Primed for Murder (11 page)

“Right,” Artie answered when the Puterbaughs didn’t respond.

“Twice you did just fine. You even managed to bring back a couple items for yourself. But this last time you didn’t do exactly as we asked. Am I right?”

“Right?” Artie repeated when no one volunteered an answer.

“Yes.” Mr. Puterbaugh’s voice was barely audible.

“Your fingerprints were everywhere—we checked,” Leo said. “So you must have examined it pretty closely.”

“Of course.” Mr. Puterbaugh’s reply had a touch of heat. “What did you expect? It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hold an actual—”

“Only just holding it wasn’t good enough for you, was it, Jim? Mr. G figured you’d do something stupid once you knew what you were carrying. He was right. But you exceeded expectations: you were dumb enough to write about it.”

“I had to.” Mr. Puterbaugh’s voice went hollow, as if he were a criminal explaining compulsions that made him do wrong, preparatory to pleading for understanding and compassion at the sentencing. “It was as though a doctoral dissertation had fallen right in my lap. I could not pass up the chance.”

“That’s what Mr. G suspected. So he sent Artie over to look around. Guess what he found? Your complete manuscript—in the hands of another man.”

“I took it away from him,” Artie said.

“That’s not all you did,” Sandy said.

“Yes.” Leo sighed. “Unfortunately.”

“I had to cool him,” Artie explained. “He was already in the house. The place was a mess when I got here, books and crap scattered everywhere—he’d tossed it pretty good. He had the papers. I said gimme. He didn’t say a word, just jumped me with a knife. So I laid him out. A guy’s entitled to defend himself. Least I did it quiet, without using my piece.”

“You left him in the middle of the den.” Sandy sounded as though she were complaining about poor maid service. “I almost had a heart attack when we returned home and found him lying—right there—all bloody.”

“I’m sorry about the inconvenience and the shock to your system,” Leo said dryly. “I sent people over as soon as the call came in. The mess was cleaned up as quickly as possible while you returned to your grocery shopping.”

“Who was the dead man?” Mr. Puterbaugh asked. He could have been inquiring if it was going to rain.

“No idea,” Leo said. “He’d already jimmied his way in by the time Artie arrived. He was after the item you brought in. Good thing you’d already dropped it off. I assume he believed your manuscript would help him locate the object in question.”

“He had no I.D. on him, nothing but the knife,” Artie inserted. “Didn’t say zilch, just came at me with the blade. Cut me good before I put him down. See?”

“How did the man know where to find us?” Mr. Puterbaugh asked.

“Somebody must have blabbed,” Leo said.

“Not me,” Sandy said. “And not Jim.”

“Not important,” Leo said. “He won’t be telling anybody anything.”

There was a moment of silence for the departed. “Artie,” Leo said conversationally, “says the man looked Latino.”

“I couldn’t say,” Mrs. Puterbaugh murmured. “I didn’t see his face. I certainly didn’t stick around to examine him.”

“He was Mex,” Artie said. “Seen their kind before. One pitched for the Mets.”

“He could have trailed you back home from there,” Leo said.

“He followed us thirty-six hundred miles?” Doubt laced Mr. Puterbaugh’s voice. “He stayed with us at Hot Springs, Mammoth Caves and other places we stopped all the way back to Syracuse?”

“Why not?” Leo said. “You were having a good time, seeing sights, thinking about your dissertation. You couldn’t be bothered to check if you’d grown a tail.”

Artie said, “It don’t matter where he came from. He’s gone now.”

“What did you do with the body?” Mrs. Puterbaugh asked.

“There you go again, Sandy,” Leo said, “asking dumb questions.”

“But it could be important. You mentioned the dead man was hidden in a parked vehicle. A pickup truck, I believe you said.”

“What I was told. I shouldn’t have said anything because you don’t need to know. Don’t sweat it. Our cleanup crew was here thirty minutes after Artie called on his mobile, ten minutes after you left.”

Outside, Toby considered the time factor. Sandy had arrived minutes after he’d left. Leo’s boys must have just missed him, too. He didn’t want to think what might have happened if they’d have walked in to find him with the body.

“The crew did a good job, looks like,” Artie said.

“Except the furniture does not fit the room now,” Mr. Puterbaugh carped. “Some valuable figurines and pottery vessels were also destroyed. My texts are mixed up. Our rug is missing.”

“I’d still like to know,” Mrs. Puterbaugh said, “what happened to the body.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Leo said. “I didn’t ask for details of the disposal. I don’t care, since the problem’s been solved: the body’s gone and the room’s sanitized. You shouldn’t care, either—you’re in the clear. We’ll reimburse you for damaged property. See? I told you: cooperate and we’ll look after you.”

Mr. Puterbaugh cleared his throat. “Now that things are back to a semblance of normalcy, may I have my manuscript back?” He sounded like a petulant child begging for the return of a favorite toy confiscated due to bad behavior.

“Still keen to publish?” Leo’s frigid undertone made Toby shiver.

“Of course.”

“I admire your gall, Jim. But no, you can’t have it.”

“Why not? There is nothing incriminating in the manuscript.”

“Mr. G doesn’t like to take chances. He hates loose ends. That’s why he ordered your manuscript to be torched. It’s all ashes now.”

Sandy Puterbaugh blurted, “How could he? He had no right!”

Mr. Puterbaugh groaned, thinking of lost words, of ideas gone up in smoke. Toby could picture him with his head in his hands.

“No sense crying over burned paper,” Leo said. “Now, does anybody else know about this? Your kids, for instance?”

“No, of course they do not know,” Mr. Puterbaugh’s tone suggested it was a stupid question.

“You said cops came by. They didn’t suspect anything?”

“We repeated what you told us to say. We convinced the detectives there was nothing wrong.”

“You mentioned a painter who sicced the cops—what’s his name?”

“Toby Rew.” Sandy spelled it and Toby silently damned her for finking. “He claims he saw Artie kill that man.”

“He saw Artie?” Leo’s voice was sharp. “You didn’t mention an eyewitness.”

“He saw me?” Artie echoed. “Couldn’t. I checked. Nobody around.”

“I meant he saw the killing,” Sandy backpedaled. “He was standing on a ladder at the house across the street.”

“Is that where he lives?” asked Leo. “Across the street?”

“That’s Mrs. Cratty’s. Mr. Rew was painting it. I don’t know where he lives.”

“We can find out.”

Sandy said, “He didn’t see the killer’s face. He mentioned a dark-haired man of short stature and stocky build seen running from our house after the murder.”

A man growled inside the room. Leo laughed, a harsh sound, like he was out of practice. “Artie doesn’t appreciate being called short and stocky. He works out every day. He’s proud of his body. Still, the description is a little too close for comfort.”

“I tried to persuade Mr. Rew he was wrong,” Sandy said. “He’s stubborn. However, he doesn’t seem terribly bright. He’s no threat.”

“We’ll look into it, see if he can hurt us.” Toby didn’t like the sound of that. “Okay, one last piece of business. What about the photos?”

“What photos?” Mr. Puterbaugh said, too quickly.

“Don’t play games with me, Jim. I skimmed your manuscript before it was burned—it was well organized, by the way—and noticed you mentioned Mr. G’s property had been photographed. I want all pictures on film or computer file.”

“The digital camera was stolen. The photos did not turn out. Shots were all overexposed.” Mr. Puterbaugh stuttered about the tropical sun’s brightness and wrong shutter speeds in a way that even Toby knew was lies, until Leo interrupted him.

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“It is the truth.”

Leo’s flat voice hardened. “You’re jerking me around, Jim.”

“I would not do that.”

“You’d better not. Before you get in too deep, you ought to realize I also know the last part of your manuscript, a translation, is missing. I figure you sent the photos to somebody to work from. Who?”

“For God’s sake,” Sandy shrilled, “tell him what he wants to know.”

“Yeah, Jim,” Leo said softly. “Give me the name.”

“There are no photos,” Jim said. “They were ruined. What does it matter, since my work has been destroyed?”

The atmosphere in the room changed from cool to positively chilly. “It matters. Get up, both of you,” Leo said. “We’ll all take a little ride.”

“Where?” Toby didn’t blame Sandy for her fright. Leo sounded like he was all business, and his business was all bad.

“To Mr. G’s. Tell him your tale. He’ll decide what to do.”

“No,” Mr. Puterbaugh said.

“Jim,” Leo said, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way, your choice. Artie, show him your persuader.”

“What’s the gun for?” Mrs. Puterbaugh’s voice quaked as though she was trying to talk and do aerobics at the same time.

“Is that what is called a noise suppressor?” Mr. Puterbaugh asked like an inquisitive kid.

“My God, Jim,” his wife cried, “do as he says. Can’t you see he’s serious?”

“Dead serious,” Leo said. “Get up, right now, Jim, or I’ll have Artie shoot you in the knee. You’ll still have to go and you’ll be in agony all the way. One…two—”

“Very well,” Jim said, as if the exercise was a colossal waste of time. There might have been more but Toby didn’t hear it because he was sprinting for his truck.

Chapter 10

When the dark car turned out of the alley a minute later, Toby, still panting, waited behind the wheel of his truck with engine idling and lights off in the blackness at the back of Mrs. Cratty’s driveway. It was a perfect spot for observing which way Leo and Artie and the Puterbaughs went. He gave them a three-block lead and then followed as the car, a dark Lincoln Continental Mark III in beautiful shape, purred south. It was three-thirty in the morning. With bars and theaters long closed, traffic was almost non-existent. Toby had no trouble keeping the Lincoln in sight. They made DeWitt in twenty minutes. The Lincoln took Route 92 southeast at a steady 65 mph, drawing Toby in its wake a mile behind. The only vehicles on the road, they barely slowed for Lyndon, Manlius or Oran. A small green sign indicated they’d crossed into Madison County.

Twenty miles from Syracuse, at the quaint village of Cazenovia, the Lincoln veered onto Route 13 running along the shore of the lake bearing the same name as the town. Toby dropped farther back, until the Lincoln’s taillights were just pinpoints ahead. Some 3.2 miles later, by Toby’s odometer, the car turned left. After traveling a half-mile further the Lincoln stopped with its nose almost against tall iron gates set into a high wall made of stone. It idled long enough for Toby, lights doused, to cruise within a couple hundred yards of the vehicle. The barred halves swung inward. The Lincoln accelerated through the gap and the gates closed like magic behind it.

Toby pulled opposite the entrance a moment later and watched as the Lincoln’s headlights illuminated bits of property. Beyond the gate’s pointed iron bars, a long paved driveway flanked by glowing lamps rose toward a huge lit-up stone house. The dwelling was perched on a low rise that probably provided a nice view of the lake, invisible from the gate. The Lincoln halted before an arched front doorway. Shadowy figures got out and went into the house. Outside lights were extinguished. Lamps went out by pairs in sequence, and darkness marched down the driveway.

Toby drove away. After a minute he put his truck lights on.

The wall surrounding the house was ten feet high, built of mortared fieldstone. It ran uninterrupted for six-tenths of a mile before forming a corner at the juncture of a dirt road. Toby turned left and bumped along a rough track, the bulk of the wall a solid presence just yards away. The place was a fortress.

The road ended and the wall formed a corner at the edge of the lake a quarter-mile later. Toby shut down, got out and felt his way along a narrow strip of land between wall and water. Damp, stone-studded soil squished beneath his soles, making each step a balancing act. Clumps of weedy grass and stubborn bushes brushed and clawed at his pants. Clouds of gnats and mosquitoes, attracted by his passage, swarmed whining around his ears. He lurched forward, flailing hands like an idiot to disperse them, slapping where insects landed to bite.

After a hundred yards, the land pinched out. The lake lapped against moss-slimed rocks at the foot of the wall.

He hadn’t come this far to turn back now. If he couldn’t go forward, he’d go up. Toby clambered easily to the top of the wall, finding good handholds and toeholds among rough, random-size stones embedded in concrete. He was almost surprised the wall was not crowned with barbed wire or shards of broken glass—but maybe there were other more lethal defenses ahead.

From ten feet off the ground, the lake glistened flat, black and wide. Points of light fanned out weakly onto the water from the opposite shore, giving distances dimension. Ripples walked across the surface like muscles moving beneath skin.

Up here, the big stone house was just a distant glow through a grove of leafy trees. Myriad stars, bright and clear out in the country, didn’t help much in illuminating the terrain that lay between Toby and his objective. Deep shadows infiltrating perhaps fifty acres of enclosed and wooded land could conceal tiger pits, security devices, stealthy Dobermans with big teeth, prowling guards with big guns. Chances were a guy who needed a ten-foot wall around him might also desire other forms of protection.

But they wouldn’t be expecting company tonight, probably.

As long as he’d already started, Toby decided, he might as well keep going. He began working his way towards the house along the top of the two-foot-thick wall, crouching to present a lower profile, to better watch his footing. He’d make a splash if he tumbled into the water, and might break a leg if he landed on hard ground.