THE ELSON LEGACY

An Alton Rhode Mystery

By

LAWRENCE DE MARIA

The Elson Legacy, a novel by Lawrence De Maria

Copyright © Lawrence De Maria 2015

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information, email ljdemaria@aol.com.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Published by St. Austin’s Press

www.lawrencedemaria.com

Special thanks to my website designer, Nancy Kreisler, and to

Maryellen Alvarez and Deborah Thompson,

whose sharp eyes and insights have improved my work.

Dedicated to my wife, Patricia, without whose love, support and faith this book

– and others –

would not have been possible,

and to my sons,

Lawrence and Christopher.

Good men, both.

THE ELSON LEGACY

“The quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart.” -- Robert A. Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land

CHAPTER 1 - DOUBLE VISION

Atlas, Virginia

April

Colver Elson picked up the remote and started flipping through his cable channels. He scrolled through a series of cop shows: CSI, NCIS, CSI Miami, NCIS Los Angeles, Law and Order, NCIS New Orleans, Castle, The Mentalist, Rizzoli & Isles, Law and Order SVU, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods and a couple he did not recognize. He often joked to his golfing buddies that they should be happy they lived in a small town because everyone in America’s big cities was apparently murdered or raped. He’d stopped watching such shows. As someone who dealt with crime himself, Elson found the police and forensic expertise of TV sleuths unbelievable.

With almost 700 cable shows to choose from, Elson couldn’t believe he was having so much trouble finding something to watch on his brand-new, 55-inch, wall-mounted plasma TV set. The cop shows were bad enough, but for the $100 a month extra he was paying for “premium service” he’d be damned if he’d watch retards wrestle alligators,  idiots chasing tornadoes or disgusting obese people compete to see who lost hundreds of pounds the fastest!

Finally, he found something he liked on The Blitzkrieg Channel, which was devoted to German operations during World War II. It was 10 PM. The show, Wehrmacht: In Living Color, was just starting.

Elson reached over to make himself another mint julep. A frequent visitor to the Kentucky Derby, he considered his juleps superior to any he’d ever had at Churchill Downs. It was now his standard drink and he was very particular about its makeup. Cracked ice was a necessity. And not the shaved ice that came out of the ice maker on the refrigerator door. It wasn’t the right consistency and smelled of freezer food to boot. No sir. He bought spring water chunk ice from the supermarket, chopped it up and double bagged it separately, and then put what he needed each night in an ice bucket on a sturdy table next to his chair in the den. He rendered that ice down to chips, using an antique jade-handled ice pick that had been in the family since the War of Secession. Next to the bucket was a half-full bottle of Evan Williams Single Barrel bourbon that he’d opened when he sat down. Close by was a small bowl with fresh mint and a glass mesh soda siphon.

Elson was still a good-looking man, six-foot-two with a full head of white hair, piercing blue-gray eyes and the ruddy complexion of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors, either on a golf course or in the saddle. Of course, he wasn’t a spring chicken any more, and some of the ruddiness of his 69-year-old visage could be attributed to all the bourbon he drank. He still cut a swath with the ladies of a certain age, although he now often needed a boost from the little blue pills his doctor prescribed. And for a small town, Atlas, Virginia, provided a surprising number of willing bedmates, mainly widows and divorcees who felt sorry for such a vital man whose wife had passed on and who suffered the tragedy of a mentally disturbed daughter. Colver Elson felt absolutely no compunction playing the sympathy card. “Pity fucks”, as he called them, were still fucks, and he knew that some of his paramours were hoping to become the next Mrs. Colver Elson. His dance card was so full now he no longer needed to lure female lawyers and court-appointed “experts” to his bed with promises of fees from his nursing home connections. Elson had a jaundiced view of the legal profession in Atlas. My God, he often thought, if he was bisexual he would never have gotten any sleep!

Elson was having a hard time focusing on the TV screen. As usual when he drank too much, which was whenever he drank, Colver Elson was afflicted with double vision. His ophthalmologist said it was caused by a weakness in one of his optic nerves. Nothing could be done and it was only a minor irritation, except when he played golf or drove one of his cars. Putts were a bitch when aiming at two holes. And driving on a two-lane road that became a four-lane road was a challenge. But Elson was a lousy golfer even when sober, anyway. And as for driving a car while impaired, well, he was not concerned about being arrested. All the cops knew his car. None would have the temerity to stop him, or in the case of an accident, suggest a Breathalyzer or blood test.

Three more mint juleps later, the Nazis invaded France. Elson struggled to keep his eyes open. He enjoyed watching the Frogs getting their clock cleaned by Hitler’s Wehrmacht. There was a flash of lightning outside, almost immediately followed by a sharp crack of thunder that drowned out the artillery barrage on his TV screen. Elson looked out the large bay window of his study. The small grove of Eastern White Pine trees in his front yard began swaying in the wind and rain began to splatter against the window. Elson hoped the early spring thunderstorm would dissipate by morning. Sunday was the opening-day tournament at his golf club.

Well, the rain would be good for the Highbush Blueberry, Sweetfern, Partridgeberry, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and Wild Sarsaparilla shrubs and plants he’d carefully planted in his yard around the pines. They were hardy enough to flourish in shade. Elson was proud of his gardens. He was always bragging about his green thumb.

***

Elson awoke with a snort. He’d fallen asleep. He glanced out the window. The rain had slackened off to a steady drizzle. He was not crazy about playing golf in the rain, but knew it would take a monsoon to cancel opening day.

Elson frowned. On wet grass, he would probably be allowed to “lift, clean and place” his ball on the fairway. That would negate his main advantage and strategy. Which was to cheat. He always improved his lie when no one was looking. Now everybody could do it!

He turned back to the TV screen. The images were now very blurry but he could still see that the Germans were still on the move. They seemed to have a hell of a lot more tanks. Elson laughed. Probably my double vision. The Krauts would have won the war with that much armor. But they were raising a lot of dust and the huts the Wehrmacht soldiers were torching seemed too dilapidated for France. The Nazis were apparently invading Russia. Elson looked at his watch. He had to bring it almost to his nose to read it. It was after midnight. He’d been out for almost an hour. I should go to bed, he thought. We tee off at 8 AM. Clyde is picking me up at 7:30.

But he wanted a nightcap julep. He lifted the lid off the ice bucket. There was just enough ice for another drink. His hand swept the tray for the ice pick. Where the hell was it? Must have dropped it.

Elson began pulling himself up so he could lean down to see where it had fallen when he noticed that he couldn’t see the TV screen anymore. He looked up and was startled to see two figures, dressed all in white, standing between him and the screen. He almost screamed in fright at the ghostly apparition. For a moment he believed he might be dreaming, or hallucinating. But the sounds of gunfire and martial music emanating from the TV behind the two spectral figures convinced him he wasn’t.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

He closed his right eye and squinted. It was a trick he used on the highway. What he lost in depth perception he made up in missed trees.

The two specters merged into one and moved toward him. He sat up and leaned forward and emitted a harsh laugh.

“What the hell are you doing here? Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.”

He was no longer afraid, and despite his inebriation Colver Elson felt an erotic stirring. The feeling was more intense for the forbidden memories it recalled. He stretched out his arms.

“Come here,” he said huskily.

The eight-inch ice pick entered his open eye and only stopped traveling when its hilt jammed into the bone that surrounded the socket. The solid steel shaft pierced his eyeball and then plunged five more inches into his brain. The first inch blinded the eye and caused excruciating pain. Now he did scream, and then was silent, as the damage caused by the next two inches of steel paralyzed him, although his other eyelid reflexively popped open. He slumped back in the chair as the ice pick severed more billions of neurons and insured that he would never leave the chair alive. Blood shot out of the ravaged eye and sprayed over the ice pick handle, as well as the hand that wielded it. The hand let go of the hilt, almost reluctantly.

The gruesome wound was not necessarily fatal. The human brain needs more oxygen to function than any other organ and is thus well supplied with blood, much of which now traveled down the shaft and ran off the end in a steady, crimson stream. Elson might have survived had quick and expert medical attention been available. In 1940 an assassin sent by Stalin to Mexico plunged an ice pick into Leon Trotsky’s head. Trotsky was lucid enough to tell his bodyguards to keep the assassin alive for questioning, but died the next day in the hospital from brain injuries and blood loss. Modern medicine might have saved Trotsky, although he probably no longer would have been a rival that Stalin feared.

But nothing would save Colver Elson. With its nerve pathways to his damaged brain severed, his diaphragm was now only working spasmodically. He would suffocate or bleed out, whichever came first.

Ironically, the ice pick had cured his double vision. With his one operative eye he could see quite clearly now.

Unable to move, speak or even blink, Elson watched his life drip off the end of the ice pick in living, or, rather, dying color.

CHAPTER 2 - GRAVEYARD SHIFT

The report was vague. A trucker called 911 and said he saw a naked woman walking across Clayton Turnpike. The caller said she appeared to be disoriented. He stopped, but by the time he went back to see if she was all right the woman had disappeared into the woods.

Officer Richard Melore was diverted from his regular patrol route and told to check it out. New to the Atlas Police Department, Melore often caught the midnight-to-eight shift. He didn’t mind. Melore wanted some action, and a lot of it happened during the graveyard shift, although in a quiet town like Atlas, the worst usually involved a traffic accident or some high school kids getting out of line. So, he didn’t expect much when he drove to the spot indicated by the trucker. At 2 AM, traffic was expectedly light. Melore got out of his cruiser and searched the embankment where the woman supposedly was last seen before heading into the woods. For all he knew, the trucker had been mistaken. It had been raining. A tired trucker, a misty windshield — who knew what the man really saw, if anything?

But, Melore, still learning the ropes, wanted to be thorough. He took out his flashlight and scanned the dirt and grass. He was about to give up when he spotted what appeared to be a small footprint in the mud and indentations in the grass leading into the woods. He pointed his flashlight into their direction. All he saw were trees and brush. He called out. Nothing. He ran back to his car, got in and swerved it so that its headlights and spotlight also illuminated the area. His patrol car was partially blocking the road and a car slowed, then stopped. A man got out.

“Need any help, officer?”

Why not, Melore thought.

“Yeah. Would you mind pointing your headlights like mine?”

The man quickly obliged and then got out and joined the cop.

“What are we looking for?”

“Got a report of someone wandering around, maybe lost,” Melore said, not wanting to elaborate. “You see anything in there?”

“Nah. Pretty dense in there. A drunk, maybe?”

“Could be. I’m going in. Can you stay a while?”

“Sure thing, officer. Be careful.”

Melore started down the embankment, which was slippery with the recent rain, which had let up. The illumination from the two cars helped but he still trained his flashlight on the ground ahead of him to see if he could pick out a decent trail to follow. There wasn’t one, so he started to cautiously move through the brush. His foot caught on a root and he fell forward, almost losing his flashlight.

“Shit!”

He brushed himself off as best he could. His uniform pants were both soaked at the knees.

“Are you all right, officer?”

“I’m fine,” Melore said, getting to his feet.

After about another 30 feet, the woods really got thick. He called out again.

“Anybody there! Do you need help?”

There was no answer.

“The hell with this,” he muttered.

Melore decided to call headquarters. Maybe someone else besides the trucker saw something, or reported a missing person. He didn’t know what else he could do, other than call for whatever limited backup might be available that time of night. But he also knew that any search would probably have to wait for dawn. And lacking further confirmation of the trucker’s sighting, he wondered if any search was in the cards. Of course, there were the footprints — if that was what they were.

“False alarm?” the other man said when Melore came out of the woods.

“Probably.”

“Maybe you should check where the woods come out,” the man said. “Over on Doswell Road. Runs parallel to Clayton. It’s only about a half mile to the other side.”

“Not a bad idea,” Melore said.

“Want me to follow you?”

“No, thanks. You’ve done enough. Been a great help.”

He shook the man’s hand and gave him a wave as he drove off. Melore was city-raised and liked the fact that country folk were usually eager to help out a cop. He got in his cruiser and drove two miles to Cedar Plank Lane, the road that could take him to Doswell. His car clattered across the small bridge that gave the road its name and traversed Braxton Creek, one of the small tributaries of the much-larger Rapidan River. Anyone traversing the woods from Clayton Turnpike to Doswell Road would have to ford the creek at some point. Melore knew that it was barely a stream at some points but wondered how wide and deep it flowed where the person he was looking for might have encountered it. Not too deep or wide for an old lady, he hoped, if indeed she did exist.

When he got to Doswell Road, Melore headed toward the area most likely to be an exit point for anyone walking in a straight line from the spot he searched on Clayton Turnpike. He knew, of course, that the mysterious woman might have become lost in the woods and might just be wandering aimlessly. He didn’t want to think about her ending up in the creek. His was the only vehicle on the winding road, in either direction. A light mist rose up from the road, which was still slick from the rain. His radio crackled. It was his dispatcher, Lois, wanting to know what was going on. When could he be expected to resume his normal patrol? Some kids were acting up in the parking lot outside a bar at a small strip mall. Melore keyed his mike.

“I’m almost done, here. Nothing to report. Do me a favor and check … Jesus Christ!”

The woman appeared out of nowhere, directly in front of his squad car. Melore slammed on his brakes and slalomed on the wet road, narrowly missing her and sliding onto the shoulder.

“Richie! What happened! Are you all right? Do you need assistance?”

He took a deep breath and looked back. The woman was indeed naked and was now walking into the woods on the other side of the road.

“I’m fine,” he shouted into the radio. “I’ll call you back.”

Melore jumped out of the car and ran toward the woman, catching up to her just as she was about to enter the brush. She was indeed completely naked. He grabbed her arm and spun her around. Her white hair was plastered around her face and had small bits of foliage in it. There were scratches on her forehead and cheeks, and on her breasts, which Melore assumed came from collisions with trees and bushes. Her feet were also cut up. She was shivering and looked at him with uncomprehending eyes — eyes, however, that were startlingly clear and green. She was not a young woman, but behind all of the trauma Melore could see remnants of one-time beauty.

“Please, ma’am, come with me.”

Melore started leading the woman back to his police cruiser but she began to sag. He immediately threw his arms under her legs and back and easily picked her up. She could not have weighed more than 90 pounds. She put her head against his chest and began to cry. When he reached his car, he managed to get her to lie down in the rear seat. Opening his trunk, he took out a blanket and covered her, securing her as best he could with two seat belts. Shaken by the whole situation, he did not want to wait for an ambulance. Instead, he drove straight to Atlas General Hospital. He tried to start a conversation with the woman, but she was unresponsive. He called it in and told Lois to alert the Emergency Room. Ten minutes later, the poor woman was wheeled into the hospital and Melore went to the desk to fill out some forms.

“Do you know who she is, Richie?” a hospital staffer asked him.

“No clue. Do you think she’ll be all right?”

“Well, I don’t think she’s in too bad shape. But lucky you found her when you did.”

Melore left the hospital and resumed his regular patrol route. He called his dispatcher to see if anyone had reported a missing woman.

“Nothing yet,” she said. “Maybe no one noticed she’s missing, or she’s homeless.”

“I don’t think she is homeless. I mean, for someone walking through the brush in the rain, she didn’t look all that bad. I don’t know, there was something about her. Will you check with the Staties for me, Lois?”

“Sure thing.”

***

Melore finished his rounds and pulled into the station at 7:45 AM. He checked in with Lois to find out if she’d found out anything about the woman.

“Nada,” she said. “I even called the hospital. She’s stable, but not talking. Don’t worry. We’ll find out. You look beat. Go home and get some sleep.”

“Sounds like a plan. But I want to write it up first.”

As Melore walked out of the station a half hour later, he almost bumped into his boss.

“Mornin’ Chief.”

“Good morning, Richie. Busy night?”

“Not too bad. Did have something unusual, though. Found a woman wandering around in the woods between Clayton Turnpike and Doswell Road. A trucker reported it. She had no clothes on and seemed disoriented. She was cold and her arms and legs were pretty badly cut up, so I took her to Atlas General. Didn’t want to wait for an ambulance.”

Melore looked at his chief for a reaction. Taking the woman to the hospital in a squad car was not standard procedure. It invited a lawsuit.

“Showed initiative, Richie. I like that. Did she say anything to you?”

“No. Just started crying, poor gal.”

“Have we identified her?”

“Not yet. No missing persons reports. Hospital says she’s stable but unresponsive. Lois is checking with the State Police.”

“Derelict, maybe homeless?”

“I suppose it’s possible, Chief. But like I told the folks at the hospital, she looked, I don’t know, pretty respectable, despite her injuries, which were minor. Her hands and feet had some cuts and bruises, probably from trees and such. I wrote it all up for you.”

“Good. Thanks. Now, go home.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Suzanne Deerly-Johnson walked into her office and tossed her braided police cover on the wooden hat rack she’d purchased at one of the area’s innumerable garage sales.    She was the black Chief of Police of an all-white police department, and also one of only two woman on the Atlas force, the other being Lois Paxton, the department’s liaison to local schools, who also filled in as a dispatcher.

Lois was supposed to get off at 8 AM, but it was Sunday and Deerly-Johnson knew that she worked a couple of extra hours to give the next dispatcher some time to go to church and have some breakfast time with his kids. The added overtime expense was brought up at a meeting of the Town Council and the Chief was called on the carpet until she asked its members what was more important: a few dollars or God and children. It was one of the few battles she won against the Council, which refused her numerous pleas for more money to hire additional officers. The department was seriously understaffed and was stretched thin, to the point where it could only do basic police work. Serious investigative operations were almost nonexistent. It was as if the people who ran the town didn’t really want a competent police department. As the only African-American on the force, Deerly-Johnson often felt that she was being set up to fail. But she was too good a cop to throw in the towel.

“Lois,” she called out to the small squad room, “do you have that report Melore wrote up?”

“Be right there, Chief,” Lois said. “Got Clyde Spivey on the phone and he sounds hysterical.”

Oh, Christ, Deerly-Johnson thought. Spivey was president of the Atlas Town Council, the most powerful attorney in the city and the bane of her existence. She sighed, wondering what he was complaining about now.

“Chief! You’d better get out here!”

Deerly-Johnson went out to see what had gotten Lois so excited. The woman looked up at her, her face drained of color.

“He says Judge Elson is dead. Murdered!”

CHAPTER 3 - LOOSE ENDS

Staten Island, New York

Two Months Later

I was betwixt and between. At loose ends. Twiddling my thumbs. Caught between a rock and a hard place. Marking time. Alone with my thoughts. Running out of cliches.

Abby Jones, whose first name is really Habika, has taken two weeks vacation and was in Los Angeles, helping her daughter find a suitable off-campus apartment. Naomi has been living in a dorm but wants to move into an apartment complex with some friends for the upcoming fall semester. Her mother insists on checking out both the potential apartment and the potential roommates. Abby spent 20 years in the Army, in the Military Police, before becoming a security guard. She occupied a lobby desk in my building and we bonded over eggplant parmigiana heroes from the Red Lantern tavern in nearby Rosebank. She soon quit her job to come work for me. Her knowledge of crime, both from the Army and from Leon, her gang-banger half-brother, has proved invaluable. She’s helped me solve a couple of cases that had me stymied. (Another brother who works for the cable company has made me the envy of everyone in my building who has ever dealt with a cable company.)

Abby doesn’t suffer fools, least of all me. She runs my office like an Army post. I feel sorry for Naomi and her roommates.

Alice Watts, the woman I love, is spending the summer teaching at Bryn Mawr on the Main Line outside of Philadelphia. I met her at the pool at Wagner College. I was abusing my hard-earned and free access to the school’s athletic facilities and she was coaching the Wagner women’s swim team. When I first saw her, she was surrounded by long-limbed and supple college co-eds, but I only had eyes for her. Her limbs and the rest of her were also first-rate and I liked the fact that she wasn’t put off by the bullet holes in my torso. An almost-Olympic-quality swimmer, Alice also teaches philosophy at Wagner but was now searching for a bigger academic pond, something that makes me and Spencer Bradley, Wagner’s President, very nervous. The stint at Bryn Mawr is obviously a stepping stone. Alice maintains an apartment in Greenwich Village, where I maintain a chest of drawers. And she has a chest of drawers (and two closets, of course) at my house on Staten Island. She’d only been gone two weeks and I miss her. I wasn’t sure how I would react to her going away permanently. We’d have to cross the bridge over that academic pond when we came to it.

Armin Rahm, who runs the Russian mob in Staten Island, Brooklyn and now parts of New Jersey, was in Florida with his father, Marat. The Rahm crime family, always seeking new opportunities, is forging alliances with its counterparts in the huge Russian community in Miami.

“Who knows Cuba better than a Russian,” Armin explained to me. “The Communists were idiots. The Mafia is weak. Now that the U.S. has come to its senses and opened the island up again, wait until you see what a Russian capitalist can do there.”

“You were born here and went to an Ivy League school,” I reminded him. “You’re more American than Walt Disney.”

“Good point, Alton. But it makes my father happy when I act Russian. By the way, we are taking a side trip to Naples, on the Gulf. One of those mansions you told me about when you were down there a few years ago may be a good place for my father to own and use in the winter. He is slowing down. Florida’s warm weather will be good for him. And you know how Russians like to be near the water.”

“Primarily for body disposal. But why not Miami?”

“Too many Russians.”

So off they went. I even miss Maks Kalugin, Rahm’s fire-hydrant-hard pet assassin, who spent the early part of our relationship trying to talk his boss into killing me. More recently, he has saved my life a couple of times. We’re not on each other’s Christmas-card list, but Maks now occasionally smiles at my jokes. A mixed blessing, considering his teeth.

On the other side of the law, Cormac Levine, the best detective on the District Attorney’s squad, is also out of town, on a trip to Ireland, to visit the village near Dublin where his mother’s family originated. Cormac is half Jewish and was fretting about the trip until I did a Google search for him and found several bagel places in and around Dublin. I even located one restaurant that specialized in Kosher food.

“Are you crazy,” he said. “I’m not eating that crap. What about Italian restaurants?”

He left with a list of those.

So, just about everyone I knew was somewhere else. I felt like I had missed the warning about an impending nuclear attack.

I looked over at Gunner.

“When are you leaving?”

I had recently started bringing him to the office on a regular basis.

Gunner stopped gnawing away on one of the huge elk antler dog chews Alice gave him for Christmas and looked at me. (My present was a golf club, which he tried to chew first until I put it out of reach.) Reading from a brochure, Alice had explained that the dog toys were “American-sourced, naturally-shed elk antlers from the Rocky Mountains” that would give a canine “hours of chew time, beneficial vitamins and minerals, and cleaner teeth”. They did last a long time, and Gunner loved them. That wasn’t at all surprising, since it was pretty obvious he had more than a little residual wolf in him. His not-too-distant ancestors probably dined on elk whose antlers were not “naturally shed”, unless mauling counts.

Gunner started out as a fluffy little puppy that Alice instantly fell in love with, which was one reason I had to keep him. He was a gift to me from the Rahms, the other reason I had to keep him. Old Russian proverb: “Man Who Declines Puppy Will Sleep With The Sturgeons.” Actually, I made that up, but Alice got a kick out of it.

Gunner is named after a Medal of Honor winner whose murder I solved and avenged, after a fashion. In any event, a lot of people died or went to jail. He is still technically a puppy, although hopefully near his full size. He is already slightly larger than, and looks much like, an average German Shepherd, with a proud head and a sable red coat.

As Kalugin happily informed me many times, Gunner is a Byelorussian Ovcharka, a breed that is a mix of East Siberian Laikas and German Shepherds. Also known as East European Shepherds, “Charkas” are known for their toughness, loyalty and superior intelligence, traits that served the breed well on the Eastern Front during World War II. The Red Army bred East European Shepherds prior to the war for military use, police work and border guard duties.

“He will keep you in line,” Maks said.

In fact, a little research convinced me that Gunner and I would get along famously. The breed is also used as therapy dogs and as guide dogs for the blind. Their sense of smell is acute, and many Charkas are used as sniffer dogs. Tough, smart and good-looking. We were made for each other.

Gunner went back to chewing and I decided that the only sure cure for inaction was action. Perhaps I could work on one of my cases. Keep busy. Track an errant spouse. Solve a mystery.

Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. I also didn’t have any clients.

I picked up the phone and called Ron Mazzuco, one of the senior partners in the law firm that owned my building to see if his lawyers had any work for me. The reason I had such a nice corner office on the North Shore of Staten Island overlooking New York Harbor, at an affordable rent, was that I did grunt work for the lawyers when asked. Mostly skip traces and an occasional insurance fraud case.

“Everything is quiet,” Ron said. Then ominously, “Too quiet.”

Ron reads a lot of mystery novels.

“I can’t even work for free,” I said to Gunner after hanging up.

He didn’t even bother to look at me this time.

I was about to go back to feeling sorry for myself when Gunner’s ears perked up and he stood.

I, of course, had not heard anything that would have made my ears perk up, even if they could perk. Everyone knows that the typical dog’s senses, particularly as related to sounds and smells, are much more acute than any man’s. True to his breeding, Gunner had graduate degrees in both. I knew from experience that he was reacting to someone getting off the elevator in the hallway and walking toward my office. From where I sat, I probably wouldn’t have heard a gunshot.

A moment later I did hear the door to my outer office open. Gunner began to growl and move purposefully toward my inner-office door. Then he stopped. Usually that meant he recognized the tread of whoever was approaching. Usually someone who worked on my floor, a friend or regular visitor. Dogs can occasionally make mistakes, of course. I mean, hell, they are only human, right? But Gunner was pretty reliable. Anything that exhibited malevolent intent, including a Cape Buffalo, would have a hard time getting past him.

Gunner’s tail started wagging. It wasn’t a Cape Buffalo.

“Hello, Mr. Rhode.”

“It” was a beautiful woman. Gunner likes women. I think it’s more than the fact that he doesn’t consider them a threat. I think he likes the way they smell. Gunner and I are alike in that respect. Of course, if he doesn’t figure it out by himself soon, I’ll have to tell him that the most dangerous creature in the world is a beautiful woman. At least that’s what the Mafia kingpin says in Prizzi’s Honor, the great Richard Condon novel. And he should know. And it’s entirely possible that a woman will walk in and plug me full of holes some day, probably with good reason. But since I don’t want my dog chasing away beautiful women, I’ll take my chances.

I rose from my chair.

“Yes,” I said, for want of anything better to say.

“Don’t you remember me, Mr. Rhode?”

CHAPTER 4 - UPTOWN GIRL

She was exquisite. Gunner, in a sign of interspecies admiration, was now wagging his tail to beat the band.

Her features began to fall into place. She waited patiently. Then, it clicked.

“Savannah.”

She gave me a smile of pure pleasure.

“You remember me. But it’s not Savannah.”

“Sorry. An honest mistake. How are you, Laurene?”

She walked over and held out her hand. I took it. Then, she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. After she did, it seemed only natural, despite our shared history.

“What a beautiful dog!”

She crouched down and took Gunner’s head in both her hands. He lapped her face. Did I mention that he was very intelligent?

When last I saw Laurene Robillard, she was a 19-year-old call girl who pulled one of the greatest scams I’d ever been privileged to be part of. And it was a privilege, even if I was the mark. It was a work of art. As Cormac uncharitably put it, I fell for her act “hooker, line and sinker.”

She stood and sat in my client chair, crossed her legs and rested a crocodile-embroidered handbag on her lap. I sat and stared at her. Gunner went back to his elk.

Laurene didn’t look like a girl, call or otherwise, now. No longer razor thin, but still lithe, she was wearing a camel-hair blazer over sleeveless silk print dress. Her right wrist was bangled with a colorful variety of bracelets. There was what looked like an engagement ring on her left hand. It was a big enough piece of ice to sink the Titanic, but I reserved judgment. Given her knack for artifice, it might have been role-playing on her part. Her blond hair was cut short and swept back. The effect, along with the arch of her long eyebrows, gave her a slightly feline look. I’d thought of her often. I was not proud of the way I’d treated her during the Capriati caper. Not that she didn’t deserve it. After all, she almost got me killed. But since she didn’t, I could feel magnanimous. Funny how that works, when it concerns gorgeous women.

She reached in her bag and took out an e-cigarette.

“Do you mind?”

“No,” I said, “but the medical jury is still out on those.”

“A girl has to have some small vices,” she said. “I’ve already got most of the big ones covered. Besides, it helps to calm me. I’m a bit nervous seeing you.”

“No reason to be. You look wonderful, by the way.”

“Thank you. And you look just like I remember you.”

“My apologies.”

She laughed. Then she picked up a small framed photo from my desk. In it, Alice Watts held Gunner, back when he could be held.

“She is beautiful,” Laurene said. “Your wife?”

“Friend.”

She put the frame down next to the only other object on my desk, a photo cube containing pictures of Derek Jeter, Eli Manning, Mickey Mantle and Secretariat that I’d cut out from various magazines. Abby had given me hell about the cube, accusing me of preferring a bunch of jocks and a horse over Alice Watts, who she liked immensely. Abby didn’t appreciate my admittedly snide remark that I never met a women who could win the Belmont by 31 lengths. She bought me the frame, and versions of Alice, with the recently added Gunner,  has deservedly occupied it ever since.

“I was worried about you, back then, after you figured out the scam,” she said. “I’m glad you came through everything all right. Did you ever find out who set you up?”

“Yes.”

When I didn’t say anything else, she let it go. Laurene had been in the kind of business where asking too many questions was bad for business. That made me wonder what she was doing now.

“And how have you been?” I asked delicately.

She laughed.

“You want to know if I’m still hooking. The answer is no.”

She held up the hand with the diamond rock.

“I’m getting married.”

I usually try not to raise my eyebrows, but this time I failed.

“Sadie Sadie, married lady.”

“And, in case you are wondering, yes, he was a client. Knows everything about me, and doesn’t care.”

“Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.”

“Exactly. And Barry is a Richard Gere type of guy, too. Wall Street. Filthy rich.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you. You are partly responsible, you know. After what happened between us, I took your advice to heart and left town for a while. I went home.”

“New Orleans?”

A smile crossed Laurene’s face.

“I’ll never go back there. I was born in Louisiana, but up near the border with Arkansas, a little shithole of a town called Violaville. Kind of place you leave as soon as you can. In my case, that was when I was 14 and my stepfather started pawing at me when he was drunk. I never let him do what he wanted, although I doubted he could get it up, he was so sloshed all the time.”

“What was your mother doing while that was going on?”

“She was scared of him. She wasn’t my real momma, anyway. She and her first husband adopted me when I was a baby. Don’t get me wrong. She treated me good. Then my father, at least he was the man I considered my daddy, died in a tractor accident and a couple of years later she married the drunk. He’s dead now, by the way. Bad moonshine, I think. Anyways, when he was alive it seemed like a good idea to skedaddle. My boyfriend, Earl, asked me to run off with him to the Big Easy. He was 18 and said he’d take care of me. He tried, but he couldn’t find work. We were so broke, living in a dump in the Irish Channel, I started hooking. Earl liked the money so much he started pimping me out.”

“Romantic.”

“Yeah. But he didn’t last long. The local mob ran him off and I started working for them. One of the bosses took a liking to me, said I reminded him of his little sister who died. Said I deserved better than New Orleans and set me up with a high-end house in New York. That’s what I was doing when we met.”

She smiled.

“I still can’t believe you turned me down. No one else ever did.”

“You were too young for me.”

Laurene laughed.

“I was playing 13 or 14, but you knew my real age when you tracked me to that hotel.”

“I had other things on my mind, like staying alive.”

Laurene finished her non-cigarette and put it away. All her movements were dainty but assured.

“I’m glad you did. I could use your help, now. That’s why I’m here. I would like to hire you.”

CHAPTER 5 - ADOPTION

That was unexpected.

“Hire me?”

“I always kept in touch with my momma. That’s how I knew my stepfather kicked the bucket. Used to send her some money, from time to time. She wasn’t crazy about my choice of a profession, but she had her own skeletons and we kind of forgave each other. Anyway, she took me back when I told her I was in trouble.”

“I’m glad, Laurene. Moms are like that.”

“I was lucky. I caught her between husbands and short of cash.”

Laurene reached into her bag for another e-cigarette. But then she thought better of it and put it back.

“Hell, I’m not nervous anymore. I feel very comfortable here.”

We suddenly realized how quiet it was and both looked at Gunner. He’d stopped gnawing the elk bone and was now solidly asleep.

“You’re not the only one, apparently. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

I heard a ferry sound its horn as it left its slip in St. George on the way to Manhattan.

“While I was laying low in Violaville,” Laurene said, “which isn’t hard to do the place is so dead, I started thinking about where I was headed. In life, I mean. I figured it might help to find out where I’d been. I asked my momma if she could help me find my birth mother. She didn’t like the idea, but I guess she thought she owed me something. Plus, I had money, which also kind of motivated her. Turns out my adoption wasn’t all that kosher. An informal arrangement, handled by some sleazy baby broker in Baton Rouge. He wasn’t hard to track down. There’s not much you can’t find out in Louisiana if you spread a little cash around.”

“He remembered the adoption? Guys like that aren’t too keen on keeping records.”

“That’s for sure. But he said mine stood out because it was the only time he was told to pay someone to take a baby. Usually it’s the other way around. Even then, I was for sale.”

Laurene’s eyes glistened. Some things hurt even tough people.

“Hey, kid,” I said, “you turned out OK. Sadie, Sadie, married lady.”

She laughed.

“Thanks. Anyway, the guy told me what I wanted to know. He needed a little persuasion, because money wasn’t enough. He was scared. Apparently the people I came from made it very clear that he was to keep his mouth shut.”

“How did you persuade him?”

Laurene smiled.

“Not the way you think. He was, like, 300 pounds and smelled like an old sock. I told you I’d never go back to the Big Easy. I never said my time there was wasted. I made a call to one of my old friends on Bourbon Street, the guy who originally set me up in New York, and he made a call to one of his paesans in Baton Rouge. Who called the baby guy. Needless to say, I got the name of my real mother. She lives in Virginia, not too far from Washington. A town called Atlas. Always has lived there, so that’s where I was born. I went to see her.”

A strange, sad look passed across Laurene’s delicate features.

“How did that go?”

“What’s that saying? Be careful what you wish for? She never married. I am her only child. She was put in a nursing home, not long after I was born. Some sort of mental problem. They say she has not spoken in years.”

“I’m sorry.”

Laurene got up and walked to the window.

“I remember this view. The harbor. The greatest city in the world. You must love it.”

“I do.”

She turned back to me, leaning against the sill. I was glad that the cleaning service had just been through. She crossed her wonderful legs, which I admired. And since I knew her real age, I didn’t feel like a molester.

“Did you find out who your real father was?”

“Some guy she met at a fair, or carnival or something. Maybe a horse show. That part of Virginia is horse country.”

“How did you learn all this out if your mother was nonverbal?”

“Her father, my natural grandfather, filled me in. He still lived in Atlas and I went to see him because that’s the address I had for my mother. He was the one who told me about her condition, and where to find her. He said my mother never really had boyfriends and they tried to protect her, but there was only so much they could do and she met some slick guy who took advantage of her. My grandfather didn’t say rape, but who knows? She was very beautiful. A real Southern belle, with auburn hair and blue eyes. He showed me some pictures of her when she was in her early teens. He said she lived at home with him and my grandmother after she had me. Then, when my grandmother died, he had to put her away when she got too hard for him to handle. There were some photos of her after her decline. She was still beautiful, but looked beaten down, like she didn’t take care of herself. My grandfather took me to see my mother. Her name is Beatrice, by the way. I told her who I was. She just stared at me. No reaction from her at all. It’s like I didn’t exist.”

“Don’t be too hard on her, Laurene.”

“At least she’s alive. And still beautiful, in a way. You can see the resemblance.” Laurene smiled. “I know that sounds egotistical, but no one ever said I wasn’t a knockout.”

I laughed.

“And no one ever will, kid. So, you haven’t been able to communicate with her in the nursing home at all?”

“I’ve tried. I’ve been back without my grandfather. I held her hand, and brushed her hair, and talked to her for hours. At one point, when I said I might move into her old house she became a little agitated. I actually thought she might try to say something. I think she made the connection then. But it only lasted a moment and then she lapsed back into whatever world she’s in.”

“It must have been quite a shock to your grandfather when you showed up on his doorstep.”

“That’s putting it mildly. But for some reason he warmed up to me right away. Said I was beautiful and reminded him of my mother when she was young. Said he was sorry about me being put up for adoption, but they knew their daughter couldn’t care for me and they weren’t prepared to raise a baby. I found out he was a big mucky-muck in town. That probably had something to do with it. Scandal, you know.”

“This wasn’t that long ago, Laurene. Having a child out of wedlock hasn’t been a big deal in 40 years.”

“Maybe it’s a conservative town. Who knows? It is what it is. He seemed really bothered by what he and my grandmother did. Said they just wanted the baby, that was me, as far away from Virginia as possible. That’s why I ended up in Louisiana.”

None of it sounded right to me, but I kept my mouth shut. I wondered where all this was heading.

“Did you move in with your grandfather?”

“No. He badgered me to do it and believe me I was tempted. He has quite a spread. Almost like a small plantation. Like Gone With the Wind. What was the name of that one?”

“Tara.”

“Right. Anyway, while he was a big man in the area, a judge, I guess he was lonely. But I found out things had quieted down back in New York and I missed the action. I didn’t want to go back to hooking, but I wanted to see if I could go legit, maybe get an acting job. You remember I was pretty good at it.”

“You had a good teacher.”

“She damn sure was. Anyway, I came back here, enrolled in acting classes and even got some small roles off-Broadway. That’s when I met Barry. He was at the theater one night and thought he recognized me from my escort-service days. He took me out on a couple of dates and we finally slept together.” She laughed. “I’ll never forget how he looked afterward. He didn’t know whether to pay me, so he asked. He was so cute. I said he could pay me but then he’d never see me again. We got engaged a few months later. I told him the thousand bucks he didn’t pay me is going to wind up costing him millions.” She flashed her ring, again. “He just laughed.”

“What are you going to do about your mother?”

“You mean, my mothers. I have two of them to think about now. I’ve got money of my own and Barry says he’ll help if I want to keep sending something to my Mom in Louisiana, as well as do something for the one in the nursing home. I thought about moving her to a facility up North, which would make it easier to visit her, but my grandfather said she was happy where she was and it would be cruel to both of them. I could see his point.”

“If you ever decide to do it, Laurene, I can make a call. She’d be treated like a queen.”

The call would be to Arman Rahm, who had moved into the nursing home business as a way to both launder some of his family’s money and take care of the families of some of his lieutenants. They were some of the best-run facilities in the Tri-State Area.

“Thanks. But everything is on hold. Things have changed. Drastically.”

“How so?”

Laurene Robillard came off the window sill and once again sat across from me.

“My grandfather is dead. Murdered. Someone stuck an ice pick in his eye.”

CHAPTER 6 - HOOKED

“Jesus Christ. I’m sorry.”

“Look. It’s a bummer, I know. But I barely got to know the old fart. And he did dump me after I was born. When I found out, I was more concerned for my mother. About what would happen to her. As far as I can tell, I’m her only living relative now.”

“When did this happen?”

“Early April.”

“Has anyone been charged?”

“No. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. I want you to look into my grandfather’s murder. Find out who killed him.”

“Whoa, Nellie! The cops are pretty good at stuff like that. Why not give them a chance?”

“They’ve got less than nothing.”

“It’s only been a couple of months. These things sometimes take time.”

“Time is not on my side. Something is screwy in that town. I don’t know what, but I didn’t just fall off a turnip truck. I figured there might be a dust-up about my grandfather’s estate, since my mother is non compos mentis and I have to prove who I am. She’s been declared incompetent and someone has to make decisions for her. But the local yahoos seem to be bending over backwards to make it tough on me.”

Despite our background, I couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of pride in Laurene. My “Savannah” had come a long way. Now a college graduate with what only could be described as real-life experience, with her looks and moxie she’d be running charity balls at the Metropolitan Museum of Art eventually. And probably do a better job than most society airheads.

“It’s probably typical small-town bull, Laurene. You’re an outsider and the longer they drag things out the more legal fees some local lawyers will be able to rack up.”

“I know that, Mr. Rhode. But there is something else going on. I can feel it. It’s not only that they were so quick to throw my hooker days in my face. I expected that, even though I was a little surprised they dug it up so fast. Just shows how serious they are. But I didn’t expect them to say I had something to do with my grandfather’s murder because I wanted to get control of his estate.”

I wasn’t surprised at that. Laurene shows up out of the blue and her grandfather gets iced, so to speak, soon after. And she is an ex-call girl. It would take a pretty dim cop not to look into that. But it would take an even dimmer cop to pursue the theory after finding out that Laurene was probably soon going to be richer than her grandpa.

“Makes no sense. You can prove you don’t need your grandfather’s money.”

“I know. But they will use it against me in the civil matters. Barry got me some good lawyers in Washington and they tell me the lawyers representing the estate and my mother’s nursing home seem to be working together and it’s going to take time. So far, the only thing they have bent on is to allow me access to my grandfather’s house. A lot of people knew I stayed there and he even bragged about me being his long-lost granddaughter. Apparently the stigma of my birth didn’t bother him anymore. I’ll eventually get everything, but things will go smoother if you can find out who killed my grandfather. I also would like to know who killed him. He was family, after all. I’m not worried about any murder charge. I spoke to the Chief of Police. Black woman. Very sharp.”

Laurene smiled.

“I know that because she said she doesn’t think I did it. But she also said they have no clues, no suspects, no nothing. And until they find who is responsible, the lawyers will use a whispering campaign to muddy the waters and slow the process. Even though I can prove I was in New York at the time of the murder, some of the assholes are saying I could have hired an assassin. It’s a legal mess.”

“Local cops might not take too kindly to me mucking around in their investigation.”

“Tough shit, pardon my French. I know that won’t bother you. You’ve got more balls than a bowling alley.”

I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing at that glimpse of the “old Laurene”.

She laughed, too.

“Please, Mr. Rhode. I need your help. You’re the best. You found someone no one else, including the F.B.I., could.”

“Got him killed.”

“That wasn’t your fault. It was those bastards who used me to set you up. I hope they got what they deserved.”

“They did,” I said ominously. “They are sleeping with the sturgeons.”

Arman Rahm would have gotten a kick out of that, since he was one of “those bastards”. Now one of my closest friends, he’d saved my neck on a recent case and given me Gunner as a present. At the moment he was probably in South Beach eating caviar and stone crabs with his father.

“Good. I knew you were tough. But you also have heart, Mr. Rhode. You tracked me down and figured out the whole scam. You had every reason to hate me, but told me to be careful. You were worried something might happen to me. Not too many people would have given a damn about what happened to a whore.”

I considered the possibility that I was being hooked again. I knew that the woman sitting across from me was adept at the flim flam. But it certainly wouldn’t take much effort to confirm the bare bones of Laurene’s story, which she knew I would check. While I considered this, she reached into her purse and took out a checkbook. She wrote in it and then ripped off a check and slid it to me across my desk. It was a very large check. Large enough for me to hope that Laurene was on the up-and-up.

If that was the case, I’d head to Virginia. I hoped it was all true. There is something about murder that stirs the soul of a private detective. Almost as much as a really big check.

“I want to make some phone calls,” I said.

“Of course. But I’m not playing you again, Mr. Rhode.” She reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope. “The names and addresses of my lawyers. The nursing home where my mother is. My cell phone. Barry’s office number. Some other contacts. Also, some of the news stories about my grandfather’s murder. His name was Colver Elson. Judge Colver Elson. I guess that makes me an Elson, since no one seems to know who my real daddy is. But I think I’ll keep Robillard until I become Mrs. Barry Lewinsohn.  Laurene Robillard Lewinsohn. I kind of like the ring to that, don’t you?”

***

I took Laurene down in the elevator and watched her get into a Lincoln Town Car with livery plates. When I got back to my office, Gunner was paws up on the window sill looking out at the harbor traffic. A pigeon landed on the outside ledge and startled him. He started barking, which in turn startled the pigeon, who flapped away awkwardly. Gunner turned to look at me. He was having a good dog day. I gave him a biscuit from a stash in my desk and told him to relax. He did. Then I started making calls. After about an hour, I had confirmed almost all of Laurene’s story. I expected a couple of callbacks that would seal the deal. It was lunchtime. I was hungry. I looked at Gunner.

“How does the Red Lantern sound to you?”

At the mention of my favorite watering hole, and the prospect of his own meatball hero, Gunner trotted over to a chair, picked up his leash and brought it over to me. I never taught him that. He just started doing it on his own when I mentioned a walk or food. I don’t know how he figured it out. Must be something in my voice. Or maybe the look on my face. Because if I said, “The Yankees need pitching,” he would have ignored me.

In the elevator I started thinking about baseball and actually looked at Gunner and said, “They do need pitching.”

This time, he did ignore me. Unlike the two women who were also in the elevator. They moved as far away from me as they could and sprinted away as soon as the doors opened to the lobby.

It was a nice fall day, and I decided to walk to the Red Lantern, where parking would be at a premium in any event, thanks to football season. The Red ran one of the biggest NFL football pools in the city, with almost 2,000 players, from mobsters to judges, filling out weekly betting slips. One of the lawyers who ambulance chases at the Criminal Court in Stapleton once told me that it was not unheard of for a jurist to ask a defendant or his counsel if they had an extra betting slip handy.

It was Wednesday, when many of the slips were dropped off, so all the parking spots, including those next to fire hydrants, bus stops and “No Parking” signs would probably be taken. Many cars were emblazoned with official stickers or emblems identifying them as police, fire, sanitation, judicial and Borough Hall vehicles.

The one-mile walk took longer than it should have, since Gunner made a few stops at hydrants and trees, as well at Gottleib’s Bakery, where he was, as usual, given a donut because “that’s one good-looking pooch”. They never give me a donut.

“I hope it ruins your appetite,” I said, as I brushed sugar powder off his nose.

When I got to the Red, I said hello to the smokers standing outside. There are always a couple of  them, in any weather. During the recent brutal winter, I mistook one of them for a statue, he was so motionless, until a long stream of smoke came out from his frost-enclosed lips.

I found a stool at the end of the bar. Gunner curled up in a corner nearby. Roscoe Kane, the Red Lantern’s owner and resident bookie, came over. I  ordered a beer. He poured me a J. Lohr Cabernet.

“Mary made venison with a port wine reduction as the special,” Roscoe said. “You don’t drink beer with that.”

You never knew what to expect as a special in the Red Lantern. Some days it could be kielbasi. On one occasion, it was elk, from a haunch brought back by a customer who had been out West on a hunting trip.

“It’s not deer season,” I said as I sipped the excellent wine.

“It’s never deer season on Staten Island.”

Deer had disappeared from the borough decades ago. But their population had exploded in adjacent New Jersey and some hungry and obviously adventurous animals swam to Staten Island. It was estimated that the local herd now numbered almost a thousand animals.

The locally sourced venison was delicious. When I left the Red Lantern, Roscoe gave me a bag with Gunner’s meatball hero, for which, of course, there was no charge. On the walk back to my office I made a point of crossing the street before I got to Gottleib’s Bakery. Gunner gave me a look.

Back at my desk, I cut up Gunner’s hero, after taking a bite to make sure it wasn’t too hot. After my second bite, it was perfect. My concern for his well-being earned me another look. I filled Gunner’s bowl with the remainder of the meatball sub. While he ate, I returned the two phone calls on my answering machine.

Laurene’s story was solid. I called her and told her that after I cleared up a few things, I’d head to Virginia.

“That’s wonderful, Mr. Rhode.”

“I think you can call me Alton, Laurene.”

“I’ll try. Alton. Anyway, when you get to Atlas, you can stay at my grandfather’s house. You can get the keys and stuff from the local lawyer my D.C. attorneys are using. They trust her. I think because she’s new to the town. Her name is on that list I gave you.”

“I’ll do my best, Laurene. But you must realize that might not be good enough. A lot of murders go unsolved. This isn’t like TV. And I don’t care what you pay me, if I’m convinced there is nothing more I can do, I’m coming home.”

After I rang off, I glanced over at Gunner, who, with a snout covered in marinara sauce, looked like Cujo.

“Ever been to Virginia?”

I closed up the office early. On the way home I stopped in the bank branch in my building, where I keep my business account and deposited Laurene’s check. I could have used the ATM machine, which has swallowed up any number of smaller checks without a problem, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

The cute little red-haired teller who I reciprocally flirt with from time to time, and who knows my typical balance, said “Wow” when she saw the deposit.

“Way to go, Jake. Especially if this is from that hot babe I saw you waltz through the lobby with earlier.”

“Jealous, Murph?”

“Nah. She’s engaged. I saw her ring.”

“From here?”

“I could have seen it from Cleveland.”

CHAPTER 7 - MAIN LINE

The next morning I called Alice and told her my plans.

“I know you have classes, but I thought we might stop by and see you.”

“We?”

“I’m taking Gunner with me.”

“I’m always glad to see Gunner.” There was a pause. For effect. “And you, of course. But isn’t it a bit out of your way?”

“You are never out of the way.”

“I suppose sex will be involved.”

“Well I can't speak for Gunner, but I think so.”

“I'll get out my copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.”

“Oh, so Gunner will be included.”

After Alice stopped laughing, she told me where to meet her that afternoon after she finished teaching.

After packing for the trip, I set out cans of tuna and salmon for Scar, the feral cat that uses my property as his base of operations. If they sold cans of sparrow, that’s what I’d get, because that is his preferred source of protein. Sparrows, other birds and squirrels have wised up to Scar recently. Not too many of them venture into my yard, unless Scar is easily visible sunning himself on my deck.

One of the largest tomcats I’ve ever seen, he drives his name from the latticework of wounds on his face and his one and a half ears. There is not a doubt in my mind that he has prevailed in most of his fights. That makes me wonder what the losers, if still alive, must look like. When Gunner was a small puppy, Scar used to swat him around when he became annoying. He still will take a swipe at him, for old time’s sake. Despite that, they have become fast friends.

I used to ask Wayne Miller, who lives nearby, to keep an eye on Scar. Wayne, the Artistic Director and Production Manager at the St. George Theater near the ferry terminal, often wondered why he had to take care of a cat that I didn’t actually own and which only stopped by when it suited his feline wanderings. I often wondered that myself. The last time I was away for any length of time, Scar never showed up at all and Wayne spent most of his time throwing out rancid cans of fish. I felt bad, and offered to leave out food for Wayne, but he didn’t take it well. He threatened to give Alice free tickets to The Vikings at Helgeland, an Ibsen play he was putting on at the St. George, knowing that she would drag me to it for the literary equivalent of a root canal. So, while I know Wayne would bail me out in a pinch, I’ve been breaking in a new Scar-watcher, Freddie Schultz, an incipient teen-aged delinquent whose family moved onto my block a year ago. Freddie and Scar immediately took to each other, which is all you need to know about Freddie.

Only 14, Freddie already has quite a reputation for deviltry on St. Austins Place, the West Brighton block where I live in the 100-year-old side-hall Colonial my parents owned. St. Austins is a small street with large houses on large plots. It is heavily canopied by trees, some of the oldest on Staten Island, and is divided by a median strip that the city tends like a botanical-garden, thanks to a family on the block related to the Borough Park Commissioner. The street is anchored on one end by a 100-year-old Lutheran church and on the other by a Mormon meeting hall built a few years ago on the site of a home owned by a descendant of Sally Hemmings, reputedly Thomas Jefferson’s slave mistress. The street has a history of sexual shenanigans between spouses not married to each other, some of it true, and was once the target of a poison-pen attack that set neighbor against neighbor. I helped uncover the letter-writer, a local minister, and things have since quieted down, but the block still attracts its share of iconoclasts and rebels.

For Freddie to stand out, you know he has potential. I like the kid, who reminds me a little of myself at that age.

He had come by the previous evening and I gave him keys and reiterated my warning about using my house for wild parties.

“I’m not old enough to know anyone to party with,” he said, reasonably. “But watch out when I hit 16.”

I also reminded Freddie that part of his job was also to keep an eye on the house. There had been a spate of burglaries in the area.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” he’d told me, looking around my living room. “A burglar would think you’d already been robbed.”

***

The drive to Bryn Mawr down first the New Jersey and then the Pennsylvania turnpikes took about an hour and a half.

“We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto,” I said as I wound my way along Old Gulph Road, one of the exclusive streets leading up to the college. Gunner, sitting in the back of my four-year-old Hyundai Santa-Fe, probably didn’t hear me. His head was out the window, his acute canine senses absorbing sounds, sights and smells humans were not privy to.

Most humans probably also couldn’t afford the houses we were passing. Bryn Mawr is not only the name of one of the “Seven Sisters” colleges, it also designates one of the richest demographics in the United States. It sits smack in the middle of the "Main Line", a string of suburbs extending northwest from Philadelphia along Route 30, also known as Lancaster Pike. These suburbs include some of the richest bastions of what some people used to call “old money”, although a lot of “new money” has driven the price of area mansions into the stratosphere. The suburbs are also noted for their educational institutions. In addition to Bryn Mawr College, Villanova University, Rosemont College, Haverford College and Bucker College are all within a few miles of each other on Lancaster or a stone’s throw of it. And the very-ivy University of Pennsylvania is a quick ride into Philadelphia on the commuter line. I knew the area well, having played rugby against Villanova’s team during my own college days.

Alice had told me to find something called the Uncommon Grounds Café in the Marie Salant Neuberger Centennial Campus Center, which is where I sat sipping a plain black coffee, which the coffee shop barista thought was the quaintest of orders, when Alice found me. I wasn’t hard to spot, surrounded as I was by adoring co-eds. Actually, Gunner was surrounded. None of the girls tried to pet me.

“Ah, the old ‘use the cute dog to attract women’ trick,” Alice said, sitting down.

She was dressed in a grey cashmere crew-neck sweater over a wool plaid skirt and looked fabulous, every bit a Seven Sisters professor. The co-eds were better dressed than I’d expected, but next to Alice they looked bland. Seeing her, Gunner, of course, went berserk. After settling down, he went back to the co-eds.

“I must point out that I didn’t have a dog when you fell for me, sweetheart.”

“You had bullet holes, almost as good.”

“So, this is him, Ms. Watts,” one of the girls said. “The private eye.”

“Yes. Isn’t he adorable, too.”

The girls laughed and drifted away.

“Nice kids,” I said. “And none of them spoke like they had marbles in their mouths.”

“A lot of them are very grounded. They don’t act or talk like the rich bitches in a John O’Hara novel. Times, they are a changing. Want to see the college?”

We took a tour of the huge campus, resplendent in late spring flowers. Alice pointed out the Mariam Coffin Canaday Library, the Eugenia Chase Guild Hall, the Eleanor Donnelley Erdman Hall, and the Marjorie Walter Goodhart Hall. After the Clarissa Donelley Haffner Language Hall, I asked if we could stick to buildings with simple names.

“It will be dark soon,” I said.

We cut across a large athletic field and let Gunner run free. His breed is very protective and he never strayed too far from us. We let him tree a few squirrels.

“It seems that he could catch them if he wanted,” Alice noticed.

“No fun in that,” I said.

“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”

“Great area. I used to come out here occasionally when Holy Cross played Villanova in rugby. But we never hung around with Bryn Mawr girls. They thought we were unclean.”

“You might have showered after the game.”

I laughed.

“You know what I mean. Like lepers. Maybe it was because we all went out after the match with the guys from Villanova. They didn’t have the best reputation.”

“After you bashed each others’ heads in you went out drinking together? Like the opposing armies met in No Man’s Land at Christmas in World War I?”

“Exactly.”

“No girls?”

“Well, there were some Villanova girls. And, of course, girls from Bucker. They liked us manly types. The Villanova guys even had a limerick about Bucker girls.”

I repeated the ditty.

“That’s disgusting, even for Catholic school boys. Bucker College happens to be an excellent school. One of the oldest on the Main Line.”

“Hey, I’m just repeating what they said. I’m sure the sexual activities of Bucker co-eds were no different than those of co-eds here at Bryn Mawr. For all I know, the boys at Penn and Haverford had a dirty limerick about Bryn Mawr, as well.”

We spent an enjoyable few minutes trying to devise just such a limerick, but ultimately gave up.

“Bryn Mawr is tough to rhyme,” Alice said. “Let’s eat.”

She had rented a small garden apartment in Ardmore about 15 minutes from the campus. Alice had finally purchased a car, a 2010 white Volvo. I followed her up Lancaster Pike. I wanted to take her to a fancy restaurant but she pointed out that such establishments were few and far between in neighborhoods that catered to student appetites. I suggested a trip into Philadelphia but she insisted that a little home cooking would be good for me and Gunner.

“I have a wonderful little kitchen. I’d like to break it in.”

Alice had been teaching at Bryn Mawr for more than a month.

I needn’t have worried. “Home cooking” consisted of a stop at a grocery store for some wine, beer and gourmet dog food, and another stop at a Chinese restaurant for takeout. We bought extra pork dumplings in case Gunner didn’t like the dog food.

***

After dinner, sated with moo shu pork, shrimp with candied walnuts and the couple of dumplings Gunner let us have, Alice and I sat on her couch sipping the last of our wine. Gunner was asleep.

We were silent for a while. I stroked her hair.

“Do you still think about her? I mean, being on the Main Line.”

I paused. I knew who Alice was talking about. Ronnie Frost, my first real love on Staten Island, was a freshman at nearby Rosemont College while I was at Holy Cross. I was looking forward to visiting her when she moved away suddenly, leaving me bereft. Many years later, two homicide detectives from Massachusetts came into my office and told me she was dead.

“Yes.”

“I’m glad. Remember, I’m the one who said you had to find out who killed her. I wouldn’t like you as much if you didn’t think about a girl you once loved. Within reason, of course. I don’t want you thinking about her when you are ‘Bucking’ me’.”

I knew she liked the limerick.

“Usually, I’m thinking about who will give me CPR. And what’s this ‘like’ stuff? I thought you loved me.”

“I’ll always love you. But it’s also great that I really like you, too.”

Gunner rolled over and yawned.

“Everyone’s a critic,” Alice said. “But maybe I am getting too sappy.”

She got up and headed toward her bedroom, crooking a finger at me.

“Let me show you some of the sexual proclivities of a part-time Bryn Mawr professor.”

Gunner got up and followed us. We closed the door in his face. After a couple of desultory barks, he took it well, because he stopped. We undressed and lay side by side in bed.

“What are you looking at?”

“Is it my imagination, or is your left breast slightly larger than your right?”

“Many women have tatas that are not exactly the same. Most men don’t even notice.”

“Probably because they are too busy.”

“But you did.”

“I’m a trained detective.”

“I hope you don’t mind. It’s probably partly your fault.”

“What do you mean?”

“You are right-handed.”

“So?”

“You pay more attention to my left breast. It’s a scientific fact that excessive fondling can increase the size of a breast.”

“You're pulling my leg.”

“Stop bragging. You know perfectly well that’s not what I’m pulling.”

Things progressed rapidly after that.

“Jesus,” I said when I got my breath under control, “thank God, you’re not a full-time Bryn Mawr professor.”

Gunner was scratching at the door. At critical junctures, Alice is not the quietest of lovers.

“He probably thinks you were being murdered.”

She colored slightly.

“Speaking of murders,” Alice said. “What does Savannah look like now?”

“Her name is Laurene, and she’s all grown up.”

“She was all grown up when you first met her. She was just acting young.”

“Well, now, she is quite the assured young woman. No longer hooking. Has lots of money and will marry much more.”

“I want to know what she looks like, not her Dun & Bradstreet.”

“In a word, a freakin’ knockout.”

“Did she offer to ball your socks off again?”

“No, but she did mention how impressed she was that I once turned her down.”

“Good. Because I’d hate to scratch her eyes out.”

“What an un-Bryn Mawrish thing to say.”

“You really don’t know anything about women, do you?”

“Why should I be different from any other man?”

“Speaking of eyes, her grandfather’s murder sounds so bizarre.”

“Everything about Laurene is bizarre, including the retainer she gave me.”

“I have Monday off. Want some company? It’s only about a three-hour drive from here. I could come down Saturday morning and help out with Gunner while you are gumshoeing. Do some antiquing and sightseeing. I don’t have a class until Tuesday afternoon.”

Alice was a world-class antiquer, as I’ve discovered many times hauling her collection.

“Gunner will be delighted.”

Alice looked down my body, to where her hand had recently been busy.

“Apparently, he’s not the only one.”

“Arf, arf.”

CHAPTER 8 - ATLAS

I left early the next morning, arriving in Atlas just after 10 AM. As advertised, the surrounding Virginia countryside was loaded with horse farms and stables. The town itself looked like many Southern towns with proximity to Civil War battlefields. In its case it was, Manassas, or Bull Run, where the Union managed to lose not one, but two, battles to the Confederacy before getting its act together. The town square had the requisite statue of a heroic man on a horse and a few old canons, symbols of past glory that meant nothing to local pigeons. I ignored the monuments and parked across from the Atlas Police Department. Unless I have a good reason not to, I make it a point to check in with the local gendarmes when I am about to imitate pigeons and crap all over their case.

The woman at the front desk told me that Chief Deerly Johnson was making her rounds and probably would be back in a few hours. I gave her my card.

“Tell Chief Johnson that I’ll try to swing by later.”

“The Chief’s last name is Deerly-Johnson,” the woman said. “With a hyphen.”

“That’s a very unusual name.”

“She’s a very unusual chief.”

I left wondering what she meant by that, but knowing I’d soon find out. The local fuzz of a small town generally doesn’t like anyone but themselves annoying the citizenry with embarrassing questions. If I didn’t find the hyphenated chief of the Atlas cops, she’d undoubtedly find me.

Gunner was just where I’d left him; his head out the half-open window of my SUV, happily smelling Virginia.

Next stop was the law office of Ramsey, Gaudet & Rogers, L.L.P. Evelyn Rogers was Laurene Robillard’s local lawyer. She was supposed to bring me up to date, as well as give me the keys to the scene of the crime, which also happened to be where I’d be staying. Maybe I’d quickly stumble upon a clue the cops missed, or the murderer would return, as criminals always are supposed to. And maybe I’d find the missing socks in my sock drawer back home.

I had no trouble finding the law firm, which was located in a large colonial on a tree-lined street about a half mile from the police station. Or, rather, I should say, “Gladys”, my trusty GPS system, had no trouble. The first couple of times I used Gladys with Gunner in the car he kept jumping from seat to seat looking for who else was talking. Now he doesn’t even take his head out of the window.

I didn’t know how long I’d be in the law office, so I brought Gunner in with me.

“Do you always take your dog on a case?” Evelyn Rogers asked when she ushered us into her office.

“Probably the first and last time,” I said. “Gunner’s still a pup and I couldn’t make arrangements on short notice. Since I’m staying on what amounts to be a farm, I figured he’d enjoy a little vacation.”

She leaned down to pet him. He lapped her hand.

“He’s a pup? What do you feed him, zebra?”

“He won’t get much bigger, but he’s still learning the canine ropes.”

Rogers was a good-looking woman, with short brown hair and an easy smile. She got right to the point.

“We’re making some headway on the civil side. I don’t think anyone really believes that Laurene had anything to do with her grandfather’s murder. We’ll win. I’m just local counsel, with limited resources, so the other side can make life difficult. But her D.C. lawyers, Hawser & Grey, are top-drawer litigators. They’ll bury the opposition.”

“How is the murder investigation going?”

“It’s going nowhere. The town cops have made no progress. I think the chief is pretty good, but the department is short of cash and severely undermanned. The Town Council in Atlas is tighter than a cow’s ass in fly time.”

“I would think that in this part of the country law enforcement would be popular. Seems like every town I go to has S.W.A.T. teams and tanks.”

“You would think so. But not Atlas. Just between you, me and the lamp post, the justice system here is broken. We have an old boy network that likes things just as they are. Cops are told to concentrate on quality-of-life crimes, like robberies and burglaries, things that might affect business or tourism. The police do a very good job, but I can’t remember the last white-collar prosecution in these parts.”

“In most jurisdictions an ice pick in the eye of a judge might be considered a quality-of-life crime.”

Evelyn Rogers laughed.

“Of course. But the local police force has already been gutted. It’s a case of the old boys being hoist by their own petards. Not that I think they really care about what happened to Judge Elson. I mean, if it happens again, if there is a serial ice-pick killer running around, they’ll probably scream for the State Police, the National Guard and the F.B.I. But if it’s a one-off, they’ll leave it to Chief Deerly-Johnson and use it against her when she can’t solve it. Town fires more people than Donald Trump.”

“Elson wasn’t well-liked? I thought he was a local institution. At least the stories about him in the papers Laurene gave me indicated that.”

“What were they going to say? He was an institution, just not as beloved as some people made him out to be. Colver Elson was a legend in his own mind. I only knew him the last couple of years, but I found him insufferable. A pompous ass. And some of the lawyers who have been around Atlas for years say he was a mean son-of-a-bitch. And worse.”

“Worse, how?”

“I don’t like speaking ill of a dead man.”

“He’s dead. Laurene is alive. She’s our client. Give me what you’ve heard.”

“Well, for one thing, there was talk that he was a world-class cock hound who was not above tilting his judicial rulings in favor of whoever he was fucking.”

“Please don’t hold back, counselor.”

“Hell, you asked. In fact, some people think he solicited sex from female defendants and lawyers who came before his court. The joke was that all you needed from Judge Elson was a Writ of Fellatio to win your case.”

“It sounds like the suspect pool might be pretty deep in Atlas.”

“You’ve got your work cut out for you, Mr. Rhode.”

She gave me directions to the Elson place and reached into her desk and handed me a set of keys.

“ I checked the place out after the police had finished with it. They didn’t mess it up too badly but I also hired a cleaning service. They were there a couple of days ago, so everything should be shipshape. I did empty the the fridge, so you may want to stop for some provisions. There’s a Walmart on the way out there on Clayton Turnpike.”

“There’s a Walmart on the way out to anywhere.”

“There is cable TV and Wi-Fi.” Rogers handed me a slip of paper. “Here are the passwords if you have a laptop. Lauren told me that you are to make yourself at home. But if you want to drink anything but bourbon, you’ll have to buy it. Judge Elson was strictly a bourbon man. Died with one in his hand, figuratively. He has, or had, one of the best collections of small-batch bourbons in these parts.”

“I’ll make do.”

Evelyn Rogers stood up.

“What’s your dog’s name?”

“Gunner.”

At the mention of his name, Gunner’s ears perked up.

“Does Gunner like horses?”

“I don’t think he’s ever seen one, in the flesh.”

“Well, the Elson place has a small stable, and there are other animals about, chickens and the like. I hired a landscaping company to keep the place up and also have a high school kid stopping by to take care of the livestock and do small chores. Nice kid. Name is Lucas Browne. He used to do odd jobs for Judge Elson, so he knows his way around. I’ve told him you will be staying there. Good luck, Mr. Rhode. If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to call.”

***

Even though the directions to the Elson home were fairly straightforward, I still inputted the address into the GPS. It’s amazing how dependent one becomes on technology. As predicted, there was a Walmart just outside of town. A “Super Walmart”. I just needed some basics, and would have preferred a smaller neighborhood-type grocery store. By the time you find your way around a Super Walmart and reach the checkout counter, you need more basics. The parking lot was full. I was going to leave Gunner in the car and he sometimes gets upset when he can’t see where I’m going, so I drove around a few minutes before I found a spot near the store.  Actually, two spots, side by side. I presumed that would be good news for whoever was driving the red pickup truck that was following me down each aisle, obviously also looking for a space. But when I pulled in the truck, with two men in it, just kept going. The vacant spot next to my car might have been too small for the truck. I managed to get in and out of the store in 20 minutes. Gunner still looked annoyed, so I gave him a dog biscuit from among the basics.

Back on the road out of town, I spotted a tail. It wasn’t hard. It was the same red pickup truck that passed me in the parking lot. Now, that part of Virginia isn’t short of  pickup trucks. But I knew it was the same vehicle, a Dodge Ram Laramie with a quad cab. Probably a 2003 or 2004 model. A good, tough truck that was a favorite of some of my comrades in my service days.

I wanted to be sure, so I started driving haphazardly down some side roads. Naturally, Gladys lost her GPS mind and started berating me with “make a legal U-Turn” and “recalculating” pronouncements. I ignored her and kept my eye on my rear-view mirror. Sure enough, the pickup matched my every move, at a respectful distance. I finally got back onto Clayton Turnpike and a few minutes later turned onto Chandler Lane, a road that dead-ended at Colver Elson’s property. There were no other homes or structures on Chandler, and whoever was tailing me obviously knew that because the pickup truck didn’t follow me down the road. At no point was I able to get a license plate from the pickup.

I hoped the men tailing me would assume that my meandering route was the result of my being lost. Not that it really mattered. Someone was interested in what I was doing in Atlas. I was sure to run into whoever it was again.

I looked at Gunner, who had thoroughly enjoyed our jaunt through the woodlands and all the interesting sights and smells.

“The game is afoot, my noble hound.”

He gave me the look that remark deserved. I gave him another dog biscuit.

CHAPTER 9 - TOSSED

Laurene Robillard had come from money, even if she only found out about it recently.

The three-story post and beam house her mother lived in at 1 Chandler Lane was nothing short of spectacular. And it had either aged well, or Colver Elson had spent a good deal of time and money maintaining the place. There were shavings around the trees and bushes that fronted the house, and the pleasant odor of yard work indicated a recent visit by the landscapers. I could see some horses in a nearby pasture, a stable and what appeared to be a barn. Evelyn Rogers had told me that the entire property, including the woods that surrounded it, amounted to just under 50 acres. Fall had not fully taken command in this part of Virginia, which, Rogers also told me, had a climate characterized by hot, humid summers and mild to cool winters, the recent Ice Age winter that battered the East being an exception.

As I looked over a home that could have been featured in Southern Living magazine, I couldn’t help but wonder what Laurene must have thought when she saw it for the first time. And how different her life might have turned out had her birth family not abandoned her. She might have been a real Southern belle, instead of winding up as a hooker basically portraying one. Well, she had it all now, and I would try my best to make sure she kept it.

When we got out of the car, Gunner made a beeline to the nearest tree. Then he bounded up the stairs and reconnoitered the wrap-around front porch before heading towards the pasture and its fascinating possibilities. I wasn’t worried about him. His ancestors thrived on the Eastern Front during World War II. I didn’t think rural Virginia would be a problem.

The porch contained several rockers and a swing chair that reminded me of the one on which Scout and Boo Radley sat in To Kill a Mockingbird. I carried my bag of groceries up to the massive chestnut front door and put a key in the lock. Before I could turn the key the door yawned opened. Then I noticed telltale scratches around the door jamb near the lock. It had been forced, probably with a thin metal strip, judging from the marks on the wood. I switched the grocery bag to my left arm and pulled my gun with my right. Having just been tailed out of town, I knew that I was now probably in enemy territory. I should have put the bag down, but I was pretty sure no one was in the house. Gunner wouldn’t have run off had he smelled or heard another human.

I went in, gun at the ready, just in case. No one shot me or my groceries. I quickly found the kitchen and dropped off the bag. A few drawers in the kitchen were not flush with their surrounding cabinets. I didn’t think it was sloppy work by the cleaning service hired by Evelyn Rogers.

I started my search of the house, which I estimated to be about 5,000 square feet. On the first floor, in addition to the great room kitchen, was a dining room with breakfast area, a living room, a master bedroom with master bath and the den where Judge Elson had his encounter with an ice pick. The first upper level contained a sitting area, office, a bathroom and two smaller bedrooms with built-in loft beds. The third level featured another large bedroom overlooking the living and dining rooms, with a rock chimney as one wall.

It didn’t take me long to absolve the cleaning service. The place had been tossed. The signs were obvious to the trained eye. More drawers not quite closed. Cushions not lining up exactly. Mattresses hanging a bit off center. Socks and underwear rumpled. Fine suits and shirts pressed together in the expansive walk-in closets, which indicated that someone pushed them aside to look behind them. The most attention had been paid to Colver Elson’s office, where books had been swept from shelves and locked desk drawers pried open, in some cases violently.

The break-in and search smelled of teamwork. I wondered what the burglars were looking for. And if they found it. I didn’t think it was money or other valuables, since I found small amounts of both in several of the drawers that had been rifled. Not a lot, but stuff that would easily been pocketed by a crook. There was another dead giveaway. Judge Elson was apparently technologically old-school. On the desk in his office was a monitor, its wires hanging down to the floor where a depression in the carpet indicated an old-style computer tower once stood. I didn’t think any burglar worth his salt would steal a heavy computer tower. It was possible, of course, that the police had it. They might have gone through it looking for any clues that might have furthered their murder investigation. I would have to ask them.

After searching the upper floors, I went down to the basement. It, too, had been thoroughly searched. The intruders were probably exhausted by this point. They didn’t even bother putting anything back. There were several oak cabinets where drawers had been roughly pulled out and overturned on the ceramic tile floors. The area around another massive stone fireplace was covered in black ash scraped from the interior of the wood stove in the hearth. I checked the basement’s large family room, full bath and laundry. All trashed. I opened the basement door that led to a two-car garage. There were a couple of metal cabinets without doors, a set of golf clubs, a work bench with some tools on it and two cars: a Mercedes convertible and a Ford Fusion. It was a lot neater than my garage back home and nothing seemed wildly out of order, but still I presumed everything had been searched.

I was about to go back into the basement when I heard a car pull up and Gunner barking. There was a garage door button by the basement door. I pushed it and the door clattered up. I pulled out my gun again and held it loosely at my side. I put the Ford Fusion between me and the door. Gunner was standing in front of a police cruiser barking at a tall black woman officer. I knew that was all he would do. He liked cops, especially those in uniform.

I walked toward the cop. She looked at me, her eyes sliding down toward the gun in my hand. I slowly eased it back into my holster and held out my hands where she could see them.

“Chief Deerly-Johnson, I presume.”

CHAPTER 10 - THE CHIEF

“We did take the computer, but put it back weeks ago,” the Chief said. “There was nothing useful on it. I think Judge Elson used it mainly to surf the web.”

We were sitting in the kitchen. I’d made some coffee for the both of us. Gunner was happily scrunching away on an elk chew.

“Did you check what he surfed?”

She gave me a look.

“Of course you did. Sorry.”

“The judge liked his porn,” she said. “No law against that. I think whoever took the computer recently will come up dry.”

After I explained what I was doing in her town, I had taken Deerly-Johnson around the house. We were waiting for some of her forensic people to come by and check for new fingerprints, but we both assumed that whoever had tossed the place probably wore gloves. On some surfaces where the recent intruders had obviously placed their hands on recently polished surfaces, there were no visible finger or palm prints.

“I wonder if they got what they came for?”

“What bothers me,” she said, “is the fact that whoever killed Elson did not search the place on the same night. Everything was basically in order when we went through the house after the murder. Left a bit of a mess ourselves, of course, but then we gave Evelyn Rogers permission to get a cleaning service in here and put everything back together.”

“You don’t think it was a normal burglary, either?”

“No. With Elson dead, someone wanted to remove something incriminating that was not related to his murder.”

This was one smart cop.

“And since your people searched the house and no other shoe dropped, they knew that if there was anything here it must be well hidden.”

Deerly-Johnson poured us both another cup of coffee.

“And they wanted to find it before you moved in,” she said. “At least that’s how I figure it.”

“How many people knew I’d be staying here?”

“Oh, a couple of million,” she said, smiling. “It’s a small town.”

“Wonderful.”

I told her about being tailed when I left town and gave her a description of the pickup.

“That explains the gun.”

“You didn’t seem too fazed by it.”

“Even the squirrels have guns in this county. I don’t suppose you got a license plate.”

“By the time I knew they were following me, they never got close enough for me to read one. I can’t even be sure there was a front plate. If I had to guess, I’d say there wasn’t one. What’s the law in Virginia?”

“Vehicles are required to have plates front and back, but not everyone follows the law. And certain vehicles, such as pickup trucks that work farms and don’t travel more than 20  miles from home don’t even need plates, though they must have titles. I’ll check on any around here that fit your description.”

“Long shot.”

“Very. And the truck might not be from Virginia. Or they might have removed the front plate just as a precaution.”

The Chief stood up.

“Have you checked the grounds?”

“No.”

“Come on.”

***

The rear yard included natural stone landscaping, flagstone pool deck with an outdoor cooking area, vine covered trellises, a stone patio and a gazebo. The pool was still full, but I suspected that it would soon be drained for the winter. We walked out to the stable area. Two horses came to the fence. They looked healthy and well-fed, but I still wished I had brought some carrots. We headed to a small hen house. Gunner chased a few chickens but then calmed down when an angry rooster came out to protect his harem.

“You would think a dog like that would make short work of that rooster,” Deerly-Johnson said.

“He’s a Byelorussian Ovcharka. Guy who gave him to me says the breed is basically fearless, thus has nothing to prove. I bet Gunner would stand between me and a rhino.”

“Gunner?”

“Long story.”

A path behind the hen house led past a small well into the surrounding woods. It was a beautiful piece of land.

“Judges must be well paid in these parts,” I said.

“I believe the Elsons had family money,” the chief said. She hesitated. “To start. The source of all Judge Elson’s more recent money is a bit murky. No one talks about it.”

“Ever feel tempted to find out?”

She didn’t take it badly.

“All the time. And not just his source of money. But the town council keeps us shorthanded and underfunded. I don’t have the resources to stir the pot.”

“Probably a reason they keep you on a short leash.”

“Sure. But in case you are wondering, I don’t think it’s a racial thing. My predecessors were white and underfunded. Small towns are small towns. They don’t work if everyone plays by the rules. I keep the streets safe, which is good for the tourists, and business in general.”

“That’s what Evelyn Rogers said. She thinks highly of you, by the way.”

“I’m not supposed to like lawyers, so don’t quote me, but Evelyn is one of the good ones.”

“I bet now that somebody rammed an ice pick in the judge and then tossed his house, maybe you’ll do some pot stirring.”

She turned to face me. She was an attractive woman, with sharp, intelligent eyes.

“I was kind of thinking that maybe you can stir things up.”

“I was wondering why you are being so nice to me, Chief. Usually, the local law hates PI’s and threatens to run them out of town on a rail.”

“Well, I may have to threaten you with that, just for show. I knew you were coming. Evelyn Rogers told me. So, I did a little research on you before you got here. Made a call or two. Apparently, you are a royal pain in the ass, but somehow gets results. I figure you can do some things that I can’t. Of course, if you get killed, I will pick up the slack.”

“Appreciate it.”

I liked Deerly-Johnson. We were standing by an old well at the rear of the property. I felt for a coin in my pocket. I didn’t have one.

“You don’t have any coins, do you Chief?”

“Who carries coins? Why?”

“Seems a waste of a well. I wanted to make a wish.”

“You are a strange dude, Rhode.”

We walked back to the house in silence and entered through a door that led to the den where Elson was killed.

“He was apparently watching that TV when he was attacked,” Deerly-Johnson said. “It was still on when we arrived.”

“Who found him?”

“Clyde Spivey, president of the Town Council, one of his golf buddies. He came by in the morning to pick the judge up for a game. It was opening day at Castlereigh.”

“Castlereigh?”

“Castlereigh Golf and Country Club. Ground zero for the local gentry. Elson and Spivey were part of a regular foursome, apparently, and Spivey and the others took turns driving the judge, who apparently always had one too many after they played. Anyway, the front door was open and Spivey walked right in, like he usually did. People around here don’t usually lock their doors, although they’ve become more cautious since the murder. Of course, this place has been locked up since it was vacant. Anyway, Clyde called out and got no answer. Heard the TV and came in here. Saw Elson in the chair. Thought he was drunk or asleep, or both, which wouldn’t have been a first. Then he went around to the front of the chair and freaked out. When I got here, Elson was sitting there dead, with the ice pick sticking out of his left eye, up to the hilt. Spivey was inhaling some of the judge’s bourbon. Can’t say I blame him. It was a gruesome sight.”

I walked over and looked at the chair and surrounding white-plush carpet. The cleaning people had done a good job and I said so.

“There wasn’t that much blood on the floor. It dripped down the ice pick and onto his lap, mainly. Pooled in the chair around his crotch. Ran all over the handle.”

“Hard to get prints.”

“Would have been tough, anyway. The handle was jade and engraved. All ridges and curls.”

“Killer probably got bloodied.”

“Yeah. But unfortunately no one walked into the station house all covered in blood and signed a confession.”

“I hate when that doesn’t happen, don’t you? What was the time of death?”

“Blaloch, our coroner, put it sometime between midnight and 1 AM.”

“Spivey a suspect?”

“I wish. He was home with his wife, asleep. I don’t think she likes him enough to lie about it.”

“I take it you are not his biggest fan.”

“Let’s just say that me and Clyde don’t see eye-to-eye on policing and leave it at that.”

No wonder she thought I may be useful. She probably has to kowtow to the local politicos all the time. Now I can take some of the heat. Well, it’s worth the trade-off. Sure beats the alternative of having an adversarial relationship with the local cops.

“Laurene Robillard says you don’t think she is involved.”

“Makes no sense. She has an airtight alibi and most hit men would use a gun, not an ice pick.”

“How did the killer get here.”

“We presume he, or she, drove. But it was raining, which compromised all the tire tracks we found. And those we were able to cast fit many different cars. If we get a suspect we may be able to say he, or she, drove that kind of car, but, so what?”

“You keep saying ‘she’.”

“The judge liked the ladies. Can’t rule them out. And an ice pick suggests a crime of passion or opportunity. He was killed sitting in his chair, with his own ice pick. He didn’t put up a struggle.”

“Maybe he was asleep.”

“Could be. The ice pick went into an open eye. The eyelid was intact. But that doesn’t prove anything. He might have sensed something and opened his eyes.”

“You believe that?”

“No. I think Elson knew his killer. But everybody we even remotely suspected, hell, anyone who even knew him, alibied out. I eliminated so many people that I thought I might have done it.”

“You didn’t do it, did you?”

“Almost wish I had, if only to clear the case. But even I had a great alibi.”

I laughed.

“If you don’t mind me saying it, Chief, you don’t come across as some hick small-town cop.”

“I was an MP in the Army and also went to the F.B.I. Academy on an exchange program.” She smiled. “And I watch a lot of C.S.I. and N.C.I.S.”

“My office manager is a former MP. She sometimes runs rings around me.”

We heard some cars pull up in front.

“My forensic team, such as it is,” Deerly-Johnson said.

“They won’t find anything,” I said.

“I know. But I want to supervise and tell them what a royal pain in the ass you are and how I reamed you out. Don’t take it personal. I think you should stay out here until they’ve finished. When we leave you probably should call that cleaning service and put this place back together.”

***

After the police forensic team left, I called Laurene and told her about the break-in. I didn’t tell her about the pickup truck that had followed me.

“And you don’t think it was regular run-of-the-mill burglars, or maybe kids?”

“Not a chance. They were looking for something. But I don’t think they found it.”

“Why?”

“A hunch. They did the whole house. Unless they found it in the last place they looked, that probably means they didn’t get what they were looking for.”

“Maybe there was more than one thing.”

“And maybe they had 15 guys looking simultaneously. I like my theory better. Any ideas about what they were after?”

“I can’t imagine. But on TV the cops always say there are no coincidences. This has to be related to my grandfather’s murder.”

“The ‘no coincidences’ thing is a cliché, although I don’t like them either.

“Like cops and donuts are a cliché?”

“I do like donuts. But, yes. Like that. I don’t think the break-in was a coincidence, But I’m not sure the murder was committed by the same person or persons who broke into the house. It’s just as likely that your grandfather’s death merely precipitated the burglary.”

“I thought Atlas was a nice, quiet Southern town.”

“Still waters and all that.”

There was a long pause.

“I don’t want you getting hurt. Maybe we should let the police do their job.”

I was glad I didn’t mention the pickup truck.

“I haven’t earned my fee yet.”

“I don’t give a damn about the money! I don’t want a fucking refund. I’m just worried about you.”

I laughed.

“Laurene, given our past relationship, I have to say you may be the strangest client I’ve ever had. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I could fire you.”

“I want two weeks’ notice.”

Now she was laughing.

“Please be careful.”

“It’s my middle name.”

“I thought it was Bartholomew.”

I momentarily drew a blank. Then it hit me.

“You remembered.”

“Not really. You must have told Ellen the story, later.” She chuckled. “Pillow talk. Before everything went to hell. Anyway, will you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“Look in on my Mom in the nursing home. I think she’s getting good care, but the guy who runs the joint gives me the creeps. Besides, this burglary thing is freaking me out.”

“I’ll go there tomorrow. I want to get some people in here to clean up the place.”

We rang off, but not until I re-promised to be “extra, extra” careful. As if I wouldn’t be on my guard, living in a recently burgled house where a man was ice-picked to death in a town where I was tailed just as soon as I arrived. Despite what I’d told Laurene, I began to wonder if I was underpaid.

Next I called Evelyn Rogers, told her about the break-in and asked her to arrange for a cleaning service as soon as possible. She said she’d get right back to me, and she did.

“They will be there at 9 AM. I’m also sending out a locksmith, to replace all the locks. He’ll give you a new set of keys. Do you think we should get an alarm company in as well?”

“I think you may be overreacting, Evelyn.”

“Someone rammed an ice pick in Judge Elson’s eye and just broke into the house, for God’s sake.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for whoever did it.”

“Not funny, Mr. Rhode.”

“Listen. Locks and alarm systems won’t keep anyone out. Besides, I don’t think anyone is coming back. And if they do, I have a dog that barks when he hears a leaf fall and I carry a gun. After I leave town you can ring the place with Claymore mines for all I care. Maybe it will help the resale value. But for now, new locks are just fine.”

***

Back home, I have a cleaning lady come in every two weeks. Whenever Alice stays at my house, she bustles about tidying up before the cleaning lady gets there. It drives me crazy.

“This way, she can concentrate on the really hard stuff,” Alice explained. “Besides, she is a nice old lady and this is a big house.”

My cleaning lady is indeed long in the tooth, but she has the stamina and health of a Gurkha guide on Mount Everest. I pay her well and she likes to work. She once removed the glass front of my fireplace to clean it, swept out the entire hearth and had a roaring blaze ready for me when I got home. I explained all this to Alice, who listened politely and  then put me to work dusting the chandeliers before the cleaning lady arrived.

Thank God Alice isn’t here yet, I said to myself as I opened the door to Judge Elson’s liquor cabinet in his den and surveyed his stunning bourbon collection. Then I sighed deeply and and closed the door. I changed into some work clothes, opened a beer, made a quick sandwich with cold cuts I’d bought, fed Gunner, and then went about the house doing some pre-cleaning service cleanup.

Alice had trained me well.

CHAPTER 11 - BEATRICE

I was up at first light, roaming the house to see if I could spot any hiding places the intruders might have missed in their search. It was a big house, and a cursory search was  thus a waste of time. But I did manage to work up an appetite. So I made a pot of coffee, fried some country ham and scrambled some eggs that I’d collected from the hen house out back, keeping an eye out for the feisty rooster. If anything tastes better than fresh farm eggs, I’ve yet to find it. I mixed some of my breakfast in with Gunner’s dog food. He was delighted.

“Whatever you do, don’t kill those hens,” I said.

Gunner looked at me, his snout yellow with yolk.

The cleaning crew arrived punctually at 9 AM. When I let them in, their boss looked at me suspiciously and said, “We were just here last week.”

“I hope you do a better job,” I said.

I probably could have been more tactful.

About two hours later, while I was up in Elson’s office going through some of his papers, I heard Gunner barking wildly. It was his “Alice is here” happy bark. I looked out the window to see him running in circles around her white Volvo. By the time I got downstairs, she was putting some bottles of wine on the island in the kitchen.

“There is a man changing locks and some people are cleaning the place like an Ebola ward,” Alice said. “Did you invite some dancing girls over for a party or something?”

“I thought I did a pretty good job of fixing the joint up after the burglary,” I said, wrapping my arms around her. “But I think I may have insulted the cleaners.”

We kissed long and hard, no mean accomplishment with a big, enthusiastic dog trying to join the act. Finally, we broke apart and she looked at me.

“Burglary?”

***

The Heartland Nursing Home was on Doswell Road, a short drive from the Elson spread. I pulled Alice’s Volvo into the parking lot in front of the two-story, all-brick facility. I was hopeful that the change of vehicles might fool whoever had tailed me, if they still wanted to do it. I checked the rear-view mirror several times. No one followed us.

“This is so exciting,” Alice said. “Going out with you on a real case.”

I’d told Alice everything that had happened.

“We’re only visiting someone in a nursing home,” I said. “This isn’t part of the case.”

“Is that why you switched cars?”

Not too much got past Alice.

“Better safe than sorry.”

“Are you sure Gunner will be all right?”

“He and that kid hit it off, and we’ll be back long before all the chores are done.”

The high school boy that Evelyn Rogers hired to keep up the farm had arrived right after the locksmith gave me a new set of keys. The boy, Lucas Browne, was, like most country kids, comfortable around dogs and soon had Gunner following him around.

At the front nurses’ station I asked to see Laurene’s mother, Beatrice Elson. The nurse on duty wanted to know who I was and if I was on the approved list. I told her my name, and said that the woman’s daughter, Laurene Robillard, had called to get me on a visitors’ list. The nurse tapped a keyboard on her computer.

“Yes, Mr. Rhode. You’re on the list. Miss Beatrice is in room 226. You can take the elevator over there. Her room will be to the right as you exit the elevator.”

I thanked her and we started to walk away. Then I turned back.

“Excuse me. But in most nursing homes I’ve been to, there are no approved lists. Visitors are encouraged to drop by.”

“Yes, I know. This is the first place I’ve worked where we had to check people. Mr. Gruber runs a very tight ship.”

“Mr. Gruber?”

“Malcolm Gruber owns Heartland. In fact, he owns all the nursing homes around here.”

“How many?”

“Three.”

“Do they all have an ‘approved list’?”

“I don’t know.”

On the way to Beatrice Elson’s room, Alice asked, “What was all that about lists?”

“Probably nothing. Laurene said the guy who ran this place was creepy. I don’t know if she meant Gruber or just some supervisor. But it’s kind of strange that they restrict access. People in nursing homes are usually lonely enough.”

“It’s a crazy world out there, Alt. Maybe they are just being careful. This certainly looks like a nice facility.”

That was true. The Heartland Nursing Home appeared to be state-of-the-art. Everything looked clean, and even the typical nursing home odors, a mixture of medicinal and I-didn’t-want-to-know smells, were muted. The staff we encountered seemed friendly, efficient and helpful. We passed a recreation room where several patients in wheelchairs were watching television. We paused. It was The Maury Povich Show.

“I take it back,” Alice said. “They apparently torture people here.”

Beatrice Elson had a private, sunlit room that looked out over a well-manicured rear lawn that sloped into the woods beyond. She was sitting in a chair next to her bed, also watching a show on a large flat-screen TV sitting atop a six-drawer, Dark Cherry dresser that must have come from her home since most of the furniture we saw when passing other rooms appeared to be institutional.

I knocked on the door jamb.

“Miss Elson?”

She turned her head at the sound of my voice.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” I said as we approached her. “Your daughter, Laurene, asked me to look in on you.”

Beatrice Elson smiled. It was a lovely smile. She was a thin, attractive woman with startling white hair that made her look older than I knew she was. There was a fragility about her. The smile evaporated and she turned back to her show, as if we weren’t even there. I looked at the screen. She was watching a black-and-white movie starring Spencer Tracy. I stepped in front of the TV.

“Is this a bad time, ma’am? I can come back later.”

No response.

“Alton, let me try.”

Alice bent down in front of the woman.

“Hello, Beatrice. My name is Alice. We are friends of your daughter. Is there anything we can get you?”

Beatrice Elson smiled again and lifted a hand to Alice’s face, which she brushed gently.

“There isn’t anything you can get her,” a voice behind me said. “We see to all her needs. I’d like a word with the both of you. Come with me, at once!”

I turned to see a small, rather rotund man with a short handlebar mustache standing officiously in the door. He was wearing a white suit, light blue shirt and a pink polka dot tie that was too short. I didn’t like his tone.

“And who are you?”

“Malcolm Gruber. This is my nursing home.”

“Well, pal, they shouldn’t have let you out of your room, especially dressed like that. I’ll get a nurse to take you back. It must be near lunchtime. Wouldn’t want you to miss your chicken and gravy.”

I heard Alice stifle a laugh behind me. Gruber started to sputter.

“I’m not a patient! I’m the Director!”

“That’s what they all say.”

I felt Alice grab my arm.

“Alton, why don’t we all go in the hallway.”

***

When Gruber calmed down, he led us to a small, unoccupied room.

“What is your interest in Miss Elson?”

“Her daughter asked us to stop by and see her,” I said.

“The Robillard woman?”

“Yes.”

“There is some doubt as to just who she is. I believe the courts have yet to make a determination. So, I’m not sure you have any standing here.”

“I need ‘standing’ to visit a woman in a nursing home? What is this place, a C.I.A. hospice?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. But we have to take precautions. Beatrice is Judge Elson’s daughter and he was murdered. The Robillard woman shows up and claims to be his granddaughter. There is a lot of money at stake.” He caught himself. “And, of course, there is Beatrice’s mental health to consider. As you may have noticed, she doesn’t speak and is quite ill, psychologically.”

“Are you a doctor, Mr. Gruber?” Alice asked.

“Well, no.”

“A lawyer, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Have you been instructed by the courts to restrict access to Miss Elson?”

“Not in so many words. But I know the matter has not been finally adjudicated.”

“So, you are siding with the people who are fighting Laurene Robillard for control of her mother’s affairs.”

Alice had him. But he tried again.

“I’m not sure of the relationship.”

“Judge Elson brought Laurene here to visit Beatrice,” I said. “And said she was Beatrice’s daughter, didn’t he?”

“I just want to be careful,” Gruber said, lamely.

“Of course you do,” I said. “And we appreciate that. So, what can you tell us about her condition?”

Gruber smirked.

“I’m not a doctor. Now, I’m a busy man. I have an important business meeting. Please try not to tire out Miss Elson.”

He strode from the room. We went back to see Beatrice. All we got for our trouble was some more smiles and blank stares. We finally left when an orderly came by to take her to lunch. We watched them walk away.

“That poor woman,” Alice said.

“Come on, I want to stop by the front desk.”

The same nurse we originally spoke to was still at her station downstairs.

“Can I help you?”

“You called Gruber and told him we were here to see Beatrice Elson?”

I took her by surprise. For all she knew, Gruber had told me that.

“Yes. We have standing orders to notify Mr. Gruber when anyone visits Miss Elson.”

“Does such an order apply to any other residents here?”

She hesitated. I took out my wallet and quickly flashed the N.Y.P.D. “consultant” credentials my pals on the Staten Island District Attorney’s office gave me. They help me get guns on planes and there are some other perks, but they carry absolutely no real legal weight. But they look formidable.

“I’m investigating Judge Elson’s murder. I don’t want to have to subpoena you.”

“She’s the only one.”

“Keep this to yourself,” I said.

Out in the parking lot, Alice said, “I didn’t know you could subpoena someone.”

“I can’t subpoena a squirrel. But she didn’t know that.’

“What did you make of Gruber?”

“Laurene said he was creepy. I think he may be more than that.”

“What now?”

I looked at my watch.

“Lunch. All that talk about chicken and gravy made me hungry. Let’s see if we can find a decent restaurant in town.”

“You had better not order Jell-O.”

CHAPTER 12 - THREESOME

On the way into town I called Evelyn Rogers.

“Sorry to bother you on a weekend, but do you know how I can get in touch with Clyde Spivey, the guy who found Elson’s body? I presume there is no Town Council meeting on Saturday.”

She had both his home and cell numbers.

“And, more crucially, got any recommendations for a decent place to have lunch?”

“There’s a good French bistro on main Street.”

I reserved judgment, but took directions. On the way there I called Spivey’s cell phone and got a recording. Next, I tried his home, and got his wife, explaining that I’d already tried his cell.

“He’s not here,” she said, shortly.

“When will he return?”

“Who knows? He’s playing golf at the club with his pals. He always turns his cell off on the course. I can never reach him, either.”

From her tone, I suspected she was probably the reason he turned off the phone.

“He’s at Castlereigh?”

“Yes.”

“Still plays in the same foursome?”

“It’s a threesome now. They haven’t replaced Judge Elson. Don’t know if they ever will. You a friend of Clyde’s?”

“Sure am. Thank you, ma’am.”

“If you see him, remind him he has a home.”

She hung up abruptly. I looked at Alice.

“Golf widow.”

I had Alice look up the phone number for Castlereigh Golf and Country Club and she dialed it for me. I spoke to someone in the pro shop and found out that Clyde Spivey had a 1 PM tee time. A minute later we pulled into a small parking lot next to the restaurant, a place called Chez Louis. The bistro was small and crowded and we had to wait 10 minutes for a table. I didn’t mind. A bustling restaurant is usually a good sign. When we were finally seated, I ordered a bottle of Bordeaux. I opted for steak-frites; Alice had a croque monsieur.

“Alton, What do you think is going on in this town?”

We were on our first glass of wine, waiting for our entrees.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a prominent judge is brutally murdered. Months later his house is torn apart. His daughter is confined, basically helpless, in an institution run by a creep who keeps close tabs on who she sees. It’s like a bad Patterson novel.”

“Is there any other kind? Not that he writes them himself any more.”

“You know what I mean. Something stinks in Denmark.”

“I agree, although this restaurant smells pretty damn good. You know, I always get horny in a French restaurant.”

“You get horny at a Taco Bell drive-through window.”

Our lunch came. We started eating. Evelyn Rogers had picked a winner.

“So, what now?”

“After we eat, I’ll drop you back at Elson’s place. Then I’m going to that golf club to speak to Spivey. He should be off the course around 4, and from what his wife said probably head to the bar.”

“What do you hope to get from him?”

“Who knows? But if he was in Elson’s regular foursome he might know something. And he’ll probably be in his cups, so he might also be indiscreet. Gives me a chance to talk to the others who played with Elson. I’m flying blind now, so I don’t think it can hurt.”

We finished our meal and ordered coffee. The waiter handed us dessert menus.

“Do you want to share something, Alice?”

“Only if you want to,” she said.

We go through the same routine with just about every meal we eat out. Alice wants a dessert, but won’t make the first overture. I have to make believe it’s my idea. Then I act magnanimous and insist that she pick it out. Thus, she orders the dessert she first set her eyes on.

“I think the peche melba would be delightful,” she said to the hovering waiter. “Two spoons, please.”

***

It was too early to head to the country club, so when we got back to the Elson place I went inside with Alice. I looked out the window of the living room and could see Lucas and Gunner in the stable area. The boy was doing something with a rake and the dog was keeping him company. Alice came up next to me and put her arm around my waist.

“Peche melbas make me horny,” she said. Her voice was husky. “Do we have time for a quickie?”

“Probably two.”

“Braggart.”

I started leading Alice to the bedroom. She stopped me.

“No. It’s a quickie, so let’s do it right here. Undress below your waist and sit in the chair. I want to be able to see Lucas. I don’t want him walking in on us.”

That’s the type of suggestion I don’t have to be told twice. Alice also partially undressed and straddled me. It was indeed quick, but totally satisfying for the both of us. When Alice’s eyes finally came back into focus she looked out the window.

“Oh, my God! They’re back!” I tried to get up but she held me down and started laughing. “I’m only kidding.”

Alice can be perverse that way, especially when making love. And I normally have nothing against a little perversity when sex is involved.

“You had me going there, kid,” I said.

She started moving her hips again and pulled my head toward one of her nipples..

“I think I’ll keep you going. But not so quick this time.”

“You want a slowie?”

But she wasn’t listening to me any more. And soon I wasn’t listening to me, either.

***

Alice and I showered and changed our clothes. She had moved into the small guest room I’d been using. It was a bit cramped and I suggested that perhaps we could switch to one of the larger bedrooms, which had a king size bed.

“This is fine,” she said. “I like being close to you.”

I pointed out that there wouldn’t be much room for Gunner.

“That too,” she added.

When I came out of the bedroom, I found Alice in the den holding a silver picture frame. In it was a photo of Beatrice Elson. The frame was engraved with the words “Sweet Sixteen”.

“What a beautiful girl, Alton.”

“Yes, it’s a wonderful picture.”

The young Beatrice was wearing a red dress and looking at the camera. With long dark hair, blue eyes and come-hither look, she was a perfect combination of innocence and burgeoning sexual power.

“The resemblance to her daughter, Laurene, is striking,” I said.

“It’s so sad,” Alice said. “The girl in this picture had her whole life ahead of her. And not that many years later she’s in a nursing home. I wonder what happened.”

“Life. She had Laurene when she was 18 and she apparently went mentally downhill shortly after that. She was never the same and a few years later her parents placed her in a nursing home. She has been there ever since. Virtually catatonic.”

“Wasn’t there a more suitable facility?”

“Laurene told me the Elsons were big deals around here and the Judge wanted her close, so he could visit. He apparently doted on her, especially after his wife died. And now he’s gone. It’s hard to believe that her daughter, who started out with virtually nothing and had everything go against her, turned out so well and is her mother’s only real hope.”

“You are fond of Laurene, aren’t you.”

“She wants me to give her away at her wedding.”

Alice put down the photo and kissed me.

“And to think, she almost got you killed once.”

“Grudges are for suckers.”

It was still warm out and Alice had opted for white shorts and a light blue polo shirt. It was an outfit that accentuated her summer tan and long legs. I had put on tan slacks, a blue Brooks Brother sports coat, a white shirt and a yellow polka dot tie. I was heading to a country club, and figured I was spiffy enough to get past the door. I would also take my gun, just in case.

Before I left, Alice asked Lucas to show her around the property. He stammered a yes. He was a very nice kid, and obviously a little nervous being around so beautiful a woman. Eat your heart out, kid.

Lucas had tried to give me directions to the Castlereigh Golf and Country Club, but after the third time he told me to make a right “by a big oak tree” or some such rural nonsense, I decided to look up the address and use my GPS. I made a few adjustments to make sure I was not tailed, which again gave the GPS fits. But I was soon driving, untailed, through rolling country that reminded me a little of golf courses I’d played in northern New Jersey near the Delaware Water Gap. As I drove onto the property at Castlereigh, I could see golfers on both sides of the road. The fairways looked perfect and, as usual, I wished I was playing. I always feel that way when passing a golf course. It’s the same when I see someone fishing on a lake or a stream as I drive by. I wish I had a rod with me. I sighed. At least I had Alice on this trip for a couple of days.

I parked outside the main clubhouse and had no trouble finding the bar where golfers congregated after a round to lie about their game. I grabbed a waiter, who pointed me toward Clyde Spivey’s table by a window overlooking the 18th green.

“Which one is Spivey?”

“The one facing us, wearing glasses.”

I walked over. Spivey was sitting with two other men. They were all drinking beer. I didn’t recognize one of the men with Spivey.

But I knew the other, and smiled. It was Malcolm Gruber. He must have come straight from the nursing home to play golf. So much for his “important business meeting”. He smiled and looked up, trying to place me. Then the smile disappeared.

“Hello, Malcolm, old boy, nice to see you again.”

The other two men also smiled at me. If I was a friend of Malcolm’s, I was probably all right, especially looking and sounding as country clubbish as I did.

“What the fuck do you want?” Malcolm snarled.

So much for club decorum. Now, I was the only one smiling. Without being asked, I sat down. There was a small bowl of honey roasted nuts on the table. I love them, so I grabbed a handful and signaled a waiter.

“Bring another round, will you? I’ll have a Jameson on the rocks. Actually, one rock.” I smiled at the other three at the table. “More ice would be a travesty when drinking Irish whiskey, don’t you think?”

“You’re not a member,” Gruber said. Rather uncharitably I thought.

“But you are, Malc. If Southern hospitality isn’t enough of a reason to buy a guest a drink, then just look at it as penance for lying to me about your busy day back at the nursing home.”

His golf partners looked stunned. I was proud of myself. I thought it was one of my better entrances.

“My name is Alton Rhode. I’m a private investigator looking into the death of your friend, Colver Elson. I came to see Clyde but thought this might be a good chance to talk to all of you at once. I didn’t know Malc here was one of the late Judge Elson’s foursome.”

I put out my hand to the man whose name I didn’t know.

“Who are you?”

It’s hard not to introduce yourself when someone sticks a hand out. He took mine and gave it a perfunctory shake. His hand was moist. Maybe from his beer glass. Maybe from something else.

“Alvin Blaloch,” he said shortly.

“Blaloch? You wouldn’t be the local coroner, would you?’

“That’s my part-time position,” he said.

“What’s your full-time job?”

“Funeral director.”

Our drinks came. I took a sip of mine. The Jameson didn’t disappoint.

“I thought you were just a friend of the woman who claims to be Colver’s granddaughter,” Gruber said. “You misrepresented yourself to me.”

I knew he was lying. Ever since being followed by the pickup truck, I was pretty sure everyone in town knew who I was and what I was doing. But I decided to play along.

“You didn’t stick around long enough for me to explain myself,” I said. “Not that I begrudge you a round of golf on a nice day like this. Life is too short. Which brings me back to Judge Elson. Any of you have an idea about who stuck an ice pick in his eye?”

“We already told the police everything we know,” Gruber said.

I ignored him.

“Mr. Blaloch, it must have been tough on you to autopsy a friend.”

“Of course. But I had a job to do.”

“I don’t suppose there was any doubt as to the cause of death.”

“None, whatsoever.”

“Mr. Spivey, it must have been a shock finding the body.”

“To say the least.”

“The three of you all seem to be a good deal younger than the judge. He must have been a good golfer to keep up.”

“The handicap system evens things up,” Blaloch said. “And the old bastard could putt lights out.”

“You better believe it,” Spivey said. “He sure scored better than his handicap.”

No matter what the circumstances, golfers love to talk golf and bitch about other players. From their tone, I’d bet Elson had won some money from his “buddies” with his putter.

“I think you have taken up enough of our time, Rhode.”

Gruber again. I liked ignoring him, so I continued doing it.

“What kind of man was Judge Elson?”

“Colver was a fine man,” Spivey said. “An upstanding citizen and a credit to the community. His death was a great tragedy. We lost a good friend.”

The others, even Gruber, nodded in agreement at the rote-like platitudes.

“Well, someone obviously didn’t think so,” I said.

“A lunatic,” Blaloch said. “Perhaps a criminal he sent to jail in the past.”

“Yes, it was probably some nut,” Spivey added.

“I don’t know,” I said. “An ice pick in the eye seems kind of personal. I understand the judge was something of a ladies’ man.”

“What are you implying?” Gruber said.

“Nothing. But apparently Elson didn’t struggle. That might indicate he knew his killer. Perhaps someone he was close to. Someone who used the judge’s own ice pick.”

“I believe the police have looked into everyone Colver knew, intimately or otherwise,” Gruber said.

“And checked alibis,” Spivey said.

“Including all of yours, I presume,” I said.

“You are out of line,” Gruber thundered, drawing some looks from nearby tables.

“Oh, I don’t know. Where I come from, handicap inflation is cause for murder.”

“It was probably a burglar,” Blaloch said in a strangled voice.

“No, it wasn’t,” I said. “There was no forced break-in, until a couple of days ago, I mean.”

My remark should have generated an immediate reaction from the men. Instead, I caught a momentary eye shift from all of them, before Gruber said, “I don’t understand.”

“Yes, what are you talking about?” Blaloch chimed in, another beat too late.

I was convinced that all of them knew about the break-in. Of course, it was possible that they learned of it through the small-town grapevine, from cops, the forensic crew, the cleaners who put the place back together or the locksmith, to name a few. But I didn’t think so. The communal eye shift gave them away. And if they knew about the break-in, they might know something about the murder.

“Somebody went through the place and tore it up pretty thoroughly. And it wasn’t a burglary this time, either. Nothing of value seems to be missing. I think they were looking for something.” I paused. “But I don’t think they found it.”

All three were now sitting rigidly. I smiled.

“Not to worry. If it’s in the house, I’ll find it.”

I wasn’t sure I would, of course. But I could see fear on their faces. Which was why I said it.

“Well, thanks for the drink, fellas. I have to run along.”

As I walked out of the club, I wondered what Chief Deerly-Johnson would think of my pot-stirring.

CHAPTER 13 - HUNTING SEASON

The next morning I put on some coffee and again went out to the hen house on Elson’s property. The hens had come through once more and I collected a half dozen speckled brown eggs. On the way back I passed Lucas, who was carrying a toolbox.

“What are you doing here, Lucas? It’s Sunday.”

He bent down to pet Gunner.

“I can’t come for a while, Mr. Rhode. I have basketball practice all week. I want to get the well fixed.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“I guess it hasn’t been used since the judge died,” he said. “The winch is kind of rusted and I’m having trouble raising the bucket. I don’t want to break anything. The well has to be cleaned out before winter sets in.”

“Well, first come in to the house and have some bacon and eggs.”

“I appreciate it, but my mom made me a nice breakfast after 7 o’clock Mass.”

He headed to the well. Until running into Lucas, I had felt fairly industrious and countrified about my jaunt to the hen house.

“Let’s go, Gunner. The damn kid was probably milking cows while I was asleep.”

The smell of frying bacon and fresh-baked biscuits brought Alice to the kitchen. She was barefoot and freshly scrubbed, wearing shorts and one of my shirts.

“Ah, the country life,” she said, and opened a window. “I could get used to this.”

I poured her a cup of coffee and then cracked four eggs in some butter in the pan.

“Good Lord, Alton. I’ve never seen yolks so yellow. Is that what real farm eggs look like?”

“Wait until you taste them, kiddo.”

“So, what’s your plan, now,” Alice said as I ladled out the food. “Do you really think your trip to the country club yesterday will pay dividends?”

“I don’t know. I think I struck some nerves, but I might be overreacting. Maybe Gruber and the others have nothing to do with anything. Even without alibis, they would be pretty low on any suspect list. And they have alibis for the murder. And no one needs an alibi for the break-in, since we don’t know exactly when it happened. Tomorrow, I’ll go over the case files with Deerly-Johnson and see if I can spot anything she missed, which is unlikely. She’s a pretty sharp cop.”

“Unusual name.”

“Yes, I asked her about that. The Deerly is English and was the name of the last slave owner who bought her ancestor from a Louisiana owner. The Johnson is Swedish.”

“And now she’s Chief of Police in Atlas, Virginia. There’s justice in that. But if you don’t find anything new, what then?”

“I’ll keep annoying people and hope something happens. Maybe I’ll spot another tail, although that might not mean much. It may have nothing to do with Elson’s murder and is only related to the fight over his estate.”

“You don’t sound very hopeful.”

“That’s because I’m not. My coming down here to solve a murder that happened months ago was always a long shot. I told Laurene that.”

There was a knock on the door. It was Lucas. He smiled at Alice and his eyes drifted toward the opening in the shirt she was wearing before he glanced away quickly. I didn’t mind. I was a teen-age boy once myself, a million years ago.

“Are you sure you won’t have something to eat?”

“No, thanks, Mr. Rhode. I was wondering if you might run me into town to pick up some solvent and grease.”

“Where’s your car?”

“In the shop. My Mom dropped me off. But I can wait until you finish your breakfast.”

“No need.”

I walked over to the counter and flipped him my car keys.

“Take the Santa Fe. And would you mind putting some gas in it for me.”

“Not a problem.”

I gave him some cash.

“Do you need money for the other stuff?”

“Nah. I run a tab and the lawyer lady pays it at the end of the month.”

“Do you think the whole windlass has to be replaced?”

“I hope not.”

“What’s a windlass?” Alice asked.

“It’s a kind of crank,” I said.

Alice smiled at me.

“You mean you’re not the only one here?”

Lucas laughed.

“You are very industrious, Lucas,” Alice said.

“Thank you, ma’am. It’s about the only job I haven’t gotten to around here. Judge Elson told me not to fret about the well whenever I mentioned cleaning it out. Said I had more important work to do.” He paused. “Those biscuits sure look good. Mind if I take one for the road?”

Alice gave him two. Gunner followed the boy to the door. They’d gotten close.

“Can I take him with me? He’ll be OK.”

“Sure,” I said. “But you better grab some more biscuits. He loves them.”

Alice gave him two more and he and Gunner set off.

“What a nice kid,” Alice said.

“Yeah, he is. Even if he only left me with two biscuits.”

***

We had just started cleaning up when I heard a small boom in the distance.

Alice looked at me.

“It’s hunting season,” I said. “Deer.”

We’d been hearing shots all weekend. There was another boom.

“I never understood the fascination with hunting,” Alice said. “It seems so unfair. They are such beautiful creatures.”

“Don’t go Bambi on me, Alice. There are more deer in this country than there were when the Pilgrims landed. In some states in the East they are called farm rats, for all the damage they do to crops and gardens. And they can be a menace on the highways. Hunting is a rite of passage, especially in the South, and while I’m not particularly enamored of the culture, hunters probably provide a needed service.”

“That’s a rationalization, and you know it. I could give you a dozen reasons why hunting is wrong.”

“You’re a philosophy professor, Alice. You could give me a dozen reasons why the world is a rhombus.”

“Pshaw!”

“Pshaw? Is that how they speak at Bryn Mawr?”

“The Bryn Mawr pshaw is a lot classier than ‘bucker and fucker’.”

I poured myself another cup of coffee while I tried to come up with an appropriate retort. Before I could, I heard Gunner barking at the door.

“That was quick,” Alice said. “I thought they’d be gone longer than that.”

I didn’t recall hearing a car pull up. She went to let them in.

“Alton! Oh, my God!”

I ran to the front door. Alice was cradling Gunner in her arms. There were red specks on his coat. Some of his blood was now on her arms. There was no sign of Lucas or my car. I knelt down next to them and spread the dog’s fur apart. There were shards of glass embedded in it. Then I spotted the small round holes.

“He’s been shot. Looks like buckshot. Take him inside and call the cops. And a vet.”

“Where’s Lucas?”

I didn’t answer her. I ran back inside and grabbed my holster and gun from the back of the chair on which I’d been sitting. Alice’s car keys were also on the counter and I took them. She was gently leading Gunner into the house.

“Lock the doors. Wait for the cops.”

I jumped in the car and roared down Chandler Lane. I didn’t have to go far. I was halfway to Clayton Turnpike when I spotted my Hyundai off to the side in a ditch up against a tree that stopped its progress. There were no other cars. I got out and ran to the side of the Hyundai, immediately noting that both the windows on its left side had been shattered. I had a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach. I recalled the booms.

Both front airbags had deployed and Lucas was face down in the one that exploded out from the steering wheel. The air bag was bloodied, and I knew that wasn’t the result of the impact with the tree, which appeared minor. I opened the door and gently pulled back on the boy’s collar. The front of his face was almost completely gone. He was dead.

Lucas had taken the full blast of a shotgun, at close range. From his wounds, I surmised that he probably turned toward the shooter, perhaps out of curiosity. Gunner had almost surely been in the passenger seat and been hit by flying glass and a few pellets. The window on his side was open. He probably had his head out enjoying the ride when the attack occurred. After the car hit the tree, he probably jumped out through the window to escape. The two shots I’d heard explained the shattering of the rear passenger window. I wondered if the killer had been on foot or in a passing car or pickup truck. I didn’t wonder who the target was. With my car’s window up, the shooter would have assumed I was driving. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced the killer was in a vehicle. Even wounded, Gunner would have gone after an attacker on foot. And probably would be lying dead in the road. A passing car — or pickup truck — made more sense. Gunner might have chased a vehicle but not for long. He’s have returned to Lucas. And then headed back to me.

I heard a siren approaching. A minute later, an Atlas police cruiser slid to a stop next to the Santa Fe. A young cop got out and nervously pointed his gun at me. I realized that he saw my own weapon.

“On your knees, now! Hands behind your head.”

It was a dangerous situation. I assumed he could see the dead boy, the blood and the broken windows. And he had no easy way to disarm me. People have been shot with less reason. I did as he asked.

“Call your chief. Deerly-Johnson. My name is Rhode. She’ll vouch for me.”

“Shut up! Reach down with your left hand and take your gun out of the holster and fling it off to the side. Then lie face down. Make a sudden move and I’ll shoot you.”

This was a good cop. For all he knew, I got his chief’s name off the Internet. So, again, I did what he asked. I was saved from putting my face in the dirt with the arrival of another police car. Deerly-Johnson got out.

“It’s OK, Richie,” she said. “I know him.”

The young cop looked dubious, but he holstered his weapon.

Deerly-Johnson walked over to my car and looked in.

“Jesus Christ!”

CHAPTER 14 - AFTERMATH

I spent the rest of the day at the Atlas Police Department. Chief Deerly-Johnson made it abundantly clear she wished I’d never arrived in her town.

“But I don’t suppose you will leave now,” she said.

Outside her office window, the sun was just above the horizon. I was anxious to get back to the farm. Alice, with a police escort, had taken Gunner to a local veterinarian to be patched up and had called to say that both she and the dog were fine. The same young cop who had put me on the ground when I’d found Lucas was staying with her until I showed up.

I told Deerly-Johnson about my visit to the country club.

“I’m going to stick around,” I said. “Somebody doesn’t want me here, and it’s not because they believe I can do a better job than you solving Elson’s murder.”

“Although you probably do,” Deerly-Johnson said, dryly.

I shrugged.

“Not important. What is important is the fact that someone broke into the judge’s house just before I got there, and then tried to kill me today.”

“You are assuming it’s the same person or persons.”

“Yes, and so do you.”

She nodded.

“And I’ll tell you something else I’m assuming. Spivey, Blaloch or Gruber have something to do with this, because Lucas was killed after I bragged to them that I would find whatever the burglars missed.”

“That doesn’t mean they were involved. They might have told someone what you said. There are no secrets in country clubs. You aren’t the only one who runs off his mouth.”

I didn’t appreciate the rebuke.

“Do I have to remind you, Chief, that you wanted me to stir things up?”

“I didn’t want you to get a 17-year-old kid killed!” I think she was startled by her own anger. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure you feel as shitty about Lucas Browne as I do.”

“Not possible,” I said.

“Sure. You realize they are probably going to try again.”

“Forewarned is forearmed.”

“What about your lady friend? She’s also in harm’s way now. ”

“Not for long. She was due to leave anyway. I’ll just speed it up. I appreciate you putting a guard on her. He’s a good cop.”

“Melore’s my best,” she said. “But I’m glad she’s leaving.”

Deerly-Johnson didn’t look happy.

“You suspect three of the most prominent men in this town, including the President of the Town Council, who just happens to be my boss.”

“Like you said, maybe they only ran their mouths off. But I’m pretty good at reading people. They know something.”

***

My Santa Fe was part of a crime scene investigation, so I made a call from the police station to a rental car agency in town. They didn’t have anything with bullet-proof glass or side-mounted machine guns, so I settled for what I hoped was an inconspicuous Toyota Corolla. As a favor to Deerly-Johnson, the agency said it would have someone drop the car off at the station.

“I don’t know when we can release your car,” she said.

“I’m not sure I even want it back.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Still, I know a good body shop. Want me to send it there to get cleaned up? You will need new glass, too.”

I took her up on the offer and then called my insurance company. When my rental came, I thanked the Chief and left.

Back at the Elson place, Officer Melore and Gunner answered the door. The cop had his gun out. He holstered it when he let me in and went back to the island in the kitchen, where he was drinking coffee with Alice. There were empty plates in front of them.

“The lady was nice enough to make me a sandwich.”

“I made a couple for you,” Alice said, going to the refrigerator.

I bent down to hug Gunner and check his wounds, which were superficial. I wondered how much of the blood I’d seen on his coat earlier had been from Lucas.

“The vet said he will be fine,” Alice said. “She gave me some antibiotic pills just in case. She also said he’s the nicest dog she’s seen in a while.” Alice bent down for a doggie lap. “Isn’t that right, Gunner?”

“I guess I can run along,” Melore said. “I checked all the doors and windows. Chief will have a car cruise by just enough so that anyone watching will notice. No set pattern, so they can’t be sure when we’ll be around. We’re shorthanded, so it’s the best we can do. I’d stay alert, if I were you.”

“Would you mind sticking around a few minutes and then escorting Alice out of town?”

Alice looked at me. I knew the look. Every man does.

“I’m supposed to leave tomorrow,” she said. “And I’m not sure I should leave at all.”

“You are going now. And Gunner is going with you.”

“The hell you say.”

I looked at Melore. He took the hint.

“I think I’ll check the perimeter one more time,” he said. As he walked past me he whispered, “Probably safer outside now, anyway.”

After he left, I turned to Alice.

“I can’t do what I have to do if I’m worrying about you all the time.”

“And just what do you plan to do?”

“Find out what the hell is going on around here. Find out who killed that boy.”

“You mean find out who is trying to kill you.”

“It’s the same thing, Alice.”

“I don’t think Laurene Robillard, or Elson, whatever the hell her name is, sent you down here to get killed. Why don’t you let the police do their job. They will eventually get to the bottom of it.”

Alice was angry, and worried. That wasn’t a good combination. I took her in my arms. She stiffened.

“Don’t try to sweet talk me, Alton.”

I pressed her closer.

“Look. I think that the police chief is a good cop. But I also think she doesn’t know what ‘it’ is. And she might be hamstrung. She has to answer to the Town Council, whose president may be involved. If that’s the case, you can bet she’ll be kept shorthanded. You yourself said that there is something fishy in this town. Something that Colver Elson’s murder is bringing to the surface. Laurene asked me to find out who killed Elson. I don’t think I can do that without finding out what else is going on. I’m not that easy to kill, especially when I’m on my guard, looking out only for myself. But if I have to watch out for you, too, it makes me more vulnerable. It increases the chance that I will get killed. You must see that.”

Alice buried her head in my shoulder. I could tell from the way her body relaxed that I’d gotten through to her. She leaned up and kissed me, hard, and then gently, on the mouth.

“I love you,” she said. “I’ll go pack.”

I went outside. Melore was leaning against his patrol car.

“Must be weird staying inside a house where there was a murder,” he said.

I thought back to what had happened in my own basement back home.

“You get used to it.”

“It is a beautiful place. Boys back at the station raved about it.”

“Weren’t you here when they found the body, or during the investigation?”

“Nah. I was tied up the night of the murder. Found some crazy woman walking naked along the road and spent most of my shift getting her settled in a hospital. Then I went off duty. Got called back in, of course, but the Chief had me doing regular patrol work. Most everyone else was at the crime scene. I think I was the only car out and about.”

The door opened and Alice came out with her small suitcase. Gunner trotted after her.

“Just follow me, Miss,” Melore said as he got into his squad car.

Alice settled Gunner in her Volvo and then turned to me.

“You will be careful, won’t you?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“You are such a ball buster.”

“Look who is talking.”

We kissed and and she left.

I went back inside and called Laurene. I told her everything that had happened. She was not pleased, and as I expected agreed with Alice.

“I want you to get out of that idiot town!”

“My car has been impounded for evidence.”

“Don’t be a wiseass.”

“Don’t you want to find out who killed your grandfather?”

“I hardly knew the old bastard,” she said. “He dumped me, remember? Maybe if he was still alive we could have built up a relationship. But it’s no skin off my nose. Sure, I’d have liked to find out what happened, but not enough to get you killed. I feel bad enough about that boy who got shot. I won’t have you on my conscience. My lawyers will straighten out the legal stuff. I’ll sell everything down there and I’ll move my mother up here. I don’t need this crap.”

I repeated the arguments I used on Alice. Then, I added something that Alice knew instinctively.

“I don’t like it when people try to kill me. And I particularly don’t like it when an innocent kid gets killed in my place. Somebody is going to pay.”

Laurene must have heard something in my voice. There was a long pause.

“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do,” she said resignedly.

“Something like that.”

“I could fire you.”

“I’ll sue.”

Laurene laughed.

“This is one weird conversation, considering how we met.”

“No argument there. I’ll keep you informed. Don’t even think about coming to Atlas. I got rid of Alice so I wouldn’t have keep an eye on her. I don’t need you here complicating things. Don’t worry. I’ll be around to walk you down the aisle.”

It wasn’t late, but I was exhausted, both mentally and physically. I hadn’t eaten all day. But I had no appetite and I wanted nothing more than a few stiff drinks and a bed. I shook off my lethargy and began to search the house, room by room. It was a big house and I didn’t finish until after midnight. I assumed that all the previous searchers, both legal and illegal, had done a thorough job and looked in all the obvious places for anything hidden. So, I looked in the not-so-obvious places. The backs of toilets, the toilet tanks, behind every picture, in every lamp, through the pages of books and magazines. Old houses have a lot of nooks and crannies. The damn Elson house was probably in the Nooks and Crannies Hall of Fame. Even the best searcher may miss something, so after I finished my own effort, I went back and went through the obvious hiding places. Other than a lot of recently dead insects and a desiccated mouse behind an old chest of drawers that the cleaning service missed, I found nothing interesting. Not that the bugs and mouse were interesting, but at least they were a change of pace. By the time I got to Judge Elson’s huge liquor cabinet, which I left for last for obvious reasons, I was bleary-eyed. I had visions of taking out a bottle from his small-batch bourbon stash and finding what I was looking for, whatever it was. I moved all the bottles, looked behind them, and then held them up to the light. Nothing.

I sighed and reached up in the cabinet for a glass. Most of the bourbon bottles had been opened, and any one of them would have been fine. I think I would have drunk single-batch Sterno at that point. But there was an unopened bottle of “Jefferson's Presidential Select 21 Year Old Bourbon” that wasn’t getting any younger, so I cracked the seal.  The whiskey probably went for a hundred bucks a bottle but I didn’t feel the least bit guilty about pouring myself a stiff drink. Nor the next one.

CHAPTER 15 - HOUSEWARMING GIFT

I woke up with a well-earned hangover the next morning. My mouth felt like it had a dead aardvark in it. I looked at my watch. It was just past 7 A.M., which meant I only slept about four hours. Resisting the temptation to roll over, I put on some running clothes, then went to the kitchen and drank some orange juice, which gave me heartburn but restored some much needed electrolytes. I headed out the door and ran the perimeter of the property under the watchful eyes of farm animals who undoubtedly thought I was nuts. I know I did. My gun kept digging painfully into my waist and I constantly had to shift it. But running without a weapon was no longer a viable option. Of course, I knew that a sniper with a telescopic scope would make my precautions moot. But it would take a pretty good shot to hit a moving target. I thought about zigging and zagging, but didn’t want to look ridiculous. That kind of maneuver may work for ships trying to avoid U-Boats; a hung-over runner would probably break an ankle.

The first part of my run was excruciating. I started sweating and grunting like a professional women’s tennis player. My tongue was dry and my eyes burned. I was sore in places I didn’t know I had places. I began to root for a good sniper. But I soon got into a rhythm and my body began to purge the previous night’s 90-proof poisons. I circumnavigated the property twice but still wanted more, so I headed down the path that led into the woods behind the old well that Lucas Browne never got to fix. The mist clung to the trees, giving the forest an eerie cast. The going was slippery. I estimated that I ran about a quarter of a mile before coming out to a road. A road I recognized. Clayton Turnpike. I ran along Clayton and turned back up Chandler Lane. All tolled, I’d been gone almost an hour. Physically, I felt much better and pretty good about myself as I neared the house.

Until I saw a white minivan parked in front.

Someone was sitting in one of the rockers on the porch. I took out my gun as a man stood up.

“You look like something the cat dragged in,” Maks Kalugin said, picking up a small duffel bag next to the rocker. “Where am I sleeping?”

***

We sat in the kitchen drinking coffee. Maks hadn’t said more than two words since we entered the house.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Arman sent me. Alice called him.”

“I told her that I didn’t need any help.”

“You always need help. But I didn’t come to help you. I want to find out who shot Gunner.”

“It was only a couple of pellets, Maks. Barely broke the fur.”

“Alice also said that you might do something stupid, as if that would be the first time. What do you want me to do?”

I knew Maks. The subtext was “who do you want me to kill?” It was useless to argue with him. If he had to, Maks would sooner kill me than let me turn down his and Arman’s offer of help, especially if it was prompted by a request from Alice. And the more I thought about it, having the Rahm family’s pet assassin watching my back probably wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Eventually, of course, I’d have to figure out how to rein him in. To Maks, the slight wounding of a Russian puppy was cause for eliminating half the adult males below the Mason-Dixon Line. I pointed down the hall.

“You can take the first bedroom on the right.”

He grunted and picked up his duffel.

“You travel light,” I said.

“Weapons are in the van.”

Anything and everything up to an anti-tank gun, I assumed.

“Whose van is it?”

“I rented it at the airport. Vans sometimes come in handy in my line of work.”

“How did you get the weapons through security?”

“Arman arranged a private jet. Enough with the 20 fucking questions!”

He unzipped the duffel and brought out two bottles of Kalashnikov Vodka. They bore the visage of the Hero of the Soviet Union who designed the AK-47 assault rifle.

“Housewarming gift,” Maks said, with a frosty smile.

He went back outside and returned with four large shopping bags and started unloading a wide assortment of eggs, meats, cheeses, sausages, vegetables, loaves of thick black bread, condiments and some items I didn’t recognize. As he filled cabinets and the refrigerator he looked at me.

“Walmart,” he said.

“You know, Maks, there are several good restaurants in town.”

“People get shot in restaurants.” Another cold smile. “Occasionally by me. I’ll cook. Make yourself useful and put on some more coffee. Then tell me what kind of fucked-up situation you are involved in while I prepare zavtrak. Alice gave Arman only the bare details.”

Zavtrak is the Russian name for breakfast, and I knew my recently cleansed arteries were about to be clogged again. Sure enough, he soon piled my plate with heaps of eggs, sausage, cold cuts, cheese and bread.

“I think I’ll let them just shoot me,” I said.

I told him everything during the delicious meal. He listened, ate and grunted occasionally. When I finished, I started to clean up.

“Leave it,” Maks said. “Go take a shower. You smell like a dead raccoon.”

When I got back to the kitchen, Maks was at the stove and the only smells were the sweet pungent odors of Russian cooking.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Beef stroganoff, Chicken Kiev, stuffed cabbage and blini.”

“Why are you making so much?”

“Who do you think I am? Martha Fucking Stewart. I’m not cooking every night for you. We will have leftovers that will last us a few days.”

My cell phone beeped. It was Evelyn Rogers.

“I heard what happened. And Laurene Robillard called me. She asked me to give you any help I can. Although I don’t know what that would be.”

I thought about it.

“I’m probably going to be pretty busy the next few days. I’m not a farmer. Without Lucas this place will go to seed pretty quickly. I’m concerned about the animals.”

“That, I can help with,” Rogers said. “I can get a kid out there tomorrow for sure. Can you manage until then?”

“Sure,” I said, although I wasn’t all that sure.

I hung up and looked at Kalugin.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about a farm.”

Maks snorted.

“I was raised on a kolkhoz farm collective in Magnitogorsk. Go put on some work clothes.”

“I just took a shower.”

“Hurry up.”

We spent much of the rest of the day doing farm work, breaking only for lunch. To be fair, Maks did most of the heavy lifting, and seemed to enjoy it. We fed horses and cows, mucked out the stable, collected eggs, mowed grass and did all sorts of things new to me. I knew I would never again complain about my yard work back home. When we finally finished we both needed a shower. But my head was clear and I felt I’d earned a good dinner, which I got, along with a couple of vodkas I could have done without. But one doesn’t eat with a Russian without drinking vodka. We finished up with some strong coffee that Maks insisted on brewing. I could have spread it on a blini it was so thick. But it negated the vodka.

After dinner, I called Chief Deerly-Johnson for an update.

“The coroner, Blaloch, released Lucas Browne’s body. To himself, basically. He’s handling the funeral arrangements at his own place. The wake starts tonight. I hear he’s donating his services to the family. The father is out of work and the family doesn’t have much in the way of money.”

“Blaloch probably feels guilty,” I said. “I’m sure he’d rather be laying me out.”

“You don’t know he had anything to do with anything, Rhode. Watch what you say.”

After I hung up I told Maks what the Chief said.

“This is one fucked up town,” he observed.

CHAPTER 16 - FAMILY

I felt I had to attend the wake for Lucas Browne. The boy died in my stead. I didn’t know what the police told his family, but I wanted to face them. I thought Maks would disapprove, on security grounds, but he surprised me.

“I don’t think anyone will try to kill you in a funeral home,” he said. “And you owe it to the boy. It would be nice to see Blaloch’s reaction when he sees you.”

We drove in my Toyota rental. The Blaloch Home for Funerals was on Main Street in downtown Atlas. Outside on the street Chief Deerly-Johnson and a cop I didn’t know were directing traffic. There were cones in front of the driveway leading to what I assumed was a parking lot in the rear of the funeral home. When the Chief saw me she waved me over and said something to the cop, who moved the cone. Then she got in the back seat.

“Pull in the back,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”

She looked at Kalugin.

“Who is he?”

“My spiritual adviser.”

“With a gun under his left arm?”

Not much got by the Chief.

“A plowshare won’t fit into the holster,” Kalugin deadpanned.

I laughed, and after a second so did Deerly-Johnson. It was a great line.

“Park next to my patrol car,” she said. “I’ve kept a couple of spots open.”

I did and we all got out.

“I thought you might come,” she said. “I meant to call you. We haven’t told the family that you were the target. They live outside of town. I’m pretty sure they don’t know why you are in town. If that got out, there might be hell to pay. I don’t need half the town breathing down my neck while we look for the shooter. I’ll have to tell them eventually, of course. But they have enough on their mind as it is.”

I nodded and pointed to a small brick building at the back of the parking lot.

“What’s that?”

“Blaloch keeps a separate space for his coroner’s duties.”

There was a red pickup truck parked next to the building. A Dodge Ram Laramie.

“Whose truck is that?”

“It belongs to the Bodine twins. Rufus and Abner. Locals who work for Blaloch.”

“Indeed.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Rhode. But there are a lot of red pickups in the county like the one that followed you the first day.”

I looked at Kalugin, who nodded imperceptibly.

“Well,” I said. “I think I’ll go and pay my respects.”

The Chief and I started walking away. Kalugin stayed put.

“Aren’t you coming?” Deerly-Johnson asked.

“I don’t like funeral homes,” Maks said.

As we walked up the driveway, the Chief said, “Why do I get the feeling that your friend is going to create a lot more paperwork for me?”

“Maybe a lot less,” I said.

***

The murder of someone so young had shocked the community, which turned out in force to support the Browne family. The line of mourners snaked out the front door of the funeral home. Clumps of teen-agers stood on the lawn, consoling one another. A few girls were openly crying. Beefy boys wearing letter jackets stood about awkwardly.

“Lucas was very popular,” Deerly-Johnson said. “Played football. Those boys were his teammates.”

The sight of all those kids made me feel worse than ever.

Two men, dressed in identical black and ill-fitting suits, stood on either side of the double doors leading into the home, trying to keep the entering and exiting lines of people in some semblance of order. Except for the fact that one had an unkempt and uneven handlebar mustache, their features were exactly the same. I nudged the Chief.

“The Bodine twins?”

“Yes.”

“Which one has the mustache?”

“Abner.”

“They look like they fell out of the same ugly tree.”

Both men were tall and angular, with slicked-back, greasy black hair, sallow complexions, beaked noses and prominent jaws.

“Hello, boys,” Deerly-Johnson said as we cut to the front of the line. “Looks like you got your hands full tonight.”

“Nothin’ we can’t handle,” Rufus Bodine sneered. “Right, Abner?’

“Yeah.”

I was standing behind the Chief, one step down, and they couldn’t see me clearly in the crush of visitors. But I could see enough of them when they opened their mouths to know that dental hygiene wasn’t one of their priorities. Both their expressions froze when they finally did get a good look at me. I smiled angelically at them.

“You must give me the name of your tailor,” I said as we passed them. Once inside, I turned to Deerly-Johnson. “Charming pair.”

“Not my favorite people,” she said. “They hate women, blacks and cops.”

“They got the hat trick with you. You ever have to run them in? Guys like that must have a record.”

“Minor crap. Bar fights. Some women complained about the way they were treated, but no charges filed.”

“A woman would actually go out with one of them? Who? Helen Keller?”

“Hookers.”

“In Atlas?”

“There is a 20 and 50 truck stop on the Interstate.”

“A 20 and 50?”

“Blow job for 20 bucks; a hump for 50. And they take credit cards.”

She left me at the entrance to the crowded parlor where Lucas was laid out.

“The family doesn’t need to be reminded that their police force isn’t making much progress in finding out who killed their son.”

“It’s only been two days.”

“A lot of people think it’s tied to Elson’s murder. Back in April. No progress. There wasn’t a murder in this town in 10 years. Now two in a few months.”

***

Meeting the Browne family was as excruciating as I’d feared. In addition to his parents, Lucas has three younger sisters. The girls’ faces were masked in grief. The five of them  stood in line next to the casket, stoically accepting the condolences of their neighbors and friends. The casket which was closed. A shotgun blast in the face will do that. But there was a large board with dozens of pictures of the dead boy set up on a stand behind them. Lucas as a baby. Lucas as a toddler. Lucas in Pop Warner and Little League. At a dance. Working on a farm. At a beach with his siblings horsing around. In his high school football uniform. I looked at the board as I approached the family.

I took a deep breath and said all the appropriate things to the devastated family. About how nice a boy Lucas was. How hard-working he was. The father looked particularly bereft. I assumed Lucas was working at the Elson place to bring in some extra money. The man probably blamed himself for his son’s death. The mother took my hand.

“Lucas was in your car,” she said gently, almost as if she was consoling me. “It could have just as easily been you. I don’t know what’s going on in this town anymore. First Judge Elson. And now my boy. Some sick person is loose out there. I know the Good Lord asks us to forgive, but I’m finding it very hard. But everyone has been so kind. Especially Mr. Blaloch.”

I gritted my teeth and mumbled something. As I walked away, I passed a row of seats in which an older couple sat consoling a pretty teen-age girl. All were dressed in black. Probably Lucas’s grandparents and his girlfriend. There was a side door and I used it. When I got to my car, Kalugin was leaning against it. He must have seen something in my face.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We will even the score.”

“Did you get into the pickup?”

“Of course. There is a shotgun behind the cab. Recently fired. Loaded with same double-0 buckshot that you told me killed the boy.”

“Doesn’t prove anything. It’s hunting season and every 12-gauge within 50 miles has the same load.”

“We have to talk to them.”

He meant the Bodine twins. And I also knew what “talk” meant.

“I just met them. It won’t be a day at the beach.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Maks wasn’t current on a lot of American idiom. I probably should have said tundra.

“I mean they look like two oak trees, with brains to match. And we have to get them alone.”

“We will. But when we do I want to use my van. Drive back to the farm.”

We got into my car.

“It’s not really a farm.”

“I stepped in cowshit. It’s a farm. Let’s go.”

“What happens if they are not here when we get back”

“Doesn’t matter. I placed a GPS tracking device under the passenger seat.”

“Which you just happened to have with you.”

“It is smaller than a pack of cigarettes. I always carry one. We can follow the signal on my iPhone.”

“I didn’t realize the Russian mob was so hi-tech.”

“Not all bratva. The Rahm family. How do you think we so easily squashed the Carluccis? Those dagos were so afraid of the F.B.I. they used two cans tied together to communicate.” Kalugin smiled. “And how do you think we always knew where they and you were when we were looking for Capriati? You think I just happened to be in the neighborhood to save your sorry ass when Carlucci tried to kill you.”

“Maks, you son-of-a-bitch. You bugged my car.”

Kalugin was thoroughly enjoying himself.

“Don’t worry. We don’t anymore. Arman says you are family, now.”

That was just wonderful.

CHAPTER 17 - THE BARN

We drove back to the Elson place and then changed into clothes more suitable to our mission. Basic black.

“You drive,” Kalugin ordered, pulling out his smart phone.

When we got in the van, I looked in back and saw several duffel bags and other equipment.

“You brought all that stuff on the plane, Maks?”

“Some. The rest I purchased at the Walmart.”

I headed down Chandler Lane as he looked at the GPS display.

“Take a right on Chandler. They are not at the funeral home anymore.”

The Bodine twins had left Atlas. Kalugin directed me to the interstate. We drove past a truck stop.

“Thank God,” I said.

“What?”

I told him about the hookers.

“Fucking izvrashchentsy!”

We found their pickup in the parking lot of “Barbecue Billy’s”, a honky-tonk roadside bar just off the interstate. I parked next to the their Dodge Ram Laramie.

“Now, we wait,” Kalugin said.

I could hear music and smell the barbecue. For all I knew, the twins might be in the bar for hours.

“I have a better idea.”

I told him.

“Not bad, Rhode. Remind me again, which one of these bozos has the mustache?”

“The one called Abner.”

He got out. I looked up the number of the bar on my iPhone and dialed it. Somebody answered. I could hear country music in the background.

“Yeah.”

“The Bodine twins in there?”

“I’m lookin’ at their ugly faces, or rather, face.”

There was some raucous laughter at his remark, followed by, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on” and “Give us another beer, dickhead.”

“Tell them Mr. Blaloch wants to see them right away,” I said. “Urgent. Got that?”

“Yeah.”

Rufus and Abner Bodine came out of the tavern together. Rufus belched and Abner farted, or maybe it was the other way around. It was pretty dark. But the fact that I heard the explosions from 50 feet away was impressive, no matter how you look at it. These weren’t the kind of guys you’d want to marry your sister, or anyone’s sister. Or Labrador Retriever for that matter. They stopped short when they reached their truck and saw me leaning against it.

“Get the fuck off our truck,” Rufus said. He still couldn’t see who I was. “Or I’ll kick your ass.”

“Why don’t you try shooting me with a shotgun again.”

Now they knew who I was.

“Now, lookee here, Rufus,” Abner said, “if it ain’t the scumbag private dick from New Yawk.”

They moved closer to me. I could smell the cigarettes, beer and cheap booze on their breaths.

“I thought I’d give you two Neanderthals another chance to kill me. But I have to warn you, I might be a tougher nut to crack than a 17-year-old kid.”

They looked at each other, brows furrowed in concentration.

“We don’t know what the fuck you all is talkin’ about,” Rufus finally said.

“Sure, you all do. I found your shotgun under the seat in your truck. Been fired recently.”

Abner snorted.

“Shit, man, every gun in the county has been fired recently. It’s huntin’ season. This ain’t pansy-ass New Yawk. You’re in Virginia now, bud.”

“Well, when I give the gun to the cops and they match the pellets in your shells from the pellets in the kid you killed, you are going down. Don’t you jerks watch C.S.I.? Every shotgun leaves a distinguishing mark on the pellets it fires.”

Of course, that wasn’t true. I was counting on the two idiots falling for the pseudo-science. They didn’t disappoint me. They looked at each other again, thinking it over. I suspected that it took both their brains working overtime in unison to make a decision.

“Well, then, I guess we gotta make sure you don’t go to the cops,” Abner said.

He threw a punch. I easily blocked it with my left arm, bent the fingers on my right hand and hit him in the throat, commando-style. Some things the military teaches you come in handy. He gurgled some and staggered backwards but didn’t fall. Abner was a tough old bird. His brother got behind me and pinned my arms.

“When you want to sucker punch somebody, Abner, you shouldn’t wind up,” I said. “I saw that coming so long I could’ve ordered a pizza.”

Abner coughed a couple of times and then came at me, a mad gleam in his eyes.

“Hold the son-of-a-bitch, Rufus.” He came toward me. “I’m gonna fuck you up before we kill you.”

I heard a muffled thud and a grunt behind me and the arms holding me relaxed. Rufus slid down my back and fell unconscious to the ground. Abner stopped and was now staring at Maks Kalugin, who was holding a huge revolver with silencer. I knew Maks had been close, but I’d never heard him. He walked up to Abner and hit him on the side of the head with the gun. Another thud. He dropped like a stone. We dragged both unconscious men between their truck and Kalugin’s van. I looked back at the tavern. We had not been seen. It was probably the kind of joint where fights in the parking lot were commonplace anyway. No one would leave a barstool to investigate.

“Hold this,” Maks said.

He handed me his weapon and started loading the two unconscious thugs in the back of his minivan. I recalled his comment about how handy minivans were in his line of work. I heard the click of handcuffs. I wondered what other equipment arrived with Maks on the private jet.

We got in the van. I was still holding the revolver, which looked like something from the Crimean War. With its attached suppressor, a rough piece of metal about the size of a small pipe bomb, the gun was so heavy Maks could probably kill somebody by just throwing it.

“Where did you get this cannon? The armorer on the Battleship Potemkin?”

“It is a 1895 Nagant. Seven-shot, designed by Léon Nagant, a Belgian, for the Czars.” Kalugin was an expert on all sorts of weapons, which were among the few things he enjoyed talking about. He pulled out of the parking lot. “It has gas-seal action. The cylinders moves forward when the gun is cocked. That increases the muzzle velocity and permits the use of a silencer. Not many revolvers can take a silencer. Many silenced Nagants were used by the Viet Cong for assassinations during the war that Americans lost in Vietnam. But the one you are holding was a gift from Marat. It was his father’s, an officer in the Czarist army in the First World War.”

The Rahm family name was originally Rhaminov, but that was too close to Romanov, the name of the murdered Czar’s family. By changing their name, the Rhams managed to survive Stalin’s purges in the 1930’s and their contributions, in both money and blood, in the fight against the Nazis during World War II solidified their position. Marat Rahm even rose to a high position in the post-war KGB before deciding that the breakup of the Soviet Union provided a lucrative opportunity to become a capitalist, albeit a criminal one, both in Russian and then the United States.

“I made the silencer myself,” Maks said.

“Of course you did.” We were now driving on a road, at the speed limit. I could hear groaning from the back of the van. We certainly didn’t want to be stopped for a traffic violation. “Where should we take them?”

I hadn’t thought that one through.

“I know a place,” Maks answered.

I looked at him.

“For Christ sake, Maks, you just got to town. How the hell could you know a place?”

Maks didn’t answer, but soon turned down a small side road.

“Where are you going?”

“Please be quiet. I have to concentrate.”

A few minutes later we pulled into a weed-strewn drive that led to a large dark structure in the middle of a field. There were no other buildings.

“Abandoned barn,” Maks said. “I found it on the ride from the airport. No one will bother us here.”

“How did you know we would need something like this?”

We got out of the van.

“How did I know we wouldn’t? It is always better to be prepared, no? Now, stop asking stupid questions. There are two lanterns in the back of the van. Get them and put them in the barn. We will need some light. Then come help me with these two fools.”

We manhandled both men into the barn and dumped them together on the dirt floor. Maks turned on the two lanterns. They provided an eerie, flickering light. I could see some stars through holes in the roof and could hear scurrying sounds from high above in the rafters. Rats, maybe, probably raccoons and birds. There were cobwebs everywhere. Maks went back outside and came back with a small duffel that clanked when he dropped it on the floor. Abner Bodine was starting to come around. I grabbed him by his collar and put my gun against his forehead.

“Who gave the order to kill me?”

His piggish eyes focused and then crossed, almost comically, as they concentrated on the gun. Then he spit at me, his spittle hitting my chest.

“Fuck you.”

I whipped the barrel of the gun across his head, drawing blood. Then I put the gun in his mouth and cocked the trigger.

“Tell me, you son-of-a-bitch, or I’ll blow your head off just like you did to that kid!”

I could hear my blood rushing in my ears.

“Alton.”

I turned to face Maks. It was the first time he’d ever called me by my first name.

“You don’t want to do it,” he said, quietly.

“I don’t?”

“No. Alice wouldn’t like you to. This is my kind of work, and I am very good at it. Wait outside.”

I let go of Abner and he fell back to the floor. He glared at Maks with venom.

“You’ll get nothin’ out of me. You’re wasting your time. I ain’t tellin’ you shit.”

“I know,” Maks said ominously. “But your brother will.”

He looked at me.

“Outside!”

As I left, Maks was reaching into his duffel bag. He pulled out a large knife with a black handle. I had seen it before. It was a Finnish puuko, a woodsman’s tool that became such a favorite of the Russian underworld it was banned by the Soviet Government. Maks was partial to it.

I didn’t have to wait long. It was a pleasant enough night, except for the screams. The door opened. Maks stood there, knife in hand, and nodded to me. I followed him back inside. There were now no scurrying sounds from the rafters. Whatever creatures had made them had been frightened into silence.

I looked at the twins. Both had been tied to posts, facing each other. Rufus was blubbering but otherwise appeared untouched. Abner, on the other hand, was apparently dead, and looked as if he was better off that way. His handlebar mustache was now red. I turned away, sick to my stomach.

Maks now faced Rufus. He slowly wiped the bloody blade of his puuko back and forth across the man’s leg. Rufus looked at the red stain on his pants and began to make a mewing sound. His eyes were now as wide as a barn owl’s.

“He will now tell you everything you want to know.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Maks pointed his knife at the motionless Abner Bodine.

“The power of suggestion.”

CHAPTER 18 - LEDGER

I knelt in front of Rufus Bodine, who had stopped crying. He looked at me in supplication.

“Please,” he said, “we didn’t mean to kill the kid. We thought it was you. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not so sure I know how to take that,” I said, “but let’s move on. Who sent you?”

There was no hesitation. He was completely broken.

“Spivey.”

That wasn’t the answer I expected. I looked at Maks, who raised an eyebrow. For Maks, that was the equivalent of fainting with surprise.

“I thought you worked for Blaloch,” I said.

“He has us on the books at the funeral home, but Spivey calls the shots since the judge got killed.”

“Elson?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of shots?”

“We didn’t know everything, but the four of them had some sort of scam goin’.”

“Who is the fourth?”

I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear it from Bodine.

“Gruber.”

“And Elson was in charge before Spivey?”

“Yeah. Nobody did nothin’ without him givin’ the OK first. He was the brains.”

“Who killed Elson? You and Abner?”

“It wasn’t us.”

Maks moved closer and showed his knife.

“I swear! Man, I’d fuckin’ tell you if we did it. Why would I hold back on that?”

“Good point,” Maks said.

I leaned in on Rufus.

“Did one of the others do it?”

“I don’t know. We was as surprised as anybody. They usually used us for that kind of stuff. Me and Abner figured maybe they had a fallin’ out or something. But I ain’t even sure about that. They had a meet after the killin’ and we heard shouting. They were each accusing the others of doin’ it. But I hear they all had good alibis. They even asked us if we did it and we said why the fuck would we kill our gravy train? It must have been some nut, or one of Elson’s broads.”

This was crazy. Even the crooks seemed to be mystified by Elson’s murder. It didn’t mean that one of Elson’s partners didn’t kill him, but that was now sounding more unlikely. But what were the partners involved in? It certainly wasn’t just golf.

“Did you break into the judge’s house a few days ago?”

Rufus nodded.

“Yeah. Spivey said we had to find a book.”

“What kind of book?”

“He said it was a diary or ledger or something. Brown, about the size of a big paperback.”

“Did you find it?”

“No.”

“What is in it? And how were you supposed to know what it was? Elson had a lot of books.”

“Like I said, it was a ledger, with handwriting. They said we’d know it because it had names of Gruber’s nursing homes in it and other stuff.”

“What other stuff?”

“Names of people. Dates. Money amounts.”

“What is so important about this book?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that they want it before anyone else gets it. That’s why they asked us to kill you. They were worried you’d find it.”

“What about Elson’s computer?” Rufus looked at me blankly. “You took his computer, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. But I don’t think there was anything useful on it. Spivy and the others were pissed. Had us toss it in the river.”

I kept at it for another 10 minutes, but there was nothing else to get from the surviving Bodine, who occasionally stole a glance at his motionless brother and kept wetting his lips with his tongue. I stood up and motioned to Maks to follow me outside. Rufus was left staring at Abner. Even outside I could hear him chanting, over and over, ‘Oh, God, oh sweet Jesus, help me’.

“What do you make of his story?”

“This is one fucked up town,” Maks said.

“You keep saying that. What else?”

“He told you everything he knows. That judge was running some sort of operation and kept a record.”

“Something involving Gruber’s nursing homes.”

“It would seem so. There is a lot of money in nursing homes. They are a very profitable for Arman.”

The Rahm family owns a string of nursing homes and Medicare clinics in New York and New Jersey as part of its “legitimate” business empire. Much like the other lawful  enterprises, the homes and clinics help to launder the oceans of cash from the Rahm’s criminal operations. But by all accounts they are well-run, models of their industry.

“Arman told me that even honest nursing home owners can make money,” I said, “given the aging population and Government largesse. Why would Elson and the others have to run a scam, whatever it is?”

“Maybe they are just greedy. Don’t forget, the Rahm family has many other sources of income. To be honest, I am interested to know just what these otmorozki are up to.”

My Russian is a little rusty. I had no idea what otmorozki meant, but I suspected it wasn’t a compliment.

“If it is so lucrative they are willing to kill people to keep it secret,” Maks continued, “perhaps Arman is missing something.”

I stared at him.

“Joking,” he said.

God, I hoped so.

“Do you think his partners killed Elson?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

“You can’t go to the police.”

“Rufus can testify.”

“To what? That we kidnapped him and killed his brother?”

“We could claim self-defense.”

Maks gave the remark the scathing look it deserved.

“Don’t be stupid. You saw Abner. What are you going to say? He fell into a thresher? And even if it worked, any good lawyer would get the testimony suppressed. Believe me, your appalling legal system is the best thing that has ever happened to criminals.” Maks actually smiled. “I speak from experience. Wait here.”

He started to go back into the barn. I grabbed his arm. It was like grasping a piece of metal.

“Maks, I won’t let you do it.”

Kalugin looked at me. Then at my hand on his arm. I wondered if anyone had ever grabbed him like that. Anyone still alive, that is. But he only patted my hand.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt him. Here, you can even hold this.” He gave me his knife. “Put it in the van for me, will you? And get some rope in the back.”

When I returned to the barn, Maks was moving Abner’s body into an alcove where there was some old hay. I looked at Rufus, who appeared to be unconscious. As I got closer to him, I could see that his head was lolling at an unnatural angle. I pushed it back. It flounced around like a Slinky. He was dead.

“I thought you weren’t going to hurt him!”

“Perhaps I misspoke. I meant that it wouldn’t hurt. Believe me it was quite painless. Now help me with his body.”

When I hesitated, Maks walked up to me.

“Grow up.”

A half hour later we left the barn, with sparks shooting into the night sky. Maks had arranged the two bodies in poses that might suggest they fought each other to the death, supplying each of them with knives from his bag of tricks. Then he expertly set the barn ablaze, starting fires in all four corners of the structure. The old wood and hay made for a nice conflagration.

“Any decent forensic expert will know they didn’t stab each other to death,” I said as we drove away. I could see the glow from the burning barn in the rear view mirror. “And he will surely notice the broken neck.”

Kalugin snorted. Or maybe laughed. With Maks it was hard to tell.

“So what? Nobody will grieve over those two otmorozki. Their bodies will be melted together. They are identical twins, remember? The police will be so confused by the similar DNA they might not even look for anything else. They probably won’t be able to tell who is who.”

“What about dental records?”

“Did those two look like they ever went to a dentist? They didn’t have 10 teeth between them. And didn’t you tell me the coroner is Blaloch, and he only works part-time? Do you think he will start an investigation that may lead back to him? Even if he identifies those two bodies, he will shit his pants. I hope he identifies them. He and his partners will wonder what the hell is going on.”

“You are enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“You are never dull, Rhode, I will say that. I think people must hire you for the entertainment value.”

We drove for a while in silence.

“Maks, what would you have done if Rufus hadn’t broken? If he was as tough as his brother.”

“He was the weak link. I could tell that from the fight in the parking lot. There is always a weak link. You Americans have your ‘good cop, bad cop’ strategy when dealing with a suspect. In Russia, we have something similar called ‘dead suspect, talkative suspect’.

When we first met, Maks Kalugin wanted to kill me. We’d come a long way since then. But he still scared the hell out of me.

“Just what the hell is an otmorozki?”

“Plural. Scumbags.”

I knew what my next move was. I had to find that book. It might not help me find Elson’s killer, but I couldn’t let Spivey, Blaloch and Gruber get away with Lucas’s murder, let alone whatever other crimes they’d committed.

CHAPTER 19 - WELL, WELL

We drove back to the Elson house. While Maks cleaned up his “tools,” I poured a bourbon for myself and a vodka for him. When he finally sat down, he raised his glass to me.

“"Vashe zdorovie, Rhode. All in all, a good night’s work. It went well.”

“I’d hate to see what you consider a bad night’s work.”

He heard the bitterness in my voice.

“It had to be done. And your hands are clean.”

“I was there.”

“If you are remorseful over what happened to those two, don’t be. They shot a child in the face with a shotgun. And I’m sure it was not their first murder. Now, have one more drink and get some sleep. Tomorrow, we look for the book.”

“I’m beginning to think it isn’t here. I searched this place pretty thoroughly. And that’s after the Bodines and the cops went through.”

“Did Elson maintain an office downtown?”

“I don’t know. He was a retired judge. Does it make sense that he would keep something incriminating in a courthouse. It’s obvious his partners thought it was here. Perhaps they even saw him write in it during their scheming.”

“Then we go through the house again in the morning. I’ve done many searches. Two sets of eyes are better than one.  But they must be fresh eyes.”

***

I awoke to the smells of sausages and Kalugin’s thermonuclear coffee. I went to the kitchen and ate a quick sandwich with two cups of his potent brew. Then we began our search. I started in the attic and worked my way down. Kalugin, in the basement, did the opposite. We passed each other in the second floor hallway about two hours later. Two hours after that, we worked every room together. Then we checked the outside of the house, even going on the roof and looking under the eaves. We gave the porch a thorough going-over.

“If it’s here,” Kalugin finally said angrily, “we’ll need an ax to find it.”

“I doubt that he would hide it so that he’d have to chop up the floor or walls to get to it.”

“Why couldn’t the bastard have a safe like a normal person.”

“I don’t think he was normal, in any respect.”

“I’m hungry,” Kalugin said.

We sat in the kitchen. Maks warmed up some stuffed cabbage, the smell of which effectively killed my appetite. I settled for more coffee and some black bread and butter.

“Isn’t a bit early for vodka?”

“The sun is up,” Maks replied.

“I don’t know what my next move should be.”

“We can kill the other three and be done with it.”

“No wonder you guys beat Hitler. But let’s put that plan on hold for a while. Besides, it doesn’t help me find out who killed the judge.”

“Why do you care? He was just as bad as the others. The boss, actually.”

“I want to know what they did. What they still might be doing.”

“We could ask them. I’m sure there are some other abandoned barns around here. And afterward they wouldn’t be doing it anymore.”

The logic was inescapable. And frightening.

“I have to make sense of all this, Maks. If only for the Browne kid.”

I thought of Lucas the morning he was killed. Talking to me in this very kitchen about fixing the windlass on the well.

“My way is easier,” Maks said.

But I was no longer listening. There must have been something in my face because Maks asked, “Rhode, are you all right?”

“Jesus Christ!”

I jumped up suddenly and headed toward the door.

“Where are you going?”

He caught up to me when I reached the well.

“What are you doing?”

I tried to turn the handle on the windlass. It was still stuck. I grabbed the rope and started pulling on it. A moment later, the dripping bucket appeared. It was made of wood and leaked steadily. There was some bedraggled clothing festooned with old wet leaves hanging from the bucket. I quickly tossed the cloth on the ground when I saw what was sticking up from the rapidly draining container. It was a large plastic Ziploc freezer bag, inside of which was another, slightly smaller plastic bag. Both were tightly closed. The second bag held a sealed Tupperware container. We both could see what was in the container.

“Sukin syn!” Maks said.

“Son of a bitch!” I said.

“I just said that.”

I ripped open the bags, opened the container and took out the small brown, and very dry, ledger. With Maks looking over my shoulder, I started turning pages. There were only 14 with writing on them. Each of the 14 had a name on the first line, followed by a date. The last page had only a name. The date on the first page was eight years earlier. The last date was from the previous year. On each page there were also various entries: INSURANCE, PROCEEDS OF WILL, REAL ESTATE, AUTOMOBILES, JEWELRY, OTHER PERSONAL EFFECTS and MISCELLANEOUS. Next to each entry was a N/A or a dollar amount. The totals were added at the end of each list. They varied, but none of the totals was less than $250,000 and the largest was almost $2 million. At the bottom of each page where there were financial amounts, there were initials, next to which were dollar amounts and what appeared to be bank routing numbers. The initials were “C.E.”, “M.G.”, “A.B.” and “C.S.”

“Elson, Gruber, Blaloch and Spivey,” Kalugin said. “And those are foreign accounts. Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.”

I didn’t have to ask him how he knew that.

“Looks like the judge took 40%,” I said, “and the rest got 20% each.”

I did a quick calculation of all the totals in my head.

“More than $11 million,” I said.

“What do you think it means?”

“A record of that much money hidden in a well and worth killing for? Nothing legal.”

“More bodies,” Maks said.

We went back to the house and I fired up my laptop. Then I started Googling the names from the ledger, starting from the first. A couple of them popped up in local news reports or photos from the town daily, the Atlas Advance, and a weekly, the Atlas Record. But the stories were boilerplate. Garden shows, golf outings, a  charity dinner and the like. And all were years old. None were recent and none were what I expected. Obituaries.

“I assumed these people were dead,” I said.

“So did I,” Kalugin agreed. “Or else, why the insurance payments. And they must be old, from the look of the photos, which are from years ago.”

I checked the websites of both papers.

“These newspapers have comprehensive obituary coverage,” I said. “Death notices, feature stories, the works. Some of these people in the ledger must have died, but there are no obits. Makes no sense. We’re missing something.”

I pulled out my cell phone and called Chief Deerly-Johnson.

CHAPTER 20 - ARSENIC AND OLD LADY

We met the Chief outside the Atlas City Courthouse. I showed her the ledger.

“The goddamn well! Don’t I feel like an idiot.”

“Lot of that going around, Chief” I said. “It only stuck in my mind because Lucas wanted to fix the winch just before he was killed. We wouldn’t be close to any of this, whatever it is, if people around here weren’t so murderous.”

None of the names in the ledger looked familiar to her.

“Is this what it looks like?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.”

We went into the City Registrar’s office. A clerk came over.

“Howdy, Chief. What can I do for you?”

The clerk looked warily at Kalugin.

“Don’t mind him, Mary” Deerly-Johnson said. “I’d like to check some death notices.”

“No problem. We just joined the 21st Century. Got them all on computer now.”

She took us to a computer terminal and Deerly-Johnson read the first name from the ledger, Walter Gusweller. Mary typed the name in a search box and the death certificate appeared on the screen.

Gusweller was indeed dead.

“Can you print that out, Mary?”

“Sure thing.”

She did and we gave her another name. Then another. All dead. Except for the last name: Eunice Blanton.

“No record of her,” Mary said. “I guess she’s still alive and kicking. What’s this all about, Chief?”

When Deerly-Johnson hesitated, Kalugin said, “It’s confidential. I’m with the Internal Revenue Service, investigating Social Security fraud. Not a word of this is to get out.”

“Yes, sir,” the clerk replied, thoroughly cowed.

We took the 13 printouts to a table. I looked at Kalugin.

“Social Security fraud?”

“Could you think of anything better? Everyone is afraid of the I.R.S. She’ll keep her mouth shut.”

I had to admit it was inspired.

We started going through the printouts. The average age of the people in the ledger was 79. Of the 13 names, eight were men. All apparently passed away naturally, at least according to their death certificates: congestive heart failure, pulmonary disease, diabetes, cancer and other maladies common to the elderly and infirm. But it didn’t take us long to find the pattern . Even though the deaths were spaced out over eight years, the deceased had two things in common: all had died in a nursing facility owned by Malcolm Gruber and their death certificates were signed by part-time coroner, Alvin Blaloch. I looked at Deerly-Johnson and said, “probate.” We went back to the clerk.

“Mary,” the Chief said, “are the probate files on the computer as well?”

“Yes.”

A half hour later we had our answer. The estates of all 13 of the dead nursing home residents were handled by none other than Clyde Spivey, identified as a “court appointed lawyer”. And all his cases were adjudicated before Judge Colver Elson.

“This is one fucked up town,” Kalugin said. “I might have to retire here.”

Then, we all looked at each other.

“Eunice Blanton,” I said.

“She was next,” Kalugin said. “Or is.”

Gruber owned three nursing homes. Each of us called one.

“Got her,” Deerly-Johnson said, hanging up a phone. “Serenity Home and Hospice. It’s out by the golf course. We’ll take my car.”

With siren blasting, we got to the nursing home in five minutes. At the nurses’ station we asked for Eunice Blanton’s room.

“What’s going on?” the nurse-in-charge asked.

“Just take us to her room,” Deerly-Johnson barked.

When we entered the room, it appeared as if we were too late. The woman in the bed was so thin and pale, I immediately looked to see if she was breathing. I was relieved to see the slight rise of her chest.

“Eunice has not been feeling well,” the nurse said. “She sleeps most of the time.”

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

“A lot of things,” the nurse said. “She’s old, after all,”

“Does she get many visitors?”

“Oh, no. There isn’t much family. A niece, I believe. But she lives in Lynchburg. Can’t remember the last time she was here. I don’t think they are close. If it wasn’t for Mr. Gruber, the poor woman wouldn’t have anyone to talk to.”

“Gruber is a regular visitor?”

“Yes. He is a wonderful man. He takes a special interest in residents who don’t have much in the way of family and are lonely.”

I looked at Deerly-Johnson.

“I bet,” I said.

“Excuse me,” the nurse said. “What does that mean?”

“Please go back to the nurses station,” the Chief said. “I want to ask Ms. Blanton some questions.”

“Yes, ma’am. But you may not get much out of her. And she is easily agitated.”

“We’ll be careful.”

The nurse left and we tried to gently rouse the old woman. She finally opened her eyes but the nurse had been right. The woman was frightened and disoriented. She quickly became highly excited. I was afraid she’d fall out of the bed. Finally, Kalugin walked over to her. He gently picked up her hand and started singing something softly in Russian. She looked at him and smiled. Then she fell back to sleep.

“That was very nice of you, Maks.”

It was hard to believe this was the same man who the previous day had killed two men.

“Arsenic,” he said.

“What?”

“She is being poisoned with arsenic. The leukonychia striata is obvious.” He saw my look of incomprehension. “Look at her fingernails. The white lines.”

I picked up Eunice Blanton’s hand, which was light as a feather and cold to the touch. The white lines that ran parallel to the base of her nails were obvious.

“Why hasn’t anyone noticed?”

“Because the lines are not uncommon among old people, and can be caused by illnesses or injuries.”

“Then why do you assume it is poison?”

“Because she is in that book of death. If you check her medical records, she will undoubtedly have certain symptoms, such as diarrhea, vomiting, blood in the urine, night blindness and stomach pain. Her  kidneys and liver will shut down. The final result will be coma and death. The lethal dose is between 70 and 200 milligrams a day for a healthy adult. Of course, for these poor souls, it would be less.”

“How do you know so much about it?” Deerly-Johnson asked.

“I read a lot.”

I turned to the Chief.

“All those symptoms can be attributed to other factors,” I said, “such as the diseases listed as causes of death on the certificates. If you check, I think you will find out that Gruber was solicitous of all the dead people in the ledger, visiting them frequently and poisoning them. Deaths in nursing homes are par for the course. There would be no autopsies and the only one who might have noticed anything suspicious was your part-time coroner and full-time funeral director, Blaloch. And if you dig deep enough, I bet you will also find that somehow Elson and the others arranged to have their victims turn over their insurance policies and assets to them.”

“Dig deep is right,” Deerly-Johnson said. “The only way to prove any of this would be to exhume the bodies.”

“If there are any to exhume,” Kalugin said. “If it were me, I’d cremate the remains.”

I looked at him. Maks shrugged.

“I’m just saying.”

“They wouldn’t have been cremated,” Deerly-Johnson said. “In Virginia, a body must be autopsied by a state medical examiner before it can be cremated. They wouldn’t have taken a chance on that. No, the bodies are available, but I’ll need a court order. With probable cause.”

“The ledger and a blood test on this lady should provide that,” I said. “The nurse mentioned that she has a niece. Get her to authorize the test. Close or not, she probably doesn’t want someone murdering her aunt. And find out if any of the 13 dead people in the ledger had next-of-kin. Some must have, no matter how far removed. They won’t be too happy to learn that they lost out on inheritances they probably didn’t even know existed. Do you trust the local prosecutor?”

“Atlas doesn’t have one. We’re part of Culpeper County. The Commonwealth Attorney there is Mike Doyle. He’s got political ambitions for higher office, maybe even Governor, but he’s a straight shooter.”

“Go to him. This is the kind of case that can make him a national reputation. When he sees the ledger, the death certificates and Eunice Blanton’s blood test he’ll run with it, maybe all the way to the state house.”

“It would be nice to keep this old lady alive,” Kalugin said.

“I’ll get her transferred to the hospital and put under guard,” Deerly-Johnson said.

CHAPTER 21 - SLEEP INTERRUPTED

Things went more quickly than I expected. Michael Doyle turned out to be as ambitious and honest as Deerly-Johnson indicated. He descended on Atlas with a slew of investigators and a contingent of Virginia State Troopers sent by the Governor, who happened to be of the same political party as Doyle and also saw a political goldmine in the making.

As I suspected, all 13 of the nursing home residents who died either had no living relatives, or only those that were too distant or uncaring to monitor what happened to the elderly victims, none of whom rated an obituary. Insurance policies, deeds, bank accounts, trust documents and the like were signed over to a corporation that Gruber set up to run his nursing homes. From there, the monies found their way into various shell corporations and offshore accounts. As Mike Doyle explained to me, the flood of extra cash was easily lost amid the Federal disbursements the homes received thanks to their not-for-profit status.

“It all started with a little old lady named Mae Culverhouse,” Doyle said, “who had no family and actually did leave a small fortune to Gruber’s homes. Gruber and his golf buddies began talking and Judge Elson realized that they could use Mae’s money to keep paying the insurance policies of certain residents no one really cared about, and have them name Gruber’s business as their beneficiary. When the residents died, they would collect the insurance. It wasn’t long before they figured out they could speed up the process if they bumped off the old folks. As someone died, they used a portion of the insurance or other assets that had been signed over to keep up more policies. It was like a geriatric Ponzi scheme that could go on indefinitely, as long as they had one or two elderly residents whose deaths would go unnoticed each year.”

It soon became obvious that Judge Colver Elson could not have orchestrated his scheme without at least the passive  acquiescence of some local attorneys and court officers. The Governor quickly named Doyle as Special Prosecutor to clean up the mess. The media, of course, went berserk and soon a Grand Jury was empaneled. Spivey, Gruber and Blaloch were not immediately arrested and they all lawyered up, but their efforts at creating a solid front crumbled quickly. Doyle let it be known that the first conspirator in the door seeking a deal would avoid the death penalty.

Blaloch was the first to crack, unnerved by the fact that his two henchmen, the Bodine twins, had apparently vanished. At my urging, Doyle hinted to Blaloch and his lawyer that Rufus and Abner were themselves cutting a deal. Their fused bodies had not yet been discovered in the smoldering barn. For all I knew, it might be months before they were. The local fire department had let the barn burn itself out and the police now had more on their plate to worry about than a fire presumably set by wayward teen-agers.

“What makes you think the Bodines had anything to do with anything?” Doyle had asked me.

“What makes you think they didn’t? Their disappearance is strange, isn’t it? What do you have to lose by throwing their names out there?”

Doyle stared at me as if he wanted to say something else, but let it go. The Michael Doyles of this world don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. But as a precaution, Kalugin decided to leave town. I would have, too, but when I called Laurene Robillard to fill her in on what happened, she said she was coming to Atlas and wanted me to stick around.

***

“If I had known what it would lead to, I don’t think I would have tried to find out who I really was.”

Laurene and I were sipping some of Colver Elson’s bourbon in the den where he was murdered. I’d picked her up that afternoon at the same private airfield that Maks had used. She also flew in by private jet, supplied by her rich  fiancé. I was beginning to wonder if anyone flew commercial anymore. We were sitting on a couch in front of the bay window looking at the pine cones falling from the trees.

“I’m going to sell that goddamn chair,” she said, pointing to the one where Elson sat when the ice pick was driven through his eye. “In fact, I’m going to sell this whole place and give the money to the family of that boy who was killed. He’d be alive if it wasn’t for me.”

“And your grandfather and his crew would have kept right on killing old people, Laurene. None of this is your fault.”

She crossed her elegant legs and sighed.

“I know. But finding out that I am descended from a murderer is hard to take.” Her eyes glistened. “I was so happy to imagine I came come from respectable folks.” She laughed harshly. “What a fucking joke. Who would have thought ‘hooker’ looks better on my resume?”

“Don’t be a ninny,” I said. “You are not an Elson. You are a Robillard. And soon to be Laurene Robillard Lewinsohn. You will be hobnobbing with the rich and famous on Wall Street, some of whom kill more people with a pen than Elson ever did with a sword, or arsenic. Besides, no so-called respectable clan lacks a murderer or two hanging from the family tree. You’ve straightened your life out, Laurene. I won’t let you screw it up now because you’re feeling sorry for yourself.”

“You won’t, will you?”

“Here’s looking at you kid,” I said, in my best Bogart voice.

“That’s from a movie, isn’t it?”

I’d forgotten how young she was. She held out her glass and I got up and fixed us two more drinks.

“I’m still going to give the money to the Browne family.”

“Good for you.”

“Do you think I’ll ever find out who killed my grandfather?”

“Hard to say. I don’t think Spivey, Blaloch or Gruber had anything to do with it, but the suspect pool is now immense. The lawyers he basically blackmailed into his scheme. The women he allegedly abused. Hell, even the relatives of the people in the nursing homes. Maybe one of them figured the scheme out. I’ll stick around if you want, but the State Police are now involved. They have a better chance of finding the killer now than I do.”

“No. You’ve done more than anyone could have asked. “You must want to go home.”

“No argument there, kiddo. But come on, I’ll take you to dinner in town. I know a good French bistro. Unless you want some week-old Chicken Kiev.”

***

It was 1 A.M. when I awoke from a dead sleep, the best I had since arriving in Atlas. Beef Bourguignon and a good claret will do that. Not to mention the fact that just about everyone who might do me harm in that part of Virginia was either dead or in jail. I wasn’t worried about a serial ice pick killer returning. Judge Elson had obviously been the target.

But I did wake up, drowsily. You tend to do that when someone is fondling your private parts. I automatically rolled to the side, cupped a firm breast and kissed an erect nipple.

“Alice,” I whispered.

She laughed and then moaned slightly. Only in the tiny part of my brain that was functioning rationally was there the realization it wasn’t Alice. The breast was too small, the laugh different. Even the fingers in the hand working in my groin felt strange. Not unpleasant, but strange. I reached back to the bedside table and turned on a light. Laurene Robillard lay there naked. The last I’d seen her she was headed up to a second-floor bedroom.

Now, I was fully awake. She rolled on top of me and leaned forward. Her breasts brushed my lips as she reached down to insert me. I reached down and stopped her.

“What the hell are you doing, Laurene?”

My voice was hoarse. She was gorgeous.

“You’re the detective. You tell me.” Her face looked both aroused and mischievous. “I just wanted to thank you for everything. Just relax. I’m really good at this.”

I rolled her over on her back and pinioned her arms. I looked down at her lovely, smiling face. I kissed her hard.

“I appreciate the offer,” I said, breaking the kiss. “But I’m with someone, now.”

She arched her pelvis and ground it into mine.

“It sure feels like you want me.”

“A man would have to be dead, and maybe cremated, before you couldn’t get a reaction out of him, Laurene. You are a knockout. But I like you too much to fuck you.”

“I don’t love you, if that’s what you think,” she said. “I just want to give you a little pleasure.”

“What about Barry?”

“This has nothing to do with Barry. After we get married, I’ll stop giving it away.”

I laughed. And so did she. I rolled off her. She sat up.

“Are you sure?” she said.

“I’m sure.”

She leaned down and gave me a peck on the cheek.

“I’m going down to get a drink of milk. Do you want anything?”

I shook my head.

“See you in the morning,” she said. “Toodles.”

I watched her walk out my bedroom. She had a wonderful, tight little bum. I took a deep breath and shut the light.

“Barry, you lucky son-of-a-bitch,” I whispered. “You hit the damn lottery.”

CHAPTER 22 - A MOTHER’S LOVE

When the sun came up, I went down to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. I looked out the window. There was a slight mist, but I could see Laurene standing by the old well at the rear of the property. I watched her as she walked back to the house. She was holding something in her hand that from a distance looked like a large white rag.

“Good morning, Alton,” she said when she entered the kitchen. She gave me a mischievous smile. “Sleep well?”

“You know damn well that I didn’t.”

She laughed.

“Whose fault is that?”

I poured her a cup of coffee.

“Look at this,” she said, holding out the rag.

But it wasn’t a rag, but rather some sort of clothing. Now I recognized it. It was the clothing that had come out of the well when I pulled up the bucket. I’d just cast it aside in my excitement at finding the ledger. As she shook it out, bits of dirt and leaves fell on the floor.

“It is my mother’s.”

“How do you know?”

“Her name is in it.” Laurene showed me the small name tag sewn into the collar: B. Elson. “It must be from the nursing home. She wears one just like it. I wonder how it got in the well.”

I took the dress from her.

“It’s in pretty bad shape,” Laurene said. “I was thinking of washing it. Maybe get that stain out.”

I looked at the large brownish spot on its hem. I rubbed my finger on some of it.

“Is that mud?”

“No,” I said. “It’s blood.”

I put the dress on the counter and headed out the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back. Don’t touch that dress.”

I walked out to the well, then stared down the path in the woods behind it.  I pulled out my cell phone and called the Atlas Police Department and asked for Officer Melore. The switchboard operator told me he was off that day. I asked her to contact him and have him call me.

“It’s urgent,” I said.

She knew who I was and said she’d call Melore at home. I thanked her and went back to the house. I deflected Laurene’s questions and poured myself a cup of coffee. My cell beeped. It was Melore. He sounded sleepy.

“Sorry to bother you. But do you remember telling me that on the night Judge Elson was killed you found a woman, a naked woman, walking along the road?”

“Yes.”

“Was it Doswell Road?”

“How did you know that?”

“I’ll explain in a minute. How did she look?”

“Like I said, she had no clothes on.”

“I mean, other than that. Was she injured in any way?”

“Not really. Just some cuts and bruises from walking through the woods.”

“Do you know where she had walked from?”

“Truck driver said he saw her go into the woods on Clayton Turnpike. She came out on Doswell, where I found her.”

“The Heartland Nursing Home is on Doswell, right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“How far from where you found the woman?”

“About a mile. What are you getting at?”

“Didn’t you think she might have come from there?”

There was a long pause.

“No, not really. She wasn’t all that old.”

“Did you get her name?”

“No. I drove her to the hospital and then resumed my patrol. I meant to check up on her the next day but then all hell broke loose when the Judge got killed.”

“Melore, I have to know her name and what became of her. Can you check with the hospital?”

I had his full attention now.

“You don’t think … ?”

“I need that name.”

“I’ll call you back.”

***

An hour later, Laurene, Deerly-Johnson and I walked into Beatrice Elson’s room at the Heartland Nursing Home. There was a lot of new staff in all of Gruber’s nursing homes, as well as security guards and people from the prosecutor’s office checking records. I shut the door.

Beatrice was sitting where I’d last seen her, watching TV. I went over and turned the sound down. She looked up at us, her eyes settling on Laurene. She smiled.

Deerly-Johnson leaned down and held out the nightgown.

“Miss Beatrice,” she said gently, “how did your nightgown get into the well behind your house?”

Beatrice Elson reached out her delicate hands and took the clothing from the Chief. Then she looked up at the four of us.

“Momma,” Laurene said, “it’s all right. We just want to understand.”

“I … could not …”

The words came haltingly, and were barely audible. Time stood still in that room. I could hear my own heart. Even though it was what we’d hoped for, when a woman speaks for the first time in decades it came as a shock.

“What couldn’t you do, Momma?”

Beatrice started again, less haltingly.

“I could not let him …. do to you …  what he did to me.”

“Grandfather?”

Beatrice Elson looked at Laurene. Her face took on a cast of determination. And something else. Pure love.

“Colver Elson,” Beatrice said, in a strong voice, “was also your father.”

CHAPTER 23 - PILLOW TALK

“Colver Elson, the man Laurene believed to be her grandfather, was her father!”

“Well, actually, he was both,” I said, “in a Chinatown sort of way.”

I had just finished relating to Alice what Beatrice told us in the nursing home. Once she broke down her wall of silence, the horrible truth about Elson spilled out.

“My God, the poor girl.”

Alice and I were in a four-post, canopied bed in a suite in a pet-friendly bed and breakfast just outside of Atlas. It came highly recommended by a grateful Evelyn Rogers, whose small law firm was rapidly becoming a large law firm. The litigation arising from the murders in the nursing home was sure to be monumental and Laurene Robillard and I had made sure the relatives of the deceased learned that Rogers knew more about the crimes than any other attorney in town, many of whom were compromised in the scandal anyway. Something told me I wouldn’t have to worry about the B&B bill. A lot of previously unconcerned relatives came out of the woodwork.

“Laurene is a tough cookie. I wouldn’t worry about her.”

“I’m thinking about her mother, Beatrice. What she must have gone through, living with a monster like Elson.  How long had he abused her?”

“Just after her sixteenth birthday. He only stopped raping her when she became pregnant with Laurene. By that time Beatrice was exhibiting signs of the mental illness he undoubtedly exacerbated. Given his position, he had no trouble placing her baby far from Atlas and then clapping Beatrice in one of Gruber’s nursing homes.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t force her to have an abortion.”

“Apparently his wife wouldn’t allow it, on religious grounds. And perhaps she was hopeful Laurene’s father would reappear and do the right thing. She had no idea that the father was her own husband. Beatrice was too ashamed to say anything. Mentally damaged, she was totally under Elson’s sway.”

“He must have been afraid that Beatrice would eventually say something. I mean she just did. So, I’m also surprised he didn’t kill her as well.”

“She was his daughter, and he may have loved her in some perverted way. Beatrice said Elson occasionally had sex with her in the nursing home.”

“No!”

“He had the run of the place, and Gruber insured privacy. Beatrice is pretty murky on the details, because she was usually drugged up by Gruber. That was another safeguard for Elson. He made sure she was always nearly catatonic. One of the reasons she can talk now is that Gruber isn’t around to give her whatever he was giving her.”

“If she was drugged, how on Earth did she manage to leave the nursing home to kill Elson?”

“A mother’s love may be more powerful than any narcotic. When she found out that Elson asked Laurene to move in with him, she willed herself to do something. She was given pills four times day. She faked swallowing some of them until she was able to function. She waited until late at night, pretending to be asleep, which she usually was anyway, and then slipped out of the nursing home.”

“What about the staff?”

“At that time of night, only a couple of nurses are on duty. It’s a big place and while they check the rooms intermittently once the residents are asleep they stick close to the nurses’ station. Beatrice waited until a nurse looked in on her and then went out a back door, knowing she would not be missed until morning. I’m not sure she even cared about that. Her actions after killing Elson were erratic. She knew enough to throw her bloody nightgown down the well. But walking naked through the woods and out to a highway in the general direction of the nursing home was probably instinctive. There were still plenty of drugs in her system. When Melore found her she was once again nonverbal, probably in shock. He had no idea who she was.”

“Didn’t anyone at the hospital or Heartland make the connection?”

“If they did, they thought it was just a weird coincidence. After all, she was just a sick, harmless woman who just happened to wander away from her nursing home on the night her father was killed. No one knew he’d raped her and she feared he was about to do the same thing to her daughter. How could anyone imagine she would walk miles to her house to kill a man everyone assumed she adored? That was a fiction he supported by his frequent visits to the nursing home. Where he continued to abuse her with the help of Gruber.”

“How did Beatrice find out Elson wanted Laurene to move in with him?”

“Laurene told her, during one of her visits to the nursing home. She was just making conversation, of course. Beatrice was unresponsive, but the thought that her daughter would now be living with Elson was too much for her. She assumed he’d do to Laurene what he’d done to her.”

“But Laurene wasn’t going to move in with Elson.”

“Beatrice didn’t know that. And she also didn’t know that Laurene wasn’t any virginal shrinking violet. If Elson had made a move on her, Laurene would have probably cut his balls off.”

Alice shook her head.

“So Judge Elson’s murder had nothing to do with the other murders at the nursing homes.”

“Nope. But it was the key to unraveling the nursing home conspiracy.”

“I hope those men burn in hell.”

“They will, or something close to it. When they eventually go to jail, every con with an elderly parent will be waiting for them, shiv in hand.”

“Are you sure they will go to jail?”

“Yes. Blaloch is singing like Sinatra. He is the weak link.”

“What do you mean?”

I told Alice what Maks said about criminal conspiracies.

“The darling man should know.”

For some reason, Kalugin and Alice, despite being on opposite ends of the moral spectrum, adored each other. I took great comfort knowing that the Russian mob’s apex assassin always had her back.

“What’s going to happen to Beatrice? Certainly, they can’t hold her responsible for killing Elson.”

“No. After all, he is the one who had her declared legally incompetent. Besides, there isn’t a jury in the land that would punish a woman who killed a father who raped her for years and who also helped murder more than a dozen helpless senior citizens. Hell, if she hadn’t killed Elson, the nursing home murders might have gone on indefinitely. Jurors would probably want to dig the son of a bitch up and stick an ice pick in his other eye.”

Alice shook her head.

“Will Beatrice have to stay in the nursing home?”

“For a while, until the dust settles. But Laurene and her husband-to-be have great financial and legal resources. They will eventually petition the courts to allow Beatrice to move into a home up North to be close to her family. I’ve already spoken to Arman and he says Beatrice will have the best care in one of his homes. I don’t see why anyone would object. Doyle, the Special Prosecutor, is already on board. So is Chief Deerly-Johnson. They are being given credit for solving one of the crimes of the century. What they say carries a lot of weight.”

“What about you? You basically broke the case. Don’t you want some credit?”

I thought about the Bodine boys in the barn. They were among the sleeping dogs I preferred to let lie.

“I’m happy the way things turned out. I’m not looking for publicity.”

“This is surreal. Beatrice Elson will be going to a facility owned by the Russian mob.”

“Which, as a rule, doesn’t murder sick old people.”

“Does Arman know who Laurene is? That she once basically worked for him?”

“Yes. He was quite amused. I mean, he knew some of it from Maks. But he couldn’t wait to tell his father about this latest twist.”

“Speaking of twists,” Alice said, “I can’t believe Laurene tried to fuck you.”

Gunner rolled over and yawned.

“I think Laurene was just going through the motions. For most of her life, sex was the coin of the realm to her. She just wanted to show me how grateful she was. She knew I’d turn her down. And since I did, she found another way to be grateful. Abby called me. Said Laurene sent me a bonus check. A very large bonus check.”

The money, I knew, would come in handy. I needed a new car. The insurance company said my Santa Fe was a total loss. Just as well. I knew I could never drive it again without thinking about Lucas.

“Do you still plan to walk sweet little Miss Robillard down the aisle?”

“Only if you don’t mind.”

Alice thought about it.

“What the hell? She’s proving that hookers do have a heart of gold by taking care of the Browne family. Besides, the wedding is at the Waldorf. I’m dying to go. But maybe I’ll make a move on her new hubby, just to even things out.”

“Can you wait until after the cocktail hour? It’s probably going to be spectacular.”

“I’m glad you have your priorities right.”

Alice snuggled closer to me. I snuggled back. Naked snuggling is one of my favorite pastimes.

“I’m glad we’re not staying in Elson’s house anymore,” she said. “The thought of what went on in there sickens me. We didn’t sleep in his bed, did we? Or in any bed Beatrice would have been in?”

“I’m pretty sure we didn’t. And as for sex, I think you preferred that chair by the window, so you could watch the farm animals while we did it.”

“Why don’t you suck a fart?”

“There something else I’d rather suck.” I lapped her nearest nipple. “How about another peche melba?”

“I knew I should never have said that. Will I have to hear it all the time?’

“Well, except maybe when we’re actually doing the melba.”

I rolled on top of her. Gunner, who had been curled up on the floor next to the bed while we talked, yawned again, got up and went in the other room.

“He did that before, too,” Alice said. “I don’t think he approves of what we do.”

“He is just being discreet. Besides, he has very sensitive hearing.”

Alice, who knew she was very vocal during sex, colored.

“I kind of like making love in a bed like this,” she said.

“I’m not sure I do. It’s too far off the ground. We’ve rolled out of beds before, you know. If we fall out of this one, we’ll wind up in traction. And that canopy is a big waste. There should be a mirror up there.”

Alice giggled.

“I like all the fluffy pillows,” she said.

There were all sorts of colorfully decorated pillows. Round pillows, oblong pillows, tube-like pillows. At first, I’d kicked most of them to the floor. But then Alice, who’s spent a lot of time in Paris and picked up some tricks from her French girlfriends, showed me how they might be used other than for sleeping.

“Hand me that one, sweetie.”

Gunner had left in the nick of time.

THE END

THE ELSON LEGACY is the sixth of the Alton Rhode mystery novels. If you enjoyed the book, please take the time to review it on Amazon.com. Here is a link you can use:

THE ELSON LEGACY

The next mystery in the Alton Rhode series is TURTLE DOVE. Here is a sample:

TURTLE DOVE

“Mourning Doves are small, graceful birds, common across the continent. The doves form strong pair bonds to raise their young. They have always been heavily hunted, and now developers are savaging their breeding grounds, plowing under nests filled with eggs and young chicks. In North Carolina, where they are also called Turtle Doves, the soft, drawn-out calls of surviving parents for their buried young sound like laments.”

— Ashleigh Harper, from To Bury a Turtle Dove

PROLOGUE

The old woman was so very tired. She felt as if she could close her eyes and sleep forever. Which she knew was a distinct possibility when one is 88 with a weak heart.

Not that she feared death. Her long life had been one of accomplishment and honors. While she cared little for the honors, she liked the thought that her signature book was now a staple in classrooms around the country. My God, has it been 47 years since it was published! Or was it 48? She could not remember.

It was hard remembering such things at her age. The pills certainly did not help. But they did make her more comfortable, if a bit addled. Her arthritis and various other pains were now bearable. Her eyesight was strong, thanks to cataract surgery that gave her better vision than she had when she was in her 60’s! She had books and cable TV for the BBC crime dramas she loved, and she still enjoyed her food, especially the variety of fresh seafood available, although she ate sparingly.

She stirred in her rocking chair and looked out over the Atlantic Ocean from the deck of her third-floor bedroom. She certainly could stay awake long enough to watch the night arrive. Not the sunset, which would be in the West, on the opposite side of the island. The woman did not give a fig about sunsets. They could be beautiful, of course, and she had seen spectacular sunsets on the West coast of Florida and in the Florida Keys, where she traveled when much younger. But here, on Bald Head Island, just off the coast of North Carolina, the sun set over land. No shimmering golden glow against the clouds, no “green flash” as the sun disappeared (which she had once actually spotted even though some people claimed it was an old wives’ tale), no boozy spectators “hissing” as the sun appeared to drop into the Gulf of Mexico. In her house facing the beach, she loved sunrises, and next to them, watching the Atlantic glimmer, first with fading sunlight and, at the right time of the month, with the moon’s reflection as it rose into the night sky.

She was a familiar sight to beachgoers and passing boaters, as she sat on her deck. It was mid-October, and the air, while unseasonably warm for this time of year, was still brisk, so there were few people on the beach and only an occasional passing boat. She always waved at the boaters, and if they noticed, they invariably waved back. She wondered if any of them knew who she was. She doubted it. She had done everything she could to avoid becoming a tourist attraction, God forbid. Soon, there would not be anyone to wave to her. The tourist season had been over for weeks and the first real cold front would drive the stragglers away, leaving only the island’s few permanent residents, many of them commercial fishermen.

A large sport fishing boat came into her view, very close to shore. The captain must be a good sailor, she thought, since the shoals and sandbars along this stretch of coast could be challenging. But there was little breeze and the sea was comparatively docile. The boat stopped and dropped anchor. Curious. It was late for day fishing and early for night fishing. A man threw a raft over the side and was soon paddling into shore. That was even stranger. The old woman had watched boats for many years and had never once seen someone do that. The man beached the raft and dragged it a few dozen yards onto the sand. Then he walked toward the house.

The old woman heard the sliding door behind her open, and then a familiar voice.

“Time for your meds, honey.”

“So soon, Sandy? It seems like I just took some.”

“These are a new prescription.”

“What are they for?”

“They will help you sleep.”

“I already have sleeping pills.”

“These are a new prescription.”

“Why are there so many?”

“Doctor’s orders. Now be a good girl. Here, I’ll help you. You can take them one at a time. That’s good, honey. Now another one. There we go. Just a few more.”

She disliked taking pills. Some of her medications were so large that she called them “horse pills” and joked that she was thinking of entering the Kentucky Derby. But Sandy knew what was good for her. She had been the old woman’s right arm for several years, ministering to her failing health and keeping her isolated from journalists and even the merely curious who wanted to talk to the famous writer, who valued her privacy above all else. The woman knew about the rumors that she was senile, or worse. On a good day she had most, if not all, of her faculties. But being thought of as mentally challenged had its advantages for someone who wanted to be left alone.

She had been angry at Sandy only once, when her caretaker and friend suggested a meeting with a New York publisher who wanted the woman’s other manuscripts.

“What other manuscripts?” she had asked.

“The ones I found in those trunks you have in storage.”

“Oh, my goodness, Sandy. I wrote that drivel when I was barely out of college. I did not even have any experiences to talk of. Just childish jottings. I thought I burned them. Throw them out.”

“But they may be valuable. At least the publisher thinks so.”

The old woman was stunned.

“You’ve already approached a publisher about them! You had no right, Sandy. What were you thinking? They just want to trade on my name. Those infantile scribbles will make me look like a fool. They will cheapen the one book I want to be remembered for. I won’t have it, I tell you. I won’t have it. I want them destroyed. I will even put it in my will. Nothing I wrote before Turtle Dove must ever see the light of day!”

Sandy apologized, and that was that. Since then, she had been even more solicitous, as if to make up for her mistake. But that was all in the past.

Now, after the old woman managed to down all the pills, she said, “Sandy, are we expecting someone?”

“Why do you ask?”

“A man just came ashore and was walking toward the house.”

“Well, he must have used the beach access path to cut through to the road. I didn’t see anyone. Here, let me help you get dressed for bed.”

The old woman suddenly felt very sleepy. She could hardly keep her eyes open. She did not object.

***

The woman did not know why she woke up. It was dark, but moonlight streamed through the windows. There was someone in the room. She was suddenly frightened. But why?

“Sandy, is that you?”

A hand switched on her bedside lamp. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust and then she had quite a start. Another woman, also elderly, was standing by the side of her bed, staring at her. It was like looking in a mirror, except the woman’s eyes were brown.

“Who are you?”

Suddenly, Sandy appeared next to the other woman, and pulled her away, shouting “Bessie, what the hell are you doing in here?”

“I just wanted to see her in person. I want to get everything right. Her eyes are blue.”

“Yes, we know. We already have the contact lenses for you.”

“And her skin is darker.”

“A few days sitting in the sun will take care of that. And maybe a little body makeup. Now get out of here and stay on your side of the house until we come for you.”

“All right. All right. You needn’t be so pushy. I had to hear her speak, didn’t I?”

“Do you think there will be a problem with that?”

“No, no. I’m no Meryl Streep, sweetheart, but I’ll get by. I heard enough.”

“Good. Now go to your room.”

“Sure, sure. But I’m sick and tired of being cooped up out of sight. When does she go in that nursing home?”

“A few days. Now, get out of here.”

The woman in bed heard the door shut. She was confused. Who were they talking about?

“Sandy, what is going on? Who was that? Who is Bessie?”

There was no answer and for a moment she thought she was dreaming. Then, another unfamiliar face swam into her vision. It was a man’s face. A cruel face.

“Jesus Christ,” the man snarled. “You said she’d be sleeping!”

Finally, a face she knew loomed above her. Sandy. And she was smiling. The old woman smiled back. It was all right.

“I must have screwed up the dose,” Sandy said.

“That’s fucking great,” the man said. “Now what? They saw each other. Bessie is a pain in the ass. What did she want to hear her voice for? This one here hasn’t spoken in public for years.”

The old woman was shocked at the man’s vulgarity. Who was he, and what were they talking about?

“What difference does it make?” Sandy said. “And who knows? It might be for the best. I never thought about the voice. It doesn’t change anything. You know what you have to do.”

“I’d rather do it when she was asleep,” the man grumbled.

“Just get on with it, for Christ’s sake.”

A hand roughly lifted the old woman’s head and she felt her pillow being removed. The movement was so sudden that she cried out as pain shot through her weak neck muscles.

“No,” she said as her head flopped back on the mattress. “I need my pillow.”

“Coming right up, lady,” the man said.

The pillow came back into view. She was sorry she’d complained. They were probably just fluffing it for her. The man was certainly crude, however. No bedside manners at all. And he smelled of fish. I will tell Sandy to replace him.

The pillow seemed to be coming closer. Then it was pressed firmly against her face. She tried to breathe. She couldn’t. The pressure increased. She did not understand. Her lungs started to burn. Panic pierced her drug-addled brain. For the first time in ages, she felt the beat of her feeble heart. It was pounding. There was a roar in her ears. Her hands flew up to grab the pillow and encountered the arms holding it relentlessly against her mouth and nose. The arms were strong and hairy. She vomited, which only increased her agony, since her mouth and nose were blocked.

Then, mercifully, her heart, starved of oxygen and unused to such exertion, began beating erratically and plunged into a terminal arrhythmia. She lost consciousness, and was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

But the man who murdered her did not let up the pressure for another five minutes.

“That’s enough,” the woman called Sandy said. “Jesus, that’s enough.”

“You said she’d be out like a light,” the man said, breathing heavily. It was hard work holding down the pillow. “I want to be sure. This old biddy is tough.”

He lifted the pillow. The woman’s sightless eyes stared up at him. A greenish-yellow fluid dripped from her mouth.

“Christ, it stinks in here,” he said. “She must have crapped, too.”

“Never mind that. Strip her and then wrap her in the bed sheet with the pillow. I’ll clean up here. Will you need my help getting her to your boat?”

The killer’s 31-foot Bertram rolled gently at anchor 150 feet off the beach behind the house. The craft, no longer in production but still considered one of the finest fishing boats ever made, was his pride and joy. It had cost him a small fortune, which was one reason he got himself involved in this crazy plan. The other reason was standing at the end of the bed giving him orders. He’d never had a woman like her, and suspected he never would. Their relationship was a well-kept secret. He wished it wasn’t. He wanted to climb to the top of “Old Baldy”, the island’s historic lighthouse, and shout that he was sleeping with a woman other men could only dream about, especially the harbor rats he hung out with at the bar at Mojo’s. Someday, if all went well, he would.

“No. I’ve already figured that out.”

He wrapped the corpse and everything else in the bed sheet and carried it out to the deck.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“She don’t weigh much,” the man said, “but I don’t want to carry her down three flights of stairs.”

With that, he unceremoniously dropped his burden off the deck, where it landed with a thud in the sand far below.

“Jesus Christ, Len!”

“What? She don’t care.”

He went downstairs and out the back door. He picked up the body. She really was light. Just skin and bones. The small rubber skiff that he’d used to come ashore lay in the sand at the high-tide mark. He put the body in the skiff and dragged it into the surf, hopped in and picked up a paddle. The water was calm, which is why they chose this particular evening.

***

Leonard Vole slowed his fishing boat, She Got the House, approximately three miles from Bald Head Island. Originally named the Peggy Sue after his third wife, the new name aptly reflected Vole’s reduced circumstances. He changed it immediately after his divorce from the bitch, who somehow was awarded most of his assets — even though she was the one caught screwing their minister in Vole’s pickup. She got the damn pickup, too! Before meeting Sandy, he alternated sleeping on the boat and in a rented room in Southport. He still had the room, but now also spent much of his time in Sandy’s bed. He had not replaced his vehicle. He could walk to the ferry terminal in Southport, and everything he needed for his fishing charter business was available on Bald Head, which except for a few maintenance, fire and police vehicles, did not allow cars. All other land transportation on the miniscule island is limited to modified “golf” carts, small trams, bicycles or foot.

Vole looked at the bundled corpse on his deck. He’d originally planned on wrapping it in heavy chains and additionally weighing it down by barbells, but decided not to take any chances. On board he had the tools needed to clean the largest marlins and sharks, and now he took them out of a locker. Then he unwrapped the sheet around the woman. An hour later, using his biggest hooks, he weighted down the individual pieces with the heaviest sinkers in his tackle box. As the boat made steady progress on autopilot, Vole calmly dropped his horrible cargo at approximately quarter-mile intervals. A former Navy Seal who was separated from the service for mental instability, he did not find the whole grisly process all that disturbing. He’d seen worse.

Each chunk sank out of sight, but not before attracting the attention of some sharks, lured by the blood in the water. From the look of them they appeared to be spinners or blacktips. Even such an experienced fisherman as Vole sometimes had trouble telling the close shark cousins apart at a distance. Vole knew this stretch of the Atlantic as well as anyone in North Carolina, and had specifically chosen the location, where the water was not only deep but also far from any of the underwater wrecks favored by his fellow fishermen. In the distance he could see the running lights of freighters plying the coast of North Carolina, but there were no other boats, large or small, within miles. The chance that the body parts would ever be discovered before decomposition and seas scavengers obliterated all traces of them was nil. And even if any bits remained, they would be swept far away by the Gulf Stream. Certainly, nothing would wash up on shore anywhere near where the killing took place.

The Bald Head Island marina was in an inlet on the western shore of the island. Vole headed back, shredding and scattering the woman’s clothes, pillow and bedsheets in the water as he went. Then he started washing down the deck and stern, which looked like an abattoir. He noticed that it had gotten darker. The moon, which had been shining brightly, was now covered by clouds. Vole went into his cabin and turned on his weather radar. There was a squall just to his north. He headed for it and soon She Got the House was engulfed in a driving rain. It was a rough ride, with water sloshing over the gunwales fore and aft, but Vole loved it. He was too good a seaman to be worried about a passing squall, and the rain and seawater was cleaning the boat even better than he could!

It took him almost an hour to reach his berth. After tying up his boat and checking for anything incriminating, Vole climbed into one of the golf carts owned by the woman he had recently dismembered and headed back to her house.

Just under 15 minutes later, he stripped off his sodden clothes in the room he was using, threw them in the washer and took a shower. Then, wearing only a towel, he padded into his lover’s room. She was already lying in bed, naked. The woman knew his blood was up, and he wanted his reward. He dropped the towel. She laughed and reached out and grabbed him by his already erect member.

“Any problems?” she asked, drawing him onto the bed.

“No.” Leonard Vole’s voice was husky with lust. “She’s sleeping with Bin Laden.”

It was a good line, and the woman laughed. A moment later they were thrashing in bed, not knowing, or caring, that they had just committed only the second murder in Bald Head Island’s history.

The first had occurred almost 500 years earlier, in 1526, when a Spanish sailor washed ashore after the ship captained by the Spanish explorer Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón ran into the treacherous shoals surrounding the island and sank. The sailor, whose name was lost to history, was found, sprawled barely conscious in the sand, by some of the Native Americans who frequented Bald Head’s shores and estuaries to collect the abundance of shellfish available.

Unfortunately for the sailor, the savages who revived him were sick of eating clams and shrimp, and decided to augment their diet.

They killed him, and ate the evidence.

If you would like to read the rest of TURTLE DOVE, you can use this link:

TURTLE DOVE

***

Many of the characters and incidents in the book have been developed over the length of the Rhode series. The books can all be enjoyed by themselves, but if you are interested in starting at the beginning, here is a list of links to the first five mysteries, in order:

CAPRIATI’S BLOOD

LAURA LEE

SIREN’S TEARS

SISTER

GUNNER

Lawrence De Maria’s other thrillers and mysteries:

JAKE SCARNE THRILLERS

COLE SUDDEN CIA THRILLERS

De Maria welcomes comments and suggestions from readers and can be contacted at www.lawrencedemaria.com or by using this link:

WEBSITE