Money To Burn (4 page)

They had found Thomas Nash.

A few minutes later, the men had maneuvered the gurney up the ladder and were carrying it toward a waiting van. Maynard Pope walked behind it, making notations on a clipboard in his hand.

He saw me staring and waved me over. “Sure you can do this?” he asked. “The body was found slumped over an upturned metal desk and pooled water preserved a small part of the face. If you could just take a look at the height and build—and what’s left of the face—it would be worth our while to send for dental records. Think you can take it?”

“Of course I can,” I mumbled, dreading the moment. The gurney had been half-lifted into the back of the truck and the men carrying it were waiting for the go-ahead. Maynard stepped up and peeled the plastic sheet back, starting at the top of the head as he slowly unveiled the body.

Charred remains that had once been a face stared up at me, the flesh on the left side burned away so that the skull and teeth gleamed in a death grimace. Part of the other half of the face remained, where the body had been lying on its side in water. The flesh was covered with a black crust, but I recognized enough of the remaining features to know it was Thomas Nash. The figure was so very different from the man I had sat across from in my office that it didn’t seem possible that I was looking at something that had once been human. His arms were roasted into thin black sticks that crossed his chest as if he had been warding off a blow. The rest of his body was a mixture of black ash, charred tissue and bone, and melted lumps where his feet and shoes had been.

I snapped. Overwhelming anger filled my body. I turned away from the grotesque figure on the gurney, wanting to destroy. The first thing I saw was a towering stack of garbage left on the curb by someone a few days before. I kicked the pile savagely with my right leg, hitting a metal trash can solidly enough to send it flying into the street. The stack of trash collapsed, sending cardboard boxes and plastic bags tumbling to the ground. I waded into the mess and began kicking each object methodically, only dimly aware that everyone else had backed off. I felt the weight of each container roll onto the top of my foot as I plowed through the pile of garbage, bent on destruction. I began to count each kick, moving faster and lifting harder, sending each bag soaring into the air so that it fell with a splat in the street, the plastic bursting as discarded cans and bottles skittered down the asphalt. I could hear myself cursing as if I stood at a distance from my own body, helpless to stop the attack.

Maynard Pope waited quietly until I had reduced the pile of trash to debris. When I was done, I was breathing heavily and gasping for air. My lungs felt like all the smoke of the night before had gathered in a big choking ball and lodged in my throat. I had to get the taste of the fire out of my mouth. I bent over and coughed so violently that I finally threw up, losing the contents of my stomach on the edge of the grass and not giving a shit who saw it.

When I was done heaving, I remained bent over, eyes closed, and rested myself with my hands propped on my knees. Something lly. Sometwet and cold touched my arm. I opened one eye tentatively. A narrow dark nose was in my line of vision, pointing obediently at the pool of vomit at my feet.

I looked up to find Annie the accelerant dog bowed at attention, her front paws daintily crossed and her hindquarters thrust into the air as she pointed her nose at the pile at my feet. One of her two hundred and twenty-five million nose nerve endings had detected one of my three gin-and-tonics of the night before.

Maynard Pope coughed and I met his eyes across the draped and thoroughly toasted carcass of Thomas Nash.

“That’s him,” I told him glumly. “I’m sure it’s him.”

For the rest of the morning, Annie and her owner moved through the fire scene, repeating the same ballet over and over: Annie would sniff a section of surface area, find a suspicious spot and freeze in a bowing position. Her owner would mark the spot with a small red flag and reward Annie with a treat from the pouch. As they moved on to another area of floor, a forensic fire specialist would come in behind them, carefully swabbing the area with a pad of gauze or carving out a section of the area where Annie had scored a hit. Each sample was placed in a small metal container that resembled a quart-size paint can, then the top was labeled according to a grid code. The process repeated itself again and again as Annie sniffed out suspicious substances beneath the ashes. The dog was finding plenty of hits. In fact, she was bobbing up and down more than a bunch of Dallas socialites kissing Fergie’s ass.

After a while, Annie was hoisted into the basement using a canvas sling that caused her legs to splay out to the sides. She endured this treatment cheerfully, the consummate professional, her ears perked high and her tail wagging as she disappeared from my sight.

I knew she’d be a long time in the basement. As I waited for the dog to finish, I leaned against a telephone pole and drank a cold Pepsi that Doodle had found for me after my public puking performance. The can was icy and I held it against the back of my neck as I gulped in fresh air. It was only ten o’clock and already the July day was hotter than two foxes fucking in a forest fire.

“Know that woman?” Maynard Pope appeared at my elbow again. I jumped at the sound of his stridently nasal voice.

“Jesus. You always sneak up on people like that?” I glared at him, irritated.

“Sorry. It’s my job. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He was old for an active fireman, more than sixty, I’d say, and he rolled the words around in his mouth like Popeye before he spoke. “Know that woman over there?” he repeated.

I followed his gaze. A slender woman of medium height, with straight brown hair, was standing alone at the edge of td hhe edgehe front lawn, sobbing into a white handkerchief. Her white cotton dress billowed in the breeze, giving her the air of an apparition posed against the backdrop of black, charred ruins.

“No, but I’ll find out who she is,” I volunteered, thinking of the voice on Nash’s answering machine the night before. I had a pretty good idea of what she was, even if I didn’t know her name.

She faked me out. With surprising quickness, the woman turned her back on the fire and hurried back to the street, hopping into the passenger side of a late-model Sentra that was parked at the curve just beyond the parameters of the taped crime scene area. The car sped off before I reached it.

“Quick, ain’t she?” That damn Maynard Pope was like a ghost. I flinched. Maybe what I really needed was a good long nap.

“So who was that?” he demanded. He’d stuck a toothpick in his mouth and it bobbed up and down while he spoke.

“The victim had a girlfriend,” I explained. “I think it was her.”

“What else do you know about this Thomas Nash?” the arson investigator asked. “Who was harassing him?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You go first. What have you found out so far about the fire?”

He stared at me, content to hold his ground. I held mine right back.

“Can’t tell you,” he finally said.

I shrugged. “Coincidence. My information is confidential, too.”

His small eyes flickered, but I stared back, determined to wait him out. I couldn’t afford not to. He held the magic keys to the fire. No way I was giving information away for free.

“I’ll trade you,” I finally volunteered, once it became obvious that we were now in a pissing match rather than a mere staring contest. “You tell me one piece of information
and I’ll tell you something I know about the victim in return.”

His mouth twitched. “Not very trusting, are you?” he said.

I shook my head. “Nope.”

It was like pulling teeth from a tiger, but in the end I found out what I needed to know. Judging by where he was found and his position, Thomas Nash had likely beer=“d likeln knocked unconscious before the fire even started. Maynard was willing to bet that Nash had died of smoke inhalation following the blow. Accelerant had been found at various spots throughout the basement and first floor. Maybe even on the upper floors, too. They had to wait until the floors were shored up before they could confirm it.

“In other words,” I said. “This was no accident.”

“Definitely not an accident,” the little man agreed. “More like murder.” He gave me a thin smile. “Stick around. The cops are on their way.”

Funny thing, me and Durham cops. I got the hell out of there.

“Good thing I deposited his check right away.” This was all the ever-sensitive Bobby D. had to say when I informed him later that afternoon that Thomas Nash was not only dead but Extra-Krispy in the bargain. Bobby had the decency to look guilty at his remark, though it didn’t stop him from assaulting a large garbage pizza. His face was smeared with a sheen of oil and tomato sauce, making him look like a hyena caught in the bowels of a kill.

“Bobby, do the women you date ever go out to eat with you more than once?”

“Sure, babe.” He licked his fingers with the dedication of a cat. “The women of today realize that a man with a hearty appetite has a keen appreciation for other pleasures of the flesh, know what I mean?” He wiggled his eyebrows at me and har-harred, causing a rope of half-eaten cheese to fly out of his mouth and across his desk. A lesser man would have apologized and whisked it from sight. Bobby plucked it from the telephone and dangled it in the air as he chewed at one end with undisguised gusto.

I stared. He chewed. I stared some more.

“What?” he finally said, defensively.

“This whole thing sucks,” I told him. “Nash was a good guy and you should have seen what that fire did to him. He looked like a giant spare rib. I’m not touching meat for at least ten years.”

“They got any idea who did it?” Bobby asked.

I shook my head. “I was thinking about looking into it on my own. He does have quite a few hours left on his retainer fee.”

Bobby probed the corners of his lips with a fat red tongue for stray tomato sauce. “Casey,” he said with a gentle belch, “what we need are live clients, not dead ones. Let the cops handle it. They won’t let you get near it, anyway.”

“If the cops won’t let me near it, that’s all the more reason why I ought to look into it on my own,” I told him. “I owe it to the poor guy.”

Bobby rolled his eyes. He is only sentimental about women, and not even women if they happen to be clients, too. “Face it, babe, the guy gave you the hots and you’re sorry you never had a chance to tango. That’s what this is about.”

“It is not,” I said indignantly. “It’s about honor. I said I would protect him.”

“It’s about hormones. He was your type. Tall. Brown hair. Kept bumping into things.”

“That’s my type?” He made it sound like I enjoyed dating Great Danes.

“No, but he was breathing. And that is your type.”

I punched him on the arm. My fist sank harmlessly into a sea of flesh. “I’ll be in my office if any new clients come in,” I told him.

“Don’t worry, I’ll send them your way. Hey, did I show you my new gizmo?” He started to open his desk drawer and I stopped him.

“Bobby, we agreed. No more new gizmos. I don’t want to see it.” But it reminded me. “How do I get the film in that cigarette pack camera developed?”

“Leave it with me, babe,” he said. “I need something to do to occupy the afternoon. I’ll drive out to the spy shop and drop it off.”

Yeah, while he waited out those long lonely hours between his afternoon snack and his dinner. I handed the cartridge over for processing. I was curious to review just how Thomas Nash had spent his last afternoon. Maybe I’d spot something I’d missed the first time around that would point toward his killer.

Unfortunately, my good intentions died within half an hour. Exhausted by my night vigil at the fire, I fell asleep at my desk with my cheek resting on a roll of scotch tape. I woke in the early evening, alone in the office, with a dent in my face centered bynd center what looked like a boil the size of Cleveland. I wasn’t about to visit any of my regular haunts with the outline of a giant snail on my face. So I drove home to Durham and resumed my fitful sleep in bed.

All night long I dreamed of fire and smoke, awaking at intervals, choking for breath and certain that I was trapped by flames. By morning—which was a long time coming—I knew that I had to somehow find the money to ignore my other cases, so I could find out who had killed Thomas Nash. If not, I’d be trapped in my own private hell forever.

If your intentions are pure, the universe will further them. I know because two weeks later, after a depressing but financially necessary fourteen days of boring divorce cases and missing persons work, a stunning woman in her early thirties walked into our office in downtown Raleigh. Her eyes were shaded by expensive sunglasses and she had soft brown hair that fell in waves down her back. She wore a yellow sundress with thin straps that criss-crossed her shoulders. If she’d looked any better in that dress, she’d have been wearing it down a runway.

When she walked in, I was standing at the coffee machine, pounding it with the heel of my hand to make it drip faster than the maddeningly slow pace it had recently adopted. Coffee was more important than a new client, so I decided to let Bobby handle the newcomer.

Unfortunately, Bobby was preoccupied staring at the black Ferrari that the woman had parked at the curb.

I cleared my throat loudly and Bobby got the message. He roused himself from the depths of auto lust and rose from his long-suffering chair to give the woman a courtly bow. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said grandly. “I am the proprietor of this establishment.”

She slid the sunglasses down her nose and peered at him. “I want to talk to her in private,” she said, pointing a finger at me.

I shrugged innocently, though I recognized her face once I got a better look at it. “Right this way,” I said, waving her in the direction of my office cubby. She looked like a nice woman, so I spared her the offer of any coffee.

The visitor sat in my extra chair and slid her glasses up on her head. Her hair bunched in silky waves around the frames, a maneuver that I swear requires hours of practice in front of a mirror to perfect. She looked around the dingy room and her confidence faltered for the first time.

“This is a pretty small office,” she said.

“Bobby needs a lot more room than I do,” I told her, “as I’m sure you noticed.”

She answered me with an uncertain smile and I saw that she had recently survived t tly surva serious crying jag. Her eyes were red and devoid of makeup, though the rest of her was perfectly groomed.

“I saw you at the fire a couple weeks ago,” I said. “You were wearing a white dress and crying into a handkerchief.”

“Yes,” she said in a voice that suddenly broke. She burst out sobbing and fumbled for tissues in her ostrich-skin handbag. I produced a box from my lower drawer and slid it across the desk toward her. We detectives are prepared.

She sobbed out a completely incomprehensible sentence, her voice muffled by tissue and tears. Where are subtitles when you need them? I caught the word “Maynard” and took a stab at her meaning.

“Did Maynard Pope send you to me?” I asked.

She nodded and gulped for air, then threw her shoulders back with resolve. I waited while her sobs subsided. Eventually, she blew her nose with a honk that would have caused an entire flock of Canada geese to fall from the sky. Then she daintily dropped the offending soiled Kleenex in my trash can.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “Thomas Nash was my fiancée.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I told her. “I heard your voice on his answering machine. You were the woman flying in early from Savannah.”

She nodded. “If I had only gone to his house from the airport, this probably wouldn’t have—” Her voice threatened to break again so I headed her off at the pass. Any more salt water and I’d start feeling like Kate Winslet in Titanic.

“Your fiancée was murdered,” I told her. “If you’d gone to his house, you would be dead, too. And if the killer had failed the night of the fire, he most certainly would have succeeded eventually. Unless you set the fire, his death is not your fault.” I should have recorded the speech and played it back for myself.

“Why did Maynard send you to me?” I asked when she threatened to tear up again. Maybe I should find her a sponge instead of a tissue.

She wiped each eye with a fresh Kleenex and let her head slump back, trying to relax the muscles in her neck. “This is rough. I don’t know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning,” I suggested. I could tell she was wealthy, and rich people who have inherited their bucks are different from us mere mortals in at least one important respect—time is not money, it’s theirs to spend as they like.

“I need a drink,” she said unexpectedly. musexpecte”I’ve been trying not to give in to the urge, but I need a drink if I’m going to get into it.”

“No problem.” I slid open one of my lower drawers and produced the bottle of bourbon that I keep hidden behind my box of tampons—one of the few items in my desk that Bobby D. refuses to touch. “Will this do?” I asked, displaying the label. “I keep it for emergencies.” Which was true. Just the smell of bourbon can make me gag, but sometimes it was useful with hysterical clients. I had wavered between the more traditional private-eye inspired bottle of scotch, but given that my clients were almost universally southern, bourbon won out in the end. At least it was a decent brand. “Wild Turkey okay?”

“I’d drink Sterno right now,” she answered. She winced as she realized the irony of her remark, and I poured her a paper cup full of the hard stuff before she started blubbering on me again. She drained it in one gulp, gave a long shudder, then composed herself to begin.

“I called Mr. Pope a number of times after the fire,” she said in a soft voice tinged by a cultivated drawl. “I found out his name from some, well, let’s just say some ‘connections.’ I guess I got on his nerves with all my questions, but when he figured out who I was, he didn’t want to make me mad. So he suggested I call you for help.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So, who are you,” I asked, “that arson investigators like Maynard Pope tremble at the very sound of your voice?”

She smiled, revealing perfect white teeth. “Lydia Talbot. My father is Randolph Talbot.”

“Oh,” I said, immediately tabulating the implications of that simple remark. Randolph Talbot was the chairman of Teer & Talbot Tobacco, my dead client’s former employer. Randolph Talbot was also head of Durham’s wealthiest family. In fact, the Talbots were probably close to being the top dogs in both Carolinas, with more bucks than Marlin Perkins had on his walls and more social influence than the president of the local junior league.

Even the most out-of-it townies knew their story. Rumor had it that a Talbot from Virginia had rolled into North Carolina after the Civil War searching for a way to improve his family’s fallen fortunes. He’d founded T&T Tobacco in Durham with the backing of a friend named Eustace Teer. Within two generations, the Teer seed died out thanks to debauchery and rumored syphilis, but the Talbot family tree took firm root and, eventually, took over the company. One hundred and thirty years later, T&T had made Randolph Talbot and his relatives wealthy beyond expectation. The mere mention of their name could make bankers salivate and caterers faint with joy. If Thomas Nash really had been engaged to the young woman sitting before me, she may well have been the reason why he was so blissfully unconcerned about current profits. He’d be set for life once he married her.

Of course, now he never would, would he?

“When I first saw you at the fire,” Lydia Talbot was confessing to me tearfully, “I knew you weren’t with the cops or fire department. And I could tell you were upset.

So I thought maybe you and Thomas…” Her voice trailed off.

“You thought I was having an affair with him?” I asked incredulously. “That doesn’t say much about the level of trust between the two of you.”

Her shoulders slumped. “You don’t understand,” she said. “We were engaged and he kept saying he was happy, but he always seemed so… distracted. Distant. He was even passive about our wedding plans. He went along with everything I suggested. I guess I thought maybe it was because he had been seeing someone else and that you were her.”

“I assure you I only met your fiancée the day before the fire,” I told her. “And I can also tell you that he was more preoccupied with his work than any other man I’ve ever met. I’d be willing to bet my original Kid Creole and the Coconuts debut album that his preoccupation was not due to another woman. Is that why you’ve come to see me? To make sure we weren’t having an affair?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s worse and even more ridiculous than that.”

Worse than what? I wondered. What was so frigging ridiculous about the idea of me boffing Thomas Nash? Yeah, sure, I had less than a millionth of her bank account and I was a good ten years older and thirty pounds heavier, but there were plenty of men who found my, ahem, big bold beauty appealing.

“Mr. Pope said it was arson,” she said. “And that it was probably set to harm Thomas or cover up the evidence of some other crime. But he said he couldn’t be more specific. He thought maybe you could help me and he gave me your card.”

I wasn’t sure whether Maynard Pope was sloughing a hysterical female off on me or whether he was trying to do me a favor. I’d let her fee decide.

“What exactly is it you want me to do?” I said slowly.

“Could you find out who set the fire and whether or not they intended to murder him?” she asked.

“That’s what the cops are for,” I told her. “What do you really want?”

She blew her nose again, daintily this time, stalling for time.