Frenzy (15 page)

30

 

B
arefoot, wearing only a pair of shorts, Dwayne looked in on his dead parents before going down to the garage. He flipped the opener light switch to Off so the garage stayed dark when the heavy overhead door rose. The roll and rumble of the door seemed unusually loud in the still night.

Leaving off the lights of both cars, Dwayne moved his father's big Mercedes out of the driveway. Then he backed Maude's Chrysler convertible from the garage and out of the way. He had some trouble with that one, as it was a stick shift and Dwayne had practiced only on cars with automatic transmissions.

But he got the job done. Then he moved his father's car into the garage, and replaced it in the driveway with Maude's. The third car in the garage, his father's Porsche, he didn't touch.

Now it would appear as if his father had driven to his office as usual in his Mercedes. When Bill Phoenix came by later this morning, as Dwayne knew he would, he would see only the Chrysler convertible parked in the driveway—his signal that Dwayne's father wasn't home and it was safe for Phoenix to “clean the pool.” Maude should be waiting, probably sprawled in her lounger with a catalogue.

After flipping the toggle switch to its usual position, so the light would come on when the garage door was raised or lowered, Dwayne went back upstairs.

He looked in on Maude and his father, like a dutiful son.

Neither had moved. Everything in the room was the same.

Remaining only in his shorts, Dwayne went to his bedroom and set his alarm clock. He knew Bill Phoenix would be at the house at ten o'clock, and seeing Maude's car, he would pull in behind it with his service van. It was where he usually parked; in the driveway, sheltered by the palms and bougainvillea, the van couldn't be seen from the street.

Then Phoenix would walk around the house to the pool, where Maude should be waiting. After a little while, they would stroll together to the cabana, where they were safe from being seen by any part of the outside world.

Since it was summer, and there was no school, they would assume that Dwayne, a late riser, was still asleep in his bed. Dwayne didn't much care for swimming, so even when he happened to be awake, he always stayed in the house. So Maude and Phoenix thought.

Dwayne switched the ceiling fan on low and got back in the bed. He lay curled on his side, his cheek resting on his upper arm, and almost immediately fell asleep.

He didn't dream.

At 9:45
A.M.
Dwayne's clock radio played the recorded-and-saved Cyndi Lauper number about girls and fun.

Dwayne's eyes opened but he didn't move right away. His throat was dry, so he swallowed several times and then yawned. Memory of last night came to him in pieces, and he smiled.

People underestimated him because he was young. He didn't mind that. It was an advantage, and even at his age he'd learned how to use it to the fullest. He had a handle on things.

Dwayne relieved himself in the bathroom off his bedroom, adjusted his shorts, then flushed the toilet. He rinsed and dried his hands, then got half a dozen tissues from the dispenser on the granite vanity.

He carried the tissues to his Father and Maude's bedroom and removed the knife from the bed.

He had plans for the knife.

31

A
t 10:01
A.M.
, here came Bill Phoenix.

From where Dwayne crouched concealed by the oleander bushes near the garage, he watched Phoenix's white pool service van hesitate at the bend in the driveway, then continue and park where Phoenix and Maude had determined the vehicle couldn't be seen from the street.

Phoenix climbed down out of the van, walked around it, and got a long-handled pool skimmer out of the back. A breeze ruffled his swept-back dark hair as he swiveled his handsome head to look in all directions. His gaze slid right over Dwayne.

Dwayne knew the skimmer was a prop. In the off chance somebody dropped by and caught Phoenix and Maude together, Phoenix could stop whatever else he was doing and begin skimming leaves and debris out of the pool. Just like that, he would become the proper and preoccupied hired help, engrossed in his job rather than in his employer.

With the skimmer propped on his shoulder, he strode across the lawn toward the back of the house and the pool, where he assumed Maude would be waiting as planned.

As soon as Phoenix was out of sight, Dwayne went to the van and opened the door on the passenger side. He gave the knife that he'd used on Maude and his father a final wipe with the tissues so it would be free of any fingerprints that weren't smeared. Then he slid the knife beneath the passenger seat, closed the door softly so Phoenix wouldn't hear, and hurried out of sight, concealing himself near the bushes by a big date palm.

Less than another minute passed before Phoenix reappeared, carrying the pool skimmer at waist level now. After leaning the skimmer against the van, he walked up to the front porch. He wore a slight frown, and seemed aggravated and vaguely puzzled.

Dwayne knew what Phoenix was thinking. Maude was probably still in bed. Her husband was gone, and even if he wasn't and came to the door, Phoenix could go into his pool cleaner routine. The worst that could happen is that Phoenix would actually have to clean the pool. If Dwayne's father wasn't around, Dwayne himself might come to the door and would tell him where Maude was.

Assuming an attitude of boldness, Phoenix leaned on the doorbell.

When he got no response, he knocked.

Knocked again. Harder. This was turning out not to be a good morning.

His hands propped on his hips, he left the porch and strode back toward the van. Then he changed his mind, kicked a small rock off the driveway, and went back up on the porch. He knocked again.

This time when he got no response he tried the doorknob.

It turned. The house was unlocked.

Phoenix eased the door open, stuck his head in, and yelled hello. Shouted, “Pool man!”

Dwayne had never heard Phoenix refer to himself as “pool man.” It sounded like some kind of superhero who rescued people who bumped their heads on their diving boards.

After the third hello, Phoenix called for Maude. When he got no response he called Dwayne's name.

Phoenix stood for a while, pondering, then seemed to gather resolve. He went inside, leaving the door open about a foot.

Time passed. The jagged shadows of palms trees dancing in the breeze moved this way and that on the porch.

Dwayne waited.

When Bill Phoenix emerged from the house, he was white. Dwayne was surprised. He didn't think a person—especially one with such a great tan as Phoenix's—could suddenly turn so pale. Phoenix was stumbling as he walked toward his van. Something that had to be vomit glimmered on the chest of his sleeveless T-shirt and down one leg.

Dwayne stepped out onto sunny the driveway and walked toward him, grinning. He raised a hand in greeting. “Hi, Bill. You seen Maude?”

Phoenix staggered past him and didn't seem to have seen him.

“Hey, Bill . . .”

“Don't go in there!” he heard Phoenix call, as he clambered into his van. “For God's sake, don't go in there!”

Dwayne watched as the van roared and shot backward. It swerved back and forth, once even going off the driveway and onto the grass. Leaving tire marks. Good. Dwayne couldn't see the van when it reached the street, but he heard its tires squeal as it sped away.

Dwayne would have liked it if the van had slammed into one of the palm trees, but this was okay.

He walked back to the house to phone the police. He wanted to call them before Bill Phoenix did. If Phoenix ever would.

Not that it mattered. The police would contact Phoenix.

32

 

“T
he police have released the bodies of my girls,” Ida Tucker said.

Sitting primly across from Quinn and regarding him over his desk, she looked much younger than she had to be, which was somewhere in her eighties, perhaps nineties. Her back was straight, her chin outthrust and confident. Her blue eyes were steady. From years ago, a beautiful woman looked out from the ruins. “I've come to take them home, where they can rest with their family.”

“I can't tell you, dear, how sorry I am for your loss.” Quinn meant it, and his sincerity came across in his voice.

Ida Tucker swiped at an eye with the knuckle of her right forefinger. Quinn pulled a tissue from a box on his desk, then stood up and leaned over the desk so Ida could accept it. She folded the tissue in halves, then in quarters, and used it to dab.

“It's a hard thing,” Quinn said. “Time might not cure, but it can help.”

“Time is my best friend and worst enemy,” Ida Tucker said.

“So it is with us all.”
Thinking deep thoughts.

“I suppose.” She took a final dab at her eye and slipped the tissue into a pocket of the blue cotton tunic she was wearing.

“May I make an observation?” Quinn asked.

“That's part of your job, Detective Quinn.”

“Andria was rather young to be your daughter.”

“My husband Robert and I took her in as a ward of the state when she was quite young. We later adopted her.”

“She was an orphan?”

“Let's just say she was unwanted.”

“I see.” Quinn wondered if there was any kind of police record, juvenile or otherwise, on Andria. He doubted it. Jerry Lido wouldn't have missed that kind of information. But then, why would he even look in that direction? This family seemed to have been pieced together with disparate parts, yet there was a curious glue that held them together. Before Quinn sat a woman who seemed too frail to be thought of as their guiding matriarch, but age and experience could harden a soul and give it the gift of guile.

Ida Tucker clasped her hands in her lap. “I was glad when I got the message at my hotel that you wanted to see me, Detective Quinn. I also wanted to see you. Have there been any meaningful developments in the murder investigation?”

“We're always working to develop new leads.”

Her blue-eyed assessment suggested that Ida Tucker knew bullshit when she heard it.

“I take it you haven't learned anything new,” she said. “It's my understanding that if they're going to be solved, most murder investigations are successfully concluded within the first forty-eight hours.”

“If that's true,” Quinn said, “it's because in most homicides it's obvious who is the killer. Quite often it's the spouse standing over the body with a gun.”

She gave that some thought. “Yes, I can see where that would be true beyond the make-believe world of entertainment.”

“But very often it's evidence we discover during the first forty-eight hours that turns out to be important.”

“I see. So you still have hope?”

“Absolutely.”

“Our family hasn't fared too well when it comes to the timely solving of crimes,” Ida Tucker said.

“Tell me about this unsolved crime,” he said.

“During the war—the big war—an English woman shipped something to Willa Kingdom in a large wooden crate.” Ida held her steady gaze on Quinn, making sure he understood. “From England to Ohio, where Willa lived with her husband, Mark. They'd just moved to Ohio. Mark was in the Merchant Marines and was badly wounded when his ship was sunk by a German submarine.”

“That's too bad,” Quinn said, thinking about how her information dovetailed with Lido's.

Ida shrugged. “War.” She carefully adjusted her skirt, which had worked to within a few inches of one of her wrinkled knees. “When Willa pried the box open, it contained some bricks, and under the bricks were handwritten letters explaining what had been in the box, and why.”

“Were the letters from the English woman?”

“Yes. Betsy Douglass was her name. The letters related what a British soldier named Henry Tucker had told her. It all made sense, except for the bricks, which obviously replaced what Betsy Douglass had shipped from England.”

Quinn considered asking Ida if what Betsy might have shipped was
Bellezza,
but he decided to play that card close instead. There was no reason to tell Ida Tucker more than she needed to know. And there was reason to see how much she'd tell him.

“Why did this Betsy Douglass ship something to Willa?”

Ida leveled her gaze at Quinn. “Betsy Douglass was Willa's sister. Willa was born in England.”

Quinn was interested in where this was all going. At sea on the waves of lies.

“Where are the letters that accompanied the box of bricks?”

Ida shrugged a bony, somehow still elegant shoulder. “They went missing.”

“Stolen, you mean?”

“Possibly. They were available, then they were gone.” She gave a sad grin that was almost a grimace. It made her suddenly look her age. “Part of the unknown original contents of the wooden crate.”

“Willa must have read them.”

“No. She simply glanced at their headings and signature, then replaced them in the box to examine them later. She was going to read them, then something interrupted her. I think she received a phone call. When she went to retrieve them, they were gone.”

“So none of you knows what was in the box?”

“It appears that way.'

“So who was the phone call from?”

“That I don't know. People were calling Willa all the time. She volunteered a lot at church.”

Quinn just bet she did.

Ida took a deep breath. “But that's not what we're talking about. And I'm here to claim the bodies of my daughters.”

“Andria and Jeanine?”

“Of course.”

“I'm just trying to keep things straight,” Quinn said. “But they aren't really sisters. I mean blood relatives.”

“Andria and Jeanine, as it happens, had the same biological father. He was a man they were well away from.”

Quinn's desk phone jangled like an alarm. He held up a hand, raising a forefinger to signal Ida Tucker that they weren't finished talking. As he picked up the receiver, Ida settled back in her chair. She was dug in, prepared to accept the worst of whatever Quinn might dish out.

The caller identified himself, before Quinn could get a word out. “Renz.”

“I'm busy right now,” Quinn said.

“Okay, but there's something you oughta know.”

“I keep running across that,” Quinn said.

“Something new on the DNA findings. Somebody at the lab doing a standard reevaluation of the blood samples noticed it. Two of the killer's victims have very similar—”

“Sisters,” Quinn said. “Or maybe cousins.”

“Choose one or the other,” Renz said.

“Cousins for now. But I wouldn't want to make my guess permanent. It's complicated.”

“That's a good word for it,” Renz said.

“You know that hedgerow maze at the Far Castle?”

“Yeah,” Renz said. “It looks confusing.”

“Well, that's how this is.”

Quinn looked across the desk at Ida Tucker.

She was smiling.