When North rewound the tape and looked at another series of plays another revelation came to him.
And when the truth finally hit him, Merl North had never been more stunned in his life.
Chapter 19
NORTH HAD RECRUITED SWIFT and McIntyre once more for what he hoped was the final leg of this Odyssey-like journey. They had driven for nearly five hours, nearly across the breadth of the state, over both good and not-so-good roads. They could have flown, but North carried something that made traveling by plane problematic. As they neared their destination, North took in the familiar scenery. How many times had he driven this route, turned at the same spot, advanced like a good hound toward home?
“Wow” was all Swift could say as the house, mansion—estate, rather—came into view. Though they were close friends and teammates, Swift had never been here before. North was often embarrassed that he came from such wealth, and he liked to keep it separate from his life at Draven University.
McIntyre also looked impressed but said nothing, though she did glance sideways at North.
“Casa North,” said North with all the enthusiasm of a hopeless sinner near death. His father had built this place hundreds of miles from his alma mater in a ruggedly remote area that promised nothing to anyone. Peter North had made his fortune elsewhere, and then had retreated to this isolated location to erect his cathedral of glorious excess that few would ever see.
“If I had grown up in a place like this, I never would have left it,” said Swift.
“Yes you would, Jimmy. Trust me. There are only so many bathrooms one can use. And having to travel about a day to play with other kids got a little tedious.”
North pulled into the motor courtyard and stopped his car in the same spot he always did, the one next to his father’s big Mercedes. Despite a six-bay garage, Peter North liked to keep his main ride out front, his son knew.
North took the bag from the trunk of his car, and they all went inside, where they were greeted by Peter North’s valet of sorts. His name was William, and he had been with the family since before North was born. His father, North had learned, had always wanted an English-born and -bred valet, and William had fit the bill.
“He’s expecting you,” said William. “He’s playing billiards.”
North was surprised. “This is Thursday. He doesn’t play pool on Thursdays.”
“He knew you were coming. I think he thought you might like to play.”
William looked at Swift and McIntyre. “You could perhaps make it a foursome.”
As they started off, William pulled North aside. “FYI, he’s not quite all there tonight, sir. A little heavy in the cups, as they say where I’m from.”
“I understand.” And North did understand.
Peter North was indeed smacking billiard balls, sending them careening wildly along the velvet. A cigar dangled from one corner of his broad mouth. Everything about his father was overly wide, thought North. Except the shoulders.
“Boy, come on in and see if you can give an old fart a good match. Hundred bucks says I kick your ass, Merl.”
Then he saw McIntyre and his manner changed completely.
He was indeed in his cups, and his words, while not exactly slurred, seemed extra heavily licked by his tongue before being expelled from his mouth.
“My, my, and who is this lovely young lady?”
“I’m Molly McIntyre, Mr. North. I go to Draven with Merl. And that’s Jimmy Swift over there.”
Peter took in Swift and grinned. “Hell, that’s right. You broke the record, you little speedball, didn’t you?”
“I did, with your son’s help.”
Peter shook his head. “Herschel Ruggles didn’t need any help and neither did you, Jimmy. Remember that, boy.”
North put his bag down on the edge of the pool table. “I’d like to show you something, Dad.”
His father banked the seven ball into the corner pocket. “Show away, buddy boy.”
North reached into the bag and pulled out the Mauser. He set it on the edge of the billiard table. “Here’s your pistol back. It’s the one you said you brought back from Vietnam. It’s actually a German make, by the way, World War Two era, not Vietnam. Just so you know that I know.”
Peter straightened and took a long puff on his cigar. He blew the smoke out, and the wispy cloud almost obscured his entire face for a few seconds. He picked up the pistol, and Swift took a nervous step back. McIntyre was rooted to where she was standing.
After he checked the empty box magazine in front of the trigger, he pointed the gun at the head of an eight-point buck hanging on the wall and fired an imaginary shot, killing the animal a second time.
“German, you say. I didn’t know you had taken it. I guess I was mistaken about Vietnam. Or maybe you got it wrong, Merl.”
“I don’t get things like that wrong.” He slipped his hand inside the bag once again. “I have something else to show you.”
“You’re just show-and-tell boy today, aren’t you?” Peter looked at Swift and smiled, slapped the young man on the shoulder, asked him how he was, if he wanted a drink. Didn’t they want a drink?
“No, they don’t,” answered North for all of them.
Peter went over to the little bar in the corner, put his cigar in an ashtray, and poured himself a martini before popping five olives, one after the other, into his mouth. The man had a large and voracious appetite for everything. When he did something, it was done! North had, until recently, admired that quality about his father.
Peter edged up to McIntyre. “You look like you could use a drink, Molly. I make a nice little mojito.”
“No, really, I’m fine.”
“You sleeping with my son? I hope you are. Otherwise, I’m going to be thinking he doesn’t like girls.”
Thoroughly embarrassed, McIntyre said nothing. Peter smiled at her discomfort and continued to chew his olives.
He stopped chewing when North pulled the gown and the wig out of the bag.
“I don’t know if you heard about Linda Daughtry,” North said. “She’s dead.”
“Linda who?”
“Daughtry. Runs…ran the wig shop over near the university. She was found hanged in her home. Jimmy and I found her.”
Peter swallowed the rest of his martini, picked up his cue stick, and neatly smacked the four ball home. He took a moment to chalk his stick and readied another shot.
“You know Linda Daughtry, Dad.”
“If you say so, Merl. I know lots of people.” He grinned at Swift. “It’s not exactly page one news. Peter North knows folks.”
“You dated a few times. I have a photo of you both here.” He lifted the paper out of the bag. “The college yearbook committee is putting together a special anniversary edition, and they’ve dug up lots of interesting things, including this photo of the two of you, with your names listed.”
“Dated lots of women in college, son.” Peter smacked Swift on the arm again. “Bet you do too, don’t you, Jimmy? Bet you are one helluva skirt magnet. Probably teach my son some lessons, couldn’t you? And after breaking that record, damn, I bet the gals are after you hook, line, and sinker, boy, don’t lie and tell me they’re not.”
Before North could say anything else, his cell phone rang. He answered it, listened for a few moments, said thank you, and clicked off.
His father had watched him carefully and then said, “Merl, if you’ve got business, don’t let me keep you son, I’m perfectly fine all by my lonesome. Why don’t you and Jimmy beat it, and Molly and I can have some drinks and then enjoy whatever else might come up?”
A rattled McIntyre took a step away from the drunk man.
“I have a question to ask you, Dad,” said North.
“Ask away, son.”
“Did John Draven pay you off first, and then you in turn paid Linda Daughtry to impersonate Gloria Draven in the tunnel that day? Or did Draven just pay the two of you separately?”
In response, Peter
laid aside the cue stick, went over, and made up another martini. “You sure you all don’t want to join me?”
A subdued Swift shook his head while North just stared at his father. A nervous McIntyre edged closer to Swift.
“And then of course there’s Ed Belichek,” said North. “He was perhaps more important to your plan than Daughtry.”
“Belichek? That’s a blast from the past. What the hell does he have to do with anything?”
“You switched places with him during the fourth quarter of the game. I watched the film. You left the field in his jersey with his helmet on so no one would know. But while you were both the same height, he was far broader than you. So his jersey was too big for you and your jersey was way too small for him; it was so stretched across his chest you could barely make out the numbers, while his hung loosely off you. But with helmets on, not even your teammates would know the difference, not in the heat of the game. And Belichek’s blocking technique was far different from yours. I would know since you beat that into my brain from my Pop Warner days. And Belichek wasn’t used to playing right guard; I could see that in the film. But his size and speed enabled him to make the transition well. In fact, he played the position far better than you could. Probably why he made it to the pros. And you didn’t.”
“And why would I want to change places with Ed Belichek?” asked Peter, looking up from making his drink.
“Because you had to get to the locker room. You were waiting in the locker room when he got there.”
“Who?”
“Herschel Ruggles!”
Peter took a sip of his fresh drink. “You’re making no sense at all, boy. Zip, nada.”
“Maybe you told Ruggles earlier that you had gotten a message from Gloria Draven, since Ruggles probably confided in you about the affair. Perhaps you acted as a go-between for them. I spoke with Gloria Draven. She knew who I was, and not from playing football for Draven. She knew who I was because she knew who you were.”
Peter shook his head. “Gloria Draven? Didn’t know she was still alive. Quite a beautiful woman back then. The years will have taken their toll. They do, you know. Especially on the ladies.” He eyed McIntyre and held up his drink. “Enjoy it while you got it, babe.”
“She’s a lot more than beautiful, Dad. She’s also very intelligent.” North paused and then continued, “Or you could have forged a message from Gloria and left it for Ruggles. The note might have said that if Ruggles scored in the direction of the Mighty Johns locker room that he should just keep running into the tunnel, that she would be there to give him, what? A kiss? A hug? Maybe even the news that she was going to divorce her husband and marry him? Or perhaps it was as simple as Daughtry hanging out near the entrance. Ruggles scores, sees what he thinks is the love of his life, and heads over. But she slinks inside and draws him in, ultimately to his death.”
On this Peter put up a wide hand. “Hold on, son, just hold on. I want you to come with me. I have something to show you.”
Chapter 20
THEY FOLLOWED HIM from the billiards room to his study near the back of the house. Peter sat behind his desk and motioned for them to sit across from him in a row of chairs. He lit up another cigar and blew smoke at them. He smiled.
“So we were at the part where Daughtry gets Ruggles inside. And then what? I mean, this is really getting good.”
North was not listening. He was sniffing the air and feeling his sinuses closing up in protest. It was the same smell as before. Now any lingering doubt had just been erased.
“I thought you said you had something to show us,” said North.
“I do. Later. Now go on with your silly story.”
“You were in the locker room. They would have passed you. At some point, Ruggles is going to return to the game, especially if Daughtry keeps flitting away, which she has to do because she can’t allow Ruggles to catch up to her and see that she’s not Gloria. That’s where you came in. You might have come out of the locker room, told Ruggles that Gloria was indeed waiting for him, farther down the tunnel, to keep him going after her. And just in case he didn’t, you had a backup plan. The German World War Two Mauser from Vietnam. Did Draven give it to you? He served during World War Two. He could have brought it back with him. I guess your guilt made you lie to me about the gun’s origin. Hell, you could have said it was a collector’s piece from World War Two and I wouldn’t have known the difference. Yet perhaps you were trying to erase, in your own mind, what you had done.”
“And what exactly was that, son? What the hell had I done?” Peter barked, sitting forward. “Do you really think I shot Ruggles in the tunnel in the middle of a damn football game, and just happened to keep the gun I committed the deed with so the police could find it? And what exactly did I do with the body? Huh?” This was the first display of raw emotion Peter had shown, and Swift and McIntyre looked worriedly at North.
“You neither killed Ruggles yourself nor did you bury the body,” said North calmly, his gaze directly on his father. “You wouldn’t have had time. But you weren’t the only one in that tunnel. There were others. Other men. At least three, probably, counting Draven. Ruggles was a very strong man and they would have taken no chance. Now, Draven was at the game that day, I checked. Only he left his seat shortly after the kickoff and never returned. I also checked that.”
Peter grinned and sat back. “That’s my boy, a first-rate checker.”
The words were now slurring from the big man, who somehow looked smaller than ever. In all except science, North had never felt adequate to his father. Not as good an athlete, surely not as dynamic a businessman. His father had charisma his son never would. Merlin North, despite possessing brilliance in his chosen field, had always assumed himself an unequivocal failure in his father’s eyes. Now it all seemed too easy; the great competitor vanquished long ago, perhaps by his own demons. And it was clear to North now that there must have been many such demons for his father.
“There’s a very curious room located very deep in the tunnel. It’s the room where Daughtry kept the gown and wig, and also where she transformed herself into Gloria, something she obviously couldn’t do beforehand, because someone might have seen her. Daughtry was the perfect accomplice because her mother ran the wig shop back then, and she could get a wig and fashion it properly without anyone knowing. And she was also the same size and height as Gloria. With your charming ways, you no doubt persuaded her to cooperate; and Draven’s money was an added inducement.”
“Is that right?”
“You turned Ruggles over to Draven and his men, and then you went back out the tunnel and rejoined the team. By then the place was pandemonium. No one would have noticed you coming back out and realized that you weren’t Belichek. In a short period of time everyone would be focused on the fact that Herschel Ruggles had disappeared.”
“Interesting story, son. You should be a writer of fiction.”
“Draven, no doubt being the sort of person he was—cold, manipulating, and ruthless—would have wanted to confront the man who was the object of his wife’s desire, if for no other reason than to let Ruggles, the greatest competitor of them all, know that Draven had trumped him. And right after Ruggles’s most memorable touchdown run ever, the old bastard must have cherished every moment of it.”
Peter smiled and wagged a finger at him. “God, son, that imagination, and I thought scientists weren’t supposed to even have one.”
“I would hope that even if time had permitted, you would have refused to participate in the actual killing. Though very recent events make me doubt that conclusion.”
His father squinted at him and said coldly, “Recent events?”
“Linda Daughtry didn’t hang herself.”
Swift looked at him. “How do you know she didn’t?”
“There was no chair underneath the body, Jimmy.”
Swift shot a penetrating glance at Peter, who looked only at his son.
“Go on, Merl,” said Peter, “f
inish your tall tale.”
“They took Ruggles to the room I’ve already spoken of, killed him, and buried him there. His grave and the rest of the room were then paved over with stone, the perfect hiding place.”
“Interesting theory.”
“It’s more than that. At my direction, the police took up that stone floor and recovered Herschel Ruggles’s body, or rather his skeleton. There were also remnants of his street clothes, shoulder pads, cleats, uniform—one could still see the famous number 1 on his jersey—and what was left of the football.” North paused and then added, “Ruggles’s arm was still curled around the football, they tell me.”
Peter sat up and the color in his face drained away.
North added, “Since there is no statute of limitations on murder, the case was never officially closed.” North took a long breath. “And then we have the more recent murder.” He paused, watching his father closely. “When did Linda Daughtry arrive here? A few hours after she spoke with me? It’s a short flight.” His father stared blankly at him. “The police have already talked to the airline. As well as the cab company that drove her here.” He took another sniff. “And the perfume smell here is the same that reeks at her shop. It’s almost as good as a fingerprint or DNA—and by the way, they found unaccounted-for samples of both at her home. I let them take samples of my DNA. They got a familial match with the ones found at Daughtry’s.”
Peter stubbed out his cigar in an ashtray and sat back, a grim smile on his lips.
North continued. “She came here and told you about the wig I had found, which she recognized as being the one she wore to impersonate Gloria Draven forty years ago. You flew her back in your private plane that same day. I checked that, too, before coming here. You went to her home sometime on the morning of the day that she was murdered and confronted her. Perhaps at the meeting here she told you she wanted more money to keep silent. It’s pretty clear that after Ruggles died you had been paying her to keep silent about her role in all this.”
Peter said, “Well, it’s not clear to me. But then you’ve been known to screw things up before.”
The Final Play Page 10