Summer of the Dead (24 page)

They parted. The sheriff headed toward his Blazer, Bell toward the courthouse. Sunlight was drowning the streets in a bright molten glaze, which meant that when Bell's cell rang and she peered at it, she couldn't make out the caller ID. The glare on the screen was too intense.

“Elkins,” she said warily. When she didn't know the identity of a caller, Bell always expected it to be an outraged citizen or pissed-off judge or livid defense lawyer. She girded herself for verbal battle.

“It's Rhonda.”

Relief. “What's up?”

“Well,” Rhonda said, excitement stirring in her voice, “I used a few connections here and there. Turns out that as of last week, Tiffany Stark is the proud owner of a brand-new house over in Toller County. Purchase price was a hundred seventy-five thousand dollars.”

Tiffany Stark
. Bell was disappointed. She had let herself hope that Rhonda's news was related to the Arnett or Frank murders.

“Go on.”

“So Jed Stark didn't have an insurance policy. No verifiable income of any kind,” Rhonda continued. “In fact, neither Jed nor Tiffany even had a bank account. He worked strictly for cash—which isn't surprising, given the fact that his work mainly consisted of selling narcotics or threatening people who'd pissed off other people who were selling narcotics. That trailer was a rental and they're five months behind on the rent—or at least they were until today. Tiffany settled up with the landlord. Gave her notice, too. And hired a big moving company out of Charleston to get her stuff over to the new place in Toller County.”

“Where the hell did Tiffany Stark get that kind of money?”

“Mighty interesting, isn't it? Like I said, Jed Stark had no bank account—but as of a month ago, he was named an equity partner in a company known as Rhododendron Associates.”

“Equity partner.” Bell made a noise in the back of her throat that indicated disdain. “Guy like Jed Stark probably couldn't even spell ‘equity.' And I've never heard of any ‘Rhododendron Associates'—aside from the fact that it's the state flower of West Virginia.”

“Nobody's heard of it. All I can tell you for sure is that it's got nothing to do with flowers, boss. And everything to do with money. Lots and lots of it. And that's how Miss Tiffany is financing her life change. She got a big payout from that company.”

“Other partners?”

“Well.” With the instinctive flourish of a storyteller, Rhonda lowered her voice dramatically and said, “According to the articles of incorporation, the CEO of Rhododendron Associates happens to be our mystery man—Sampson J. Voorhees.”

“But how—?”

“Hold on. I know you've got a million questions. I did, too. Like—who is this Voorhees character and what in the world is Rhododendron Associates and where the heck did their money come from?”

Bell had reached the courthouse steps by now. As Rhonda talked, she had continued walking back to her office, noticing neither the heat nor her surroundings. Did a good number of people wave or nod at her, and had she nodded or waved back? Maybe, although Bell couldn't have sworn to it. She'd damn near tripped over a fire hydrant.

“This next little tidbit took me hours and hours to dig up,” Rhonda went on, and then gave a little moan to signify how hard she'd worked. “I must've called fifty places. No, make that a hundred. And nothing added up. Rhododendron is listed as an investment company, but they don't have any investments. They don't have any clients. They don't do any work at all, seems like. Gotta be some kind of front for the transfer of money. So I had to track back through the information on their original filings, looking for something—anything—that would give me a clue about who they really are and what they really do. And then I found it.”

Bell waited. She was tempted to try to goad Rhonda into speeding up, but given her assistant's personality, felt obliged to resist. To let the story roll along at the pace that Rhonda wanted it to.

“Finally had a brainstorm and called Charlie Dillon,” Rhonda went on. “Haven't talked to Charlie since law school. He dropped out after our first year. Now he works for the state commerce commission. Lives in Cross Lanes. He and his wife, Barbara Ann, have the cutest little—”

“Rhonda, please.” Bell was too antsy to hold back. “The company.”

“Okay. Right. Well, Charlie came through, just like I figured he would. He looked long and hard—and he broke about a dozen rules for us, so I think it might be a good idea to put him on our Christmas card list this year—and he went through a lot of records that aren't public and that surely aren't on any digitized databases because they're too darned old. But it worked. Turns out that if you go back and back and back—and if you wind your way through about a dozen shell corporations and another dozen businesses that never did any business and then just put your head down and plow right on past a bunch of false leads and phony trails—you finally stumble across the company that funds Rhododendron Associates one hundred percent. A much, much,
much
older company. And it's private—no public records, no list of officers or employees. Nothing.”

“So that's it.” Bell couldn't keep the dejection out of her voice. “A dead end.”

“Oh, Belfa.” Rhonda almost never called her boss by her given name. Elation had prompted her to do so, however, and it also caused her to put a chuckle at the end of the two words. “You know me better'n that!”

“You found out something about the original company?”

“Sure did. I came up with the name of the person who started it—way back in 1957. I'd ask for a drum roll here, but I think you're about ready to skin me alive unless I get to the point, which is what I guess I'd better do.” Rhonda sucked in some air so that she could conclude her story in a single excited breath:

“Our mystery man, the one who's behind Rhododendron Associates—and the payoff to Tiffany Stark—is none other than the former governor of West Virginia. The honorable—and I'm using that term loosely here—Riley Jessup.”

 

Chapter Twenty-three

She'd spooked herself. That had to be it, right? Yeah. That had to be it. All that talk about how darkness was different in the summer. How it fooled you, made you complacent. Even lazy. Softened you up. All that theorizing in front of Nick Fogelsong.
No dark like summer dark
.

Bell stood beside her Explorer in the driveway. It was well past midnight. She'd not intended to work this late at her office. As always, it just happened. She'd suddenly looked up from an endless stack of paperwork, realized the time, then further realized that she was all alone in the courthouse. The lamp on her desk was the only light in the entire building. To find her way out, she'd had to use the tiny flashlight on her key chain. The corridor lights were switched off at nine each night at the main circuit, to save energy. Sheriff Fogelsong's edict. Once she left the downtown area, she'd not seen another car on the road.

She pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine. The silence was so profound that it startled her. It seemed to have been waiting for her. Worse—it had
plans
for her.

Oh, stop,
Bell chastised herself.
Don't be such a girl, okay?

She stood on the blacktop, while the dome light inside the Explorer gradually expired. This was a moment she usually looked forward to: day's end. Homecoming. Time to shuck off her shoes and—although it wasn't quite so automatic—her woes, too. Tonight, though, she didn't feel relieved. She felt apprehensive. She always left the front porch light on; the bulb must have burned out.

There were no lights on in any other house on Shelton Avenue. Not even in the house belonging to Priscilla Dobbins, across the street and two doors down. Priscilla was seventy-four and sometimes stayed up late to read. Not tonight, apparently. Her three-story Victorian home looked like a big black trunk propped up on one end, tightly secured with straps and bolts and buckles. Was that to keep something outside from getting in—or to keep something inside from getting out?

You're freaking yourself out,
Bell thought.
Stop it. Just stop it. Shut the hell up
.

She climbed the steps to the front porch. The house was mired in a darkness made more ominous by the fact that she wasn't expecting it. Hadn't she left a light on in the living room? She was certain that she had. She always did. A portion of her youth had been spent in a trailer in Comer Creek, way out beyond any other houses or trailers, and she knew how drenching that darkness could be. How it provided a handy place for formless things to hide as they whispered past windows, crept around corners.

Well, maybe she hadn't left a light on this time. She couldn't remember. Or maybe she'd left it on and Shirley had come home during the day to pick up a few things—they barely spoke now, they could pass each other in the upstairs hall without a word, and the hell of it was, it didn't even feel strange anymore—and maybe Shirley had turned off the light in the living room. Shirley might not have known how important it was, that beacon—although Shirley, too, had grown up in the trailer on Comer Creek. Wouldn't she have known? She understood darkness as well as Bell did. Better.

So did I leave a freakin' light on in the house or didn't I?
She was having trouble finding the house key in her purse. It was so damned dark.

And if she had indeed left a light on, and Shirley hadn't been there and thus hadn't turned it off—but if the light, nonetheless, was turned off now, didn't that mean someone could very well be waiting for her on the other side of this stone wall? Lurking in the darkness just behind the front door? Weapon raised over his head? His eyes would be adjusted to the dark by now, so he need not hesitate, need not guess, need only wait and aim and strike—

Goddammit,
Bell told herself. Fear was turning her testy, making her disgusted with herself.
Find the freakin' key and go in and look around. Get it over with
.

She punched the key in the lock. Opened the door. Stepped inside.

Nothing happened.
Of course there's nobody here. Jesus. Grow up, already.
Bell felt like a damned fool. She shoved the door shut behind her. And realized that her hand was shaking.

 

Chapter Twenty-four

At noon the next day, Bell caught Nick Fogelsong in the act. His first impulse was to fumble for a desk drawer in which to hide the evidence, but to no avail; she'd seen what he was up to. So the sheriff, scowling, miffed at himself for letting her find him this way, gave up. He grunted and flung the object across the top of his desk. It knocked over a chipped red coffee cup filled with pencils and pens. He made no move to pick up the cup or its scattered contents.

“I do believe,” Bell said gravely, “that this may constitute an impeachable offense. Been nice serving with you.” Then she grinned, unable to keep the joke going. Picked up the book he'd discarded, studied the armor-cocooned knight on the cover. Read the title and the author's name aloud: “
Agincourt
. Bernard Cornwell. Good one?”

He nodded. He was still embarrassed. Reading—especially military history—was Nick Fogelsong's passion, but this was the middle of a workday. No excuse for such lollygagging.

“Well,” she went on, setting the book back down, “I'll let you slide this once. And I need a favor, anyway, so think of it as quid pro quo.”

He waved her toward the wooden chair that faced his desk. “Long as you don't spill the beans about my secret vice, you can have whatever you want.” He pulled out the bottom drawer on the left-hand side of his desk and perched a booted foot there. “Actually, come to think of it, this is my lunch hour, so I've got nothing to apologize for. Free on a technicality.”

“Hey. Who's the lawyer around here, anyway?”

The office was exceptionally hot. Fogelsong didn't believe in air-conditioning. He'd allow other employees who worked in the courthouse annex to install window units if they so chose, but he also let it be known that he considered it a ridiculous frill. The mountains kept Acker's Gap reasonably cool, he pointed out.
The good Lord surely meant for us to sweat hard,
he'd add.
Little reminder of the effects of hellfire
.
So we can alter our behavior accordingly.
He was teasing, but with Nick Fogelsong, sometimes it was hard to tell.

Bell rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse. A nod to the humidity, as well as to the fact that she had a serious matter to discuss with him.

Leaning forward in her chair, her earlier levity having vanished, she rapidly filled him in on what Rhonda Lovejoy had discovered about Rhododendron Associates and Riley Jessup. The information had been simmering in Bell's mind since the day before, when only a full slate of afternoon appointments and an evening's worth of paperwork kept her from acting on it right away.

She didn't tell Nick about the absurd little drama she'd enacted on her front porch last night, and never would. He'd worry about her. Think she was slipping. Going soft. There was enough real danger already; threats were common in a small-town prosecutor's office, because a prosecutor had to live alongside the very people whose lives she interrupted with little inconveniences such as jail terms. No sense dwelling on the made-up kind.

“So I'm headed to Charleston in about an hour,” Bell said. “Want to have a little chat with Riley Jessup.”

The sheriff looked mildly surprised. “Really.”

“Well, I had a bail hearing scheduled this afternoon on the Fletcher case, but it's been postponed. So I have the time. And it's a nice day for a drive.” She shrugged impatiently. “Why would a public figure like Jessup be in business with a low-life scumbag like Jed Stark? I figure there's no harm in trying to find out what the connection is.”