On the Run (28 page)

“I’m Ivy. My friend is Abilene.”

“Okay, Ivy, you seem like a reasonable woman. How about helping me out of this net? We both know I’m an innocent victim here, and I’ve got ants crawling all over me.”

Clever Ute. Divide and conquer. Was he really as innocent as he was trying to make us believe?

I picked up the bat and made a decisive thump on the ground. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Abilene and I are a team. We work together.”

28

Ute muttered something unintelligible, although I was fairly certain he was not complimenting me on what a sweet and gracious person I was. After that he sat in hostile silence.

Abilene returned with a tall glass clinking with ice cubes. Ute hadn’t, at least, been lying about being thirsty. He drank the glass almost empty before stopping for breath. Then he extracted an ice cube and rubbed it on his face. His face had cooled a shade now, dropping from explosive firecracker red to old brick.

I gave him a minute to finish drinking and then continued the questioning. “So if you weren’t searching for gold or drugs after you found the bodies, what were you looking for to make up for what Jock and Jessie owed you?”

“Doesn’t matter. I didn’t have time to find anything.”

“Why not?”

“Because the stupid doorbell started buzzing. I didn’t know there was anyone within five miles, and all of a sudden someone’s right outside the door. Worst doorbell I’ve ever heard. Like a cross between a jackhammer and a whoopee cushion. Then this person starts hammering on the door. And I’m trapped in there with two dead bodies.”

“But they were suicides. You’ve said so yourself.”

“Yeah, well, that’s right. But I was still . . . spooked.”

I knew the feeling. I’d been spooked too, when Abilene and I found the bodies.

“So you didn’t go to the door.”

“No. I figured whoever it was would give up and go away in a minute or two. But instead, whoever it was started rattling the doorknob and trying to get
in
. I was so spooked by then that I jumped and rammed right into the wall. Practically knocked myself out. And then the stupid phone started ringing.”

The thump and then the ringing phone I’d heard! Ute. So that was me rattling the doorknob. I started to protest that I hadn’t really been trying to get in, but then I decided there was no need for Ute to know the details. Or even that it was me at the door.

“But whoever it was finally went away. I waited a few minutes to be sure they were gone, then I ran out through the kitchen door and jumped in my van and got out of there.” He lifted his shirt beneath the net and wiped sweat off his forehead as if he were still feeling the nerves and exertion of that day.

“But the door was locked when we got here,” Abilene said. “Did you lock it?”

“I don’t know . . . Yeah, I guess I probably did. It just seemed like the thing to do, you know, them in there . . . dead and all.”

A decent thing to do, I decided, even if some of his other actions hadn’t been so decent.

Now I realized why the lock had been on a different side of the gate when I came back the second time. Ute had fastened the chain and lock from the inside when he entered the gate, and I’d come along not long afterwards. After I left, he’d gone out, moving the lock to the outside of the gate, which was where it was when Abilene and I came back the next day. I also realized that if I’d come around the house that first time, I’d have seen his van.

“So where’s your van now?” Abilene asked.

“Couple of miles back in the woods.” His thumb poked through the net as he motioned. “There’s an old road back there.”

“Why did you move from where you were camped before?”

He looked mildly alarmed to realize we’d known where he was hiding out earlier. I’d figured the camper/skulker was sharp and observant enough to recognize someone had prowled in his camp, but I was beginning to think Ute might not be quite the expert outdoorsman he’d made everyone believe he was. Or maybe he’d never gone back to that camping place.

“It was too far to hike,” he admitted finally. “I didn’t like having to plow through all the brush and stuff to get here. Look, I’m getting really tired of sitting here wrapped up in this stupid net. It’s making me itch.” He scratched his arm as evidence.

“Tough,” Abilene said.

He gave a much put-upon sigh.

“Somehow I don’t think you’ve been spending all this time spying on us just so you can sneak in the house and grab forty dollars worth of chili and sardines,” I said.

“I had something else in mind,” he admitted grudgingly.

“Like what?”

He shifted on the hard ground. The sun was shining into the brush enclosure now. Sweat beaded his forehead. He had a couple of scratches on his face where a fallen branch had scraped him. I moved over to shade him with my shadow.

“I’d given Jock and Jessie some ideas for the new script they were working on. That was what my job was supposed to be, a research assistant. Anyway, once I realized they were . . . gone, I couldn’t see that they’d have any use for the script. So I thought I’d just find a copy of it, or at least the treatment.”

The word rang a bell. I remembered that bewildering late-night caller who’d been so indignant about not receiving a “treatment.” “And a ‘treatment’ would be . . . ?”

“It’s a short document that tells what the proposed story is about. Who the characters are, the concept, the setting, how the plot works out. A little like an outline or synopsis, but not exactly. More high-powered maybe. Stronger on concept.” He spoke with a certain loftiness, a person with inside Hollywood knowledge we ignorant outsiders didn’t possess.

If he was trying to impress, it didn’t work with Abilene. She hit the bottom line. “And after you found this script or treatment, whatever, you were planning to pass it off as your own?”

He shifted uncomfortably on the ground. “Probably the best stuff in it
is
mine,” he said defensively. “And now that they aren’t around, I figure I’m as entitled to the script as anyone.”

“There are legitimate heirs,” I pointed out.

“Yeah. The wimpy son. The greedy wives. The bratty kids. None of them could tell a decent script from a sitcom dog. But I could make something really worthwhile out of whatever Jock and Jessie had started. It was my idea they go futuristic, with mutant sharks invading after atomic weapons demolished the ice caps and raised the sea level. A really great idea.”

“So you and the Northcutts were kindred souls, survivalists/writers united together.” After a moment’s reflection I added, “With a mutual touch of paranoia?”

“I’m not paranoid. Although I could get that way around you two,” he muttered. “Would you please stop thumping and twisting that bat like you’re just waiting for a chance to whop me over the head with it?”

I hadn’t realized it, but I was stirring up a small cloud of dust of my own. “Sorry. So that’s what you’ve spent all this time here for, waiting to get into the house to steal Jock and Jessie’s movie script or treatment?”

“I haven’t had anything better to do, and it’s cheap living in the van out here.” He sounded defensive again. “I haven’t sold anything except one short story in the last year. My agent just dumped me. This looked like my best shot. And I don’t think it’s fair to call my wanting the script ‘stealing.’ I mean, that mutant shark was my idea, and I’m pretty sure they used it.”

Probably so, considering both what I’d seen in the files and what I’d heard earlier from Margaret Rau about the Northcutts’ odd interest in shark attacks. Which I doubted gave Ute the right to claim the entire script, however.

“Perhaps you prefer the term
plagiarism
?” I suggested.

The word
stealing
hadn’t seemed to upset him, but
plagiarism
, the word that applied distinctly to the written word, apparently did. He shifted uncomfortably on the net wadded beneath him and rubbed the back of his neck. His gaze darted to the line of ants industriously carrying off Oreo crumbs.

“You made yourself a good hiding place here. Very competently done. Apparently, even if you and the Northcutts had some differences, you are an expert survivalist?”

He jiggled his shoulders in an indecisive motion.

“I heard you spent six weeks alone in the wilderness with only a pocketknife and matches.”

He scratched the side of his nose. “I may have . . . exaggerated somewhat.”

“Exaggerated how?”

“I kind of . . . made that up.”

“To impress the Northcutts?”

“I wanted to learn something from them working here. They hadn’t had any big successes lately, but they were good writers. But I doubted they were going to hire just any old writing hopeful who wandered in from L.A. So I beefed up my resume to what I thought would interest them.”

“Bought some camouflage clothes and an old van, got a tattoo, and turned yourself into a survivalist.” We hadn’t seen the tattoo yet, but I assumed it was there.

“I already had the van.” He didn’t deny my other accusations. “But basically you deceived the Northcutts about who and what you were.”

“I didn’t really deceive them,” he protested. He was sweating more now, maybe not just from heat. “It was more like playing a part. I’m interested in acting on the screen as well as writing for it. You remember the
Digby and Son
TV show?”

“No, I don’t think so.” I glanced at Abilene, and she shook her head.

“It lasted only part of one season, but I was a waiter on one of the episodes. A good one too. So with the Northcutts I just kind of acted the part of . . . a survivalist. One of
them
.”

“But you’re not.”

“If I were really some survivalist expert, would I have gotten caught in your stupid trap?” He fist-jabbed the net, tore his thumbnail, and looked at it like a little boy about to run to Mama with a boo-boo.

We’d gotten sidetracked here, I decided. And maybe Ute was acting even now, trying to throw us off. I jumped to a new subject. Surprise, according to the mysteries I read, is always good. So I surprised him with, “Do you think there’s a chance Jock and Jessie were being blackmailed?”

“Blackmailed?” He indeed sounded astonished, but after a moment’s thought a one-shouldered shrug followed. “They’d probably pulled enough shyster tricks over the years to warrant blackmail. Ethics were not a high priority with Jock and Jessie. Look what they did to me. But I don’t know that they were being blackmailed.” He paused, absentmindedly working his jaw back and forth as if checking for damage. “Actually, if you want to talk blackmail, I’d be more inclined to think they were the blackmailers, not blackmailees. I’d bet they knew all kinds of dirt on any number of Hollywood big shots.”

Logical, except that it didn’t jibe with the disappearing cash, which said they were paying out, not receiving, money. Information I didn’t intend to share with Ute, of course. I offered a possibility that fit with his. “And perhaps this person or persons who were being blackmailed decided to end it by killing them?”

“How would I know? Besides, they weren’t murdered. They committed suicide. The police and medical examiner and everybody said so. The newspaper ran several pieces on it.”

Did he believe that? Or was he clinging to the suicide story because he was afraid if he didn’t, if he expressed any doubts, he might wind up at the top of a sheriff’s “People with Motives” list?

“That’s what you thought when you first saw the bodies?” I asked. “That they’d committed suicide?”

“Right off, I thought somebody’d whacked ’em,” he admitted. “But then I saw the gun and the note.”

“Were you surprised then, that they’d done it?”

“I don’t know. Yes and no, I guess. I mean, they were such fanatics about survival, you know? Why go to all that trouble to survive, and then give up and do yourselves in? And yet they sometimes did things so impulsively. Like going down to Hugo one time and coming home with enough toilet tissue to t.p. New York.”

Right. That mountain of it in the basement. I decided to hit him with another surprise. “Maybe the note was a fake. Maybe they
were
murdered.”

“How could it be a fake?” he scoffed. “The newspaper said Frank identified the handwriting.”

“You could have managed a fake note,” Abilene said. “You’re smart and clever and creative—”

Even the appeal to Ute’s ego wasn’t enough to make him admit, yeah, maybe he could have faked a note. He shook his head with all the vehemence of a small boy faced with a plate of brussels sprouts.

“Me? Hey, no.” He struggled to rise within the net, but his knees jammed against his chin, and he wound up in an awkward toad-squat. “Don’t try to pin this on me. Look at all the other people who had it in for them a whole lot more than I did!”

“Such as?”

“Someone they were blackmailing who was mad enough to kill them himself . . . or herself . . . or hire a hit man. Or maybe someone they wronged back in Hollywood had it in for them. What about whoever got those gold coins you were talking about? What about the son and that la-di-da wife of his? Maybe they decided to kill Jock and Jessie before they got cut out of the will. What about the ex-wife? She talked Jock and Jessie out of money more than once with some sob story about the poor deprived kids. I heard her myself. And what about those spoiled-brat kids? Or maybe Jock and Jessie really were into drugs, and I just didn’t know it, and some druggie did them in.”

It was quite a lineup of potential killers, I had to admit, but Abilene jumped on a line buried in the list. “The kids?” she repeated. “You’re saying the
kids
could have phonied up a suicide note and then shot their grandparents?”

“Well, okay, probably not the kids,” Ute muttered as if realizing an off-the-wall charge about the kids really didn’t strengthen an argument for his own innocence. “They’re spoiled brats, but I guess they couldn’t have pulled this off. But the son, now, he’s a different story. And the wife too. She never got along with Jock and Jessie. They could have—”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Back up. You mentioned a will. Did you see a will? Or hear Jock and Jessie talk about one?”

“They were looking at something one time when they had me in the house trying to unplug the kitchen drain. I didn’t actually see what it was, but it was typed on that long, crinkly kind of paper lawyers use, and I thought it was a will at the time. They were arguing about something in it. Maybe Frank and his wife thought they’d better protect what they had coming as an inheritance by getting rid of the old folks before they changed the will.”