Except for the Bones (11 page)

As the service manager turned away, Patty’s smile twisted maliciously. “Have you talked to the constable? Did he find you?”

As if she’d struck him, a sucker punch, he felt himself go suddenly hollow. How long had it been since he’d felt this fear, this particular fear? Lost above the overcast over Guatemala with fuel running low, an engine fire in Nam, the aborted takeoff at Seattle, a near-miss on the approach to Tampa, that was one kind of fear. This was something else.

But the words came quickly, easily: “Constable Farnsworth, you mean?”

“Right. He wants to—” Her gaze shifted, slanted beyond him. The malicious smile widened. “Here he is now. I happened to hear you on the tower frequency. I knew he wanted to talk to you. So I called him. Have you been a bad boy, Bruce? Again?”

Turning his back on her, he forced a smile. “Hi, Chief. I hear you’re looking for me.”

As if he were debating whether to acknowledge Kane’s easy familiarity, Farnsworth pursed his small, delicately formed mouth. In his fifties, grossly fat, his cheeks and jowls a glowing, cherubic pink, his shrewd little china-blue eyes sunk deep beneath eyebrows so pale they disappeared, Constable Joe Farnsworth had been Carter’s Landing’s chief constable for almost twenty years. Because he was appointed by the town’s select board, and because he had a secret file on every member of the board, Farnsworth had lifetime job tenure. Because he was almost totally bald, Farnsworth wore his stiff-brimmed felt trooper’s hat at all times. Therefore, he decreed that each of his five constables also wear their hats at all times. Just as Farnsworth had almost never been seen without his hat, so had he never been seen to smile, or laugh.

“You going out to the parking lot?” Farnsworth asked. “Get your car?” His voice was low and clotted, as if it were clogged deep in his throat. His manner was abrupt, perpetually ill-tempered. Just as most of Carter’s Landing’s indigenous population disliked him, so did Farnsworth dislike them. But Farnsworth’s edge was the badge and the gun—and the secret files.

“I’ve got something in my car I want to show you,” Farnsworth said. Without waiting for a reply, he turned and walked through the automatic doors that opened on the air terminal’s parking lot. Farnsworth’s white patrol car was parked at the curb. Farnsworth never walked when he could ride. He opened the car’s rear door, reached inside, and produced a manila file folder. Leaving the door open, he moved to the front of the car and put the folder on the hood. He extracted a single sheet of paper, which he held out to Kane. It was a black-and-white fax copy of a woman dressed for tennis. She was posing in front of a tennis net, holding her racket across her chest. Squinting against the sun, she was laughing for the camera—a long-legged blonde who might have been a fashion model.

Carolyn Estes.

Before the sheet of paper could begin to tremble, an extension of his hand, of his secret inner self, Kane handed the picture back to Farnsworth.

“Know her?”

“Yeah, I know her,” he answered. It was a straddle, limiting the downside risk by giving points on the upside, the market-player’s strategy. He was telling the truth readily, a dutiful citizen. But, Daniels’s dutiful servant, he was giving nothing away. The secrets of the castle must always stay within the castle walls.

“What’s her name?” Farnsworth’s voice was expressionless. His eyes revealed nothing. His hand, Kane noticed, was resting on the butt of his revolver, holstered at his hip. His other hand held the picture.

“Her name is Estes. Carolyn Estes.”

“How do you know her?”

Without doubt, Farnsworth knew the answer to the question he asked. In Carter’s Landing, no movement of the outlanders escaped the veiled notice of the year-round residents, the townies who depended so completely on tourist dollars.

And what the townies knew, Farnsworth also knew. Farnsworth knew it all—and more.

Compelling, once more, the straddle: the truth on one side, a servant’s loyalty on the other.

Servant?

No, not servant. Beginning now, right now, the word no longer applied—had, in fact, never applied. When he said fly, they flew. The last word was always his.

“She’s a friend of the Danielses.”

“The Danielses? Or just Daniels?”

He shrugged. “Okay. Daniels.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

He allowed the smile to fade, then decided to thoughtfully frown. “I guess it was—yeah—” He nodded. “Yeah, it was two weeks ago, just about to the hour. I flew them up from New York, from Westboro.”

“Both of them?”

“Right.”

“Did she have a car here on the Cape, do you know?”

Deciding how to answer, Kane eyed the other man. But the smooth, round, pinkish face with its prim little mouth and small, innocent blue eyes revealed nothing. Finally he decided to say, “I’m a hired hand, Constable. I’m paid to fly. Period. I don’t pay attention to who comes and goes, whether they drive or not.”

“The word around town is that this lady—Carolyn Estes—has been here several weekends lately.”

Kane decided to make no response.

“The word is,” Farnsworth went on, “that you usually fly the two of them in on Saturday, for the weekend. They keep a very, very low profile. Which is understandable, since the lady isn’t Daniels’s wife. When they arrive, they go right from the airplane to the car, which you get from the parking lot and drive out on the tarmac. They go right to Daniels’s beach house. They stay there for the weekend, pretty much out of sight. Maybe they go walking on the beach, but that’s it. No servants, no eating at restaurants. Usually they go back to New York on Sunday. Same thing, run backwards—they drive out to the airport, right to the airplane.” Farnsworth took a long moment to study the other man’s face. Then, softly, Farnsworth asked, “Is that about the way it goes, would you say?”

Kane decided to nod, decided to smile, decided to answer, “That’s about it, Constable. You’ve got spies everywhere, haven’t you?”

“It’s a small town.”

“Indeed.”

“You’re probably wondering why we’re having this little talk.” It was a soft, silky question. They were getting to the meat of it—the red meat.

Kane decided to shrug. To Farnsworth, indifference would translate into innocence.

“The reason I’m asking,” Farnsworth said, “is that a few days ago we heard from the NYPD. That’s where Carolyn Estes lives. New York.” A short, cat-and-mouse pause. “Or maybe it’s ‘lived.’”

“Lived?”

Farnsworth nodded. Meaningfully repeating: “Lived.”

“I—” Suddenly his throat closed. His eyes, he knew, had fallen, a guilty man’s reaction.

“I stopped her,”
Daniels had said.
“I clobbered her.”

“She lives in Greenwich Village,” Farnsworth was saying. “She works for an advertising agency, some kind of an artist. When she didn’t show up for work on Monday, and her landlady said she hadn’t come back from her weekend, someone called the cops. In New York, they don’t do anything about a missing person for forty-eight hours. Nothing. But her father’s apparently a big-shot lawyer in Manhattan, and so at the end of the forty-eight hours, the police really got in gear. And it didn’t take them long to find out that Carolyn Estes had met some very high roller who started taking her away for weekends, mostly to Cape Cod. Apparently Carolyn was pretty closemouthed about this guy. But a friend of hers said that Carolyn had talked about flying into Barnstable one time with this guy in the fog. Apparently she was pretty scared.” Expectantly—watchfully—Farnsworth waited.

Kane spread his hands. “Fog in the summer, here, that’s nothing new. With the King Air, though, it’s no problem.”

“I don’t know anything about airplanes,” Farnsworth said. “All I know is that there’s a Detective First Grade McCarville, in New York, who’s trying to find out whether, in fact, Carolyn Estes was here on the Cape two weeks ago today. And as I understand it, you’re confirming that she was. Is that right?”

Should he call Daniels before he answered? Should he say he wanted a lawyer? No—God no. Only criminals called their lawyers.

Criminals—murderers.

“I stopped her. I clobbered her.”

He was nodding, acting out the role of the good citizen. Saying, therefore, “That’s right. She was here.”

“She came in Saturday. Right?”

Kane nodded. “Right. Saturday evening.”

“And did you take her back to New York on Sunday?”

“No. I flew Mr. Daniels back to New York Monday morning.”

“Alone?”

He nodded. “Alone.”

“And now he’s come back. With his wife.”

“Right.”

Farnsworth drew a long, deep breath. “So it looks like the next person I have to talk to is Preston Daniels.”

Once more, Kane shrugged.

“Y
ES?”

Instantly, Kane recognized Millicent’s voice: Eastern schools, Western money.

“Yeah, ah, this is Bruce, Mrs. Daniels. Can I speak to Mr. Daniels, please? It’s, ah, about the airplane.”

“Anything wrong?”

“No, not really. But I thought I should—”

A click. Then Daniels’s voice: “I’ve got it, honey.” A pause, another click, as Millicent got off. Followed by silence. At the beach house, Daniels was doubtless waiting to make sure Millicent was out of earshot. Finally, carefully: “Yes. What is it?” The voice was clipped, the accustomed accents of command.

But those were the old rules, played according to the old game.

This was the new game. Beginning ten, fifteen minutes ago, this was the new game. Beginning with the fax of Carolyn. No more masters, no more slaves.

“Is it okay to talk?”

“What is it?” Short, terse words, demanding an answer. An order from the boss.

“I just talked to Constable Farnsworth.” Deliberately, cryptically, he matched his speech to the other man’s.

“Just a minute.” A click, a long moment of silence, then another click. Finally: “Farnsworth, you say?”

Yes, it was showing through. He could hear it: the hesitation, the instinctive caution. Their little secret, now.

“He was asking about your friend. They’re looking for her.”

“Who’s looking for her?”

“The police. The New York police.”

“Ah.” A wan, wounded syllable: score one more for the Daniels-haters. “Where are they looking?”

“It started in New York, as I understand it. Then, yesterday, Farnsworth got a picture. A fax. So he wants to—”

“Yesterday, you say? He got a fax yesterday?”

“Right. So now—” He let a moment of silence fall, maximizing the impact. “So now, he wants to talk to you. That’s why I called.”

“Ah.” Another subdued monosyllable.

“S
O THE WAY I
get it,” Farnsworth said, “she left here about ten o’clock Sunday night, two weeks ago. And that’s the last you saw of her or heard of her. Is that about it?”

“That’s about it.” As he said it, Daniels could critique the nuances of his own response, an essential executive’s knack. And he was satisfied. He wasn’t patronizing Farnsworth, but neither was he deferring to him, as a guilty man might.

Standing together beside Farnsworth’s white police car, both of them faced out toward the ocean. For this boon—for the vital minutes that allowed him to intercept Farnsworth in the driveway, well away from the beach house, Daniels knew he must give thanks to Kane. Had it gone the other way—if Farnsworth had reached the door and rung the bell, and if Millicent had answered, Farnsworth might have—

“Did you lend Miss Estes a car, Mr. Daniels?”

“No. We—ah—” He dropped his voice to a confidential note, man to man: “No. The—ah—fact is, Carolyn and I had an argument. So …” He smiled, shrugged, let the Daniels charm come through. “So she just picked up her suitcase and took off.”

Skeptically, Farnsworth frowned. “Walking?”

“Walking,” Daniels answered firmly.

“At ten o’clock at night?”

Indifferently, Daniels shrugged. “You asked me what happened. I’m telling you.”

“Didn’t you go after her? Make sure she was all right, at least?”

“No, I didn’t. She had money—a lot of money—with her. That, I knew. So I assumed she hired a cab, drove to Falmouth. Whatever.” He smiled again. As he kept the smile in place he calculated the variables, the options. How could he suggest to this fat, country-bumpkin policeman that, if he cooperated, he would be rewarded? To make bribery work, though, an intermediary was necessary. But, aside from Kane, none was available. And Kane already knew enough.

“Where does she—did Miss Estes live?” Farnsworth asked.

“In New York City,” he answered. “The Village.” Yes, his voice was calm, controlled. It was, after all, the mismatch of the century: Preston Daniels versus Constable Joe Farnsworth.

“Does she work?”

“Yes. She works in advertising.”

“Did you phone her on Monday? To make sure she was okay?”

“Constable—” He allowed mild vexation to shade the single word. Then, a tactical shift, he spoke affably, one good old boy to another: “Come on. You know what we’re talking about here. I’m a married man. A
happily
married man. But my wife and I—” Once more, the smile, the full, direct eye contact. “We have a deal. An arrangement. Both of us, well, we get a little on the side … that’s the expression, I believe. And Carolyn, well, she was my summertime playmate, let’s say, while my wife was in Europe. But that’s all it was. Call it recreation. Okay?” As if he considered their conversation ended, Daniels moved a step toward the house. Repeating: “Okay?”

Farnsworth lifted his beefy shoulders, shrugging. Reluctantly agreeing: “Yeah. Fine. For now, anyhow. Fine.”

Encouragingly, Daniels nodded. “Good. I appreciate that.” A momentary, meaningful pause. Then, significantly: “I appreciate that very much.”

“I
STILL THINK,” PAULA
said, “that you should talk to her father. Tell him what Carley Hanks told you. Sooner or later, you’re going to
have
to talk with him, when Carley’s five hundred dollars is gone.”

Bernhardt shook his head. “I’d rather talk to Diane first, get a handle on her. Working with druggies is like working with alcoholics. Hopeless, in other words. A couple of hours talking with her—eighty dollars of Carley’s money—and I’ll know whether I want to ditch her.”