Cul-de-Sac (20 page)

“So Growler goes to prison, gets out, hooks up with Paul Milton who buys Cul-De-Sac … for what reason?”

She didn’t answer.

“What were Growler and Milton looking for at Cul-De-Sac?”

“I don’t know.”

The lie surprised Camel, he hadn’t been ready for it. He liked Elizabeth Rockwell, admired her style, a lady with a lot of class and brass … then she insults him by lying … it seemed so out of character, as if she had suddenly cleared her throat and spat on the floor.

“You’re lying.” Camel’s voice was quiet but came with the authority of someone who wasn’t wrong about these things.

“Hey buddy!” Murray warned from the counter. “Watch your mouth!”

“Drink your Ovaltine dear,” Elizabeth said before turning back to Camel. “Murray has a point … you’re a guest in my house, I’m providing you with information you’ve requested, I hardly think you should be calling me a liar.”

“I didn’t call you a liar, I said you were lying.”

She looked amused. “There’s a difference?”

“I sincerely hope so.” Although references to an elephant had drawn blanks with everyone else, Camel decided to try one on Elizabeth. “Were Growler and Milton looking for an elephant?”

She hesitated, didn’t want to be caught in another lie. “Are we playing games Mr. Camel?”

“I’m trying to investigate—”

“You’re fishing.”

“Sounds better when I call it investigating.”

She smiled without the condescension. “Give the devil her due, Hope Penner was a brilliant young woman.”

Camel waited to hear what this had to do with an elephant.

“Hope played the piano at concert level, she was an accomplished artist, spoke several languages, she could’ve been a chess master … J.L. fancied himself a good chess player but Hope beat him consistently, which delighted J.L. In his eyes Hope could do no wrong … like every man who ever met Hope he was totally infatuated with her.”

“Did it go beyond infatuation?”

She gave Camel a look that made him regret the question.

“I don’t think that’s a subject on which I’d care to speculate.”

He said fair enough.

“After Hope died J.L. went into both a mental and physical decline. Although he became very rich selling land he also became very reclusive and more than a little strange. By the end of his life he was barely in possession of his faculties.”

“And at this time you were his—”

“Before Hope came to live at Cul-De-Sac, J.L. and I were engaged to be married. After her death he and I were simply friends.”

“Her death unhinged him?”

“Her
life
unhinged him, Mr. Camel. He loved showing her off, J.L. would host a party for Hope every night for seven or eight nights in a row. He gave her cars, indulged her drug habits. When J.L. discovered what an excellent chess player Hope was, he began buying chess sets and very soon became a serious collector. He developed an obsession for the East India Chess Set, not the most famous chess set in the world but perhaps the most expensive. It had been broken up in the last century, its pieces sold and resold to buyers from all over the world. The entire set could never have been reassembled at any price but J.L. did manage to purchase almost all the black pieces and one white … the knight.”

“The white knight?”

“He and Hope would have fondling sessions with it.”

Camel again waited for her to explain.

“J.L. and Hope would creep hand-in-hand to the library where he kept his chess collection and they’d take out the East India white knight. Hope loved to hold it and she would say ‘Oh J.L. you’re my white knight.’ And he would promise Hope that someday the elephant would be hers. It was all rather pitiful.”

“You said he promised Hope the
elephant
would be hers?”

Elizabeth looked at Camel as a teacher might regard a particularly dull scholar. “The East India Chess Set’s black pieces were carved ebony, the white pieces were solid gold … and the white knight was an elephant.”

“A solid-gold elephant.”

“Encrusted with jewels.”

“Worth?”

“Three million dollars. Why
Monsieur Chameau
, do you have something in your eye or are you actually smiling?”

“Smiling,” Camel admitted. “Like a scoundrel.”

Linda Kay Gray was smiling too, it was a treat for her when Parker came home in the middle of the day. She’d heard his car, heard him go into the kitchen … that’s where she was hurrying now.

“Park?”

He was at the table with his back to her, when Linda came around to sit across from him she lost her smile … he looked terrible.

“What’s wrong?”

Parker Gray stared across that table as if he didn’t recognize his wife.

“
Park?
”

He shook his head.

“Something at work?”

“I …” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been suspended.”

“Good Lord what for?”

“I came down too hard on a man brought in to be questioned about a shooting.”

“What do you mean, came down too hard … you hit him?”

“No. I pushed for his arrest and—”

“They wouldn’t suspend you for—”

“And I got into a shouting match with a couple of our detectives.”

“Over what, arresting that man?”

Parker Gray held up a hand … how could he explain to his wife that their whole life together, their marriage, the success he’s had with the state police, everything has been built on a convoluted conspiracy that grinds on him every night?

“I’ll make some coffee.”

Watching his wife work at the counter Gray felt a strangely powerful impulse to pull out his 9mm and shoot her in the back of the head … then kill himself. Allowing this apocalyptic fantasy to run a course Gray suddenly realized why so many men end everything with a murder-suicide … killing someone, especially someone you love,
requires
you to take your own life, it’s what a man does when he can’t summon the courage to commit suicide, he forces his own hand. That’s what Paul Milton had been toying with, threatening to shoot his wife and Camel so that, seeing what he’d done, he would have no choice but to kill himself. Except Milton finally found the balls to do it on his own, without the motivation of murdering someone else first. Gray experienced a mixture of relief and regret when he finally put it out of his mind, the idea of shooting Linda in the back of the head.

He’d known all along of course that Milton’s death was a suicide, Gray had to charge Camel to keep him bottled up until McCleany could finish what they’d started at Cul-De-Sac seven years ago. Goddamn McCleany anyway … and goddamn me.

“Take just a minute to drip through,” Linda said as she sat again at the table. “You feel like talking about this now?”

No he would never feel like talking about it.

“Park?”

“What?”

“Is it something else, I mean beside the suspension?” She was thinking, he’s having an affair.

While her husband was thinking, the only way out of this if I don’t want more people to die … I’m going to have to kill myself and then go to hell.

“References to an elephant kept popping up,” Camel told Elizabeth Rockwell. “I questioned people but no one tipped to it. Not knowing what it was or what it referred to was starting to get under my skin. Now I know, that’s why I smiled.”

“You
do
have a passion for secrets, don’t you?”

He squinted another smile. “Tell me another one.”

“As I said, the East India white knight is a solid-gold elephant … approximately eight inches long and eight inches tall, trunk and right foot raised in triumph, the entire piece heavily decorated with various precious gems, diamonds and rubies and emeralds. I saw it many times in J.L.’s collection and could never decide whether it was beautiful or garish. But its monetary value was never in dispute.”

“Three million bucks.”

“That’s the value we settled on for insurance purposes. What it would be worth on the open market I don’t know … probably more.”

“Where is it?”

“The elephant was stolen.”

“By—”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you—”

“After Hope was murdered, J.L. never looked at his collection of chess sets again, I guess they reminded him too much of her. I was executrix of his will which was tied up in probate for a long time, all his possessions held by a security company. When we finally got around to doing a complete appraisal we discovered that the elephant, the real East India Chess Set white knight, had been replaced by a copy cast from brass, studded with false gems made of colored and cut glass. A pretty good copy if you didn’t examine it too closely.”

“Who pulled the switch?”

“Pulled the switch.” The phrase amused her. “We assumed someone connected with the security company, in fact we made a claim against that company’s insurance. J.L. left most of his estate to charity, there weren’t any greedy heirs to pursue the matter.”

“Growler stole the elephant before he went to prison.”

“So it seems. No one suspected Donald because the switch wasn’t discovered until last year, after he’d been in prison for six years. But when he was here last night he was very intent on finding that elephant.”

“Who’s got it?”

“I don’t know. Apparently Donald hid the real knight somewhere in Cul-De-Sac but while he was away someone found it and that has made Donald very, very angry. You see … is this starting to bore you?”

Camel assured her he remained fascinated with everything she was telling him.

Elizabeth smiled and touched her hair. “Obviously I’ve been giving this some thought since Donald’s visit. His best friend, his former best friend, is an artist … maybe Kenneth is a sculptor also.”

“Kenneth Norton?”

“Yes. If Donald and Kenneth, they were always up to something, if Kenneth sculpted a copy of the East India elephant … well don’t you see, Donald lived at Cul-De-Sac and had access to J.L.’s collection and could’ve easily made, pulled the switch. Maybe Donald and Kenneth were planning to leave the country, the white knight
financing their life in Europe, Donald was always talking about living in Europe.”

“And the murder, its connection to—”

“Maybe Hope found out about the plot and threatened to tell J.L., although I think it’s vastly more likely that she was in on the scheme from the very beginning.”

“You didn’t like her.”

“I hated her.”

“But not enough to kill her?”

Murray didn’t warn Camel to watch his mouth because Murray had become bored with the conversation, was looking out a window, and failed to catch Camel’s implied accusation.

Elizabeth didn’t take offense either, it was too ludicrous. “No I didn’t kill Hope.”

Camel believed she was telling the truth.

“Until last night I was absolutely convinced Donald had killed her.”

“Until last night?”

“He was enraged. Prison has changed him from a weird and rather delicate young man with a taste for the macabre … he kept severed animal heads in his room … to a well-muscled violent psychopath who’s on a mission.”

“A mission?”

“Revenge upon everyone who helped send him to prison. He was most vociferous in proclaiming his innocence. Of course at the trial he claimed he was innocent too but last night for some strange reason I believed him.”

“Then who do you think killed Hope … J. L. Penner? You were saying before that he benefited by inheriting the girl’s share of Cul-De-Sac.”

“I could see J.L. arranging to frame Donald for the murder but no, J.L. didn’t kill her, he was in love with Hope. Donald was too. In fact I don’t think I can recall one man who was immune to Little Miss Hope Penner.”

“She had a lot of lovers?”

Elizabeth laughed. “A lot? She had legions. A ludicrous number
of lovers for a girl so young Mr. Camel. She was … well I can’t think how to describe it forcefully enough without being crude. She was sexually active, promiscuous, perverted—”

“Perverted?”

“Do you know about the photographs?”

Camel knew only that Parker Gray had asked if photographs were found at Cul-De-Sac.

“Mr. Camel?”

“No I don’t know about the photographs.”

“We’d better have more coffee … Murray how’s your Ovaltine?”

“I’m bored.”

“I know you are darling, why don’t you go upstairs and—”

“How long you going to be?”

“Mr. Camel and I are going to drink one more cup of coffee each, then we’ll be done with our chat.”

“Caffeine’ll kill you.”

“I know dear, but so very many things will.”

“I’ll wait for you upstairs … you okay here with
him
?”

“Yes darling, Mr. Camel means me no harm.”

“Better not,” Murray warned before bear-walking from the kitchen.

She watched his departure with obvious fondness, telling Camel, “He’s such a dear … fun to be with, loyal, totally faithful—”

“Yeah I had a dog like that once.”

Elizabeth started to protest the remark but laughed instead, laughed hard enough to wet her eyes … then looked at Camel and said, “Oddly enough I actually enjoy your company.”

“You’re okay too Beth.”

She considered him for a moment then poured the coffee. “As with everything else Hope did, she was an accomplished photographer … won several awards, displayed in local galleries, I mean the girl really was too good to be true. Built her own darkroom, did her own developing. After her death it was discovered Hope had set up a secret camera in a room where she entertained her many lovers … the room where she was killed. Hope hid the camera
up on the ceiling, pointed down at a mattress on the floor, rigged to snap pictures at certain intervals. Mr. Camel you can’t imagine what a collection of photographs she must’ve had … riding instructors, soldiers, policemen, actually anyone in uniform, UPS men I’m sure, various samplings of Cul-De-Sac’s political VIPs … J.L. was active in the Republican party … oh, Hope’s list of conquests goes on and on, local boys, gardeners, visiting TV repairmen, a cousin, maybe an uncle, men she met in bars and dragged back to Cul-De-Sac.”

“Did you see the photographs?”