Dead Crazy

by Nancy Pickard

  “Howdeedo,” he said at once, as I walked into the kitchen, where he sat at the same big old table. He twinkled at me; I twinkled back, to the best of my ability, and waved the check at him.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I suggested.

  His face fell in comical mock dismay. “What’s the hurry? Like I said, I kinda like doin’ business with you.”

  He reached out for the check, but I held it high, and tut-tutted him. “You’re the one who seems to be in a hurry for cash. Not so fast, George. Contracts first. Money later.”

  We settled across from each other at the table to iron out the last details of the purchase. When we reached the subject of title insurance, I said, “Did you have enough insurance to cover your loss on that property next door?”

  He made a sound something like “huh.” Then, quickly, he said, “Ain’t never enough to cover a loss like that. A woman died in that fire, you know. Can’t cover a loss like that.”

  “You’re a sensitive man, George,” I remarked.

  He eyed me, grinning slightly. “That I am.”

  “You owned that property; I’m surprised you didn’t notice that old wiring and replace the stove before something happened.”

  “Hell, I tried.” He leaned back and stuck his thumbs in his belt loops. “Gardner tried; that cute little Sammie tried. But the old lady liked that damned old stove, and she wouldn’t hear of me taking it out. Hell, even if I am a landlord, I’m not heartless, you know? I didn’t want her carrying on, so I left the damn thing in the house. Shouldn’t never have done it, I know that, and I feel damn bad about it, but Rod Gardner’ll tell you, like he told the fire investigators, she wouldn’t hear of it. Hell, if I’d been at fault, he’da sued me, you can bet on it.”

  “I guess he can’t tell me, being dead and all.”

  “Yeah.” Butts rubbed a hand against the stubble on his face. “Pretty sad. Lotta tragedy in that family.”

  “That’s pretty valuable information,” I commented, and he looked puzzled. “That information Rod had about what a thoughtful landlord you were; why, information like that could be worth quite a lot to a fellow. Might even buy him a house. Course, if he’s a greedy sort, it might not be a good enough house, he might decide he wants an even better one, maybe even an expensive new condo for him and his wife and the baby….”

  I brightened, as if struck by an idea.

  “I guess Sammie could tell me, though.” When he cocked his eyebrows again, I said, “About what happened in her aunt’s house, I mean; about how the old lady wouldn’t let you replace the stove, like you wanted to do. It might have looked pretty bad for you if the truth was, say, that she had asked you to fix the wiring, but you had refused to do it. As the landlord, you might have been charged with manslaughter, or worse, I suppose.”

  “Yeah, ‘spect so.” He sat up straight in the chair, slapped his big hands down on the tabletop, and said jocularly, “If that were the case, which it ain’t.” He chuckled. “That Sammie, she’s a cute one, all right, just a cute, scared little rabbit, but she’s got herself a nice little nest now, so I ‘spect she’s happy. Well, you got my signature on the contract, how’s about giving me yours on that check now?”

  “And Mob would know,” I said.

  He blinked. “Mob? What? What would he know?”

  “About how much Dorothy Rhodes supposedly loved that old stove, and how much you supposedly wanted to replace it. She used to give him doughnuts and coffee; she even let him sleep on her porch in rough weather. I expect they talked a lot; I expect she would have mentioned to him how dearly she loved that old stove. Don’t you expect so?”

  He was squinting slightly at me and clicking his front teeth together in a thoughtful kind of way. Finally, he said, “That boy’s crazy, ain’t nobody gonna believe a word outta him, ‘specially since he killed young Rodney. You don’t want to be believin’ anything that boy says.”

  I nodded. “You’re probably right.”

  He shoved the contracts across the table toward me with a brusque movement. I put my hands on them and pretended to look them over in order to gather my thoughts. I lifted my pen and started to sign my name, but then I put the pen back down again and looked at him.

  “Grace Montgomery might have known, too.”

  His fingers, which lay flat on the tabletop, drew back like crab’s legs.

  “She and Mob were friends,” I said. “It was an odd friendship, but a pretty close one, I suspect. He might have told her, oh, all sorts of things.”

  George Butts pushed himself back from the table, overturning his chair with a crash as he did it. I stood up, too, glad of the table between us.

  “And actually,” I said, “Sammie might be more scared of going to jail than she is of you. She might be scared enough to tell the police how Rod had an appointment with you that night, and how he was going to tell you the new condo wasn’t enough, and that they wanted cash on top of it, claiming it was for the baby—”

  “Greedy,” he said, in a strained version of his old jovial tone. “You’re greedy, just like them two. Think you’re going to hand me a check, and I’m going to hand you some cash, is that it? Well, I don’t think I like doin’ business with you so much, after all—”

  But instead of moving toward me, he moved backward.

  “Mob’s out of custody, you know,” I lied, as evenly as I could. “That’s what sometimes happens when people cooperate with the police. They tell everything they know, and they get—”

  “Mob’s out?” The twinkle had long since disappeared; now it was openly replaced with an expression that was hard and frightening. “Funny they’d let a madman like that out on the streets again. He might go crazy again. Might kill somebody else, maybe even do it right in here, just like last time….”

  He reached for the butcher knife on the wall at the same moment I started backing out of the kitchen. I was screaming and running, and he had it in his hand, holding it out in front of him as he rushed after me into the hallway. The police who were waiting there let me run on by them. It was only George Butts they stopped—for good.

  If he hadn’t turned instinctively and lunged toward one of the detectives when he saw them, they never would have shot him. But he did, and they didn’t miss. In the big meeting room down the hall, I was still screaming. I couldn’t stop.

  Epilogue

  Sunday afternoons I usually reserve for a drive to the Hampshire Psychiatric Hospital to visit my mother. This Sunday Geof wanted to accompany me, after brunch with Marsha Sandy and Rosalinda Mclnerny, at the C’est La Vie restaurant down by the harbor.

  We had thought about inviting Derek and Marianne Miller, but it was all too awkward. I’d heard from Marianne that she and Derek had dated a few times. Derek had gotten away from Sammie Gardner—but only because she kicked him out as soon as she knew she had nothing more to fear from George Butts. The girl claimed—and there was no one now alive to refute her—that she had only guessed at the real reason for the payoff, and for the later blackmail, between her husband and Butts. It was on the basis of that “guess”—to which she admitted at the police station—that I had leveled my accusations at Butts. It was he who was the link to the odd series of real estate transactions on Tenth Street—he had owned the house that burned, the church where Rod Gardner was killed, and he had not only sold a house to the young Gardners but had later bought it back from them as well. There was no one alive, either, to tell us why he killed poor old Grace Montgomery, although we felt the answer lay in the probability that she knew something about the fire or the murder that he couldn’t afford for her to know.

  Sammie Gardner had only wanted Derek around because she was frightened—and for kicks. Once Butts was dead, she quickly decided she wasn’t interested in supporting a bodyguard, even if he was good in bed. Derek was now collecting unemployment, but at least he was using some of it to pay for counseling from Marsha.

  As for Marianne Miller, she was still a little shaky, too, recover
ing from her terrified assumption that her former husband, Perry Yates, might have been the one who killed Rod Gardner in order to get Sammie for himself. That was why she’d been so relieved when I told her that Derek was living with Sammie—if Derek had her, then Perry didn’t. And if Perry didn’t, then his children probably didn’t have a killer for a father. A jerk, maybe, but at least not a killer. Poor Marianne still suspected the unborn child might be Perry’s. It probably wasn’t, I had told her, or Sammie would have been after him for support payments by now.

  This particular Sunday was about a month after George Butts’s death, a month of watching Faye adjust to her new authority. I’d cheated her, in a way, because I had not hired a new secretary; I had merely enlarged her duties and her salary. The foundation had, for some time, needed to cut back on personnel expenses, so she and I and Marvin, our accountant, were all taking up the slack. Sad to say, we hadn’t even noticed it very much, since we’d been doing most of Derek’s real work all along.

  It had also been a month of watching Marsha rebound from ending her relationship with Joe Fabian. During the meal, my old friend was vivacious in her anticipation of the imminent opening of the recreation center—which Mrs. Butts had unaccountably decided to sell us, after all.

  My new “Friend,” Rosalinda, was peaceful in her understanding that Kitt was doing as well as he could be expected to do at another hospital. Because of all the recent trauma he’d endured, it was doubtful that he’d be out again soon, if ever, but Rosalinda didn’t know that.

  Geof laughed a lot during breakfast and seemed a bit hyped up himself. He had spent much of the month watching me as I tried to bounce back from the unexpected depression into which so much death and fear had plunged me. I was glad to see him enjoying himself for once instead of worrying about me. On this Sunday, I tried to rise to the mood, but Sundays wear me down, even before I get to the hospital.

  “Love to your mom,” Marsha said, with a hug and kiss, as we left the restaurant. “I’ll visit her the next time I’m up there.”

  “Bye, Jenny Friend,” Rosalinda said, shyly.

  I was glad to let Geof navigate the long drive, to put a Paul Simon cassette in the tape player, to travel in companionable silence, and to close my eyes most of the way. But when the car started bumping in an unfamiliar way, I opened them. I looked out to find evergreens and bare maple trees close by on either side of us.

  “Are we lost?” I inquired, not really caring.

  This road was not the two-lane blacktop highway to the hospital; this was more like a private road, dirt and rocks, curving through the trees toward the ocean.

  “I decided to take another route,” Geof told me. “Pretty drive, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it’s nice, but what is it, a county road?”

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  We were coming to a clearing, and soon there was the ocean in front of us, along with a glorious, clear-blue view of sky. There was a house set off to the left of us, just in front of a lovely stand of Norwegian pines. It was a smallish but charming old place of stones and timber, well kept, set among pleasingly wild bushes and flowers. It seemed so pretty and so homey that it brought tears to my eyes. How very fortunate the people were who owned this place, I thought, with self-pity. They had lights on in the house, and there was smoke coming from one of the two chimneys. If Geof knew these people, it was news to me, but good news. I knew I’d like them, whoever they were.

  “Friends of yours?” I asked him.

  He smiled over at me. “I called ahead. I thought you’d like the surprise. Do you mind that we’ll be a little late to see your mom?”

  “No. We’re the only ones who’ll know the difference.”

  He parked in the graveled circle drive in front of the house, which was really more like a large, two-story cottage, and then, in an unusual gesture, walked around the car to open the door for me.

  “Why, thank you, kind sir.” I managed to smile at him.

  He held out his hand to me, to help me “alight,” and then kept hold of it as we traversed the flagstone path to the front door.

  “Who are these people?” I whispered.

  But he only smiled and knocked.

  When no one responded, he pressed gently against the door. It came open to his touch, revealing a charming but empty living room. I would have felt like Goldilocks, except that not only was there no one at home, there was no furniture either. There were only logs, burning in the fireplace.

  “Geof?” I said, turning to frown at him. “What is this?”

  He pulled me into the living room, then closed the front door behind us. He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around so that my back was against him, and I was facing the beautiful living room.

  “Do you like it?” he asked.

  I twisted back around, to look at him. “Geof?”

  “Do you like it?”

  I nodded. “Geof, who got the fire going?”

  “Would you believe the three bears?”

  “No.”

  “Spontaneous combustion?”

  “No!”

  “Okay, then. The real estate agent.”

  I surprised myself, by laughing.

  “Is she hiding upstairs?”

  “Well, yes,” he admitted, looking sheepish. “And I asked her to hide her car out back. Shall I call her down now?”

  “In a minute.” I moved in close to embrace him with all the strength I had. With my face buried in his chest, I murmured, “You’ll have to give me a minute.”

  “We have lots of time,” he said.