Keller 05 - Hit Me (28 page)

Waiting, he reminded himself that he’d committed himself to nothing. That he’d neither misrepresented himself nor broken any laws.

“Yes?”

Just a citizen, ringing a doorbell.

“Hello? Who is it?”

“Officer Griffey,” he said. “Police.”

There was a lengthy pause.

Well, he’d just broken a law. It shouldn’t take too long to drive back to Cheyenne. He wouldn’t even need the GPS, although it would probably be simpler to use it. The Soderling address was already programmed into the system, and the woman with the soothing and infinitely patient voice was waiting to guide him home, and get him there in plenty of time for dinner. And Denia was a good cook, no question about it, and—

The buzzer sounded. He pushed the door open and went on in.

The elevator was industrial, but it had been converted to self-service when the building turned residential. There’d been a 4 next to the bell marked
HEANEY
, so he pushed the appropriate button and rode to the fourth floor. The elevator door glided open, and there she was, holding a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

While he hadn’t formed a mental picture of her in advance, it would have been hard to improve on reality. Trish Heaney was no more than five foot four, but she made an impression. She wore wheat-colored jeans and a fuzzy pink sweater, both garments skintight. The jeans would have been tight on anyone who wasn’t severely anorexic, but most women who could have squeezed themselves into the jeans would have found the sweater a loose fit.

And that might have been true of this woman, he thought, before some obliging nip-and-tuck artist had put her in competition with Dolly Parton. The result was impressive, he had to admit, but no more convincing than the vivid red hue of her upswept hair. She had a butterfly tattoo on her neck, and the Geico gecko inked onto the back of one hand, and enough piercings to put a metal detector on tilt, and God knows what else she had underneath the sweater and jeans.

“You’re a cop,” she said. “You don’t look like a cop.”

“You don’t look like a kindergarten teacher.”

“Who said I was—” She broke off, frowned, took a deep drag on her cigarette. “That supposed to be a joke? You want to show me some ID?”

“I could,” he said.

Or, he thought, he could cut to the chase. One hand cupping her chin, one hand grabbing that mop of red hair. Be over before she knew it.

“So?”

“But once I do,” he said, “this becomes official. You sure that’s what you want?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There’s a guy in the hospital, touch and go whether he lives or dies. I won’t mention his name, but you wouldn’t be living here if he wasn’t paying for it.”

“This is my place,” she said. “The deed’s in my name. And I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Was this working? Keller wasn’t sure. The cigarette smoke was bothering him, and so was her perfume, an overpowering floral scent redolent with musk.

He said, “Sure you do, Trish. You were all set to get Richard Hudepohl away from his wife, and then you realized he’d be broke after the divorce. But suppose he didn’t have to go through a divorce? Suppose something happened to his wife and kids?”

“Not the kids,” she said, and put her hand to her mouth.

“Not the wife, either,” Keller said, “because old Tyler burned the house down with the wrong person in it.”

“She took his car,” she said, “and all Tyler saw was the car, and the kids in the backseat. He couldn’t see who was driving it. If you’re wearing a wire, that’s too fucking bad. You never did read me my rights.”

“Or show you my ID,” he reminded her. “Because this isn’t official. Trish, there’d be nothing easier than hanging this on Tyler, and if he’s in it then you’re in it, and having your rights read to you isn’t going to help you. But I’m the only person who made the connection, and why would I want to see you go to prison?”

She looked at him, breathed in, breathed out. Really a bad idea, that perfume she was wearing. He could see how it might work on a primitive level, but it was so blatant, and so unpleasant—

“What do you want?”

“Your boyfriend’s professional services, Trish. I got property that’s underwater.”

She frowned. “How can it burn if it’s underwater?”

“It’s an expression,” he said. “It means I owe more money on it than it’s worth. The bank’s set to foreclose on the mortgage, and when that happens, my investment goes up in smoke.”

“Unless—”

“Unless the property goes up in smoke first. Call him, get him to come over here. You’ll both make a few dollars, and I’ll forget what I happen to know about you and a man named Hudepohl. And Trish? Have you got a gun in the house?”

“Why?”

That was as good as a yes. “Get it for me,” he said.

Forty-Four

H
alfway to Cheyenne, he spotted a sign for a country-style chain restaurant and found it at the next exit. The menu ran heavily to quaint—
Grampa Gussie’s Crispy Taters, hand-cut wif his own Bowie knife—
but the food was what you’d get pretty much anywhere. He ate half of a grilled cheese sandwich and drank a few sips of his iced tea and let it go at that.

He stopped at La Quinta and caught the late local news on the CBS affiliate in Denver. A jeweler on Colfax Avenue had been robbed, apparently by a gang who’d been making a habit of this sort of thing. And the weather was going to be more of the same, although it took the weather girl ten minutes to convey that information.

Nothing about anyone named Hudepohl, or Heaney, or Crowe.

At first he thought Denia had retired for the night. The ground-floor lights were mostly turned down, and he used the key she’d given him and softened his step once he was inside.

The dining room table was cleared, the room dark. He padded across the carpet toward the staircase when she spoke his name. He turned, and saw her in an armchair in the dimly lit parlor. She was wearing a robe, and her feet were bare.

“It won’t be any trouble to warm something up for you,” she said. “But I’ve a feeling you’ve eaten.”

“The fellow I had to meet was hungry,” he said, “so I kept him company.”

“I didn’t have any appetite,” she said, “so I had a couple of drinks instead and wound up going to bed on an empty stomach. And then I couldn’t sleep after all, and I still didn’t have any appetite, and I was too restless to lie there and wait for sleep to come. Do you ever have nights like that?”

“Once in a while.”

“This is a robe of Jeb’s. That’s his actual name, incidentally. J-E-B, it’s not short for anything, though people assume it’s short for Jebediah. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone named Jebediah. Have you?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“I’m a little drunk, Nicholas. Why don’t you sit in that chair there? I want us to have a little conversation, if you don’t mind. That’s all I want, just a conversation, but I do want that. Is that all right?”

“Of course.”

“It has his smell. The robe, I mean. I ought to give all his clothes to the Goodwill. What am I keeping them for? But I like to smell them. And there’s a flannel shirt of his that I like to sleep in sometimes. And sometimes I put on this robe.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that.

“Widows are easy. You must have heard that, Nicholas.”

“Uh.”

“Everybody knows it, too. I’m not sure it’s true, but I do know that everyone believes it is, or wants it to be. I’m a reasonably attractive woman, Nicholas, but I’m hardly a movie star or a supermodel. And men who I swear never looked twice at me while Jeb was alive, men who were his friends, men who are married to friends of mine…”

She shook her head, raised her glass, sipped its contents. “Passes were made,” she said. “What an odd way to put it. ‘Passes were made.’ Well, they were, verbal and physical. Made and deflected, with no embarrassment on either side. I was not tempted.”

“No.”

“But I get lonely, you know. And I miss intimacy. Physical intimacy.”

“Well.”

“This is whiskey,” she said, brandishing her glass. “I usually have a glass or two of wine of an evening. Tonight I’ve been drinking whiskey because I wanted it to hit me, and it has. Can you tell I’m drunk?”

“No.”

“I’m not slurring my words, am I?”

“No.”

“Or speaking in too loud a voice, the way drunks do?”

“No.”

“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Of course you’ve heard that slogan.”

“Yes.”

“My husband and I subscribed to that philosophy. He had to do a certain amount of travel for his business, and if he had an opportunity for a dalliance, he was free to pursue it. When he was at home he was married, and faithful. When he was miles away, he was a free agent.”

“I suppose a lot of couples have that sort of understanding.”

“I would think so. I’m going upstairs now. I’m sure I’ll be able to sleep. I’m glad we’ve had this little talk, aren’t you, Nicholas?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And tomorrow’s our last day. I can’t remember the name of the buyer we’ll be seeing tomorrow.”

“I believe it’s a Mr. Mintz.”

“As in pie? Shame on me. It’s ridiculous to make jokes about a person’s name, and the person will have heard all of them, time and time again. When he’s gone we’ll open the envelopes. And you’ll be able to have dinner, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Boeuf bourguignon, I think. With the little roasted potatoes, and a salad. Good night, Nicholas. No, I can get upstairs under my own power. It’s just my tongue that’s loosened, that’s all. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

He had a shower. He’d felt the need for one ever since he left the Arapahoe Street loft. He toweled dry, brushed his teeth.

Too late to call Julia. He’d thought of calling her from La Quinta, decided not to, and now it was too late. Was it too late to call Dot? Probably not, but he didn’t want to call Dot. It was possible she’d called him, or tried to. He’d turned his phone off earlier and had never turned it back on.

He got in bed, turned off the light. What happens in Cheyenne, he thought, stays in Cheyenne.

He didn’t think he was going to be able to sleep, and thought about putting on a robe and going downstairs to drink whiskey. But he didn’t have a robe, and didn’t much care for whiskey, or for the whole sad business of sitting up late drinking it.

He owned a robe, a very nice maroon one with silver piping. It had belonged to Julia’s father, who’d been an invalid during the short time Keller had known him. Mr. Roussard hadn’t known quite what to make of Keller, though they got along well enough, and then the man’s illness ran its course, more or less, and he was gone.

Keller had admired the robe once, and after her father’s ashes had been scattered in the Gulf, Julia got the robe dry-cleaned and told him it was his now. He liked owning it, but he hardly ever wore it. It didn’t smell of the old man, or of the sickroom, the dry cleaner had seen to that, but still it stayed unworn in Keller’s closet. Robes, pajamas, slippers, they worked fine for some men, not so much for others, and Keller—

Dropped right off to sleep, thinking of robes and slippers.

Forty-Five

T
he representative of Talleyrand Stamp & Coin arrived twenty minutes late. Keller, on the patio with a second cup of coffee, watched as the fellow parked his black Lincoln Navigator in the driveway and headed for the front door, briefcase in hand. Like his predecessors, he wore a conservative suit and a tie; in manner and body type he fell somewhere between the two.

“Pierce Naylor,” he said, first to Keller, then a moment or two later to Denia Soderling. “Lew Mintz couldn’t make it. As I understand it, I’m the third stamp buyer to cross this threshold in as many days. Ma’am, you must be sick to death of the whole tribe of us.”

“It’s been no hardship for me,” she said. “Mr. Edwards has enabled me to stay very much in the background.”

“You’re fortunate,” he said. “The less time you spend around stamp buyers, the better off you are. Well, it’s my intention to make this as simple and easy for you as I possibly can, and profitable in the bargain. Unless I’ve been misinformed, you were visited in turn by E. J. Griffey and Martin Rombaugh, and I’d be surprised if either one of them got out of here in less than five or six hours.”

Keller was preparing a reply, but Naylor didn’t wait for one. “That’s far more of your time than I intend to take,” he said, “nor will I eat you out of house and home, as I’m sure Marty Rombaugh made every effort to do. One hour’s all I’ll need.”

Oh?

In the stamp room, Keller indicated the chair that had served Griffey and Rombaugh in turn. Naylor stayed on his feet and walked over to the shelved stamp albums. “Spain,” he announced, and carried an album to the table. Still standing, he opened it apparently at random, studied the stamps, flipped a few pages, closed the album, and returned it to the shelf. He spent a little more time with Sweden, and not much time at all with Turkey.

“All right,” he said, after replacing the Turkish album where he’d found it. “Griffey and Rombaugh, with Griffey leading off. He’d have tried to make his offer preemptive, but that little ploy quite obviously didn’t work. And Marty would have tried to add a little sweetener. He’d top Griffey’s bid and slip you a little something for your troubles. But that couldn’t have worked, either, because the stamps are still here, aren’t they?”

Keller agreed that they were.

“How high did Griffey go? And was Marty able to top it?”

“We haven’t opened the envelopes.”

“You’re kidding,” Naylor said, and looked intently at him. “You’re serious,” he announced. “Well, that makes it interesting, doesn’t it? Why don’t we bring in Mrs. Soderling? I have a suggestion to make.”

“You want us to open both envelopes,” she said. “In front of you.”

“That’s right.”

“And you’ll guarantee to top the high bid by twenty percent. I believe that’s what you said.”

“It is.”

“But you barely looked at the stamps. How can you know they’re worth that much?”