Tucker Peak (27 page)

I could, in fact, since my own wife had met a similar fate even longer ago than that, a distance in time that had in no way dulled my memories of her and the happiness we’d shared. It wasn’t something Gail and I often discussed, but she knew about Ellen and now cast me a sympathetic look.

“Norman dealt with the loss the same way Joan of Arc seems to have taken to those famous voices she heard.” Betts continued, “He became absolutely driven, even obsessed. All his energies were given to environmental protection. When I’d known him first, I’d wondered about his apparent inability to break off from a task and relax a little. Lord knows, the rest of us knew the value of a vacation. But there were others enough like him that what might have been identified as a form of mental imbalance was merely dismissed as zealotry.”

He paused and sighed gently. “And then he met Abigail—a wonderful girl, light-hearted, broad-minded, and generous. She was like a magical elixir, cleansing his soul of the dark clouds within it. It wasn’t quite like a Hollywood movie, of course. In fact, it was quite rough going to begin with. He was very resistant to a much younger woman trying to reintroduce him to life. It was almost comical at times to see her loosening him up, making him laugh despite himself. But the transformation succeeded; he began to melt like an iceberg in the sun, and finally, after much hemming and hawing, they announced they were to be married.”

He smiled sadly. “Looking back, I wouldn’t doubt a part of Norman now hates that day, when he sacrificed his own twisted logic and committed himself to another human being. He probably feels that had he stayed the course, his and Abigail’s world wouldn’t now be so haunted and crippled by misery and debt. He’s just the type to take responsibility for the simple vagaries of fate.”

“I’m losing you here,” I told him quietly. “What happened?”

He laid his hand on mine. “I’m sorry. I ramble, given half a chance. Going against all his earlier instincts, Norman agreed to have a child with Abigail. That child, in the cruelest of ironies, has developed leukemia. It has driven Norman and Abigail apart and perhaps pushed Norman over the edge.”

Roger Betts turned and fixed his tired, pale-blue eyes on mine, and added, “I have no idea if he is the man you are after. I do know that suddenly, he’s been able to pay for medical treatments that were previously beyond his means. I only know this because Abigail told me about it in confidence. I have never asked him outright to what he owes this good fortune, but the rumor is a rich relative left it to him in a will.”

“And you don’t believe that.”

He sighed again. “I’m ashamed to say, no.”

“Implying there’s something you’re leaving out.”

He nodded without speaking, seemingly at odds again about being here.

“Is it something he’s done?” I tried.

That got him going again. Again, he patted my hand. “No. I mean, not actually. I’m not accusing Norman of anything. But he’s been erratic lately—moody, forgetful, quick to judge—but most of all, inconsistent, which he’s never been in the past. He’s as driven as ever, but not by our mutual interest. It’s as if his concentration is elsewhere… ”

“With his sick child, perhaps,” Gail suggested.

But Betts disagreed. “It’s different. Now you can understand why I was so loath to bring this to you. Something is eating this man up from within, beyond the guilt of his family situation. And given his almost maniacal sense of purpose, it frightens me. I truly no longer know of what he may be capable.”

The wash of noisy, clashing conversations swelled around us in the silence following Roger Betts’s last words. I looked up and around in mild surprise and saw that the after-work, pre-dinner crowd was at its max, laughing, drinking, making deals, and eyeing one another with a variety of intentions.

“Roger,” I finally asked, “given the timing of the various accidents and Norman’s schedule, do you think he might have been involved in any of them—specifically?”

Betts looked at me helplessly. “I wish I knew. It’s not the kind of organization where we use a time clock. People show up at odd hours, work for however long they can. It’s terribly fluid, and to be honest, I haven’t pried into it.”

“Not to worry,” I tried easing his discomfort. “We’ll do that, and we’ll try to be subtle about it, although we will act on what we find.”

“I understand,” he said simply.

“I will do my best,” I added, “to keep you out of it, though.”

A small look of distaste crossed his worn face. “I deserve that because of the surreptitious way I approached you. But don’t worry about it. I am not an informant—I acted on my conscience. If it comes out, it comes out—it might even be for the better.”

I noticed how Gail was looking at her old friend and figured the best way for me to end this conversation was by leaving the two of them together to commiserate. I’d catch up with her later.

I did, however, have one last question, “Would you say Norman was mechanically inclined?”

Betts’s face momentarily cleared. “Oh, good lord, I should say so. He trained as an engineer in college and was always the one we called on to fix things. He built his own house—he’s very handy. Why?”

I rose to my feet and squeezed Gail’s shoulder in farewell. “Just curious.”

· · ·

Outside, after sunset, the wind had kicked up and was blowing down the street in ferocious, snow-dusted gusts. The headlights of passing cars glittered off the airborne ice crystals, making me feel all the more like I was walking inside a huge freezer.

The chirping of my cell phone, deep inside my coat, introduced an incongruous and ineffective spring-like note.

I groped around, my glove in my teeth, until I successfully tore the phone from its inner recesses and flipped it open, shoving my head into a doorway to hear better.

“Joe, it’s David Hawke. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m freezing my ass off on a cell phone. What’s up?”

“I’m sorry it took me longer than I thought to get back to you on those prints. I did get a set off of Jorja Duval’s body—textbook lift. Worked just like the guy said it would. I might have to write him a note of appreciation.”

Why is it, I thought, that when you tell people something like you’re about to die of hypothermia, they immediately prolong what they have to say?

“That’s great, David. Did you get a hit on the prints? Were they Marty Gagnon’s?”

“That’s the cherry on top. I sure did. The FBI coughed it up pretty fast. But they weren’t Gagnon’s. They belong to someone named Antony Busco, nicknamed Tony Bugs.”

All sensation of cold and discomfort vanished. “Does that mean what I think it does?”

Hawke laughed, not often the bearer of such heady news. “You bet. Very connected man, as they say. I sent the rap sheet to your office.” He hesitated before asking, “Was that okay? I didn’t know you were on the road. You going back there?”

“I am now.”

THE HEATER MADE THE CAR BALMY AND COMFORTABLE
and completely at odds with the weather outside, which had turned gray, cold, and blustery. The blasts of wind I’d experienced the night before in Montpelier had developed into a sustained northern blow, and weather reports were calling for more snow later in the day.

I was happy it hadn’t started falling yet, though. Using the windshield wipers during a covert surveillance was poor form, and right now I was very interested in keeping a low profile.

Willy Kunkle was sitting next to me, one foot propped up on the dash before him. In the distance, behind a thin screen of denuded hardwoods, was Andy Goddard’s generously sized house, which, like most of its upscale brethren, was blessed with a view of the snowbowl beyond. We were parked on the service road, near some dumpsters and a few other vehicles: pickups and sedans belonging either to guests or maintenance crews. Aside from actually being in the car, we didn’t stand out from our surroundings.

“What the hell’re we doing here, anyway?” Willy asked. He’d left his own vehicle at the bottom of the hill and had joined me just a few minutes earlier.

“Waiting for Mameve Knutsen,” I said, knowing the lack of further explanation would irritate him. Every once in a while, I found it irresistible to turn his crank slightly. He did it so routinely with all of us.

He sneered at me. “Cute. Where’d you come up with that?”

I smiled. “Didn’t, that’s her name. She’s one of the cleaning ladies around here.” I pointed at Goddard’s house, “She’s working in there right now.”

Willy didn’t need a more detailed explanation. “Isn’t that a little risky, using her to search for us?”

“We’re not. She doesn’t know we’re interested yet, which means she’s not acting as our agent. If we pick her brains after she comes out—and she cooperates—that puts us in the clear.”

“Which, combined with Kurt Peterson’s affidavit about Goddard being a user, maybe gives us enough for a search warrant,” he concluded.

“Right.”

“Except there’s no reason she should tell us anything.”

I checked my watch. “That’s why Linda Bettina’s meeting us here in about ten minutes.”

Willy nodded without comment, apparently satisfied.

“How’s Sammie doing?” I asked after a pause.

“Good. She’s tough.”

“Maybe. The guy did try to rape her.”

He pressed his lips together, his eyes fixed straight ahead. I didn’t say anything, hoping the silence would work for me.

“She did smack him down,” he finally said. “That counts.”

I couldn’t disagree. Had Gail been able to do what Sammie had, years earlier, I didn’t doubt that the trauma of her own rape would have been easier to handle. Still, the threat alone was bad enough, and nothing to dismiss.

I thought I might approach the subject from a different angle. “How did you feel about it?”

He snorted. “You guys hadn’t been there, I would’ve killed him.”

“I thought what you did was great.”

He mulled that over awhile and eventually said quietly, “I was proud of her.”

“It showed.”

He didn’t respond. I was wondering what to say next, a little curious why I was even pursuing this with him instead of with Sammie, when he suddenly said, “Spinney told me we’re dealing with the Mob all of a sudden.”

I hesitated, disappointed at the abrupt change of subject, and then conceded defeat. Sammie was right, he was a tough nut to crack. “Looks like it. We put out an inquiry on the whereabouts of Tony Bugs Busco.” I reached into my pocket and handed him a copy of Busco’s mug shot that I’d received as e-mail just before leaving the office. “Got this from the FBI. There’s a long rap sheet back at the office, too, but no current information. If it turns out he’s dead or in the joint or we get proof he’s in the South Sea Islands, we’ll go from there, but if not, I’d like him to explain how his prints ended up on a corpse in Vermont.”

Willy grunted, staring at the picture. “In the meantime, we wait for Mameve Knutsen. What the hell’s with that name?” he said irritably.

A pickup truck with the Tucker Peak logo on its side pulled into the lot not far from us. “You can ask her yourself. Bettina just arrived.”

We got out of the car, buttoning our coats and turning up our collars against the cold, as Linda Bettina—tall, broad-shouldered, and seemingly immune to the weather—strode toward us wearing her usual uniform of heavy boots and insulated coveralls.

“She out yet?” she asked. She didn’t offer to shake hands or trade amenities. We were a necessary evil, as she’d explained again on the phone this morning, and cooperating with us was just a means of getting us gone faster.

I glanced over to Goddard’s house and saw some movement by the small car parked in his driveway. “Looks like it.”

Bettina walked by us, heading that way, “Then let’s get this over with.”

“Remember,” I warned her, catching up.

“I know, I know. I’m just here to support her, not twist her arm. I got it the first time.”

Mameve Knutsen was a small, slightly built woman with a lively face and an engaging smile, which she turned on us as we all drew near. Given Bettina’s mood and Willy’s routinely grim expression, I gave her high marks for not running to her car and locking the doors.

Instead, she put down her vacuum cleaner and bucket in the driveway and greeted us amicably. “Hi, Linda. How’re you doin’?”

“Okay,” Bettina said, sounding surprisingly pleasant all of a sudden. “You all done in there?”

“Yup. Just heading off to my next stop.”

“Great. Well, this won’t take long, but these two men would like to ask you a few things. They’re police officers, from the Vermont Bureau of Investigation.”

To my relief, Mameve’s smile broadened. “I’ve heard of you. You’re part of that new outfit, supposed to be like the Untouchables or something.”

“Or something,” Willy muttered under his breath.

I shook her hand and introduced myself and Willy, explaining, “We don’t want to take too much of your time, but we’re here on kind of a sensitive mission. I understand from Linda that you have a habit of starting each job with a fresh vacuum cleaner bag.”

Mameve looked mystified. “Yeah. I know it sounds dumb, but I like to start fresh, the vacuum works better that way, and I don’t have to stop in the middle to change bags.”

“So you started on this house with an empty one?”

She stooped down and pulled a rectangular wrapper from the bucket by her feet. “First one out of a bag of three—got two left.”

“And the other one’s still in the machine?”

She glanced at Linda, as if hoping she’d explain the joke. “Sure is. I put them in my trunk and throw them out at the end of the day.”

“Okay,” I said. “Well, here’s probably the weirdest question I have for you: Could we have that bag?”

The smile faded. “The vacuum cleaner bag? Why?”

Linda Bettina spoke up from behind me. “Mameve, they’re suspicious about Mr. Goddard for some reason and think you might have picked something up that’ll help them out. The bag’s your property, though, and you can tell them to get lost if you want. That’s why I’m here, to make sure that point’s made crystal clear.”

Again, I was relieved by her reaction. The smile returned with a crafty look. “Wow, that’s great—like the crime lab on the Discovery Channel. I love that show. Is that what you’re talking about?”