Authors: Ross Thomas

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

Briarpatch (27 page)

BOOK: Briarpatch

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They also stood and watched as Colder finished almost half the pint, rose, put the top back on, and replaced the container in the
freezer. As he sat back down at the table, he looked up at Dill and asked, “What d'you know about Harold Snow?”

“Not much.”

“Felicity ever write you about him?”

“No,” Dill said and turned to Singe. “You want to sit down?”

She shook her head. “I'd just as soon stand.”

Colder pushed a chair out from the kitchen table, but neither Singe nor Dill sat in it. “We started checking into Harold right after Felicity died,” Colder said. “And guess what we found?” He answered his own question. “Harold was all bent out of shape.”

“Dishonest, you mean,” Singe said with a small polite smile.

“Very,” Colder said.

Dill shook his head in apparent disbelief. “He told me he was a home-computer salesman.”

“He was, part of the time,” Colder said, “but he worked strictly on commission, and if he didn't feel like working some days, well, he didn't have to. He could stay home. Or go somewhere else and be what he was really good at, which was a thief.”

“What'd he steal?” Dill said.

“Time.”

“Time?”

“Computer time,” Colder said, “mainframe, which is pretty valuable.”

“So I understand,” Dill said.

“Well, Snow would locate it, figure out how to steal it, and sell it. He was sort of a computer and electronics genius. Some people are like that. They might not be too bright about most things, but they're real technical geniuses. You've known guys like that, haven't you, Dill?”

“I don't think so,” Dill said.

“What about you, Miss Singe?”

“I haven't either.”

“Huh. I thought everybody had. Well, when Snow wasn't stealing and selling computer time, he was doing something else that wasn't too nice either. He was tapping people's phones and bugging their offices and bedrooms and stuff like that, although I doubt if we could really prove it now. But guess who his last customer was?”

“You don't want me to guess,” Dill said.

“You're right. I don't. Well, his last customer was Clay Corcoranâwho dropped dead at your feet yesterday in the cemetery. And now poor old Harold drops dead at your feet here tonight. How's that for coincidence, Mr. Dill?”

“Strange and rare,” Dill said. “But let me ask you this: what the hell've Snow and Corcoran got to do with who killed Felicity?”

Colder stared for several seconds at Dill. It was a stare that Dill felt contained nothing but distrust and dislike. “We're working on that,” Colder said finally. “In fact, we're working on that very, very hard.”

Colder rose from the table, took his pint of fudge ripple out of the freezer, and headed back toward the living room. Dill and Singe followed. Cindy McCabe was still seated on the couch, her hands in her lap, her knees pressed tightly together. Colder went over to her.

“Miss McCabe?”

She looked up at him. “Yes?”

“Is there anyone we can call for youâabout Harold?”

She dropped her eyes. “There's his brother,” she said.

“What's his name?”

“Jordan Snow.”

“Do you have his number?”

“No, but you can get it from long-distance information. Back home, he's the only Jordan Snow in the book.”

Colder turned to Sergeant Meek. “Have somebody call the brother and tell him what happened.”

“Where's back home?” Sergeant Meek asked.

“Kansas City,” Colder said.

“Right,” Sergeant Meek said.

CHAPTER 31

They argued all the way to the Hawkins Hotel. It turned nasty as they got out of the rented Ford in the hotel basement garage and headed toward the elevator. They fought in the elevator. They were still fighting when Dill unlocked the door to room 981 and held it open for Anna Maude Singe, who sailed into the room, trailing the accusation “goddamned fool” behind her.

“It'll work,” Dill said, closing the door.

“Never,” she snapped.

“Watch,” he said and crossed to the phone. After picking it up he looked at her questioningly. “Well?”

“What is it with you anyway?” she demanded, her tone furious, her face pink and angry beneath the tan. “Do I owe you something? For what? Because we fooled around a couple of times? I don't owe you anything, Dill. Not one damned thing.”

Dill was dialing now. “Sure you do,” he said. “You're my sweetie.”

“Your
sweetie
! Christ, I don't even like you anymore. I'm your lawyer. That's all. And all I have to do is give you sound advice.
Well, here's some: don't make that call. You want to call somebody, call the FBI.”

“Somebody's already called them,” Dill said as he listened to the phone ring. “In Washington. If I called them and I'm wrong, it would just screw up the deal the Senator's got with them. This wayâwell, if I'm wrong, nothing happens.”

“Nothing good,” she said as Daphne Owens answered the phone on its fifth ring. Dill identified himself and a few seconds later Jake Spivey came on with “I got your message, Pick, there at the tail end of the tape. I think you kinda shook old Chief Strucker up some. You really think he knows who killed Felicity?”

“He thinks he does.”

“So what's on your mind?”

“How would you like to get Clyde Brattle off your back for good?”

Spivey didn't answer immediately. When he did, it was with a cautious question: “Do a deal with him, you mean?”

“Something like that.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Not over the phone, Jake. But I think I've got an idea you two should sit down and talk aboutâjust you, him, and me.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow night after you're both through with the Senator.”

“Where?” Spivey said. “Where's gonna be important, Pick. In a sitdown with Clyde, where's gonna be almost as important as what we're gonna talk about. So where's where gonna be?”

“Just a second,” Dill said. He pressed the phone against his chest and looked at Anna Maude Singe, who was now lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Well?” Dill said.

She didn't look at him. She was still staring at the ceiling when she said, “Okay. My place.”

Dill put the phone back to his ear. “I'm thinking of Anna Maude's place in the Old Folks Home, but there're still a couple of details to work out. Let me call you back in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“I'll be here,” Spivey said and hung up.

After Dill put down the phone, he turned to Singe and said, “Let's go.”

She asked the ceiling, “I wonder why I said yes.”

Dill unlocked the door to the narrow stairway that led up to his dead sister's apartment in the carriage house. The airless stairway was at least ten degrees hotter than the outside temperature, which seemed to be resting for the night at 91 degrees.

Followed by Anna Maude Singe, Dill went slowly up the stairs, unlocked the door on the small landing, went inside, and turned on the brass reading lamp. When Singe started to close the door, he said, “Leave it open.”

He went to the telephone, picked it up, and again called Jake Spivey. When Spivey himself answered, Dill said, “It's me.”

“You get it worked out?”

“Well, I think it's both neutral and reasonably secure.”

“Reasonably don't cut it, Pick, but I've been thinking and, well, the Old Folks Home just might do. All we'd have to have is somebody on the stairs and at the elevator. My Mexicans can handle that. And I expect old Clyde'll want Harley and Sid along, so what we'll have is kind of a Mexican standoff, which'll suit me just fine. What time you aiming for?”

“Ten tomorrow night.”

“When we gonna meet with the Senator?”

“He gets in at four tomorrow afternoon,” Dill said. “Why don't
you go out to the airport with me? I'm reserving them a suite at the Hawkins. We can all ride back together and talk in the car and then up in the suite.”

Spivey made a counterproposal. Dill had known he would. “Tell you what,” Spivey said. “Why don't I come down at three and carry you out to the airport in my Rolls-Royce automobile? I've never known fancy to hurt none when you're doing a deal like this.”

“Okay,” Dill said, “but no driver.”

“Boy, you sure like to explain things to us dumb ones, don't you?” Spivey said and hung up.

Twenty-five minutes later they were in Anna Maude Singe's living room, seated on the couch. She held a glass of Scotch and water and looked around the room as though seeing it for the very first time. “So,” she said, “this is where you're going to do itâin the only home I've got.”

From the other end of the couch, Dill said, “Right here.”

“You still think those phone calls worked? What if neither of them were tapped? Where does that leave you?”

“I think my phone at the hotel is tapped,” Dill said. “And Jake's is, I'm pretty sure. I'm positiveâwell, almostâthat the phone in Felicity's alley place is tapped. It must be by now. So whoever's reading those taps will know Jake Spivey's meeting here tomorrow night with Clyde Brattle. I don't think they want that meeting to happen.”

“Why not?” she said.

“I think that's what Corcoran found out. The why. I think that's why he got killed.”

“But you're not sure, are you?”

“No.”

She looked around the room again. “Something rotten's going to happen, isn't it?”

“Yes. Probably.”

“Here. I mean here in this room.”

“Yes.”

“What're you going to do when it does?”

“I don't know yet,” Dill said.

“Maybe you'd better start thinking about it.”

“Yes,” he said. “Maybe I'd better.”

Dill was up by seven the next morning, boiling water for instant coffee in Anna Maude Singe's kitchen. He carried two mugs of it into her bedroom. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed, bare-breasted. Dill sat down on the edge of the bed, handed her one of the mugs, bent down, and kissed her right breast. She jerked the sheet up to her neck, sipped the coffee, and stared at a still life print on the far wall. Then she said, “I wonder what I'll do when I'm disbarred.”

“You can come live in Washington for a while and when you get tired of that, we can go live somewhere else.”

She stared at him with amazement. “Why do you think I'd want to do that?”

“Because you're my sweetie.”

“Don't bank on it, Dill.”

At 7:49 on that morning of August 8, a Monday, Dill got stuck in the traffic near the intersection of Our Jack and Broadway. As he waited, he watched the digital time and temperature sign on the First National Bank go from 7:49 and 91 degrees to 7:50 and 92
degrees. The radio newsreader in a tired voice was predicting 106 degrees by 3 P.M.

After parking the Ford in the basement, Dill rode the elevator up to the lobby and stopped by the desk to see whether he had any mail or messages. He didn't. The elderly woman he had taken for a permanent hotel guest was also at the desk. As she turned, she looked at him, hesitated, and then spoke.

“You're Henry Dill's boy, aren't you?” she said in a soft voice.

“Yes, I am. Did you know him?”

“A long time ago,” she said. “I'm Joan Chambers.” She studied Dill for a moment or two. “You look like your father, you know. The same nose. The same eyes. He and I had a summer together once. It was 1940âthe next to last summer before the war. I sometimes think it was the last good summer ever.” She paused and then added, “I read about your sister. Felicity. I'm very sorry.”

“Thank you,” Dill said.

“Excuse me, ma'am,” a man's voice said. The Chambers woman stepped back. Dill turned. The voice belonged to Captain Gene Colder. He was no longer wearing his blue jogging suit or his Nike running shoes. Instead, he wore a nicely pressed tan mohair suit, a foulard tie, and a blue shirt whose tab collar was held together by a gold pin. Colder was also freshly shaven, but there were circles under his eyes, and the expression around his mouth was grim.

“I've been waiting for you,” he said, apparently indifferent to the still-listening woman.

“Why?” Dill said.

“We know who killed your sister,” Colder said.

“And high time, too,” said the woman who had spent her last good summer with Dill's father. Then she turned and walked away.

BOOK: Briarpatch

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