Primed for Murder (21 page)

A half-hour later, he carried everything he’d found into his new home on Buckley Road. With a narrow-bladed screwdriver he went to work on the suitcase locks and in minutes the latches popped open. Toby rummaged through the contents. A plastic bag held dirty laundry. Neatly folded clean clothing, mostly earth-toned slacks and short-sleeved shirts, matching socks and complementary ties, plain white cotton briefs and a pair of worn but gleaming brown loafers wrapped into a paper bag filled the suitcase. Many items had tags: HECHO EN MEXICO. He found an unopened bundle of the thin Mexican cigars. There was a kit containing the usual shaving gear and toiletries. At the bottom lay a man’s heavy silver ring nicely sculpted into a snarling cat’s head.

No initials on the bag, no name and address tag attached to the handle, no passport or other identification in the suitcase. All in all, it was disappointing, though circumstantial evidence—cigars, Spanish-language map and the sedan’s Texas license plate—pointed at the dead man as the owner. But who was he? And why had he followed the Puterbaughs and/or the Mayan book from Mexico?

Toby was uncertain what to do with the information or the physical property. Should he put the bag back where he’d found it, or lose it? For now, he stashed the suitcase behind a couch. He borrowed a cigar, cracked a beer and sat down to study the Mexican map to see if it could tell him something. It couldn’t.

Later, after midnight, the phone rang. He picked up the receiver, got an earful of crackling static. “Toby?” a thin voice said through the noise. “Is that you? It’s Mac.” It sounded like he was calling from the moon, using a can attached to a string.

“Yes, Mac, it’s me,” Toby yelled. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, thanks. I see you figured out my little puzzle.” There was the suggestion of a chuckle over the wire.

“With a little help. Where are you?”

“Far, far from Morrisville, in another country altogether. Marta’s with me, of course. I tell anyone who asks she’s my granddaughter. No one seems to care.”

“Any trouble getting away?”

“None. I took all photos and written material with me, by the way. I didn’t see why, if I’m to be driven from my home, I should leave them anything.” There was a burst of electrical sound, then the line cleared. Now it was like Mac was in the next room. “This is a different phone number than you gave me.”

“I moved. My apartment house burned down. Somebody was killed in the fire.”

“Oh, dear. What happened?”

“The police think it was arson.”

“Is it connected with the codex?”

“Could be. Or it might have to do with the dead man I found in the Puterbaugh house. Either way, it’s not good.”

Toby could hear the professor’s muffled voice as, speaking Spanish or some other language, he passed the news to someone else, probably Marta. “The dead man,” Mac said, “do they know yet who he was?”

“Haven’t a clue so far. He turned up again in a cemetery. No I.D. on him but it looks like he came from Mexico.”

“What was he doing at the Puterbaugh’s?”

“I’m guessing he was after evidence of the codex, same as Giambi’s man. Or maybe he was after the actual manuscript.”

A woman’s voice, unintelligible, sounded in the background. “Marta asks what the dead man looked like,” Mac said.

“Maybe five-seven, slim. Long, gray hair tied back in a pony tail.”

He heard Marta speaking. “What about his face?” Mac translated.

“Dark skin, big nose, dark eyes.”

Marta babbled again. “Did he look like a figure from the codex?”

Toby remembered the painted men, who all resembled one another. “Yes, except the dead man wore modern clothes instead of feathers.”

Over the wire, Marta loosed a torrent of words. “She asks if the man wore anything unusual,” Mac said.

“He had on a string tie. With a silver clasp shaped like a cat’s head.” Just like the ring in the toiletry kit.

“
El tigre
,” he heard Marta say.

“Like a tiger, with spots instead of stripes. You know this guy?”

Mac and Marta went back and forth in her language for a minute, then fell silent. Mac drew breath that was half sigh. “We think he might be Hernan Revuelto.”

“Who’s he?” With the stub of a pencil Toby wrote the name phonetically on the margin of a newspaper: ER-NAN REV-WEL-TO.

“Lately, Director of Antiquities for Quintana Roo in Mexico, where Marta lived. Hernan was a sharp dresser, a familiar figure, known for his jaguar jewelry, a powerful symbol for the Mayans. He made the rounds, always asking questions about artifacts and scaring away tomb robbers. He was very zealous in his duties, Marta says. He was proud to help protect his ancient heritage. Hernan, like Marta, has—had—strong Mayan bloodlines. Lacandón and Quiché ancestry, particularly.”

“You knew him, too?”

“He was just a boy then, a teenager, acting as ticket-taker and tour guide at a small but unique ruined city near the border of British Honduras—now Belize—when I first met him, almost fifty years ago. Even then, he wore his hair tied up in back, like his ancestors, when in that time and place it was considered unmanly to wear one’s hair so long.” Mac sighed. “Ten years later, Hernan was managing the Cobá operation when I came through. Five years after that, he was curator of the museum in Tulum.”

“Now he’s dead in Syracuse.”

“It would appear so,” Mac said, twice. The static picked up again. “What will you do now, Toby?”

“I’m not sure. But somehow I’ve got to get the cops on track, so we’ll all be safe from Giambi and his boys.”

“Do you think I’ll be in trouble with the police?”

“I doubt it. You didn’t know the manuscript was stolen. You never had it in your possession. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“The police may view it differently.”

“It’s not the police we have to worry about right now, Mac.”

“You’re right.” Mac loosed a noisy breath. “Well, for the time being, Marta and I will remain where we are. Perhaps we’ll return when this whole thing blows over or perhaps we’ll just stay here. I’d forgotten how pleasant it is where we are. I’ll give you our address in case you change your mind and want to join us.” He rattled off a number, spelled names of a street and a Mexican village. Toby promised to call again, through the intermediary, if anything came up. Mac said he’d call if he hadn’t heard from the painter in a week. They both rang off.

“Lucky stiffs,” Toby mumbled, staring at the dark, blank television screen. “They get to be safe somewhere else, while I get to sit here and sweat.”

For a fleeting moment, he thought of investing some of Mrs. Colangelo’s advance money in a plane ticket. He had no deep roots in Syracuse. Even without a passport, he could go anywhere he wanted in the U.S., start over again. Wherever he landed, people with more money than time would always need houses painted. He’d make out all right.

No, that was stupid. Why should he be pushed out of town?

Mac was an old man and Marta was a young woman, so he didn’t blame them for fleeing. But it wasn’t Toby’s way. If he’d picked up anything from Randy Rew, it was stubbornness. Why should he have to run with a warrant for fraud—or a contract on his head from her father—for taking money from Desdemona under false pretenses, added to his pile of troubles? Why should he be shoved around like a helpless pawn? He had a few moves left. Maybe he could still turn the tables.

A crazy plan formed in his brain. Toby examined it from every angle, found no obvious flaws and stood with renewed resolve to carry out the scheme. He filled in the name blank on the car rental form, spelling in block letters: “ERNAN REVWELTO.” He wrote the name in cursive form on each map and on the flap of the packet of photos. Then he carefully wiped down all the dead man’s possessions. He put maps, rental receipt and photos in a pocket of the suitcase, and carried the closed bag by its hanky-wrapped handle to the truck.

Toby drove by the most direct route to the north side of town and crept past the tan sedan. It sat quiet and dark and empty, wearing its bouquet of tickets. He cruised the block, watching for people sitting in parked cars who might be policemen, but there were none he could spot. Turning the fourth corner, he drifted with lights off to the head of the alley behind the Puterbaugh place. No lights shone from the house.

Leaving the truck cab unlocked, engine idling in neutral, he took the suitcase and locked it in the sedan’s trunk. He unlocked and eased open the car door and climbed into the driver’s seat. The car started right up, despite having sat for several days, unlike Toby’s truck, which sometimes balked in cold or wet weather. The engine ran smooth and strong. No rattles, no sputtering.

Toby pulled away from the curb. He stopped in the middle of the street to get the feel of the car. The seat was too far forward for his long legs so his knees stuck up. But he didn’t readjust it or touch the rear-view mirror—he’d seen TV programs where such moves told investigating officers that someone other than the owner had driven the car. The steering wheel under his fingers was smaller, more responsive than his truck’s. The idle was set high, so when he shifted from PARK to DRIVE the car jerked forward and drifted along at a good three miles per hour even when the accelerator wasn’t pressed.

Without using headlights, Toby drove onto Charbold. He turned the car into the Puterbaugh’s driveway, aimed at their garage. He threw it into NEUTRAL and jumped out, hastily wiping everything he’d touched. He hit the lights and, with the door open and his fist depressing the gas pedal to the floor, revving the engine, shifted into DRIVE. The car leaped forward with a screech of rubber, its door almost catching him when it swung shut. Toby raced the sedan up the driveway.

After its initial burst of speed, the car slowed, but was still moving at a fair clip when it hit the garage doors with a tremendous crash. By then, Toby was at the alley. He took a sharp right past the fence behind the garage and chugged for his truck. The tan car plowed through the garage doors as though they were made of paper, charged through empty space and rammed out the back wall, narrowly missing Toby sprinting by. The runaway stalled, halfway into the alley, one unbroken headlight tilted towards the sky.

Lights winked on here and there along Charbold Street. A sleepy voice carried on still night air: “What was that?”

Toby made it panting to his truck, jumped into the cab, yanked the shift into gear and drove sedately away towards home. “I couldn’t bring the body back to the Puterbaughs.” He chuckled to himself over his cleverness, heart still hammering. “So next best thing is to return the dead man’s car. This’ll shake things up.”

He had no idea.

Chapter 18

The next morning, Toby rose early to get a jump on the Colangelo job. He called Dezi to confirm she’d be there, and was finishing his breakfast of precooked, heat-and-enjoy waffles and sausage, when the phone rang.

“You think you’re smart, don’t you?” The voice rasped into his ear. Electronically disguised and impersonal, it was impossible to tell if the caller was man or woman—it sounded like a visitor from another planet.

“Who is this?”

The caller didn’t bother to answer. “Dumping the body. Planting evidence. Wrecking the car so identity could be ascertained. Connecting him to the Puterbaughs.”

How did this person know so much? Toby wondered. How’d he or she get this number? Had somebody been shadowing him? There could have been an army of pursuers in monkey suits chasing him on stilts, and he would never have thought to look for a follower until this minute.

“You’re a busy bee, Rew.” There was something in the caller’s delivery, something familiar but too faint to jog Toby’s memory.

He played along. “What’s the buzz? Why are you calling?”

“To warn you: keep bugging certain people, you’ll get stomped on.”

“What people? What are you talking about?”

“Never mind details.” The caller changed metaphors in mid-stream. “Just take my word for it: you’re in a deep hole.”

The alien-sounding voice, combined with the emotionless way the words were said, gave Toby a chill. “How do I dig myself out?”

“Drop everything. Get out of town now and don’t come back. Lose yourself. Keep your mouth shut.”

“Why should I?” Toby didn’t feel as defiant as his words.

“Because if you don’t, you’re a dead man.”

There, the threat was finally out in the open, naked and real. “And if I do go someplace else, what then? Will someone still come after me?”

“Not if you stay quiet. You’re pretty small fry in the scheme of things. Go be a nobody in another city if you want to live.”

“Look, you don’t scare me—”

A note of pleading crept into the eerie voice. “Take the advice. Stick around and keep meddling, nobody can save you.” The caller hung up.

Toby threw on coveralls over a fresh T-shirt and briefs, donned work boots and left the house. He thought about the call all during his visit to the paint store and beyond. The person on the phone, he decided, posed no direct threat, just a messenger from other, more sinister forces.

But they knew where he was now. He’d better move again, and quick. He was ready. There was money in his pocket, more in the bank. The new clothes, canned goods and packaged food, restored copy of Puterbaugh’s dissertation, and other portable items were in bags and boxes beside him on the seat. His working gear was all loaded in the truck bed beside the new buckets of paint for the Colangelo project.

It was a shame to lose that nice house and the money he’d forked over for it, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d be a sitting duck out in the sticks. Better to seek the company of other people. If the bad guys ever got off his back, he could return to the Buckley Road house and use up the rest of the month’s rent.

He drove first to Charbold Street. Boy, would he be glad if he never had to visit this neighborhood again!

Mrs. Cratty’s big Buick was parked in her driveway. The old lady herself was just clambering out. His timing was perfect for once. Toby parked, blocking her exit. Let the old bat try to escape paying him now!