Primed for Murder (22 page)

Getting out, he glanced across the street. The blue house seemed the same, still and empty. The smashed Puterbaugh garage looked violated: he could see clear through it to the alley. His handiwork. The runaway car was gone—towed away where the police could go over it thoroughly, Toby hoped. Once they tied the car to the body they had on ice, learned who the man was and why he was dead in Syracuse, the cops should be able to follow the lead to the Puterbaughs, and from there to Giambi & Co. If the lawmen were too dense, Toby would figure something else to give them a nudge in the right direction.

Mrs. Cratty stood her ground, glowering as Toby approached. “Morning.” He smiled. “What do you think of the paint job?” He waved up at the house.

“I just got home this very minute and haven’t had time to inspect your work. Got to get these groceries inside.” She nodded at a back seat awash with plastic-bagged goods, arching an eyebrow at Toby.

“Let me give you a hand.” Toby hooked bags over his forearms and dangled others from his fingers. Laden with fifty or sixty pounds of groceries, he followed Mrs. Cratty as she clumped towards the front door clutching a carton of eggs. Toby had never been invited, never been allowed inside before—when nature called, he’d watered bushes out back, and once he’d gone to a public restroom at a nearby park. By the looks of the place, he hadn’t missed much.

Mrs. Cratty led him through a dark-wallpapered parlor crowded with spindly antique tables, tarnished brass lamps, and plastic-covered couches and armchairs. They entered a kitchen in desperate need of modernization. The fake-marble linoleum floor was worn through to bare wood at the doorway and in other spots where foot traffic was heaviest. A clunky cast-iron wood-burning stove and a black pot holding split kindling stood away from a back wall made dingy by years of grease and smoke. Under the only window sat an old-fashioned porcelain double washbasin, chipped and stained with age, bordered by warped vinyl counters of indeterminate color.

Toby set his burdens down on the scarred top of a wooden kitchen table and sat in a cushioned straight-backed chair to catch breath. The house reeked of lilac. No wonder: doily-decorated sachets hung everywhere, pumping out scent.

Mrs. Cratty bustled about. She stood on tiptoe to cram cans into banks of tall cabinets. She bent with a groan to shelve perishables in the kitchen’s only new appliance, a refrigerator-freezer large enough to hold a month’s supply of food.

“How was your trip to Oswego?” Toby inquired politely.

“Not so good.” She stored gallons of chocolate ice cream beside whole chickens stacked like cordwood in the freezer compartment. “My daughter’s got big problems.”

Toby didn’t want to hear about it—he had troubles of his own. But before he could deflect her onto another subject, Mrs. Cratty launched into a monologue. Toby learned more than he ever wanted to know about forty-seven-year-old Doris’ operations, her delinquent children, Al and Bea, and her good-for-nothing husband, Ed.

When she finally paused for breath, Toby inserted, “That’s real interesting, Mrs. Cratty. But I’m kind of in a hurry.” He plucked at his paint-spattered coveralls. “I’ve got another job to get started on, so could we finish our business?”

Mrs. Cratty’s seamed lips pinched together with displeasure at having her story interrupted. “I suppose so.” She stashed a huge jar of strawberry preserves and briskly brushed palms together. “Let’s look at your work.”

With Toby at her elbow, she made a slow, silent circuit of the house exterior. Then they went back inside. Mrs. Cratty fetched a shopping bag-sized beaded purse from a gigantic walnut cabinet with dozens of compartments and drawers, and sat in a high-backed wing chair that engulfed her. Toby sank onto a striped velvet couch facing her. Its clear plastic cover made rude sounds beneath him.

Mrs. Cratty fumbled with the catch of the purse on her lap. The bulging bag looked full and heavy. “Two thousand, wasn’t it?”

“Three thousand.”

“Three thousand?” She lasered Toby with a glare. “You wouldn’t try to take advantage of a helpless, forgetful old lady, would you?”

Toby felt sweat gather on his upper lip. Damn it, he shouldn’t have listened when she’d said not to bother with a written estimate or a formal job contract. Why did people have to make it so hard for him to earn a living?

“Don’t you remember?” he said, louder than necessary. “We talked about it before I started. You agreed to three grand for my work, a bargain at the price, if you ask me.”

“Who’s asking?” She drew herself up primly. “You don’t have to shout, I have perfect hearing. My memory is excellent.” Her lips were a bloodless slash. “You seriously feel your work is worth that much?”

“Look, Mrs. Cratty, I did the job just as you said, and—”

“I shouldn’t have to pay for your mistakes, should I?”

“What mistakes?”

“That splash of paint on my front window, for example.” She pointed with a gnarled finger. Through gauzy curtains, Toby saw a pale streak on the glass. It looked like bird droppings. “I’ll have to hire someone to clean it off,” she said.

It would take him five minutes to have the window sparkling again, but he was tired of Mrs. Cratty and her house and wanted to move on. Toby stifled a sigh, “I’ll knock off fifty.”

“And there’s an unpainted spot under the kitchen window.”

There was no such spot, he knew, because he took pride in his work. But he didn’t feel like arguing. “A hundred.”

“And in back, where you were sloppy painting trim.”

The trim was perfect! The sigh slipped out. “Okay, twenty-seven-fifty. Final offer.” He’d be damned if he’d let himself be whittled away by this old lady.

She thought about it while Toby squirmed on the crackling plastic. “That sounds more reasonable.”

Mrs. Cratty opened the purse, removed crumpled wads of currency from the bag and painstakingly counted it. Though she dug deep, there was only about $1,700 in wrinkled ones, twos, fives, tens and twenties. She held out the mass of bills so Toby had to get up, walk over and take them. “I thought I had more in here.” She looked up with moist eyes. “I won’t receive my government check until the end of the month. I’ll need something to live on until then.” The old lady took back some larger bills, leaving $1,500 even, a wad of cash the size of a robin’s nest.

“What about the rest of it? When do I get that?” Toby stood, staring her down. It was important he not blink first.

“I can pay you in installments, perhaps fifty a month. Or—” She reached into the bag again. “Would you take these?” She held up two rolls of coins.

“What are they?”

“One hundred 1905 Indian head pennies in mint condition. They’re probably worth five dollars each, to collectors.”

Toby accepted the pennies. “You’re still seven-fifty short.”

“There’s this.” She opened a small manila envelope, tilted its contents into her palm. “A five-dollar gold piece. You could easily get three hundred dollars.”

Toby took it. He also acquired other items as Mrs. Cratty produced them one by one, with appropriate flourishes, like a magician:

• Four oversized $1 silver certificates patched with browned cellophane tape

• A half-dozen fractional currency bills—holed, ripped, all with corners missing

• Thirty dollars, in allegedly genuine Confederate money that looked suspiciously new

• A handful of aluminum and brass foreign coins, and ten Liberty Head silver dollars

• A thin silver ring set with what was purported to be an amethyst

• A folded sheet of old but unused 3¢ postage stamps, vintage 1960, all stuck together

• A gold-plated pocket watch, nonworking

• Seven tintypes of angry-looking people stiffly posed in uncomfortable clothes

• Assorted cards with duplicate photographed nineteenth century street scenes that would appear three-dimensional when viewed through a device, which she no longer had.

Then the bag was limp, empty. Mrs. Cratty claimed the lot would more than cover what she owed. She fetched him a paper shopping sack to carry everything. “If you want any of this stuff back, I’ll be happy to trade it for cash.” Toby eased towards the door with his treasure before she could give him another sob story.

She smiled and wrinkles radiated across her face. “I won’t want it back. It was just gathering dust.”

As he lugged the heavy load back to his truck, Toby figured he’d be lucky to get five hundred for the junk collection. Screwed again, this time by an old lady.

Twenty minutes later and a quarter-hour early, Toby parked in front of the Colangelo residence. He started to unload painting gear, when something caught his attention: the headlights of a dark-green car halfway down the street flashing on and off. A man inside the car—Toby couldn’t see who it was because of sun glare—stuck an arm out and beckoned.

Toby moved closer, using his truck, a bush, a tree for cover, in case it was someone who wanted to sling lead at him. He found an angle where he could safely spot the driver: Detective French, in a light-gray blazer today. What was he doing here?

French motioned for Toby to get in on the passenger’s side. “I’ve been waiting two hours for you to show,” he said, as Toby sat and closed the door. He sniffed once, quickly. “I called the number you left, but no answer.”

“That’s because I’m here. Why’d you want to see me?”

“To bring you up to date on the case.”

“Can’t it wait? I’ve got a job to get to.”

“You’re a witness to a crime. We need to talk.”

“So talk. Where’s your partner, by the way?” It bothered Toby that Dixon, who’d acted as a buffer for French’s aggressiveness and cynicism, was missing.

A frown rumpled the smooth skin between French’s pale eyebrows. “On another assignment.” His glance met Toby’s, darted away. “Your guess about the dead man being Mex was on the dime.”

“You find out who he is? Was?”

“Yeah. Some unknown person helped us by conveniently crashing the dead man’s car, a rental from Texas, into the Puterbaugh’s garage. You wouldn’t anything know about that, would you, Mr. Rew?”

“Who, me?” Sensing that a truly innocent man would object more strenuously, Toby added a phrase he’d heard on a television show: “I resent the implication.”

“The car was—surprise—full of stuff.” French ticked off items on his fingers. “Suitcase, complete with clothes and a pack of photos showing the Puterbaugh family frolicking in Mexico. Passport. Wallet contained about a thousand dollars, half in Mexican pesos, and a loaded .38 revolver, too. The first item was in the trunk and other stuff was stashed in a door panel. Together, they helped us identify the renter as one Hernan Jose Revuelto.” He gave the last name letter-by-letter.

“The car had been sloppily wiped and we found fingerprints in the car that matched the dead man’s. Curious thing, though.” Toby felt French’s eyes boring. “He misspelled his own name on some of his possessions.”

Toby was sweating, but he had to suck spit to moisten his mouth enough to reply. How was he supposed to know how to spell a foreign name? “Who was he?”

“An important Mexican government official, in charge of protecting Mayan artifacts. Seems he had a reputation as a hotshot lone-wolf detective.” French’s tone was scornful, as if the dead man didn’t deserve his rank. “Over the years, he’d been instrumental in the recovery of many valuable missing items. According to authorities south of the border, Revuelto was on the trail of an important new discovery.”

The detective was watching him, looking for a reaction, but Toby continued to stare through the tinted windshield. “A thousand-year-old book,” French said, “called a codex, was stolen and allegedly smuggled into the U.S. by an American citizen.”

Despite himself, Toby flinched. What line from his rehearsed script should he read now? “Revuelto followed the old book all the way to Syracuse?”

French shrugged. “The trail ends here with his corpse.”

“Did the Mexican tell anyone who he’d been following?”

“Nope. Revuelto was acting on second-hand information provided by an anonymous snitch.” French shifted sideways in his seat so he could use both hands to talk without the steering wheel getting in the way. “Informing is apparently a cottage industry down there. You sell some stupid gringo drugs or jewels or stolen art objects, then report him to the police so he can be picked up at the border. Everybody but the buyer wins: the seller keeps the money, the goods are recovered, the cops look like heroes, and another poor schnook gets to sample the hospitality of a Mexican prison.”

“How’d the book slip through?”

“Guess those dope-sniffing border dogs they tout aren’t fine-tuned enough to smell out thousand-year-old paper.” French’s snort could have been that of a bloodhound on the trail of contraband. “Seems Revuelto didn’t want to cause an international incident and blemish his spotless reputation by accusing the wrong person. So he kept the name he picked up from the snitch to himself, and decided to follow up the lead on his own until he was sure. Bad mistake.”

French stopped talking to watch Mrs. Colangelo, slender in abbreviated shorts and sleeveless blouse, come out of the house down the street. Today, her long black hair was coiled atop her head. She saw the pickup and turned left and right, looking for Toby. When she didn’t spot him in the detective’s nondescript car, she clipped a bouquet of blossoms from the flowerbeds and went out of sight.

“Revuelto last called from the border to report,” French said. “He still had no proof he was following the right party, because the smuggler seemed above suspicion. But the book was too important to take a chance it might slip away, so thanks to his successful track record Revuelto received permission to follow his hunch. He stuck like glue to his man. Looks like the info he got was dead-on.” French sniffled once, pensively. “As you can imagine, the Mexicans are mighty pissed about Revuelto’s murder and want something done about it, pronto. They’d also like their old book back, naturally.”

“Where’s the book now?”

“Not a clue. It wasn’t on Revuelto’s body or in his car, so we can assume whoever killed him still has it.”