Our Fathers (Conner Beach Crime Series)

by John Chabot

  "Sure. I felt a little odd at first, but it's really a good idea. He said it's harder to be stuffy when you're barefoot."

  "Now, this may be important. Did he insist on it?"

  "No, not at all. I don't think he'd have said anything about it if I hadn't asked."

  "What about the second time, Saturday night? Did you take them off then, too?"

  "Sure."

  "Both of you?"

  "You don't have to talk Kelly into taking her shoes off."

  "All right. While you were there, do you remember seeing a knife, a fancy looking thing with colored tiles in the handle?"

  "Sure. I asked him about it. He said it was a sort of gag gift. I think he said it was from India."

  "And where was it?"

  "On the desk. Lower left hand corner. It was there both times."

  "Do you know what he used it for?"

  "No idea. Letter opener, maybe. I think he just kept it to remember someone. He said it was a woman who gave it to him, but he didn't say who."

  "Now, this is probably a stupid question but, while you were there, did anyone take a shower?"

  "A shower? No, we just went for dinner, that's all." What the hell kind of question is that?

  "Well, that's a help. Thank you. Oh, by the way, he didn't happen to mention a will, did he?"

  "I don't think so. Why?"

  "Just trying to get things straight."

  Hanging up, Terry decided in favor of the early lunch. He could spend the afternoon trying to make something decent out of the trash written during the morning. He felt like the miller's daughter, faced with a roomful of straw to be spun into gold, and wished he felt more like Rumpelstilkskin.

  As the first pages were being printed, he thought of Chervenic's call. The question about the will he could understand, but why would he be asking about shoes and letter openers? And showers?

  CHAPTER 11

  Dave liked to talk. Put him in his cab with someone in the back who didn't mind listening, and he could keep a line of chatter going all the way to the destination. In Mario's, with a beer in front of him, he could always keep up his end and more. There were some who wished he would give it a rest now and then, and some — no doubt moody, asocial types — who said so. But he liked to talk. It made him feel good. He was good at it.

  Now, he wasn't so sure. This made him nervous. He took a sip of the coffee, wishing he had some bourbon to give it some zing. He didn't drink much coffee, but when he did, he liked it 'with'.

  Across the table from him sat a detective, a woman, leafing through the trip logs, making notes. Where did they get these people? They kept getting younger all the time. Do they give detective classes in grade school now? This one looked like she was barely out of high school. Well, maybe a bit more, but young. A detective yet. What could she know at her age?

  And the eyes. She didn't have cop's eyes. Not yet. He had known a lot of them, one way or another, and had come to recognize the hard, almost blank stare that many of them had. He didn't know if it was a result of the work, or if they became cops because it was already there. But he knew it when he saw it.

  Dave had been driving a cab long enough to know that you don't get the cops pissed off at you. You need them too often, like when you get a mean drunk or some clown trying to stiff you on the fare. You want them around and on your side when that happens. At the same time, he felt odd about this. In the neighborhood, the family, the way he was raised, talking with cops was frowned upon. Somehow, it made him feel slightly disloyal. He felt as if he were about to do something immoral.

  The detective looked up at him. She turned the logbook around so Dave could read it and pointed to an entry. "Do you remember this fare? On the twelfth?"

  "When was that?"

  "Last Tuesday. You picked him up at the beach, two-story house with a blue roof. You took him to the bank in Wilford."

  "So? There's nothing wrong with that."

  The detective looked at him quizzically. "No, there isn't."

  "Yeah, well, sure I remember him. Who could forget?" A thought slipped in, and suddenly he knew what this was about. "Hey, is this the guy who was killed?"

  "What guy was that?"

  "At the beach."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Aw, come on. Everybody's heard. Is it him?"

  She nodded slowly.

  "Sweet Jesus! That's too bad." He meant it.

  "You liked him?"

  "Well, you know, you don't get a fare like that every day."

  "Like what? A good tipper?"

  "Damned good! But it wasn't just the tips. He was regular, you know what I mean? He didn't just sit back there like God, and want you to shut up and drive. We talked. We had real conversations. He's the kind of guy who would sit up front, except it's against the rules."

  "What did you talk about?"

  "I don't know. Just stuff. It wasn't about anything."

  "So you took him to the bank."

  "Yeah. When we got there, he wanted me to wait for him. Which is okay. Lots of people do that, but you gotta' watch 'em. Sometimes a deadbeat will ask you to wait, and you never see him again. Pretty soon you get so you can tell who's likely to pull that crap. I wasn't worried about this guy, though. Besides, I knew where he lived, didn't I?"

  "How long did you wait?"

  "Thirty-two minutes on the meter."

  "That didn't worry you?"

  "Nah. He handed me a twenty when he asked me to wait. With a twenty in my hand, what's to worry about?"

  "Did he take anything into the bank with him? A briefcase, anything like that?"

  "No. He wasn't carrying anything. I noticed, because when he'd gone maybe twenty feet he stopped, like he'd forgotten something, but then he clenched both fists real hard, and just stood there. I thought maybe he was sick or something, but then he went on into the bank."

  "How about when he came out?"

  "No. He came out just like he went in."

  "Did he go anywhere else?"

  "Not that time. When we got back, he paid off what was on the meter. I reminded him about the twenty — hey, he was all right, I liked him — and you know what he said? Keep it!"

  "That's a pretty good tip."

  "That was nothing. You want to know about the second time I picked him up?"

  Mickie consulted her notes. "That would be Friday, three days later."

  "I guess. Whatever the log says."

  "Where did you go that time?"

  "Hey, where didn't we go?" He pushed the undoctored coffee aside to free his hands as he talked. He was loose now and on a roll.

  "Listen," he said. "You hang around a bunch of cabbies, pretty soon you hear the stories, you know what I mean? Like, one of them is, this gorgeous looking . . . yeah, well, you don't want to hear that one."

  Mickie smiled to herself. She had already heard that one.

  "The other story is about some guy with more money than sense who wants you to drive him someplace really far away, and the meter runs up this really huge tab. Then he does something, and he wants you to drive him back. Then on top of that, he gives you a huge tip. It's all bullshit. I've heard about a million variations of both of them. I've even told a few. You sit around waiting to get a fare in the off hours, you think of all kinds of stuff."

  "You mean they're wishful-thinking stories."

  "Yeah, bullshit. Anyway, the second time I picked this guy up was about as close as I'll come to those stories, especially working in a place like this. We start off going to the bank, just like the first time."

  "Was he in there about the same length of time?"

  "Yeah, just about half an hour, maybe a little less. Then we go over to Wilmott Street, to one of those old mills they turned into offices and fancy shops. He's in there maybe another half-hour. When he comes out, he's got this big shit-eating grin. Now right away, that was strange. I've taken lots of people to lawyer's offices, but they aren't smiling when they come out. This guy was almost
laughing. I said something to him like, you know, 'You seem pretty happy', and he says, 'Yeah, I'm having fun.' Well, I'm looking at the meter and I'm having fun, too. But we're just getting started. He says to me, 'Okay, let's go to Wilmington.' No shit! Wilmington. That's a half hour each way."

  "Where did you go when you got there?"

  "A place called the Asian Market. That was first. It's one of those strange little places where they sell all kinds of rice and seaweed and God knows what. All that Chinese crap. He came out of there with a couple bags of stuff. From there we went to a regular supermarket. He bought some more stuff, and we came on back. Oh, yeah, I forgot. We stopped at a hardware store, too."

  "I don't suppose you know what he got there?"

  "Matter of fact, I do. When we got back to the house, he asked me to help him take the stuff inside. I don't think he was very strong, you know what I mean? Like he'd been sick or something. Anyway, when we were putting the stuff on the kitchen table, the bag from the hardware store got knocked on the floor, and he took the stuff out to check it. There was a roll of that wide, silver tape, you know, duct tape. But the other thing was a compass. He checked it out to make sure it still worked."

  "A compass?"

  "Yeah, you know, like the Boy Scouts use. Points north."

  "Anything else?"

  "No, that was it. He had paid the fare out in the street. But he pulls out a fifty, hands it to me and says, 'Have a nice day.' Hell, you'd have had to break my arm to make it a bad day."

  When he was leaving the room, Dave stopped in the doorway, looking back at Mickie. He hesitated, as if he couldn't make up his mind whether to speak or not. Finally he said, "Listen, whoever did this — get the son of a bitch! Okay?"

  Carlsberg's Furniture was a cavernous, high-ceilinged place you could park large airplanes in. At this hour, a little before lunch, it was nearly deserted. Among the dining room sets, a saleslady was trying to encourage a woman with a doubtful look, and a husband who had given up trying to look interested.

  Robert's office was in a rear corner of the showroom. It had waist-high walls topped with glass panels. This gave him some privacy, at the same time allowing him to look out over the sea of sofas and end tables and dinettes and highboys and all the hundreds of pieces for sale. It was flanked by several smaller cubicles for his salespeople, but was the only one with a door.

  "I'm afraid I've caught you at a bad time."

  "No, that's all right, Lieutenant. I just got back from a convention in Asheville. I'm trying to get caught up, but I won't get it done today. Half an hour won't make a difference."

  Harry sat on the only other chair in the room, a rickety wooden thing that refused to put all four feet on the floor at once. For a furniture store, he thought, the place was very poorly furnished. The cobbler's son syndrome.

  "I suppose Mr. Stoneman told you I'd be by?"

  "Yes. Yes, a terrible thing. Matt had finally come home and then . . . Do you think it was an intruder? A thief?"

  Robert Carlsberg didn't much resemble his brother and sister, except perhaps in the eyes. All of them had the same shade of green. Except for that, you would never have guessed. Matt and Annabelle were both fairly short, with the fair complexion and sandy hair of their mother's family. Robert must be more like his father. He was taller and lean. His hair was black, except where it was graying at the sides. His face was that kind that always looked as if he had a tan. Harry thought that, with all that, he should have looked distinguished. Somehow, he just missed.

  "We don't know yet what happened. It may have been suicide."

  "What!" Harry saw an instant of real surprise before the face closed again. "Are you sure?"

  "No, but it's very possible."

  "But why?"

  "He was very sick. Probably terminal. Didn't you notice?"

  "I only saw him that day at Annabelle's. He was sitting most of the time I was there. I thought he seemed, well . . . gaunt, but then I hadn't seen him for over twenty years."

  "I believe you left early. Is that right?"

  "Yes. I was leaving for Asheville. Actually, I should have left Monday morning, but of course this was rather a special occasion. The Prodigal Son."

  "While you were there, did he say anything that would indicate he had enemies, or that he was in any danger?"

  "No, not then." He hesitated. "Well, no, he didn't say anything like that." He stopped then, trying to decide how to go on. Finally he said, "I don't suppose it makes any difference now. He's dead, isn't he?"

  Harry said nothing. He suddenly realized why Robert Carlsberg would never be distinguished looking. His face was locked. Everything went on behind it. Nothing showed through.

  "After Matt left, he never wrote. We had no way of knowing where he was, or what he was doing, or if he was still alive. Not even a card at Christmas. I think I had almost forgotten him. Then, three or four years ago, a man I know at the lodge came back from Europe. They had been staying in France with some of his wife's relatives. I don't know how it even came up, but they had been talking about terrorists and revolutions and such, and Matt was mentioned. The host did a lot of international trading, and knew about such things."

  "What things?"

  "Gun running. I hate to say it, but that's what Matt was doing. I wouldn't normally mention it, but it might help you to know."

  "Yes. That's very interesting — if it wasn't suicide."

  "You seemed unsure."

  "Did they have any details of what he was doing? Who he was working with?"

  "No, but then I got it third hand. They just said he was smuggling guns. Mostly in Africa, I believe."

  Chervenic made a few notes, then asked, "You never heard anything else about him?"

  "Nothing."

  "Not even in Maria Rhyne's letters?"

  He watched the other man's face as he asked this, but besides a little tighter closing, there was nothing. A very hard man to read.

  "I didn't see those letters. And no one discussed them with me."

  "There were a lot of hard feelings?"

  He didn't answer that, but sat stonily. Harry said nothing, giving it time. He was about to give up and go on, when Robert said, "Yes, I suppose there was. But good God, that was a long time ago. That's done with."

  "You and your brother settled it between you?"

  "No, I told you, I never saw him. I didn't know where he was. It's just that I finally realized I thought more of her than she did of me. It was that simple. Otherwise, she wouldn't have left. I married someone else."

  "Ruth Babineau. Did she know your brother?"

  "I suppose so. She was in my sister's class at school. They were very close friends, in the same crowd. Why do you ask?"

  "No particular reason. We might want to talk to anyone who knew him, that's all."

  "But if he killed himself . . ."

  "Then it's closed, and we won't be talking to anyone. Did she go to the convention with you?"

  "Who? Ruth? No. Why would she?"

  "Wives sometimes do."

  "Oh, I see. Annabelle didn't tell you we divorced. Sometimes my sister lives in her own little world. It only lasted a few years. We had a daughter, Diane." He almost smiled as he thought of her. "That was good. But the marriage itself was a mistake from the beginning."

  "You married on the rebound, so to speak?"

  "Something like that. I don't see what this has to do with my brother."

  "Probably nothing. Just exploring possibilities."

  "Am I a suspect, then?"

  "That's how it's done. Until we can show that it's not a homicide, we have to assume it is. Everyone who could have done it is a suspect. Then, by investigating, by asking these questions, we eliminate those who couldn't have done it."

  Robert put his hands flat on the desktop as if that settled that. "Well, I certainly couldn't have."

  Chervenic raised one bushy eyebrow. "Oh?"

  "I was never there."

  "What time did you get ho
me on Saturday?"

  "I'm not sure. Late. Nearly midnight, I think."

  "Did anyone see you come in? Neighbors, anyone?"

  Only Robert's eyes moved as he considered it. "I don't think so. It was late. I live alone. I didn't see anyone when I came in."

  "Where did you stay in Asheville?"

  "The Bellman House. It's bed and breakfast."

  "Did you stop on the way home?"

  "Yes, I stopped once for gas, and I stopped for dinner in Winston-Salem."

  "Did you know where your brother was staying?"

  "No."

  "He didn't say?"

  "He said something about having a place at the beach."

  "He didn't mention the address?"

  "He might have. He was talking mostly to the children. Mostly about Africa. Probably things he had seen during his smuggling. Knowing what I did, I didn't think it was in very good taste."

  "Just to get everything straight, I tried to call you yesterday evening, after your brother was found. You weren't home?"

  "No. My daughter's art class had an exhibition of their paintings. I couldn't be there Saturday, so I went last night."

  Harry looked back through his notes, wondering what he had forgotten to ask. He was interrupted when Robert said, "I just thought of something. Maybe it doesn't mean anything, but it was odd. I had forgotten about it. I got a phone call. It was a woman's voice. She wanted to know if I could tell her how to find Matt."

  "Did you tell her?"

  "I couldn't. This was a day or two before he called me. I didn't even know he was back."

  "Did you recognize the voice?"

  "I'm not sure. For a minute, I thought I did. There was something familiar about it. But she didn't say much. When I asked her if she knew anything about him, she hung up."

  CHAPTER 12

  Harry found Chez Babineau in the same converted mill that housed Stoneman and Briggs. It had one corner of the old building, very effectively setting the roughhewn beamed look in contrast with the modern fashions. Wilford, unlike many in the area, was a town that was growing. New wealth was coming. Chez Babineau was in place to serve it and share in it. Harry knew little of fashion but, from what he could tell, this was a place centered in taste and style. Gaudy was for downtown at the mall. He had heard it said of shops like this that the fewer things there are on display, the more expensive they are. The few he could see seemed very pricey, indeed.