Summerkill (20 page)

“No, I sneaked off.”

“Well, I’m glad you checked it out. Are you mad?”

“It’s okay. Look, I’ve got to go.”

“You take care now. I’ll call tomorrow at nine. I promise.”

“If you want.”

I felt like a real shit, hanging up. Also borderline suffocated. And beyond that: for the first time truly aware that it wasn’t
just me I had to negotiate through this mess.

W
ednesday morning I got over to Mariah’s earlier than she’d possibly be stirring. There were things that needed doing before
the sun got strong. Just take it one step at a time, I’d finally decided last night. The first step, at least, was obvious.

Mariah’s front lawn had a few trees, but basically it was grass, grass, grass; she sometimes contemplated, not entirely frivolously,
grazing sheep there. Once past the lawn you were confronted by a fortress. The rest of the property she’d had walled in, and
I’m not talking knee-level New England stone wall. To access Mariah you needed her complicity, a sturdy ladder, or the right
burglary tool. The first season I worked there, she’d given me a key to the south gate. I used it.

By the time my teenage hunks had brought everything inside the walls and there was just me and garden, I was feeling half
a ton lighter. I sort of expected Mariah to saunter on down and hang around once she got her day’s act in gear, but somewhere
approaching ten she hollered to me from the spa patio, something about having to go up to Albany again and she’d leave the
back door open so I could use the house. I shouldn’t kill myself trying to get everything done ASAP.

Assuming you’re not cramped for space, there’s something extraordinarily restful about being all by yourself, enclosed within
walls, a feeling of security that extends beyond the physical. Inside Mariah’s compound I not only had lots of interesting
elbow room, I also was protected from having to think about anything or anyone beyond it.

Some people have little taste for working in a garden: the labor is too hard, the sun is too hot, the bugs are too pesky—
and besides, they’re bored. I do love physical labor, and maybe it says something about the limitations of my mind, but working
with plants and soil occupies it fully and pleasantly for hours on end. I don’t even think about time. The only reason I stopped
at what turned out to be a little after four was what looked and sounded like a sizable thunderstorm had started rolling up
from the west. That front, it must be. Roxy gets terrified; I like to be home with her when I can. All the seriously temperamental
plants were in, so I packed up and left.

My sense of peaceful isolation lasted into the early evening. It was a nice storm, vivid with lightning, that eased off into
a good steady rain. When the noise abated, Roxy emerged from under the sofa and allowed herself to be comforted by extravagant
petting and a couple of Milk-Bones. After that she toggled between wherever I was and the porch door. If the pattern held,
she’d keep watching for the boys till twilight, then presumably put them out of her mind until tomorrow afternoon, when she’d
again expect them home.

I found myself missing things too: some of the routines, the goodnight hugs. A positive sign, surely, that Alex and Galen
were starting to take up residence in my life, not just sharing it by legal arrangement. Still, I was immensely relieved that
for the next week they’d be at least a phone call away from the lingering murder aftermath.

A little before eight-thirty, as I was prepping myself to make that evening’s promised phone call, the doorbell rang. Roxy
bounded into the kitchen to bark at it. As she neared the door the barking stopped and the tail, which had been wagging at
generic greeting speed, shifted into high.

“For a corporation, you’re lousy about returning phone calls,” Baxter groused from beyond the screen. He was wearing his olive-green
uniform pants and a messageless T-shirt that might once have been close to matching. “And in case you care, your answering
machine ran out of room this morning.”

“Lately it functions better that way. Is this an official visit?” I asked, opening the door. “It’s hard to tell from your
attire.”

He considered it. “We do have business, but you can offer me a beer if you feel like.”

I took two of the three in-stock Molsons from the refrigerator, and he followed me into the living room. I picked one end
of the sofa, he picked the other end. “Cheers,” I said, raising my beer can.

“You’re in a good mood.”

“That does happen sometimes. It’s been a wonderful Wednesday, so far. Not a single soul has given me any grief.”

“Going by the quotes people keep feeding me from yesterday’s standoff at the Red Barn, you’re not the safest person to do
that to. Anyone who loudly and publicly tells Clete Donnelly to stuff it—”

“What was I supposed to do—shrivel up and slink off? Kyle called later with sort of an excuse: his dad had been drowning his
sorrows all afternoon, so naturally one look at me and he was ready to do a little venting. Like Clete probably wouldn’t actually
run me out of town, much as he’d love to. I couldn’t tell if Kyle was tempering or reinforcing. I never can read him with
much confidence. Kate, you at least know where she’s coming from.”

“I was in the grade between the two older Donnelly boys in school. After all Junior’s bluster, Kyle was relatively reserved—except
when engaged in an activity involving a ball. He was forever getting tossed out of games for fighting or arguing with the
ref.”

“Our Kyle, the genial go-between?”

“The very same. He and Kate are both still brats on a tennis court. My sister and I drew them in a doubles match a couple
of years ago. What amazed me was the instant we finished they were civilized adults again—like they hadn’t spent the last
hour and a half being obnoxious.”

“With Clete for a father they had a world-class teacher in that art form. I don’t know how much Big Daddy turns his on and
off—maybe that’s a second-generation refinement. Last night it’s hard to say, if he was really tanked.”

“I’m inclined to think Clete does most of his ranting for effect.”

“He does not appear to have great faith in you.”

“Well, this is only the fifth murder I’ve been on in twenty years, and three of the others a cretin could’ve figured out who
did it. Maybe he’s right, maybe I have reached my level of incompetence.”

“Do you know me well enough now, you can retire that accidental sheriff bit?”

Baxter grinned. “Yes, ma’am. Nonetheless, here we’ve got a six-day-old murder, and the lead investigator has only a generic
idea why it happened, a glut of potential suspects, and nobody to seriously pounce on.”

“You’ve given up on Skip and Johnny?”

“I wasn’t pinning my hopes on either of them to start with. But since we tracked down that key I’ve had to scratch them along
with the rest of Etlingers’ hired help. They couldn’t have paid the freight.”

“You do plan to explain?”

“The key you gave me is for a post office box in Poestenkill. It’s been registered to a Mr. Brown for two-plus years now.
There was just one piece of mail in it—a broker’s monthly transaction report, dated August 6. This is a different broker from
his other accounts, by the way.

“Ryan opened the account shortly before leaving Watertown. With $20,000. He put the entire sum in a tax-exempt mutual fund,
with instructions to plow back the dividends. There were no further deposits until late May of this year, when $5,000 was
added. Late June and July, same thing. The deposits arrived as teller’s checks from AlBank. We’ve established that at least
one of them was paid for in cash.”

“I’ll lay you odds the original twenty thou never showed up on Ryan’s tax return or on his employer’s books. Any more than
the amounts from this year would have.”

“Why do you keep supposing I make sucker bets? When I checked with the president of Ryan’s last firm in Watertown, he got
much too agitated not to understand what I was asking about. So, yeah, that was almost surely a blackmail payoff. Like this
new fifteen thou will be. And whatever records Ryan kept to substantiate his threat, it seems our killers got their hands
on them before they made a move.”

“Yeah, but … Weren’t they taking a chance going ahead and killing him with the August report not accounted for?”

“As it turns out, yes, but they had no reason to expect an August report. All along he’d been getting them semiannually—in
early January and again in July. A letter that came with the report in the box acknowledges his request to go monthly, presumably
because of the new deposit pattern.”

“So they must be figuring they have till January to do something about the account.”

“Even longer—there’d be no reason it couldn’t sit there safely for a while. Assuming they lifted the earlier reports from
that packet, they’ve got his post office address—it’s on the report form. It’s an April-to-April box rental year in Poestenkill.
They could find out by phone and renew by teller’s check.”

“If I were them,” I said, “I’d take my time about it. Rent Mr. Brown a box somewhere else and send the broker a change of
address. Unless I was hot to clean out the account, I’d just add another box to my stable of rentals every year or two and
let the reports accumulate.”

“The broker has frozen the account and will flag any posthumous instructions. A balance that high might tempt our killers
to try for the money, but I’m going with the premise they’ll follow something like your strategy. And as long as they stay
away from the boxes they’ll be safe enough.” Suddenly, he looked so belligerent I felt an alarm go off. “Not that I could
effectively keep watch on that Poestenkill box for very long, anyhow. It isn’t even in my jurisdiction.”

“Does ‘going with the premise’ imply a course of action?”

He sighed. “I’ve told the media about the account.”

“Including how it came to be discovered?”

“Nothing about cat burglars, no. Just its existence, the new monthly deposits. But Val—”

“The people who are really interested won’t be looking for any cat.”

“Actually, they found one, or so Rodney called to tell me yesterday morning. With a request for my understanding that any
further ‘unsettling’ publicity could be very damaging to them, and since there was no crime, no damage, etc. But if a nervous
killer or two wants to make a short list, you figure to top it. Val, I’m sorry. This was the only move I could see to maybe
open something up.”

“Did you ask me to go snooping at the Garden Center?”

“I wouldn’t have gotten that key if you hadn’t,” he said glumly.

“Well, it’s every bit as much in my interest as yours to find the killers. Besides, why would they come after me now? The
damage is already done.”

“I wonder. It bothers me that, looking at their biggest landscaping job ever—a breakthrough contract, according to you—the
Etlingers would get rid of the man most competent to oversee the crew doing the installing. Did they try to stiff you, too?”

“Not as vigorously. What they offered Skip was so insulting he had no choice but to leave. They wanted me to take a cut—but
not such a huge one. I told them unless we came to terms I found acceptable I’d let it be known officially that my landscape
architect’s license was no longer guaranteeing the contract. They’d used it without my permission in the first place, to win
the bid.”

“This would have made problems for them?”

“There was that potential, especially on the public parts of the financing. They may also have caved because Willem stomped
a lot.”

“So they went with what they hoped was the lesser evil? But I wonder. Maybe there was some reason beyond it looking believable
to set you up as Ryan’s killer? Maybe somebody really does want you out of the way.”

“Why?”

“They’re afraid you’ll find out whatever Ryan found out?”

“It seems to me I’ve exited all areas that could possibly be dangerous to poke around in. Either I’ve already discovered whatever
they’re worried about, or I’m not likely to. And if I knew, why wouldn’t I have told you by now?”

“You’re trying to protect somebody you care about, possibly?”

“Willem, I assume you mean. I can’t take him seriously as a suspect.”

“Maybe you’re trying to save his career? Or protect him from his relatives?”

“I’ve often enough thought somebody should. Don’t alibis eliminate anyone?”

“Except for Willem, they were all accounted for. The burden’s on me to prove otherwise, and I don’t see any way of doing that.
These aren’t people I can lean on very hard. They’re polite as can be, but the moment I leave they call for leverage—of which
they’ve got plenty. Clete’s started making noises about having the DA appoint a special investigator. By announcing Ryan’s
secret account I’ve made their territory less comfortable. Also yours, though—which is why I’d be happier if you could clear
out of here for a week or so.”

“I don’t see how. Jake and I are looking to wrap up a contract down in Plattesville tomorrow. That we’ll need to procure a
whole bunch of materials in the next week or so. And at this point, I can’t leave Mariah’s garden alone for more than a couple
of days. If all goes well, I’m off to Cape Cod with my family next Thursday, so that’ll have to do. Don’t worry about it.
You did make the right move.”

“I’ve arranged for a night patrol along your road every half hour.” He handed me a business card with a number written in
ink on the back. “Anything comes up during the intervals, call them, they can get here pretty fast. I’d also like you to let
us know when you’re coming home from work— one of our cars will trail you in, see that everything’s okay.”

“Thanks, but that’s excessive. Not to mention unworkable. The night patrol, fine, but days I’ll be in and out a lot. The escort
service would just make it look like I’ve got some reason to need protection. Roxy will let me know if anything’s off.”

• • •

I was a few minutes late getting my call in to the camp store, enough for Alex to have stalked off if he’d been by himself,
probably. Fortunately his more patient brother and sister had come along this time. My strategy was to ask lots of questions
and cheerfully short-answer theirs. I wasn’t guilty of any outright lies, unless you count the cheerfulness, and I guess things
went all right, though its unlikely anybody hung up with a warm feeling. Despite her abilities in that vein, Vicky’s never
been able to teach me how to make this magic.