shaken, but glad to hear that the crisis had passed—for the moment.

I held her close on the walk to the door. When she caught her breath, she gave me a serious look. “Michael—”

“I know what you're going to say, Terry. And you're right. When I get this thing cleaned up, I'm going to practice nothing but real estate law. The most dangerous thing I'll ever do again is cross Tremont Street to the Registry of Deeds.”

She smiled the kind of smile that said she appreciated the prediction, but wasn't too sure how seriously I meant it. The fact was, I meant it from the bottom of my soul.

When we reached the door, I could hear John yell, “Michael, you're about to be a family man. Will you for the love of Pete—?”

I yelled back, “I will, John. I will. You take care of yourself too. We need you for the wedding!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

By the time I dropped Terry off in Winthrop, I had twenty minutes to get to the Hatch Shell on Storrow Drive for the midnight rendezvous with Bob Murphy. With Friday night traffic, I made it in twenty-five. Parking was not so easy with all the apartments around the Esplanade. I was about ten minutes late by the time I used the overpass and walked along the tree-covered strip of land leading up to the Shell.

Bob Murphy had picked the right spot if he wanted seclusion. It was dark, cold, and totally unpopulated along the pathway. What sparse light there was came only from the passing spillover of lights from Storrow Drive.

There were several benches along the way, but only one held the silhouette of a lone figure. I came up from behind. I didn't want to scare him into a premature heart attack. I called in a soft voice, “Bob Murphy.”

No answer. I thought he might be piqued by my late arrival. I figured he'd get over it. The voice that finally came out of the figure on the bench promised something more jarring. I wasn't ready for the Irish brogue of Seamus Burke.

“You're late, lawyer.”

“I know. Thank you for noticing. Apparently, Murphy is too. I'd invite you to wait on the bench with me, but he was pretty adamant about us doing this alone. Maybe you could watch from the bushes.”

“I don't think either of us needs to wait.”

I didn't like the sound of that, especially in that irritatingly calm voice of the Irishman.

“I'm sure you're going to tell me why.”

“You can see for yourself.”

He nodded his head toward a row of bushes on the other side of the path. The words, “Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap,” grew in volume as I slowly made out the outline of the body that was splayed under the canopy of bushes. Another life, this time the young life of Bob Murphy, had apparently been sacrificed to the quest for those damned diamonds.

“How?”

“Knifed. His throat was slit. Someone caught him from behind. He was there when I got here.”

I started to go through his pockets with minimal disturbance of the body for the sake of questions I might have to answer later.

“Don't trouble yourself, lawyer. There's nothin' there.”

I straightened up and began taking a mental count of the people who could have known I was meeting him at that place at that time. I doubted that he'd have tipped off anyone, and the only one I told was Seamus Burke. Given the way the sides were being realigned without notice, and Burke's sole presence with the body, I asked him the obvious question.

“Lawyer, for all of your book learning, you're not too quick upstairs. If I killed him, why would I be sitting here waiting for you? Do I strike you as simpleminded?”

“I had to ask. All right, that leaves three prime choices. He was about to tell me what happened that night in the North End. That means he was also double-crossing the other two who were there—Chuck Dixon and the elusive Kevin O'Byrne. I doubt he let either of them in on it. The final choice is Frank O'Byrne. Clearly, Murphy didn't tell him.”

I hardly finished saying it when Burke was on his feet and moving fast. I caught up and moved with him. I think the same idea hit both of us at the same time.

“You drive, lawyer. You know the shortcuts.”

I took every back street I knew through the Back Bay to Huntington Avenue. Luisa Espinosa had given me the address of Chuck
Dixon's dorm room. We were there, parked, and running up two flights of stairs within twenty minutes.

We reached the floor and breezed past a couple of sleepy-eyed students who took an immediate interest in our race to Dixon's room. Their interest peaked when, after two quick raps, Burke slipped something into the lock and sprung the door open.

“Hey, what the hell're you guys doing?”

I faced the two boys in the hall, while Burke flipped on a light and made a quick scan of the room.

“We're from the fire marshall's office. Report of electrical fire in the walls. You better keep out of there.”

They just stared at me while I called into the room. “Anything?”

“No. Get in here.”

I went in and closed the door. The most immediate thing I noticed with some relief was no dead body. I hadn't allowed myself to dwell on the fact that my afternoon chat with the two boys could have triggered one boy's death. On the drive over, I prayed hard that the count was not up to two.

Seamus had gone through the chest of drawers and was rifling through whatever was in the bedside table. “Take the closet, lawyer.”

I did. And then the bathroom medicine cabinet. I came out to find Burke sitting on the bed.

“Well, lawyer, what's your conclusion?”

I sat down beside him. “Two possibilities. One thing's for sure. He made a deliberate choice to leave. No panic. He didn't just cut and run. There's no suitcase in the room. No heavy jacket or coats in his closet. Even the bathroom cabinet. No shaving equipment, no toothpaste. He packed for a trip. What did you find?”

“You're starting to grow a brain, lawyer. Same thing in the drawers. No underwear, socks. He's going to be gone for a while.”

“It may have been his choice, but he made it in a hurry. This afternoon he was fully into his classes. Something made him pack up and go sometime after that last class. It's pretty obvious what it was.”

“You mean that little discussion you had with him this afternoon?”

“What else?”

“I'm not sure. You're quick to jump to conclusions.”

“That still leaves two possibilities.”

“And they are?”

“Either he cut and ran on his own when I threatened a jail sentence. We could follow that trail and get nowhere.”

“Or?”

“Or, he decided to stay in with the O'Byrnes. He could have tipped off Frank or Kevin that I was onto both him and Bob Murphy. He could have added that Murphy might rat out the bunch of them. No great trick to follow Murphy to the Shell and—” I made a gesture with a finger across my throat that he understood.

“You're not as dim-witted as I thought you were, lawyer.”

“You're too kind. Are you still in for the next round?”

“I wouldn't miss it.”

It was just past rush hour the next morning when Burke and I were cruising north in my Corvette. I was following the directions I'd gotten from Frank O'Byrne to the place in New Hampshire where he said he had stashed his son, Kevin. I did it with some misgivings. The events of the previous evening left serious doubts as to which side O'Byrne was on. On the other hand, given the paucity of other leads, the choice was fairly mandatory.

We followed Route 93 north across the state line, and then deep into the wooded lake country of New Hampshire. The last turn off two and a half hours later was onto a one-lane dirt road that penetrated a densely pine-forested area. The road skirted the shore of one of the smaller lakes that fed into the massive and more populated Lake Winnipesaukee.

It was two miles of subjecting the suspension of my Corvette to the rivulets, gullies, and washouts that nature had carved into what could only be called a “road” with a healthy sense of humor. It finally brought us to a small cottage in a clearing beside the lake. No question that it was the one O'Byrne had in mind. It was the only evidence of human habitation in the entire two miles.

We had the benefit of the noon sun when we stepped out onto the silent pine spill area near the single cottage door. For all of his cool, I sensed that Burke was feeling the same tension that had my nerves on red alert.

We looked at each other when we reached the door. The question was which of us would reach for the doorknob. Since the mission was primarily mine, I made the move. A count of three, a twist of the knob, and a heart-stopping thrust of the door inward resulted in—nothing. No bomb, no ambush. Just an opening into what was obviously a summer cottage, chilled to the below-freezing temperature of the outside air.

The layout of rooms was easy to see at a glance. We came in at the kitchen, with a living area behind it. Behind that was a closed door that seemed likely to lead to a bedroom. What gave the sensation of going from the serene, harmonious, wooded exterior into the playpen of a demented orangutan was that the two visible rooms looked as if a giant eggbeater had whipped everything into one enormous omelet.

Every piece of furniture was upended. Every drawer was pulled from its socket and not only emptied, but smashed. The few pieces of overstuffed furniture were slashed. The stuffing was pulled out in fistfuls, and even the frames were broken. When O'Byrne had described it as “a mess,” he was a master of understatement.

Burke was the first in. He stepped silently between shards of glass and debris to a point between the kitchen and living area. He gave a quick scan to everything visible. Without a word, he turned and pointed to me and then pointed to the kitchen area. He turned to walk into the living area, apparently to give it a closer inspection himself. Given the wide-openness of the cottage, I couldn't resist saying it out loud.

“Hey, Burke, who the hell made you boss?”

He spun around with his finger to his lips.

“What? We're inside. Look around. There isn't a living thing for two miles but bears. Maybe a moose. This damn place is creepy enough without the dramatics.”

He gave me one cold look and walked softly to stand beside me. He spoke in a whisper, but the words stung. “This is why I work alone, lawyer. I've lived forty years because I know what I'm doing. You don't. I'll be damned if some Ivy League lawyer is going to blunder my life away. Do you understand that much?”

He had me. I nodded.

“Then shut the hell up. Walk softly and search the kitchen.”

It was no time for a smart answer. I started searching the kitchen. The technique was easy. Just look. Everything down to the dust molecules had been pulled out of every cabinet shelf and counter drawer. Even the doors had been pulled off the cabinets, and the counter drawers had been thrown on the floor and smashed.

O'Byrne's description had been that the cottage had been “tossed.” That implies “searched.” What I was looking at smacked more of anger and malicious destruction. It could have been the result of frustration or perhaps something completely different. There was something about the condition of the room that did not fit any theory I could come up with. That was disturbing.

Since every nook and corner of the room was totally exposed to view, a complete search took little more than standing in the center and turning in a couple of circles.

I checked on Burke's progress. The living room was in the same condition. He was simply standing in the center of the room and doing the same slow three-hundred-sixty-degree scan. The somewhat aggravating lack of any telltale emotion in his face left me totally unable to read his thoughts. I moved as silently as the clutter on the floor permitted to stand beside him.

To keep silence, I tapped his shoulder and gave him a questioning look. He just waved me off. He gave it one more slow, three-sixty scan with a focus that did not admit interruption.

With that, he pointed to the closed door on the far side of the living area. He gestured me to the left side of the door, while he moved silently to the right side. Not only did I feel like a golden retriever on hand signals, he was beginning to creep me out. We were
clearly the only humans in that part of New Hampshire. I seriously doubted the need for the silent movie treatment. Nevertheless.

He fixed me in position beside the door with a “stay” signal. He reached slowly across the door to take a grip on the knob that was on my side. In mime, he indicated that he would pull it open toward us on the count of three.

By now he had my nerves in an uproar. I was fully focused. He counted off the “three” with slow nods of his head. When he reached the magic number, he jerked the door open a crack. I caught one glimpse of a string attached to the inside knob. It triggered an instantaneous flash reaction. Without a fraction of a thought, I dove across the door and caught Burke with a tackle in the midsection that would have done Lawrence Taylor proud.