FrostLine (19 page)

“Tell me about the fuse.”

“Fuse? Why would I use a fuse? Why the hell would I take a chance lighting a goddammed fuse when I could fire her off from the General Store?”

“Why the General Store?”

“Payphone. They could back-trace a call from my own phone.”

Play it as if he weren't nuts, I told myself, see what occurs in his alternate logic. “Didn't you want to watch?”

“I didn't have to watch it go boom,” Mr. Butler said scornfully. “By the time I drove home the 'sucker's lake would be history. And another thing, do you seriously think I'd blow that dam during a
party
? What if somebody was walking on it?”

Or sleeping under it.

He had it all figured out. Most, if not all, wasn't true, of course. But if he had accidentally killed his son, then he had to have a story he could live with. A horrible coincidence—The Will of God, our Puritan fathers would say—but the man needed a story. Not to get out of jail, but to absolve himself of his son's death.

“Why would King kill Dicky?”

“I already told you that.”

“Tell me again.”

“To get my farm.”

“Sounds like he'll have to kill you next?”

“Might not have to,” Butler answered matter-of-factly. “If they send me to prison, I'll lose the place to taxes. Either way, I got to settle this once and for all.”

“Settle? How?”

“Soon as I can bust out of here, I'm going to blow his fucking house off Morris Mountain.”

***

I could only pray that the guards weren't eavesdropping.

“Please don't even
think
about that, Mr. Butler. You'll kill somebody and get killed in the process. Let Ira and Tim and me help you.”

“Best way you can help me is get some judge to grant bail. I'll take her from there.”

I gave him Connie's care package, which the guards had inspected. Stepping out into the sunlight, breathing free again, I had to admit I was less anxious to spring him. If his claim wasn't fantasy, then his threat wasn't either.

I exited the jailhouse just in time to see Trooper Moody empty his cruiser of a tall, lanky tattooed fellow in leg and waist chains. Guards surrounded the prisoner, and Ollie, clearly very proud of himself, answered cheerfully when I asked what was up.

“J.J. Topkis,” he said. “Outstanding warrants for assault. And robbery.”

“Wha'd he rob?”

“National Guard Armory. Major Case Squad's been after him six months.”

“Pull him over for speeding?” Moving violations and DWI were ever-popular ways to get arrested on old warrants.

“Nope.” Ollie was positively radiant. “Went out and nailed the 'sucker. Heard he had a girl on Scudder Mountain. I figured he'd get horny one of these nights. Caught him with his pants down.”

“Congratulations,” I said. I meant it. It was a good arrest, and Ollie had a right to be proud. “Isn't he the guy Dicky Butler threw through the White Birch window?”

“Yup, real shame Dicky blew himself up.”

“How's that?” Ollie didn't look at all like he thought it was a shame Dicky was dead. If anything, he got even more cheerful at the memory.

“I could of turned this whacko to press charges.”

“Win some, lose some,” I said, and by then Ollie was in such a good mood that he actually chuckled, and accepted my invitation for a cup of coffee at the diner. We were settled in there, vaguely uncomfortable to be together, and chomping jelly doughnuts, when I filled the silence with a question.

“How'd you happen to hear Topkis had a girl on Scudder Mountain?”

“Got a tip.”

“Must have sounded pretty good to sit all night on Scudder Mountain.”

“Sounded like a pissed-off boyfriend.”

We cemented our unlikely camaraderie by agreeing that tips didn't come any better than that. A bailiff ran into the diner, warning his partners that the arraignment was about to begin. Ollie and I paid our separate checks and hurried back to the courthouse.

I was surprised to see that J.J. Topkis was represented by Greg Riggs, a swiftly rising star in the county, who was destined to become a very young judge. He was politically connected—admired by the entrenched crowd—and an active supporter of the up-and-coming. During Vicky's renomination battle Riggs had hosted a very profitable fundraiser for her, although I suspected that hots for Newbury's first selectman had played as much a role as smart politics. Whichever, Greg Riggs was a very expensive lawyer for a raggedy biker.

And, it turned out, worth every penny.

He talked the magistrate into granting medium low bail of forty grand, which Topkis' mother would guarantee with her house. Ollie left muttering darkly about “pussy courts.” But it sounded to me like Topkis' hotshot attorney had him cut a deal to rat someone out.

***

Back in Newbury, Tim Hall had trouble with the concept that Mr. Butler claimed to have tried to dynamite King's dam and maybe killed Dicky in the process. “Do you believe him?”

I'd had more time to absorb it. “I don't know. He sounds nuts. But he's very specific about planting the dynamite and that whole thing about detonating it by phone.”

“How do you detonate explosives by phone?”

“ATF guy told me you telephone a cell phone or a beeper to activate a radio transmitter, like a garage door opener, that signals a receiver on the bomb. Little Alison could run one up for you in shop class.”

“Why didn't Dicky do it that way? A lot safer.”

“Because Dicky wasn't as imaginative as Alison. At least not when he was drunk.”

“But the ATF said they found no remote equipment. Come on Ben, it's fantasy.”

“But Mr. Butler sounded so definite—and so casual about it, so matter-of-fact. Really makes me wonder.”

“My next question is how did ‘they' get Dicky to stand next to the dynamite?”

“
I
don't know, for crissake.”

“Hey, I'm just asking the questions. You'd do the same for me if
I
came up with a cockamamie idea.”

“It's not my idea, it's Mr. Butler's.”

“Assume for a moment that Butler's bomb went off late on a passed-out Dicky. How come nobody saw him stagger there?”

“The caterers and early party guests wouldn't have thought anything odd, seeing him at a distance. And the security people were busy with the caterers and temp help.”

“I think I want to confer with Ira Roth.”

“I already asked him to join us for lunch.”

Tim looked a little put out. Like I didn't think he was as smart as his mentor. I explained, “I ran into him in the courthouse. He's worried about something.”

***

“A tattooed, red-headed ex-convict mingling unnoticed with the guests on his way to falling asleep under the dam?”

Ira Roth's sarcastic smile would have frozen Caligula's saliva.

“Drunk,” I added, before Tim could.

Ira tipped back his chair on the General Store's porch and surveyed Main Street like folk art he might purchase for his Morris Mountain tax-dodge horse farm.

“Drunk,” he echoed.

“According to Josie Jervis, who drove him home that morning.”

“You mentioned her already.”

Tim and I looked at each other. I'm pretty sure he felt the way I did—precisely the way Ira wanted us to feel—fourteen years old at Newbury Prep, and in the thrall of serious adults.

“The insufferable Ira,” Aunt Connie had always called him. I'd known him since I was a kid. Active in town affairs and clever with land, he had been a regular at both of Dad's offices. I found him daunting. A glance at his pro bono acolyte confirmed that Tim did, too.

Ira looked younger than his late sixties. Compact, medium height, radiating self-satisfaction, he appeared larger by dint of personality and costume, his trademark three-piece navy blue suit, a pinstriped shirt, and a loud necktie that would stop traffic if most of it weren't covered by his vest. He had a fine head of hair, remarkably black, though his active, bushy eyebrows were gray. The long cigar he would fire up after the sandwiches he had allowed Tim and me to pay for peeped from a vest pocket like a surface-to-air missile.

I said, “Ira, the question is do we believe Mr. Butler's story.”

“No. The question is how do we keep the crazy fool out of prison.”

“That's right,” said Tim. “And get him bail.”

“I'm having a problem with bail,” I said. “I know he's going to pieces in there, but he's threatening to blow up King's house.”

“Talk,” Ira said. “Just talk. He'll be okay as soon as we get him home.”

“What if he tried to blow up the dam like he claims? That's more than talk.”

“But not the same as blowing up a house. He's not a killer. He's just a farmer going nuts indoors.”

“It's possible he's also going nuts because he killed his own son. Accidentally.”

“Not in my book,” said Ira.

“Are you saying you're sure he didn't blow up the dam?”

“Dicky blew up the dam. Not my client.”

“Dicky used to be your client.”

“Dicky is dead. Our client is alive, in jail. We want him home.”

I said, “Ira, I've been thinking. I'm also having problems with
Dicky
blowing up the dam. Why would he invite Josie Jervis on a picnic that same afternoon?”

“I don't care and this is the last I'll discuss it.”

“Then I'll listen real carefully, Ira. And I expect you to do the same.”

He didn't like that. Our relationship, daunting aside, was colored by resentment: He was the leading criminal attorney in Plainfield County, a lion at the Superior Court, which was to say, a very big fish in a very small pond; he hated that I hadn't retained him to defend me when I got in trouble in New York, and even accused me once of not trusting a “country lawyer” to get me off. Like Henry King, he could never understand that beating the charges had not been my main concern. As he saw it, I had robbed him of an incredible opportunity to prove himself in the Big Apple.

“Ben, you're asking the wrong questions.”

“And doing the wrong things,” said Tim. “He went up to Fox Trot and asked
King
to pay for Butler's defense.”

To Tim's amazement, Ira turned to me with open admiration. “You did? Now you're thinking, Ben. We'll end up making some money out of this thing. Did King bite?”

“Let's just say he's considering it.”

Ira got a crafty look on his face. “If Butler's telling the truth that he planted the dynamite and King found it, King can't go back. Can't say to the troopers, ‘Oh by the way, we found Butler's dynamite and didn't tell anybody.'”

“But that's the worst part of Butler's story,” I said. “It sounds absurd. Why would King not tell?”

Ira wasn't listening. “If King's in that position, he
has
to help pay for Butler's defense. To throw off suspicion. Jesus, we can bill him Washington rates. Tim, we'll make out like bandits. Even pay PI Ben, here.”

“Well, if he didn't he's in trouble now,” said Tim. “He can't now. Because they'll ask, ‘Where is it?'”

“Ka-boom,” said Ira. Then he sighed. “No. 'Fraid not. Ben's right. If our client—God forbid—did plant the dynamite, King's people didn't find it. It just blew up late.”

“I don't know that we should take Butler's word on anything.”

“Then who planted it?” asked Ira.

“Dicky,” Tim answered loyally.

“Unless somebody killed Dicky,” I said.

Chapter 17

“
Killed
Dicky? You mean tied him to the dynamite and lit the fuse?”

Tim's laugh died in his throat when his mentor growled, “Ben means before the dynamite.”

I could see Ira thinking, No pro bono ever went unpunished.

He gave me a long, cool, I-don't-need-this-complication-in-my-life look. He surveyed Main Street again, gazed with satisfaction at his brand-new Cadillac Escalade ESV gleaming in the shade of an elm. I hoped the barn-sized gas-guzzler would act as a reminder that he could afford a little complication for a good cause. And might even enjoy it.

He waited long enough to make me uncomfortable. Finally, dripping reluctance, he asked, “Suspects?”

“Suspects?” Tim looked from Ira to me and back to Ira, as anxious, suddenly, as a kid without his homework.

“Who?” Ira demanded. “Come on! Who had motive and means to kill Dicky?”

I counted them off on four fingers and a thumb: “Albert and Dennis Chevalley, Trooper Moody, a biker from Derby named J.J. Topkis, Henry King, or someone who works for him.”

“Trooper Moody?” Tim blurted.

I spoke my answer to Ira. “Dicky was going to sue him for false arrest—might have won, might have wrecked his career and cost him his pension. Plus he hated his guts.”

“Your cousins?”

“Revenge for kicking their asses.”

“King?”

“The obvious. Wants the farm.”

“The biker?”

“Same as Albert and Dennis. Dicky destroyed his rep. J.J. Topkis was the toughest, meanest son of a bitch east and west of the Housatonic until Dicky threw him through Wide Greg's window.”

“I love the law,” said Ira. “I meet such wonderful people.” A glance put me in that category. I braced for him to tear my idea to shreds. Instead he said, “What do you think, Tim?”

“Well, I just don't know about Ollie. Even for him that's going pretty far.”

“You didn't see the relief on his face when I told him Dicky was dead.”

“Relief or surprise?”

“Not necessarily surprise.”

“Albert and Dennis Chevalley, I don't think of as killers. You're talking about your cousins, Ben.”

“Distant cousins,” I said, mindful of when I saw them pummeling Dicky: if Dicky hadn't broken Albert's grip, and I hadn't intervened, they'd have beaten him to a pulp. “And if they're murderers, they're going to be a lot more distant.”

“I don't know the biker, except he's on the lam for something.”

“Felonious assault. With hand grenade. And robbery. And he's not on the lam anymore. Ollie just caught him. Greg Riggs got him bail.”

“How could he afford to hire Greg Riggs?” asked Tim.

“Where did he get the hand grenade?” Ira interrupted.

“That's a matter of some contention. It came from a Hartford National Guard Armory. But Riggs made the robbery charges sound pretty weak. Maybe J.J. bought it from the thief. Maybe J.J. stole it.”

“Weak? Was that how Riggs got him bail?”

“Or J.J. might have turned.”

Ira nodded. Leniency for tat was a concept he admired. “What else was stolen?”

“Guns, ammo, a couple of mortars and some detonators.”

Tim nodded, ruefully. I'd done my homework, but he was still at Ira's blackboard. “Henry King?” he continued when Ira prompted. “I don't think so. What's the old song? ‘Some rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen.' We all know in the end King'll take Butler's farm with a fountain pen.”

“We don't know how patient he is,” I argued. “It's likely, if Mr. Butler goes to prison, King will get his chance to buy it now instead of ten years from now.”

Ira lit his cigar and puffed reflectively.

“The whole idea is absurd. And your suspects are pitifully lame.”

His expression demanded an answer. But I reminded myself of all the lawyers' offspring that my fees had sent to private school back when I was a Wall Street player, the German automotive products they had leased with my retainers, their summer houses and their concubines, and kept my mouth firmly shut.

Ira puffed harder. “The least lame are Trooper Moody and Henry King.”

I sat silent.

“It's not impossible to imagine Ollie beating a man to death. I've always thought it would happen one day, but accidentally. Now you're suggesting a pretty strong motive. Did he grow up on a farm?”

Ira knew damned well he had. I let Tim answer. “The old Moody place. Out by Scudder Mountain. His brother's got it.”

“So Ollie could know his dynamite, not to mention whatever bomb disposal courses the state police put him through.…”

“Army,” I reminded Ira. “MPs. Could have learned some there.”

Ira puffed hard. “…As for Henry King…” Smoke enough to screen a crippled destroyer. “Henry King is the sort of arrogant son of a bitch who could justify anything.”

Tim and I glanced at each other—Ira calling the kettle arrogant?—and Tim made a valiant effort to strangle his snicker with a cough.

“What's that?” asked Ira.

“Ummgh, I was just—Hummmgh.”

“And from what Ben tells me King's got at least one hard case hanging around the house. Ex-CIA, Ben?”

“Josh Wiggens….”

“What's that?” Ira shot back, with the litigator's instinct for the unspoken.

“Mr. Butler told Tim he's seen someone, quote, ‘spying' on him from King's woods.”

“Through a sniper scope,” said Tim.

Ira shook his head. “That poor lunatic…Okay, so we'll assume King's got serious security people,” he continued aloud, warming to the possibilities. “There's another thing about King. I don't know if either of you have seen the ‘Biography' show they ran on A&E, but back when King was a student he worked heavy construction in New York City. Those jobs include blasting. Could have picked it up. Worth checking out. Pretty complicated way to steal Butler's farm. But like you say, a hell of a way to steer the post mortem….

“The biker, on the other hand, sounds too busy running from the troopers. And your cousins couldn't empty a bucket with instructions printed on the bottom.”

Maybe not. But the end tables in their mom's trailer were fashioned from wooden boxes with bright red labels. Dennis' scabbed and bruised face could have come from a return match with Dicky. Albert had seemed overly anxious to convince me they had been up on Fox Trot's high pasture all day. And for all their impulsive bumbling, no full-blooded Chevalley had ever turned the other cheek.

Nor had Topkis looked like a guy to let a few arrest warrants stop him from causing bodily harm. Otherwise, Ira read my list the way I did. Ollie Moody and Henry King and his hired help stood at the top.

“What about King's enemies?” protested Tim. “Aren't we working on the assumption that he might—“Tim looked around. We were still alone on the porch and the kid inside at the cash register had Sony plugs in her ears—“you know, still work for the U.S.”

Ira sighed. “Can you check him out, Ben? If he's the official-unofficial double crosser we think he is, then it
is
possible that Dicky simply had the bad luck to pass out in the vicinity of an explosion detonated by disgruntled terrorists.”

I supposed the Admiral owed me one for being polite to the jerk he'd sent to pump me. Maybe he'd see it that way, too.

“We're really reaching, here,” Ira said gloomily.

“Then why pursue it?” asked Tim. “I thought the plan was to make the state's attorney cave before he goes to the grand jury.”

“Because,” Ira said, “the state's attorney gave me bad news, this morning, very bad news, while suggesting I cop a plea.”

“Cop a plea!” Tim blurted, shocked into feistiness. “He's got some nerve.”

“He's also got a very strong case against our client.”

“What happened?”

“Seems Ben wasn't the only person Butler ‘confided' in. Seems that a week before the event, he and King got into a shouting match in Mike's Hardware and he told King to his face he'd blow his dam.”

No wonder Ira was so willing to listen to my “lame” theory.

“But that's just King's word against his,” Tim protested.

“Overheard by Mike, who was cutting keys.”

“Why the hell didn't Mike say this earlier?”

“Mike happens to be a Vietnam vet who sides one hundred percent with Mr. Butler.”

I asked, “Who got Mike to talk?”

“State Police Major Case Detective-Sergeant Marian Boyce. You know her, Ben.”

“I've run into her.”

“Quite a comer, I'm told,” said Ira.

“That's my experience.”

The lawyer's smile was brief and grim. “Understand, both of you. Our client's liberty is at stake. They've got that it was his dynamite. They've got the feud. They've got his son at the site. Now they've got an angry threat. And I'll bet before this goes to trial, the comely sergeant will round up additional witnesses to our client's emotional outbursts.”

“Are you considering an insanity defense?”

Ira shook his head emphatically. “You've seen him sitting there like a trapped animal. Institutionalize a man as unstable as he is and he'll never get out. It would be worse than prison. Therefore, Tim will continue to concentrate on bail and on quashing the conspiracy charge. Find a legal precedent, new evidence, a friendly prosecutor, or some judge still beholden to your old man, I don't care which. But do it fast. He's not getting any more stable rotting in there.

“Meanwhile, Ben will check out his cockamamie suspects.”

***

The Long Island Sound sprawled pale blue in the muggy haze, dotted with sailboats and bordered by an indistinct coast.

Like most of the workers hired at Fox Trot—Albert and Dennis Chevalley being the exceptions who proved the rule, and had probably inspired the policy—King's caterers had come from far away. New York City, in the case of Party Box, although when I finally ran them down they were prepping a party on the back lawn of an estate down the beach from the Larchmont Yacht Club. The parking attendant gave the Olds a dubious look.

“I'm with the caterer.”

I was told next time use the service entrance and directed frostily to the kitchens. The cooks had coffee brewing and a radio on and were arranging flowers on serving trays. I asked for the boss.

“Out at the tent.”

Extremely attractive young men and women in white shirts and black pants were humping boxes across the lawn to a striped marquee. Under the tent, they were setting tables for a sit-down dinner for two hundred. I carried out a crate of flatware, and asked the prettiest woman I could find, “Where's the boss?”

“I am. Who are you?” She was short, feisty, and English.

“Ben Abbott. I thought you did a beautiful job at the King party up in Newbury.”

“The client from hell….Why are you carrying my lugs?”

“I wanted to ask you about the party.”

“Are you looking for work?”

“No. Not this party. I mean, I'll give you a hand if you're short, but—”

“
Who
are you?”

“Ben Abbott. From Newbury. Do you have time for a quick question?”

“Are you a cop?”

“Hell, no.”

“I talked to a lot of cops.”

“So did I.”

That got her attention, and jogged pleasant memories. “I can't begin to describe,” she said, “the fantastic pleasure—the absolute joy—when his lake exploded. I felt sorry for the fish, of course, and then later that poor guy who did it. But it was
fantastic.
I mean I have had clients. And I have had
clients
.”

“What did he do?”

“Bossing everyone around,
yelling
at us. Do this. Do that. Make sure you don't forget. Why isn't that man wearing a bow tie—Because he's still setting up the bar, you nincompoop, which of course I couldn't say, but had to take time out to explain and promise that his party would be much better than the one we did for his close personal friend the maharajah….On and on and on.”

“Sounds like a miracle it was such a good party.”

“Thank God he didn't get there until right before it started.”

“What? What do you mean, right before it started?”

“That bloody helicopter brought him in. You'd think the president of the United States was landing. The whole house staff had to line up to greet him. Like ‘Masterpiece Theater'? They told me to line up too. I said, ‘Your party starts in two hours. You can have Gosford Park, or you can have food and drink for your guests. You choose.'”

“What time did King arrive?”

“Late. One o'clock.”

“
One
?”

“He cut it really close. There was some problem with the plane.”

So much for former construction worker Henry King personally stuffing his dam with dynamite to bury a dead Dicky Butler.

“From where?”

She shrugged. “I don't know. I think they said London. He looked like he'd been flying all night. All sweaty and disgusting and not exactly spiffed for a party. He was yelling at that ‘personal' assistant that the client's chairman had taken the good plane and stuck him in one with broken air conditioning, and why the hell couldn't he buy his own plane. Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

“Who told you to line up? Ms. Devlin?”

“The ‘personal' assistant? No, she was on the helicopter. It was that drunk talking out of the side of his mouth. I gathered he was a houseguest. He'd been my main annoyance until Horrible Henry arrived.”

She and I bounced “Horrible Henry” stories for another minute or two. Then I asked her what I had driven two hours to ask: “Did you lose any gear in the explosion?”

“That was the best part of all. The silly showoff insisted we use his own silver champagne buckets.”