Primed for Murder (17 page)

Firefighters gained the upper hand after two hours. By then, the house was gutted and flames were gasping for fuel.

Mrs. O’Dwyer, the landlady, joined them then, panting from the exertion of trotting three blocks. She was a short, dumpy woman of sixty-something with tightly permed blond curls and bulldog jowls. She’d heard about the fire on the television news and rushed right over. Mrs. O’Dwyer inquired about everyone’s safety, expressed concern about Bart’s unknown whereabouts. She promised to do everything possible to find her tenants new apartments at reasonable rates among the many properties she controlled. “I’ll start looking right away,” she said and dashed off.

It took another hour before the last hot spot was extinguished. Weary, soot-stained firemen began packing hoses.

Toby, Jean and Sylvia went to take a closer look at what had once been their home. The air for blocks was hazy and stung the eyes. Ashes still drifted down. It smelled like a forest had burned. The street was wet with puddles marking asphalt-filled potholes, as though a brief, violent rainstorm had passed right over the block.

A pair of firemen sitting on the curb paid no attention to the trio of victims edging past—they were too busy sucking oxygen from a bottle.

The house had been reduced to smoldering rubble still giving off heat where firemen gingerly prowled, poking at cinders with axes, shovels and pry bars. The foundation and first floor walls, both of stone, remained mostly intact, topped by ragged fragments of framing held up by charred studs. The bottom part of a window frame and a corner of the front door stood upright on the lower floor. All else was ruin.

Giving the house a wide berth, Toby and the women trooped around back, past a gang of firemen straining at a front corner of the house to lift a section of fallen wall.

The garages still stood. Paint had blistered from heat, and fingers of soot had touched here and there, but the cubicles were undamaged. Sylvia and Jean ran to check that their cars were okay. The doors of Toby’s unit were still opened wide, the way he’d left them last. From the outside everything inside seemed undisturbed. He was glad he’d had the foresight to move the corpse from his garage before this happened.

“My car keys were inside the apartment.” Jean patted her curlers as they walked down the driveway to the street again. “Even if I had keys, I’d be too upset to drive.”

“Me, too,” said Sylvia. “Be a dear, Toby, and drive us to the motel?”

“Sure.” Toby wondered which girl he wanted to sit beside him in the truck cab.

But it would be a while yet before they got away. When they neared the street, Todd and the bearded tenant stood on the sidewalk talking with one of several uniformed policemen standing about. The cop beckoned to the newcomers. The officer got names and addresses where all could be reached. The two women mentioned the Upstater Motel.

“Just temporary,” Toby added, “till we get back on our feet.”

Todd would return to his parents’ home in Solvay. The bearded man, named John Evans, would beg lodging at his ex-wife’s place off Erie Boulevard. Joe could probably move in with his younger brother who worked at an auto parts shop across town, Toby thought. Bart, if he turned up, had plenty of former girlfriends to scrounge off.

“When can we go through the wreckage?” Sylvia asked. “To see if there’s anything worth salvaging?”

“Not for a few days, at least,” the cop said. He was a big, burly guy about forty with gray edging into sideburns framing his flabby face. His stout torso strained buttons on the short-sleeved blue shirt under his shiny silver badge. “It’ll take a while to cool down. And there will have to be an investigation, of course.”

“Why?” Todd asked.

“All fires of suspicious origin are investigated. And this one’s real suspicious. Happened in the middle of the day. Started upstairs, where nobody was home. Caught too well, too fast. Textbook case of deliberate arson, bet my shield on it.” He tapped his notebook with a thick finger, ran his sharp gaze over the assembled faces. “Now, who’s got useful information about this?”

Jean gave an expanded version of her thrilling escape from death. The lawman made her tell it slowly, from the top, so he could get it all down. While they were talking, there was a minor commotion at the demolished house. Since he had nothing to add to the police investigation, Toby strolled over alone to see what they’d found.

In response to firemen’s shouts, the ambulance maneuvered through fire-fighting equipment and zoomed up the driveway. Idling cops walked quickly over to stand beside the firemen, all of them looking down at something not visible from the street.

Toby edged closer.

After a short discussion among the public servants, two men in white tunics snapped on rubber gloves, removed a gurney from the ambulance and rolled it near the ruin. They bent and with help from the firemen lifted something from the rubble: something man-shaped, but stiff and shrunken and blackened. For a fleeting moment, Toby was scared it was the body from the Puterbaugh’s house, the corpse he’d dumped in the cemetery, come back to haunt him.

The men worked quickly and efficiently to load their burden onto a sheet. They loosely folded the cloth over it, buckled it down on the gurney and wheeled it across the lawn. As they passed, Toby glimpsed a blackened arm that ended in a clawed charcoal fist. An oval patch of white skin on the upper arm framed a blue cross.

Was Bart still alive? Sure didn’t look it. Poor guy, Toby thought, his scalp numb with the shock of seeing someone he’d known reduced to this. What an awful way to go! Not that there was a good way. He glanced over a shoulder to see if anyone else had noticed. They had. The faces of the four tenants gathered around the policeman were ghostly, their eyes round and staring.

Toby speculated about what his own face looked like just then. A dagger of guilt stabbed him as the white-clad men slid the gurney into the back of the ambulance. My fault. I should have gone for a beer with Bart when I had the chance, body or no body in the pickup. Now it was probably too late.

The ambulance rolled down the driveway, slalomed around the fire engines and sped west, its siren a mournful cry that seemed to linger in the smoky air.

Chapter 14

On the way to the motel in Toby’s truck, all three passengers were quiet for a few miles, stunned into silence by the tragedy, and by the realization they’d lost everything except their lives. Who could afford renter’s insurance? The women recovered fast. Jean and Sylvia pleaded, in tandem, to be allowed to stop and buy essentials. “All we’ve got,” they said, “are the clothes we’re wearing.” Toby would need some items himself, so he detoured to a mall along the route.

Jean refused to go anywhere the way she was dressed: “I must look just awful!” She stayed in the truck as Toby and Sylvia lit across the parking lot together.

It was after eight. The mall closed at ten. Patrons, mostly in teens and early twenties, wandered four or five abreast down broad, well-lit concourses. Toby and Sylvia’s first stop was a warehouse-type drugstore. They hustled up and down aisles, piling products into a shopping cart: Various brands and fragrances of deodorant; toothbrushes, tubes of paste; bottles of mouthwash; packets of disposable razors, cans of shaving cream; packaged bars of soap; bottles of perfume, after-shave, shampoo and conditioner; combs, brushes and hair picks; lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, shadow and foundation in rainbow shades; makeup remover, skin cream and a bag of cotton balls. Sylvia topped off the cart with pastel-colored cartons containing tampons and pads and panty liners. “You’ll get used to these things when we share a house.”

Toby said nothing.

They wheeled $200 worth of purchases in four bulky bags to the truck to free themselves for the next phase of shopping. “Keep track of everything you spend on us,” Sylvia said. “We’ll pay you back when we can.”

Toby was way ahead of her: He’d reserved a coverall pocket just for receipts.

Jean was listening to rap music on the truck radio. “How’s it going?” She bobbed to the beat as they placed packages under the tarp and hurried back to the mall.

Sylvia hit a series of clothing stores. Toby, feeling caught in a whirlwind, tagged along. With his backing she bought: fourteen sets of bras and panties in all shades; ten pairs of casual slacks and six pairs of designer jeans; a dozen summer-weight tops in assorted styles from tanks to button-up blouses; four skirts in different lengths; a couple darling sundresses; four pairs of cute shorts; foot coverings from socks to stockings; four belts ranging in color from black to white.

“Good thing Jean and I are the same size.” Sylvia removed garments from Toby’s loaded arms to set onto the checkout counter. “We can trade off until we get our wardrobes built up again.”

Everything from the women’s shops—including a shoe store where Sylvia bought assorted pairs of flats, pumps and loafers—came to almost eleven hundred dollars. After motel rooms and dinner, he’d have spent twenty or twenty-five percent of what Mrs. Colangelo had given him. And he hadn’t even started the job yet.

On their way out with two laden shopping carts, Toby ducked into Sears. He bought three pairs of jeans and two pairs of pleated chinos on sale, packs of colorful briefs and gray athletic socks, a couple pairs of onionskin shorts, two tank tops, three silk-screened T-shirts and a pair of sneakers. It took him less than ten minutes to collect all items, for which he paid over two hundred dollars, including tax. The mall was ready to close by the time everything was packed in the truck.

They continued to the Upstater Motel, a clean, mid-priced establishment catering to a largely transient clientele. The motel was situated a hundred yards off Route 11, visible to traffic bypassing downtown Syracuse on Highway 481. The vacancy sign was on and the office was still lit up.

Toby went in to book two rooms: one with a double bed for himself, one with separate beds for Jean and Sylvia. The thin, pinch-faced clerk behind the counter had seen everything, by the deadness in his pond scum-colored eyes. The man didn’t even glance at the registration cards, just handed out key cards—numbers 224 and 226—to adjacent second-floor rooms in exchange for $94 and change Toby shelled out.

They hauled all purchases in three trips to the huge double room, 226, to separate items. Packages were piled upon a pair of chairs and a circular pedestal table, and laid across the surface of a long mirrored dresser. As he found them, Toby dumped his articles of clothing and toiletries into a sturdy shopping bag.

Sylvia hung up women’s clothing in the closet. “We’ll need suitcases to carry around all this stuff,” she said.

Toby bit back a groan. At this rate, a couple days with these two and he’d be broke again.

“What a day.” Jean flopped onto a bed. The robe came open to the tops of her smooth thighs but she didn’t notice or care. “I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m a mess.”

“Likewise.” Sylvia tested her neck for tackiness. “I could use a shower.”

“How about food?” Toby asked.

Jean turned, entreaty in her eyes. “Do we have to go anywhere? It’ll take forever to get ready.” She waved at the bags of goods. “I’ve got all those clothes to try on.”

“Why don’t we order out?” Sylvia piped. “We can eat right here in the room.”

“Good idea!” Jean agreed. “We’ll have time to clean up before the food arrives.”

Toby was outnumbered. “Chinese? Burgers? Pizza?”

“Pizza!” the two women exclaimed together. They wanted pepperoni, black olives, anchovies and extra cheese. Toby took a bulging bag to his own room next door. In the directory on a nightstand he found a nearby pizza parlor that delivered and called to order a twenty-inch pie that totaled $26 with four items.

He heard the shower next door and also decided to bathe. He smelled like a smoked ham from the fire. Sweat, ash and other crud had dried on his skin. Cool water revived him some, but he was still running on empty after more than thirty-six hours without hitting the sack. He’d sleep well tonight. Shaved, brushed and deodorized, Toby put on new underwear, new jeans, and a new T-shirt with “S.U.” in foot-high orange letters across its navy chest. Then he walked to Room 226 and knocked.

Jean opened the door, waved him in. She’d cleaned up her act considerably. Her hair was freshly washed and curled again. Her makeup was flawless. She’d dabbed on some subtle scent. She was wearing a pair of low-slung jeans, which fit her like second skin. The kelly-green tube top exposed her deeply indented navel and smooth tanned shoulders, while nicely defining tennis-ball-sized breasts and bud-like nipples.

“Is it pizza?” Sylvia called from the bathroom.

“No,” Jean sang. “It’s Toby.”

The door opened, releasing a cloud of steam. Sylvia, her hair hanging limp and her arms beaded with moisture, stepped through. She wore nothing but a fluffy towel wrapped tight around her torso, barely covering her from armpit to thigh. “You know what we forgot to buy, Toby?” she asked, raking fingers through damp locks. “Sleepwear. Jean and I will have to sleep in the raw.”

Toby nodded, gawking. Sylvia and Jean were supposed to be the same size, but they were sure built different. The toweled woman’s breasts seemed much larger and rounder as they threatened to spill out of the terrycloth. Her calves were muscular.

Sylvia misunderstood his stare. “Oh, don’t look shocked, Toby. Once we’re all roommates, you’ll probably get an eyeful every day. Better get used to it.”

“It’s true.” Jean smirked. “We don’t wear much in summer.”

“Me neither,” Toby said. He doubted he’d be truly comfortable in their presence wearing his frequent hot-weather attire of just briefs, especially if they weren’t wearing much either. It could be a long, hot summer with these women.

Sylvia collected articles of clothing and returned to the bathroom to dress. She came out minutes later wearing a gold-toned halter-top that showcased her large breasts. Her shorts made her freshly shaved legs seem yards long.

Pizza arrived, smelling wonderful. Toby gave the kid in the striped shirt $30 to send him on his way. They moved the table and chairs beside one bed so they could all sit and eat. Toby wasn’t crazy about anchovies—they made the pizza too salty—but he was hungry enough to dig right in without scraping off the tiny fish.