Another Word for Murder (34 page)

“Well, we're all going to need to rally around Karen and Lily,” Sara said after another somber pause. “They'll need our help and support.”

“
If
Karen decides to stay in Newcastle,” Belle replied.

“Well, I hope she does,” Sara insisted. “I realize she'll have to move to a less-costly domicile, but well, I'm prepared to do my part and supply any aid she might need in future.”

Belle looked at the old lady and smiled in gratitude and love. “You're a peach, Sara, do you know that?”

“When I wish to be. Only when I wish to be.”

“No, all the time.” Belle touched her friend's hand, and as she did she caught Martha's eye. Belle was surprised to see two tears rolling down the rouged and powdered cheeks of Lawson's famous wiseacre and skeptic.

“You know what?” she murmured. “That damn guy nearly got away with murder. And he would have, too, if it weren't for certain people sitting right here at this table.”

“But what were Dan's plans for Bonnie?” Belle interrupted in a small voice, although she'd intuited the answer already.

“Another homicide, in all probability,” Al said. “He couldn't have left her alone to blab to the whole world, which she would have done eventually. Especially if he had no plans to take her with him.”

“Who knows,” Abe added with a taut and unforgiving shrug, “maybe that's why he was heading back toward Newcastle when the Feds picked him up on Friday.”

“And to think that the brother Karen never met didn't even exist…. ” Belle continued in her subdued tone. “He was just another one of Dan's manipulative fictions. Dan had to know how much that hurt her—”

“As opposed to his affair with Bonnie?” Abe interjected. “Or the circumstances surrounding his ‘loving' marriage? Or the fact that he was living high off the hog all the while knowing that his wife and step-daughter would be left with nothing?”

“Except his expensive collection of automobiles,” Sara said.

“Which is what ultimately did him in,” Jones continued in the same embittered voice. “He just couldn't let his precious LT-5 Corvette burn up in the ravine. He had to take it with him. It was a
car
thing all along. I believe I said that a month ago at this very table.”

“And to think I once considered that Karen might have arranged to have her husband killed,” Belle admitted with a guilty sigh.

“We all came to that conclusion,” Lever told her. “Your hubby, too. Speaking of whom …” A genuine grin began spreading across Al's face as he looked out the window and across the street. Rosco was in the process of parking his “new” car directly in front of the fire hydrant.

Martha followed Al's gaze, she looked at Rosco's car, then she glanced down at Belle. “Oh, honey …,” she murmured in real sympathy, “I'm so, so sorry … but you should never let men go shopping by themselves…. You never know what they'll drag home…. ”

Belle and Abe and Sara turned in their seats and watched as Rosco flipped down the sun visor to display a police parking permit he considered part of his NPD retirement package. Studying the scene, Abe Jones couldn't help but laugh. “I guess there's a certain amount of truth to the adage that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.”

“Well, I think it's a … it's a … delightful vehicle, Belle, dear,” Sara offered in a hesitant manner while Belle stood and dropped her napkin on the table. Instead of looking mournful, however, she was smiling brightly, almost seraphically.

“Where on earth did he find it!? It's an exact double for the red Jeep he was driving the day I met him.” She hurried out of Lawson's, rushed across the street, and gave her husband a long and loving kiss. Through the window, their friends could see the couple in excited and animated conversation. Whatever anyone else's assessment of Rosco's surprise purchase, it was clear that both husband and wife were thrilled.

Al chuckled as he leaned back against the pink vinyl seat. “The ride's twenty years old, only has forty thousand miles on it, and no body-rot, from what I could tell.”

“You knew about this scheme in advance, Albert?” Sara asked. Her chiding tone conveyed the fact that she thought he'd taken a mighty chance in not persuading his friend that a more modern and comfortable vehicle might have been a wiser choice.

Al ignored the gentle rebuke. “He bought the Jeep yesterday, Mrs. B. When he called me to describe his great ‘discovery,' I knew there'd be no stopping him. He had it detailed this morning—thus his excuse for not joining us for breakfast.”

When Abe Jones's laughter finally subsided, he asked the question they were all wondering. “Where in blazes did Rosco find it? It's like a clone of his old car.”

Lever rolled his eyes. “Where does he find anything, Abe? Poly—crates lives a charmed life; you know that…. But I'm not sure the vehicle you're looking at was always red…. ”

“WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN?”

Across

  1.  Evil

  4.  Toss

  7.  Boxing org.

10.  French salt

13.  Operate

14.  Water off Mass.

15.  Mr. Rossi

16.  Record label

17.  Fib

18.  Birth of 1817, in Concord, Mass.

20.  Dr. Tacete

21.  Who'll be the clerk? “I,” said the——

23.  ——Steven

24.  Wood preserver

26.  Loafed

28.  Who'll make his shroud? “I,” said the—

29.  Play hockey

32.  Mr. Silverstein

34.  Quiz

35.  Montana capital

37.  Gnawed away

39.  Who'll dig his grave? “I,” said the——

40.  Who killed Cock Robin? “I,” said the——

42.  Who saw him die? “I,” said the——

45.  Discourage

46.  Desert sight

48.  Mr. Kojak

51.  Set down

53.  Types

54.  Mary Chase classic

56.  False

58.  Some poems

59.  Fright, often

60.  Mr. Anan

64.  French one

65.  Cut out

68.  Place for toys

69.  State & Main; abbr.

70.  Put on

71.  Tiger league?

72.  Jor. neighbor

73.  Pre DDE

74.  “Rah!”

75.  Born

76.  “All——king's harses …”

Down

  1.  Who'll toll the bell? “I,” said the——

  2.  Where Bombay is

  3.  Bambi, e.g.

  4.  Mr. Boone

  5.  Lucy's pal

  6.  Hand warmers

  7.  Who'll bear the pall? “I,” said the——

  8.  Feather stole

  9.  Treat harshly

10.  Drug

11.  Internet missives

12.  Who'll bear the torch? “I,” said the——

19.  “As many as——grow in the wood”

22.  Who'll carry his coffin? “I,” said the——

25.  Head of France?

27.  Thick

28.  Aster or rose

29.  No——

30.  Gardens

31.  “——the king's men…”

33.  Goof

36.  Appropriately

38.  Paddles

41.  Actors org.

42.  Passing fancy

43.  SM-MED——

44.  Quite so

45.  Who'll be chief mourner? “I,” said the——

47.  Who'll be the parson? “I,” said the——

48.  Who'll sing his dirge? “I,” said the——

49.  Hangouts

50.  Mr. Hemingway

52.  Murders

55.  Test part

57.  Collection

59.  Verdi opera

61.  Last words?

62.  Who caught his blood? “I,” said the——

63.  In the matter of

66.  Alphabet run

67.  “A pocket full of——”

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CHAPTER 1

Although his name might suggest otherwise, Moon-dog was a proven champion. He was an eight-year-old gelding, a commanding seventeen-hand Dutch Warmblood and a world-class jumper, with enough blue ribbons to fashion a debutante's satin ball gown. He had been foaled and trained at Glen-Rosalynne Farms in Louisville, Kentucky, then sold to an Oscar-winning film director with a three-hundred-acre ranch overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Barbara, California. The film director had jumped Moon-dog—shooting schedules permitting—in every major competition from coast to coast for a solid year before he'd suddenly grown tired of the entire equestrian thing and decided to scrap one toy for another and try his hand at offshore sailing instead. He sold Moon-dog for $100,000—about a quarter of the price of the boat—to an investment banker in Newcastle, Massachusetts, a medium-sized city just to the west of Cape Cod across Buzzards Bay.

The banker bought the animal for his sixteen-year-old daughter because her primary equitation horse, a gray Thoroughbred mare by the unlikely name of Willow-whisp, had yet to finish above second—meaning the beast had yet to win the banker's daughter a single blue ribbon. Not one! And this despite Daddy paying a trainer one hundred bucks a day, rain or shine, show or no show. Naturally the situation was both galling to the banker and a source of extreme exasperation to his daughter, Tiffany.

Both mounts, Moon-dog and Willow-whisp, were now boarded at King Wenstarin Farms, a show and breeding stable fifteen miles outside of Newcastle. It was a top-drawer place, as befitted the pricey animals residing there, but the lower stable in which the gelding and mare were housed had one disturbing complication on this particular early October evening, and that was the unmistakable presence of smoke.

Moon-dog was the first to smell it. In fact, he'd heard the unusual noises that had initially triggered the problematic situation, watched the culprit flee the scene, and so knew precisely how the predicament had begun. The only thing the animal didn't know was how to unlatch the gate to his stall—or how the story would end.

Horses do not react well to smoke. As with most mammals, humans being one notable exception, their internal mechanisms take them rapidly to the logical conclusion: Fire! Danger! Death! This intelligent insight creates in them a burning desire to put large distances between themselves and the smoke as quickly as possible. Moon-dog first snorted and then began anxiously pawing at the straw that covered the dirt floor of his roomy box stall. The acrid smoke tickled at his flaring nostrils. He whinnied and backed solidly into the wooden gate that barred his exit. The iron hinges creaked, and the steel latch jumped, but both held the gate in place. It would be only two minutes before Moon-dog would begin to do some serious damage to the stall and to himself.

The large round clock positioned in the center of the immaculate wall that rose above the stable's entry read 7:06
P.M.,
when Moon-dog began his nervous pacing and the building's equally gleaming windows revealed a deep-blue sky and a bright full moon hanging low and orange as it turned the autumnal leaves a molten silvery red. The color eerily replicated the light from the fire that was now brewing in the tack room located at the west end of the stable. Known as the “small” stable, the space had room for only sixteen stalls, eight of which were presently occupied.

Moon-dog's antics swiftly attracted the attention of the other seven equine residents. Willow-whisp, three other mares, and three additional geldings trusted the chestnut-colored Warmblood, like baby ducks trust their mothers; and if the big guy wanted out, so did they. After fifteen additional seconds, all eight horses were rearing and bucking in their stalls, their eyes huge and terrified, and their whinnies panicked, while the smoke grew thicker and the brightness of the tack room fire illuminated the stable's center aisle from one end to the other.