‘Pardon?’ I felt the hairs stir on the back of my neck, and wondered what he wanted. Suppose the contents of the package didn’t match his expectations? Was this my chance to find out what was meant by the words ‘don’t shoot the messenger’?
‘Relax,’ he growled, and sat down himself. ‘I may have a job for you – a delivery. It’s what you do, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. But I’m working for Mr Clayton.’ And Clayton had told me quite clearly to get in, drop the package and leave.
‘Yeah, I know who you’re working for. I already checked with him, and he said it was okay to ask you. Now, you want to earn some extra money or just go back to London with what you’ve got?’
It was an interesting question. I was in no tearing hurry to get back, since it would mean simply sitting around until Clayton called, then picking up another package and jetting off somewhere else. That or facing more flak from Susan or her solicitors. On the other hand, I had no idea what Mekashnik would be asking me to transport for him. Why didn’t he use his own people, of which there were at least three kicking their heels around the house? Maybe they couldn’t read road signs.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘But no drugs.’
He gave me a hard look not unlike the one Clayton had given me. ‘What is it with you Brits? You think every American’s a dealer in crack cocaine?’ He reached into one of the desk drawers and pulled out a slim envelope which he tossed across the desk at me. ‘There’s your fee. It’s for an envelope to go to Palm Springs. It’ll be ready for you to collect in the morning, which should give you time to arrange a flight from Charlotte. It’ll likely be a connection with a stop-over so don’t expect it to be quick. This is a big country. Any questions?’
‘Only one. Is there a hotel near here?’
He nodded. ‘Ask Frank on the way out. Be back here in the morning so I know you’re ready to take the envelope when it gets here. And next time try keeping your shoes on.’
I stepped out through the French windows on to the patio, then walked round the side of the house and found Frank waiting for me, idly clipping dead heads off a shrub. He gave me directions to the only local hotel before I’d even asked him, which made me wonder if he’d been listening. Then he stood and watched as I reversed the car and drove back down the drive.
As I looked back, I noticed a movement on the front balcony above the entrance. Lilly-Mae was standing with her hand on the wooden railing, watching me go.
For some reason it was a disturbing image to leave with.
By ten the following morning I was back at the Mekashnik mansion, after a good night’s sleep, waiting for someone to answer the gate. The hotel had been a few miles away, nestling on the tip of a lake, along a winding road which hugged the water. Set in breathtaking scenery which demanded to be admired, it was surrounded by trees marching across the hills like a conquering army. It probably looked a riot in autumn, or fall, as the locals called it, and I wondered if I’d ever be back this way to see it. The day was threatening warm and I could have done with staying a little longer and letting go of all the tension, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.
The inside of the hotel had been like stepping back to the Thirties, with heavy, brooding décor, dark corridors and staff outnumbering guests. If there was any entertainment on offer they were keeping it hidden, but it was clean, cool and spacious and, after a meal in a local fish restaurant recommended by the receptionist, I’d hit the hay to reverse the effects of jet lag. Before sleeping I’d tried calling Clayton, just to let him know I had reservations about Mekashnik, the allegedly normal businessman, but the call went to voicemail. I didn’t bother leaving a message.
I thumbed the entry-phone button again, leaning a little harder, as if it would make a difference. Maybe Frank was too busy killing off a few more flowers to attend to his door-keeping duties.
While I waited, I stepped over to the gun-shot mailbox for a closer look. The flap was hanging open like a drunk’s mouth and the box was empty. I poked my forefinger through the hole and felt the sharp edges on the inside. On the other side of the box the thin metal was curved outward in the same manner, where the bullet had passed straight through. I didn’t know much about shell calibres but it seemed pretty big for chasing squirrels. Maybe they bred them big around there to match the trees.
I went back and pressed the button again. Still nothing. Then I noticed the iron gates were slightly open, as if they hadn’t quite caught the latch.
I eased them back far enough to get the car through and drove up the access road, wondering how Gus Mekashnik could be doing the kind of work he did while retaining such a laid-back lifestyle – if a palatial house and property could be called laid-back. Presumably he paid people to do all the running around for him.
I dropped the scroll door-knocker and heard the echoes inside. Maybe they’d had a late-night barbecue after I left and were having trouble surfacing. I guessed if I lived there, I’d have the same problem.
The thought prompted ideas about the pool out back, so I walked around the side of the house towards the sound of running water, expecting to find Frank killing off a few more plants before their time.
I found Frank all right. But he wasn’t doing any gardening.
He was floating in the shallow end of the pool, head down as if he was searching for something on the bottom. Trailing away from him was a widening ribbon of blood leaking from a hole in the middle of his back.
TWENTY-SIX
I stared at him for a few seconds, willing myself to do something. But my mind and body were in suspension, as if expecting Frank to turn over and ask me if I wanted some juice and, by the way, why not take a swim while you’re waiting but don’t take off your shoes?
Then common sense kicked in. I ran to the end of the pool where there was a long-poled skimmer for collecting dead leaves and debris off the surface of the water. I slid it under his body and hooked it on his clothing, then dragged him carefully to the side, taking pains not to let him sink; the last thing I wanted to do was go back in that pool and fish him off the bottom. As his shoulder bumped against the side, he finally turned over with a slow-motion roll and stared up at me with a look of surprise etched on his weathered face as if I’d caught him doing something nasty in the water.
Have you seen those films where the hero finds a dead floater in the pool and drags it out to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? They always make it look so easy, don’t they? Well, I took a tug at Frank’s body and knew there was no way I could lift him out, even if his life had depended on it, much less give him a kiss. Dry and alive, he wasn’t that big or heavy; dead and wet, he weighed as much as a small family car. And he was leaking.
I decided to leave him where he was.
Using the buoyancy of the water to flip him over again, I looked at the hole in his back. I’m no expert, but he’d either been shot with a large calibre bullet or stabbed with a big spear. Then I noticed the blackened edges of his shirt around the wound and realised he’d been shot at close range. No wonder he looked surprised.
I let him drift away on the basis that he couldn’t go far and turned to study the house, hoping it would yield a clue as to what had happened. The curtains were all drawn just as they had been the previous day, shutting out the sun and prying eyes. The only difference now was that there seemed to be a truly deserted air about the place, with none of the faint echoes of life held in abeyance until someone came home.
I tried the French windows but they were locked. Obviously. After that I hoofed round the side of the house and checked the windows, in case someone had been careless. Eventually I arrived back at the front door. After a second I tried the handle.
It’s the one thing cinema audiences always expect the hero to do, but he rarely does, have you noticed that? And when he does, the door is always locked and he has to take out his gun and either shoot the lock off without giving a thought to the consequences of a ricochet, or use the butt to smash a window. All very use
ful if you have a large gun to hand somewhere, which I didn’t.
As I touched it, the door obligingly swung open.
A wave of cool air washed over me as I stepped inside, and I could hear the hum of the air-conditioning. Was this a good or bad sign? Was the house vacated temporarily or deserted?
‘Hello?’ I called out politely, feeling desperately English, like a character in a Noël Coward play. I should have been holding a tennis racket and wearing flannels and pumps. On the other hand, it was my first time coming to a house and finding a dead body in the pool and, if there were any rules laid down about these things, my dear old mother had never bothered mentioning them. What should I shout next? That in case the inhabitants didn’t know it, they had a dead gardener floating in the pool and might want to help get him out? That the good news was, they could save having to pay Frank this month’s wages but the bad news meant they couldn’t go swimming until they’d changed the water? I hoped for their sakes that replacement help was easy to get round there.
I walked across into the living-room where I’d had my chat with Mekashnik the previous day. It looked the same, even down to the envelope I’d brought him all the way from London. Only now it was ripped open and empty on his desk. There was no sign of the rifle. Otherwise the room looked undisturbed. The laptop was hibernating, with its green power light winking rhythmically.
I found the kitchen. It didn’t look as if it was much used for anything other than opening bottles, if the box of empty beer stubbies in one corner was any guide. No notes, no open drawers, no ransacking. I was halfway up the stairs when that little voice of caution which is supposed to sit on your shoulder and kick you in the ear at times of danger finally decided to wake up. What the hell are you doing? Frank didn’t commit suicide – there could be a killer up there waiting to blow your fucking head off!
Since running upstairs is not a silent activity for a man of my years and fitness, and shock at Frank’s demise was making me breathe like a carthorse, I figured it was already too late for backing down, and shook off the warning voice. But I did move a bit faster.
I found, in rapid succession, two bathrooms, a dressing room and four bedrooms, all of them deserted, opulent, if slightly garish, and with no signs of a potential assailant, armed or otherwise. And no signs of a forced entry. One of the bedrooms held a familiar aroma and an array of dresses thrown carelessly across the queen-sized bed and a jumble of shoes in disarray on the floor near a dressing table. I checked the en-suite bathroom, but there were no bodies there, either, just the usual debris of bathrooms the world over. That Lilly-Mae was a messy liver.
So, whoever had shot Frank evidently hadn’t come inside and gunned down the rest of the household. But that left the aching question of where they were. Then another thought occurred: what if Frank’s assailant had come from the house rather than to it? Had Gus finally got fed up with Frank’s attempts at horticulture, taken his gun in a fit of rage and shot him? Had Lilly-Mae?
Ridiculous. That kind of thing doesn’t happen. Police. I should call the police. What was the number people dialled in the movies? 911? On the other hand, what would I tell them? That I’d come to pick up a package to take to Palm Springs – and no, officer, I had no idea what was in it, nor who it was for – and found Frank the gardener trying to drink the pool dry? The thought of trying to explain what I’d found to a suspicious, hard-nosed, gun-chewing American cop made the friendly station sergeant back in London seem like a long-lost brother. I’d seen those programmes about how some US law dealt with miscreants – even innocent ones. They beat the crap out of them. Or worse.
It was time to go.
As I scurried down the stairs and skidded across the foyer, a shadow moved in the open doorway. I found myself face to face with a gawky youth in jeans and a T-shirt bearing a company logo. Behind him was a bright red transit van with the name of a pool-maintenance service and the same logo emblazoned across the side.
‘Hi, sir,’ he greeted me with a cheery wave. ‘Should I go on round back?’
Hell, no! The inner voice screamed at me, and I managed to unscramble my brain just enough to shake my head. Somehow I didn’t think bodies were what pool cleaners usually found among all the leaves and other debris they were accustomed to dealing with.
He looked at me. ‘You don’t want the pool cleaned?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘No. I mean.’ I tried a smile and rubbed my eyes, desperately trying to think of a way of stopping him going round to the pool. Then I realised I must have looked a sight, and capitalised on it. ‘Sorry – heavy night last night. Can you come back later?’
He grinned in understanding. There’s nothing another man can relate to more than a night on the tiles and the need for absolute silence from the entire world the following morning. It comes with the genes… unless the other man is a priest or an accountant.
‘Hey, sure thing,’ he chuckled, giving me that ‘boy, do I know how you feel, ’cos we’re all guys together’ look. ‘Do it all the time, myself. Say, I can leave it longer if you want. Come back tomorrow, maybe the day after? I got plenty of other pools to take care of. It ain’t as though I came here special.’
I nodded and waved a hand, using the hangover act to avoid the need to talk further. He probably recognised my accent as anything but local, and I didn’t want to take the risk of saying more. Knowing my luck, he’d probably turn out to have studied at Oxford for three years and able to spot a UK regional twang at a hundred paces.
‘Okay. No problem,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I’ll call back tomorrow. Have a nice day.’
I closed the door and leaned against it, breathing slowly to lower my blood pressure. That was as close as I ever wanted to come to true disaster. I waited as he drove off and gave it another couple of minutes, then stepped outside and closed the door after me.
The gates were still open the way I’d left them. I paused at the road, and was about to drive on when something caught my eye. It was the mailbox; it was still open, but balanced carefully on top was a small, brown envelope.
It hadn’t been there earlier.
Out of curiosity I jumped out of the car. The envelope had a padded interior, like many I’d carried before for Clayton. It was light and through the padding I could feel the hard outline of a memory stick. On the front of the envelope was a neat line of writing.
D. Selecca – Hyatt Regency Palm Springs.
It had to be the package Gus had wanted me to deliver. But why wasn’t he there to give it to me himself, along with the handover instructions? Where were his two goons, the Inbred Twins? And where was Lilly-Mae? And who had delivered it already marked for the recipient without coming up to the house?
There was no date or time written on the envelope, but maybe that hadn’t been settled yet. Or maybe now, with Frank floating in the pool and the house deserted, there was no delivery to make. In which case why leave it there in the mailbox? Had Gus hoped I would find it?
Three minutes later I was driving past Cappy’s Diner and heading back east towards Charlotte, praying I didn’t meet a police car coming the other way filled with a testosterone-charged SWAT team. Somehow ‘English tourist dies in police shoot-out on lonely mountain road’ wasn’t quite the ending I’d been hoping for.
I headed for the airport, praying there was a quick shuttle connection out. Where to, I wasn’t really fussed. Palm Springs beckoned, but for no other reason than that it was an excuse to be as far away from the house as possible before anyone else showed up and started screaming for the cops. In any case, I’d been paid, so I had a job to do.
TWENTY-SEVEN
As Mekashnik had suggested, getting to Palm Springs wasn’t as simple as taking a direct flight. The first one out meant dog-legging via Phoenix. It would get me to Palm Springs hours later than I’d hoped, but I had time to spare and nothing else to fill it. I spent the waiting time watching out for men in uniform who looked like they might be looking for a British guy to throw in the slammer.
As soon as I cleared arrivals in Palm Springs I used a payphone to call the Mekashnik house. I wasn’t sure if using my Nokia would tie my presence to the area, but decided not to risk it. The ring tone burbled away without being picked up. By now if anyone such as a cleaner had pitched up, they would have found the unfortunate Frank taking his final swim, and the house would be teeming with murder-squad detectives firing off questions and bawling at each other to get results from the lab and did anyone think to bring coffee and bagels. It’s what they do on re-runs of Columbo, anyway.
I replaced the phone with mixed feelings and took a cab into town. It was only a couple of miles and didn’t take long, and luckily the driver was the non-talkative type. The city looked nice; the lawns were lush and green, the streets tidy and the buildings low-rise and stylish – a kid’s model toytown set down completed in the middle of scenery which looked like something from Blazing Saddles. I was surprised by how small it was. I’d imagined Palm Springs to be a busy, bustling and even brash glare of colour, reflecting its popularity among the Hollywood elite. But it sprawled gracefully in the sun like a dozing lizard, its boulevards and golf dunes, shopping malls and ranch-style villas set behind tile-topped walls never quite managing to lose the air of a slightly off-planet experience created for the tired, city-burned movie slaves down in Los Angeles.
The Hyatt Regency was a neat, restrained building along North Palm Canyon Drive in the centre of the downtown area. I paid off the cab and walked past a patio dining area fronting the street and into the cool interior, to be greeted by a smiling receptionist who bore a striking resemblance to a Hollywood starlet I couldn’t quite put a name to. Several, in fact. Or maybe it was just the perfect, white teeth.
Smart Moves Page 17