Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery (6 page)

The kitchen had been our first project. We’d blown out a wall to make the whole first floor seem bigger, stripped three layers of linoleum, redone the hardwood, painted the cabinets, and finished it all off with granite countertops the color of jade.

I split a meatball, gave half to each cat, filled Randall in. I started with the night Phigg buttonholed me at a Barnburner meeting and told me he needed help.

Randall was a good listener. Hungry, too. He worked through his sub, chips, and Snapple, nodded once in a while, kept quiet until I finished. Then he said, “Don’t think too long, just give me your gut feeling. Did Tander Phigg kill himself?”

I ate a salt-and-vinegar chip. “No.”

“Are you saying that because the state cop pointed out the awkwardness of the necktie?”

“Partly,” I said, and ate another chip while I asked myself why it felt wrong. “Phigg was all front.” I explained the not-really-timber-frame house. Randall looked a question at me.

“Point is, he worked hard to fake it,” I said. “Hung on to his cell phone when he was broke, kept a suitcase full of preppy clothes even when he was picking up cans in ditches. Faked it pretty good for a long time. A lot of Barnburners were whispering he was low on dough, but nobody had any idea how bad it’d gotten.”

“So?”

“It doesn’t fit with the way I found him,” I said. “That miserable little shack, you should’ve seen it. Two milk crates and a sleeping bag. A three-hundred-dollar car full of saltines and Price Chopper coupons.”

Randall helped himself to a couple of chips. “And you think if Phigg decided to kill himself, he wouldn’t draw attention to his situation.”

“He would’ve done the opposite,” I said. “Would’ve ditched the car, saved pennies until he could check into a nice hotel, something like that.” I shoved him the rest of my chips, balled up the sub wrappers, rose, threw them away.

“Pretty thin gruel,” Randall said.

“There’s more.” I told him about following Phigg, watching his meeting with the woman in the silver Jetta.

“Well,” he said, “that ought to give the cops something to chase down.” Long pause. “You told them, right?”

Longer pause.

“
Con
way,” Randall said. “For crying out loud. Why would you hold back on something like that?”

I said nothing.

“So you could nose around, that’s why,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “What now?”

“I need to call some Barnburners, get the telephone chain going for the memorial.”

“What about me?”

I leaned on the countertop. “You going to help me out with this?”

Long pause.

“It’s either that or start another expensive project around here,” he finally said. “Either way, your money burns while I have fun.”

I leaned over, pulled Phigg’s address book from my boot, tossed it on the card table. “Have some fun with that.”

*   *   *

Randall set my laptop on the card table and began working his way through the address book. I didn’t know why he needed the PC—it’d be easier just to thumb through. But I’d learned that when you gave him a task, he was going to by God do it his way. If you tried to point him in a direction, he muled up.

I stepped to the front porch. My first call was to Mary Giarusso, the Barnburners’ nerve center. She lives a couple blocks north of me, feeds my cats when I’m gone. She’s a gossip hound—folks call her Switchboard Mary behind her back. Her head just about hit her kitchen ceiling when I broke the news. I asked if she could call a few Barnburners to spread the word and set up a memorial.
Could
she? I asked if she would do a little digging, see if Phigg ever talked about his family.
Would
she? I told her not to sprain her finger dialing. She didn’t hear, had clicked off already.

I squinted at the sky. Storm clouds. I hoped the rain wouldn’t hurt the deck’s fresh oil.

Inside, Randall had set up a spreadsheet on my laptop and was entering info. I stood behind him, saw the address book open to the Bs.

“You AA types are a pain in the ass,” Randall said. “It’s mostly first names and last initials. Ed A., Ginny B.”

“You start with the Ps? Family?”

He said nothing, but clicked on the spreadsheet’s P tab. The only name was
Trey
. Next to the name was a weird phone number, must be outside the U.S., and a Gmail address.

I said, “Trey was under the Ps?”

“Yup. A son, I’m guessing.”

“Why?”

Randall pointed at the e-mail address: [email protected]. He said, “Tander Phigg the Third? Born in ’seventy-two, maybe? Known as ‘Trey’?”

“That’s either a good guess or a pile of horseshit.”

“That narrows it down,” he said. “Also, your pal Phigg isn’t—wasn’t—a big Internet guy. This is the only e-mail address I saw when I skimmed the book.”

“So?”

“So this Trey was pretty special to Tander.”

“Before you enter any more names and numbers, you want to Google him?”

Randall’s shoulders tightened. “I’ll enter everything first,” he said. “Then I’ll Google.”

His task, his way.

I said, “I’m headed back to Rourke. Want to talk to the guy at Motorenwerk.”

“The garage where you got cold-cocked? Are you nuts?”

For starters, I was supposed to be the cold-cock
er,
not the cold-cock
ee
. Pride. But I couldn’t tell Randall that. He’s Mister Pragmatic. “I need to figure this deal out,” I said. “What’s going on with Phigg’s car, whether he’s entitled to money back, all that.”

“Then let me come along,” he said, and waved at the address book. “We can do this later.”

“I’ll go alone.”

Long look. “Is that smart?”

“I’ll bring my tire iron.”

“Somewhat smarter.”

CHAPTER FOUR

I parked across from Motorenwerk at 5:15 as the rain, which had been trying like hell all day, finally started. Thunder closed from the southeast as I looked at the shop. The garage doors were closed. Through the office’s plate-glass window I saw Josh. He was counter-leaning, finger-drumming. An Audi A6 Avant sat outside the office. It looked like Ollie had left for the day, and Josh was stuck waiting for the Audi’s owner to show.

For me, it was a good setup. I wanted to talk to Josh without Ollie around. Wanted to surprise him, fluster him. I decided to wait for the Audi owner, then bust in.

I looked around the interior of my F-150, which I’d picked up on the way. The glass-shop guy had said the glue for the new windows was set up already, rain wouldn’t be a problem. So far, there were no leaks.

I eased the truck backward twenty yards, moving out of Josh’s sight line. Rain picked up, thunder waded in. I ran the AC to keep the windows clear, waited, thought. What was Josh doing here? He could be earning more anywhere else, and it had to be killing Ollie to keep him on the payroll.

At quarter of six, the thunder and lightning peaked. At the end of Mechanic Street, a bolt hit not twenty yards from the Dumpster I’d puked in yesterday. I half jumped in my seat, smelled ozone, felt neck hairs rise.

A minivan pulled up. The man who hopped from the passenger side wore a suit, had a briefcase but no raincoat. He hunched, waved thanks to the minivan’s driver as it turned and left, ducked inside.

I stepped from my truck and stood in pouring rain next to the office door. After two minutes the customer stepped out. I startled him. He recovered, nodded, hopped in his car. I waited near the door where Josh couldn’t see me. I was trying to time my entry—wanted him relaxed, but didn’t want to give him a chance to lock up. I was ready to push my way in if I heard keys jingle.

In maybe three minutes I stepped into the office, hoping to intimidate the hell out of Josh.

He wasn’t behind the counter.

Shit.

I stepped into the garage. Heard noise near the back, walked along the wall. Tried to keep it quiet, but my shoes squished.

Josh stepped around a corner, walking with purpose. He held a good-size rubber mallet, raised and ready. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth open a little. His teeth were slightly apart, and I saw the pink of his tongue-tip between them. If I hadn’t known better I would’ve thought he was looking forward to beating the bejesus out of an intruder.

This wasn’t working out the way I’d pictured it.

Josh saw it was me. I made a
whoa-now
gesture with both hands. He stood four feet away, mallet poised.

“Really coming down out there,” I said.

“The hell’d you come from?” He breathed hard through his nostrils. Did I read disappointment in his eyes? Had he
hoped
I was some meth-head burglar he could cream?

“Got some paper towels?”

He nodded at a roll of blue shop towels on the bench beside me. I snapped off a half dozen and toweled my hair.

Josh said, “Where’d you come from?”

“Ollie live nearby?” I said.

“Why do you want to know?”

“
Je
sus, kid!” I fist-thumped the bench as I said it. “I don’t know what Ollie is to you. He’s more than your boss, isn’t he?”

Josh said nothing.

“I’m going to talk with Ollie,” I said. “Soon. Here. What I need from you is his last name, how close he lives to this place, his phone number. This is going to happen, with your help or without.”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” he said, twirling the mallet in his hands. “Maybe you’re going to get your head busted in again.”

Jesus, had I ever misread this kid. “It wasn’t you who nailed me yesterday. Was it?”

Josh said nothing. He didn’t drop his gaze, didn’t stop twirling the mallet.

Something clicked. I smiled slow and big and edged past Josh, putting my hands up when he cocked the mallet. I cleared the corner and saw what I’d anticipated: One corner of the car cover on Phigg’s Mercedes had been lifted.

“What the hell is it about this car?” I said.

“I think you ought to leave.”

“Tander Phigg hanged himself this morning,” I said.

“I heard.”

“What is it about this car?”

Josh said nothing.

“Look,” I said, sighing. “I need to talk with Ollie. Here, tonight. Let’s work it like this: You give me his number. I’ll bust a window around back, tell him I climbed in after you left. I’m guessing he used to pay for a security service, but not anymore. That sound right?”

Josh nodded.

“Must be twenty ways I could find his name and number without your help,” I said. “You’re just my shortcut.” I took a Sharpie from the bench, slid it and a dry shop towel toward Josh.

He stared at me for twenty seconds. Then he wrote a number on the towel. “When you talk with Ollie, you won’t mention this,” he said, nodding toward Phigg’s car. “In fact, you’ll forget all about it now that Phigg’s dead.”

I said nothing. It was easier than lying. Instead I tore off another paper towel and wrote my name, cell, and e-mail on it, shoved it to him.

He eyeballed it. “What’s that for?”

“This place is going to change, fast and soon,” I said. “It’s probably going to go away. Maybe you’ll need help finding your next job. I know a lot of guys in the business.”

As his fingertips touched the paper towel, I put one of my own on it. “Or maybe you’ll just want to tell me more about Ollie,” I said. “About what the hell’s going on here. You thought it was a high-end restoration shop. Thought it’d be more fun than doing oil changes at the local Toyota store, huh? But it was something else.”

Josh wanted to tell me. I could feel him tipping, the same way he nearly had in the garage yesterday. But he just reached a hooded Windbreaker from a hook and unclipped a huge key ring from his belt loop. “I’ll need to lock you out,” he said, flipping through keys. He looked at me. “Second window in on the back side is so sticky we can’t close it to lock it. Be easy to open it with a pry bar. Ollie would think you just got lucky and found the right window.”

*   *   *

Two minutes later I fired the F-150, watched Josh drive away in a rough old Audi 4000. It was a cult car, an all-wheel-drive sedan that came out back when that was rare. They were hard cars to keep running right, especially now that they were a quarter-century old.

I sat in the truck and figured out how to work what I wanted to do next. The weak link was going to be a missing cop car. I needed to pressure Ollie, rush him, to get him to overlook that.

I was going to get wet as hell, no way to avoid it. The thunder and lightning had moved past, but the rain was hard and steady. The upside was with the sky gray to begin with, it’d get dark earlier.

I called Charlene at home. She was brisk, chopping something while we spoke. Sophie was fine. Work was fine. She hadn’t heard from Jesse. I wouldn’t make it for dinner tonight? Fine. Click.