Out Of Time (8 page)

Her voice was remarkably steady for an old woman. I suspected her right hook might be as well. I nodded, not wanting to inflame her further for fear she would pull out a yardstick and start rapping my knuckles with it. She took my nod as encouragement to continue.

“It was the war, I believe,” she said. “That’s what changed my Peyton. It planted some seed of instability, some guilt, that he lived while others died.” She shook her head and the rhinestone corners of her eyeglasses glittered in the light like the eyes of a cobra. My feet seemed unable to move until I was dismissed. I stood, mute, being lectured on, of all things, the Vietnam War.

“What an odd war that was,” she mused as she inched closer to me. “It seemed so unreal. So very far away.” Her quavery sigh filled the room as she began to fuss over her former pupil’s desk, ineffectually stacking papers and aligning pens. She did not actually order me out of the office, but she managed—by her rigid posture — to let me know quite clearly that she was not leaving the room until I led the way.

I could have kicked her little-old-lady butt, but I could never have withstood the lecture that would have followed. So I gave in. “He seems like a nice man,” I said, rising to go. We circled each other cautiously, like a pair of elderly samurai anxious to preserve our honor without ever actually drawing swords.

“Yes,” she hissed. “He’s a wonderful man. His only fault is that he makes up his mind about people too quickly.” She stared pointedly at me. “He trusts people too easily. Sometimes people he shouldn’t.”

“I’m not one of those,” I assured her. “We’re on the same side.”

The look she gave me made my back straighten automatically and called forth some ambiguous apology from my gut. I felt a need to confess, but to what? I could cop to having beaten up some boys in the playground, but that had been decades ago. It wouldn’t satisfy her. She was out for first blood.

“I hope you’re right, young lady,” she said, her eyes boring into mine. “Peyton Tillman is very important to a great many old people in this neighborhood who would be lost and confused without him. And he is like a son to me. No one else would hire me.” Her voice softened and, for the first time, she seemed her age. I let out an involuntary breath.

“Look at me,” she demanded. “I’m ancient and I do him little googutm littld. But he insists on paying me to sit in his outer office and sleep. It’s the difference between going with and going without when it comes to food and medicine for me and my husband, you understand.” She made no apology; her genteel dignity was innate.

“I understand,” I said quickly. I was no stranger to poverty and scraping by.

“I would not like to see him hurt again,” she finished up firmly. “The people of this state are the poorer for losing him. He is a good man. We all make mistakes. His were minor. They cost us all dearly.”

“I won’t let him get hurt again,” I promised. Geeze, Tillman must have turned in one hell of a term paper on current events to merit such loyalty.

“So long as we understand each other.” The thin smile that stretched across her light pink lips made me glad I’d never had her for a teacher. “Good day, Miss Jones,” she said in a soft voice as her eyes narrowed to slits.

So, the sleeping giant knew my name. And my rank and serial number as well, no doubt. I left, reminding myself— no matter what else I did—to keep on Mrs. Rollins’s good side.

After that encounter, I felt it necessary to fortify myself with a few beers at the Player’s Retreat, then flirted awhile with the counterman at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar guided by the theory that a man in such close proximity to oysters might turn out to be a pearl in the sack. After a quick trip home to change, I was back to work.

It was just past ten when I turned off Oberlin Road onto the quiet, oak-lined streets of Cameron Park, one of Raleigh’s oldest residential areas. It had been built on the outskirts of town at the turn of the century, but now found itself smack in the middle of the action. It was bordered on one side by Hillsborough Street, which led straight downtown to the Capitol-building statue honoring the Confederate dead. Although the neighborhood had changed over the past decade, it was still home to many elderly people whose families had lived there for generations. Their houses were dark, shut down for the night, doors bolted tightly against the creeping threat of crime. The sidewalks were empty. North Carolina State University was only a few blocks away, but a rabid block association kept parking and zoning restrictions so strict that few students ever stumbled drunkenly through the neighborhood to arouse the geriatric dogs that lived there.

Peyton Tillman lived on a small side street that wound around one corner of a narrow central park. The house was a two-story whitewashed stone structure nestled on a ridge halfway down a heavily wooded hill. Oaks and pines sheltered the dwelling from traffic on the road above it and discouraged all but the most determined of visitors. Either he had inherited a pile of dough or the Tillmans had lived there
for years—houses like this went for nearly half a million in Cameron Park these days. No wonder the professors and little old ladies were pulling up stakes and selling out toat lling o the medical crowd.

I negotiated the slippery stone steps gingerly, grateful that I had worn my high-top tennis shoes. The night smelled wet and green. I could hear frogs peeping in the creek at the bottom of the park, their singing a high-pitched dirge against a gentle backdrop of gurgling water. The frogs, at least, had decided that spring had arrived.

So much for conserving energy: nearly every room in Peyton Tillman’s house blazed with light. I felt as if I had stumbled onto the Holy Grail in the darkness. Two stories of wide windows cast illuminating patches over the descent that continued behind the house into the depths of the park. I rang the doorbell and waited. I rang it again and waited some more. Still no response. Which of these brightly lit rooms was he nodding off in? I peeped in a few downstairs windows with the practiced sneakiness of a small-town PI and quickly grasped that Peyton Tillman was, hands down, an even worse housekeeper than moi. Papers were strewn about on tables and floors. Cabinet doors sagged open, drawers to end tables tilted toward the floor and books were stacked in piles all around the area rugs. Well, how do you like that? His casa was mi casa. But I saw no Peyton. I shuddered to imagine his bathroom and bedroom. This was a bachelor pad supreme.

I slipped on some ivy-covered stone near the corner dining room and the thought of tumbling into a distant creek reminded me: the hot tub. He was already soaking his weary bones and war-torn body in the hot tub. Where had he said it was located? It could only be in the backyard; both sides were too steep for anything but the most determined of creeping plants and a narrow stone walkway. I followed the path around one side of the house and discovered a large wooden deck built on pilings that angled out over the steep hillside. Unlike the rest of the house, it was shrouded in darkness. The hot tub was sunk near the far edge of the deck and I could barely make out Peyton Tillman lying in it, his head tilted back as he gazed at the stars through a canopy of bare branches.

“Sorry I’m late,” I called out. “I stopped off for liposuction so I could fit in my bathing suit.”

Okay, it was a bad joke. But ignoring it was in even worse taste.

“Peyton?” I asked in the silence. “It’s Casey Jones. We had an appointment.”

When he didn’t reply, I grew apprehensive. I’d heard stories of people drinking themselves to sleep in a hot tub and waking up in the hospital looking like giant prunes. “Peyton!” I called out more loudly. His name echoed over the hills of the park, silencing the frogs. The sudden stillness made me even more uneasy. The only sound was the gurgling of water in the hot tub. I fought an urge to flee back to the well-lit house, and I glanced around the patio perimeter to see if I was being watched. I was suddenly sorry I hadn’t brought old Mrs. Rollins with me for protection.

“Peyton—it may be time for the rinse cycle.” Still no answer. I took a deep breath, climbed th”><, climbe steps to the deck and plunged into the darkness. The deck floor was damp around the hot tub, as if someone had been careless and sloshed about. Just as I reached Peyton, I slipped on a wet spot near the base of the tub and went down hard, landing on a mound of towels carelessly heaped on the floor. My upper body sprawled across the deck and I banged one elbow on the tub edge. The pain rang all the way down my arm and I rubbed it furiously before I noticed that something sticky and sweet-smelling was coating my skin. It seeped from my bruised elbow into a dark shadow. I panicked and reached for the tub’s edge, hoping to hoist myself upright. Instead, I touched something soft and equally sticky. I dropped back down, this time landing in a puddle of dark liquid. I half-squeaked and half-screamed my repulsion. What the hell was dangling over the tub? I’ve grabbed some unknown parts in the dark before, but there was no way I was touching that one. I crawled away from the puddle on my knees and pulled myself up by the deck railing. All limbs unfolded normally; I was battered but unbroken.

I could not say the same for Peyton Tillman. Even in the darkness, I was close enough to finally see that something was very wrong. He was leaning against the far edge of the tub, his neck tilted back at what I now saw was an unnatural angle. One arm floated on top of the water, held aloft by the buoyancy of the bubbles. The other arm hung carelessly over the lip of the hot tub—this was what I had touched in the dark. I peered at the lit digital dial of the tub, searching for a light control. The timer showed less than seven minutes remaining on the jet cycle. The light dial had three choices. I went for all the illumination I could get. A blue filter capped much of the brightness, but I saw enough of the foaming light purple water and enough of Peyton Tillman’s still face to know that he had been leaking blood into the tub for a long time. Carefully, I stepped around the pool of blood that had collected on the deck floor at the base of his fingertips. It was too late to preserve the evidence. I had already smeared most of it across the deck.

I detoured around the towels anyway and felt his neck carefully for the artery. He was dead. I ran my fingertips lightly over his face and shoulders. Despite the heat of the water, the upper part of his body that protruded from the tub had surface-cooled in the night air. That meant that his blood had stopped circulating some time ago. I bent down in the dim glow from the hot tub’s lights and examined his wrists. Three long slits had been gouged vertically, beginning at the base of each palm, leading up toward the inner elbow. Each cut was deep and more than three inches long. This was no half-assed attempt at suicide. The warm water had bled him dry quickly from the one floating arm, tainting the water its seeming purple. The arm that hung over the edge of the tub had drained more slowly, I suspected, but the blood loss from either arm would have been enough to do the job alone.

Why in the hell had he chosen to do it? Why invite me over and then kill himself? Did he feel such a personal responsibility for Gail’s life that he felt a need to offer his own in penance?

I sat down on a wooden bench that edged the patio railing to consider my options. Just then, the breeze shifted and the sweet smell of pooled blood insinuated itself into my nostrils, reminding me that I had Peyton Tillman’s blood soaking my left side. The thought instantly triggered a wave of nausea.drae of na Without warning, I vomited up oysters and beer with a generous side of pretzels. There was nothing to do but lean forward and let fly, hoping to god I didn’t puke right in the pool of evidence. My tennis shoes would never recover, I knew, and I wasn’t too sure about my ego either. I was covering myself with something, but it sure as hell wasn’t glory. It took a good five minutes for the attack to pass and for me to collect my thoughts. I knew I had to call the police and I knew it would not be pretty when I did. Bill Butler would have a coronary, but probably not until after he had arrested me for disturbing the scene of the crime in a rather spectacular fashion.

The delay in calling the police gave me time to realize that I had one chance and one chance only to try and decipher what Peyton Tillman may have had to say to me that afternoon. It was stupid, I knew, but it had to be done. I’d look through his house before I called in his death. No one could have saved him at that point, I rationalized, he’d been dead for a half hour or more. Another half hour would make little difference. The trouble was, I had no gloves and I could not afford to leave a single fingerprint behind. If anyone ran the prints, they’d get an instant hit, and my felony record would be revealed in all its glory for Bill Butler and the rest of the Raleigh Police Department to see. I’d have to find a way to search without leaving any trace behind.

The hot tub reached the end of its cycle, and an ominous silence descended on the deck. The water stilled and tiny trickles of deep red satin spread from his wrist into the blue water like varicose veins. The silence made me want to see his face. It was turned away from the light and his features were difficult to distinguish in the shadows. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for: a sign of peace, perhaps, of resolution, of answered questions or resignation? What I found was nothing. All expression had been bled from his face. The essence of whoever Peyton Tillman was drained away forever.

I left him and began searching as quickly as I could, entering through the half-opened sliding back door into the kitchen. The only gloves I could find were two large oven mitts in the shape of an alligator and a cow. I felt like a demented children’s TV show host waving those babies around, but they were better than nothing. Especially when I reached the living room and realized that I was in for even more trouble than I had thought. Someone had been there before me. Peyton Tillman was no slob. His house was messy because it had been searched by someone in a hurry, the contents returned in haste. Piles of magazines slid to the floor with a nudge of my foot. Contents of drawers had been replaced upside down. Closet shelves had been swept of their holdings, the surfaces filled again with armloads of whatever the searcher could grab from the pile on the closet floor. Books had been opened, shaken and tossed carelessly back on shelves upside down and sideways. Given the circumstances, I would not find anything in the house during my own search, I knew. I walked through the upstairs rooms anyway, my oven puppet mitts casting bizarre shadows on the stairway walls. Nothing. A ransacked bedroom, empty guest rooms and a hallway cluttered with debris pulled from cabinets and linen shelves, then left on the floor. The searcher had grown even more careless when he’d reached the second story or, perhaps, had been in more of a hurry. Had he or she known that I was coming? How long ago had they left?