Primed for Murder

by Jack Ewing

  “I couldn’t say,” Mrs. Puterbaugh murmured. “I didn’t see his face. I certainly didn’t stick around to examine him.”

  “He was Mex,” Artie said. “Seen their kind before. One pitched for the Mets.”

  “He could have trailed you back home from there,” Leo said.

  “He followed us thirty-six hundred miles?” Doubt laced Mr. Puterbaugh’s voice. “He stayed with us at Hot Springs, Mammoth Caves and other places we stopped all the way back to Syracuse?”

  “Why not?” Leo said. “You were having a good time, seeing sights, thinking about your dissertation. You couldn’t be bothered to check if you’d grown a tail.”

  Artie said, “It don’t matter where he came from. He’s gone now.”

  “What did you do with the body?” Mrs. Puterbaugh asked.

  “There you go again, Sandy,” Leo said, “asking dumb questions.”

  “But it could be important. You mentioned the dead man was hidden in a parked vehicle. A pickup truck, I believe you said.”

  “What I was told. I shouldn’t have said anything because you don’t need to know. Don’t sweat it. Our cleanup crew was here thirty minutes after Artie called on his mobile, ten minutes after you left.”

  Outside, Toby considered the time factor. Sandy had arrived minutes after he’d left. Leo’s boys must have just missed him, too. He didn’t want to think what might have happened if they’d have walked in to find him with the body.

  “The crew did a good job, looks like,” Artie said.

  “Except the furniture does not fit the room now,” Mr. Puterbaugh carped. “Some valuable figurines and pottery vessels were also destroyed. My texts are mixed up. Our rug is missing.”

  “I’d still like to know,” Mrs. Puterbaugh said, “what happened to the body.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” Leo said. “I didn’t ask for details of the disposal. I don’t care, since the problem’s been solved: the body’s gone and the room’s sanitized. You shouldn’t care, either—you’re in the clear. We’ll reimburse you for damaged property. See? I told you: cooperate and we’ll look after you.”

  Mr. Puterbaugh cleared his throat. “Now that things are back to a semblance of normalcy, may I have my manuscript back?” He sounded like a petulant child begging for the return of a favorite toy confiscated due to bad behavior.

  “Still keen to publish?” Leo’s frigid undertone made Toby shiver.

  “Of course.”

  “I admire your gall, Jim. But no, you can’t have it.”

  “Why not? There is nothing incriminating in the manuscript.”

  “Mr. G doesn’t like to take chances. He hates loose ends. That’s why he ordered your manuscript to be torched. It’s all ashes now.”

  Sandy Puterbaugh blurted, “How could he? He had no right!”

  Mr. Puterbaugh groaned, thinking of lost words, of ideas gone up in smoke. Toby could picture him with his head in his hands.

  “No sense crying over burned paper,” Leo said. “Now, does anybody else know about this? Your kids, for instance?”

  “No, of course they do not know,” Mr. Puterbaugh’s tone suggested it was a stupid question.

  “You said cops came by. They didn’t suspect anything?”

  “We repeated what you told us to say. We convinced the detectives there was nothing wrong.”

  “You mentioned a painter who sicced the cops—what’s his name?”

  “Toby Rew.” Sandy spelled it and Toby silently damned her for finking. “He claims he saw Artie kill that man.”

  “He saw Artie?” Leo’s voice was sharp. “You didn’t mention an eyewitness.”

  “He saw me?” Artie echoed. “Couldn’t. I checked. Nobody around.”

  “I meant he saw the killing,” Sandy backpedaled. “He was standing on a ladder at the house across the street.”

  “Is that where he lives?” asked Leo. “Across the street?”

  “That’s Mrs. Cratty’s. Mr. Rew was painting it. I don’t know where he lives.”

  “We can find out.”

  Sandy said, “He didn’t see the killer’s face. He mentioned a dark-haired man of short stature and stocky build seen running from our house after the murder.”

  A man growled inside the room. Leo laughed, a harsh sound, like he was out of practice. “Artie doesn’t appreciate being called short and stocky. He works out every day. He’s proud of his body. Still, the description is a little too close for comfort.”

  “I tried to persuade Mr. Rew he was wrong,” Sandy said. “He’s stubborn. However, he doesn’t seem terribly bright. He’s no threat.”

  “We’ll look into it, see if he can hurt us.” Toby didn’t like the sound of that. “Okay, one last piece of business. What about the photos?”

  “What photos?” Mr. Puterbaugh said, too quickly.

  “Don’t play games with me, Jim. I skimmed your manuscript before it was burned—it was well organized, by the way—and noticed you mentioned Mr. G’s property had been photographed. I want all pictures on film or computer file.”

  “The digital camera was stolen. The photos did not turn out. Shots were all overexposed.” Mr. Puterbaugh stuttered about the tropical sun’s brightness and wrong shutter speeds in a way that even Toby knew was lies, until Leo interrupted him.

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “It is the truth.”

  Leo’s flat voice hardened. “You’re jerking me around, Jim.”

  “I would not do that.”

  “You’d better not. Before you get in too deep, you ought to realize I also know the last part of your manuscript, a translation, is missing. I figure you sent the photos to somebody to work from. Who?”

  “For God’s sake,” Sandy shrilled, “tell him what he wants to know.”

  “Yeah, Jim,” Leo said softly. “Give me the name.”

  “There are no photos,” Jim said. “They were ruined. What does it matter, since my work has been destroyed?”

  The atmosphere in the room changed from cool to positively chilly. “It matters. Get up, both of you,” Leo said. “We’ll all take a little ride.”

  “Where?” Toby didn’t blame Sandy for her fright. Leo sounded like he was all business, and his business was all bad.

  “To Mr. G’s. Tell him your tale. He’ll decide what to do.”

  “No,” Mr. Puterbaugh said.

  “Jim,” Leo said, “we can do this the easy way or the hard way, your choice. Artie, show him your persuader.”

  “What’s the gun for?” Mrs. Puterbaugh’s voice quaked as though she was trying to talk and do aerobics at the same time.

  “Is that what is called a noise suppressor?” Mr. Puterbaugh asked like an inquisitive kid.

  “My God, Jim,” his wife cried, “do as he says. Can’t you see he’s serious?”

  “Dead serious,” Leo said. “Get up, right now, Jim, or I’ll have Artie shoot you in the knee. You’ll still have to go and you’ll be in agony all the way. One…two—”

  “Very well,” Jim said, as if the exercise was a colossal waste of time. There might have been more but Toby didn’t hear it because he was sprinting for his truck.

  Chapter 10

  When the dark car turned out of the alley a minute later, Toby, still panting, waited behind the wheel of his truck with engine idling and lights off in the blackness at the back of Mrs. Cratty’s driveway. It was a perfect spot for observing which way Leo and Artie and the Puterbaughs went. He gave them a three-block lead and then followed as the car, a dark Lincoln Continental Mark III in beautiful shape, purred south. It was three-thirty in the morning. With bars and theaters long closed, traffic was almost non-existent. Toby had no trouble keeping the Lincoln in sight. They made DeWitt in twenty minutes. The Lincoln took Route 92 southeast at a steady 65 mph, drawing Toby in its wake a mile behind. The only vehicles on the road, they barely slowed for Lyndon, Manlius or Oran. A small green sign indicated they’d crossed into Madison County.

/>   Twenty miles from Syracuse, at the quaint village of Cazenovia, the Lincoln veered onto Route 13 running along the shore of the lake bearing the same name as the town. Toby dropped farther back, until the Lincoln’s taillights were just pinpoints ahead. Some 3.2 miles later, by Toby’s odometer, the car turned left. After traveling a half-mile further the Lincoln stopped with its nose almost against tall iron gates set into a high wall made of stone. It idled long enough for Toby, lights doused, to cruise within a couple hundred yards of the vehicle. The barred halves swung inward. The Lincoln accelerated through the gap and the gates closed like magic behind it.

  Toby pulled opposite the entrance a moment later and watched as the Lincoln’s headlights illuminated bits of property. Beyond the gate’s pointed iron bars, a long paved driveway flanked by glowing lamps rose toward a huge lit-up stone house. The dwelling was perched on a low rise that probably provided a nice view of the lake, invisible from the gate. The Lincoln halted before an arched front doorway. Shadowy figures got out and went into the house. Outside lights were extinguished. Lamps went out by pairs in sequence, and darkness marched down the driveway.

  Toby drove away. After a minute he put his truck lights on.

  The wall surrounding the house was ten feet high, built of mortared fieldstone. It ran uninterrupted for six-tenths of a mile before forming a corner at the juncture of a dirt road. Toby turned left and bumped along a rough track, the bulk of the wall a solid presence just yards away. The place was a fortress.

  The road ended and the wall formed a corner at the edge of the lake a quarter-mile later. Toby shut down, got out and felt his way along a narrow strip of land between wall and water. Damp, stone-studded soil squished beneath his soles, making each step a balancing act. Clumps of weedy grass and stubborn bushes brushed and clawed at his pants. Clouds of gnats and mosquitoes, attracted by his passage, swarmed whining around his ears. He lurched forward, flailing hands like an idiot to disperse them, slapping where insects landed to bite.

  After a hundred yards, the land pinched out. The lake lapped against moss-slimed rocks at the foot of the wall.

  He hadn’t come this far to turn back now. If he couldn’t go forward, he’d go up. Toby clambered easily to the top of the wall, finding good handholds and toeholds among rough, random-size stones embedded in concrete. He was almost surprised the wall was not crowned with barbed wire or shards of broken glass—but maybe there were other more lethal defenses ahead.

  From ten feet off the ground, the lake glistened flat, black and wide. Points of light fanned out weakly onto the water from the opposite shore, giving distances dimension. Ripples walked across the surface like muscles moving beneath skin.

  Up here, the big stone house was just a distant glow through a grove of leafy trees. Myriad stars, bright and clear out in the country, didn’t help much in illuminating the terrain that lay between Toby and his objective. Deep shadows infiltrating perhaps fifty acres of enclosed and wooded land could conceal tiger pits, security devices, stealthy Dobermans with big teeth, prowling guards with big guns. Chances were a guy who needed a ten-foot wall around him might also desire other forms of protection.

  But they wouldn’t be expecting company tonight, probably.

  As long as he’d already started, Toby decided, he might as well keep going. He began working his way towards the house along the top of the two-foot-thick wall, crouching to present a lower profile, to better watch his footing. He’d make a splash if he tumbled into the water, and might break a leg if he landed on hard ground.

  The shoreline curved in and out, lapping against the stone or isolating divots of land, while the wall ran straight and true. After three hundred cautious paces, the lake receded, leaving behind a rocky beach varying in width from twenty to fifty feet. In places, the wall was in poor shape. He almost twisted an ankle where a stone had fallen and left a hole, nasty as a bear trap in the dark. A crumbling patch farther along had him maneuvering like a tightrope walker to keep from falling.

  Toby inched along until the house came into view. Most interior lights were out now. Pole lanterns between house and lake revealed that the wall tapered to an end, perhaps a hundred yards short of the house, as it met gently rising land. As far as he could tell, there was no cover between wall and house.

  Men were out there somewhere in the back. He smelled cigar smoke and could hear the murmur of voices but could not make out words. If he could hear them, could they see him? He moved closer, but the voices receded out of hearing. Toby sighed then turned and crept back the way he had come. Though he moved a little faster over familiar territory, the return trip seemed to take forever.

  Back at the truck, Toby retreated down the road leading in. Since there was no place wide enough to turn around, he had to go in reverse all the way. He cruised past the front of the property again. From this direction, he noticed an intercom tucked into an alcove by the towering gates. Cameras were set on top corners of the wall, pointed down at the place where you’d stand—or sit, if driving—to press a button for permission to enter. Above the intercom, a bronze plaque gleamed dully in his headlights. GIAMBI, it read in six-inch-high inscribed letters.

  Was this the mysterious Mr. G that Leo and the Puterbaughs had talked about? Had to be. But who was Mr. G, really? What would happen to the Puterbaughs now? Nothing good. Sooner or later, one would cough up the name hidden under the blotter in the den. Then Giambi & Co. would have the photos, if they existed, and if that’s where they actually were, with somebody named McFarland. That would be the end of the matter, maybe the end of the Puterbaughs, too, once they’d served their purpose.

  The only way to put a crimp in the abductor’s plans was to get the photos first. Might as well try—he was in the neighborhood. Toby turned east on Route 20 towards Morrisville, a dozen miles away. He finished the last beer, now tepid, on the way.

  The town of Morrisville, inhabited by a couple thousand sleeping souls, sprawled along the highway where it dipped into a broad, shallow valley. Toby drove back and forth past dark houses, searching for South Street. After twenty minutes, he finally located it at the far edge of town where Route 20 ascended on a roller-coaster ride for geriatrics towards Hamilton.

  Poorly paved, two-lane South Street ran past a small Ag & Tech college. Beyond the campus houses were sparse.

  A mile from the highway, Toby found number 412, the last dwelling on the left before South Street dead-ended at a single-lane dirt road a quarter-mile farther along. In predawn half-light 412 was a good-sized, well-maintained two-story frame structure with a glassed-in breezeway leading to an attached two-car garage. The house sat by itself fifty yards off the road. Behind the house, freshly cropped pastureland ran flat towards tree-covered hills in the distance.

  The house appeared dark at first glance. But in turning around on the dirt road Toby noticed a light burning in a window at the back of the ground floor. He retraced his route and parked along the edge of the road twenty yards beyond the house, by a stand of cattails growing in a ditch. He shut down the engine and sat thinking.

  Assuming the light meant somebody was home—and not put on merely to discourage prowlers—it was early for a social call. On the other hand, could he afford to wait? The Puterbaughs might give up this address at any time. Leo and his minions could be speeding here this moment with mayhem in their hearts.

  Toby climbed out and strolled up a gravel driveway to the house. At the front door he paused to organize hazy thoughts, then pushed a lighted button beside the doorframe. Chimes sounded inside. After a minute a window lit up above his head. Seconds later, light showed behind frosted glass panels flanking the doorway. From inside came the clicks of several locks being undone. The door swung inward, flooding Toby with soft light while revealing a small vestibule and a staircase winding upward. Back-lit in the doorway, a petite woman clutched halves of a frilly robe together and peered out at him. Her long, dark hair was plaited like a rope, thick enough to secure a liner to a pier.

&nbs
p; “Sorry to bother you,” Toby said. “Is this the McFarland residence?” The young woman bobbed her head once in affirmation. “Are you Mrs. McFarland?”

  Even with light behind her and her face in shadow, Toby glimpsed a flash of brilliant white as the woman bared teeth in a smile. Her head swiveled left, then right.

  “Is Mr. McFarland home?” The woman nodded. What’s the matter with her? Toby wondered. Can’t she talk? “May I speak with him, please? It’s important.”

  The woman held a small hand, palm-outward, in a gesture that said “wait,” and closed the door. A scant minute later, the door opened again. This time the doorway framed a tall, stooped, white-haired man who stood fully dressed, staring through thick glasses at Toby. “Yes?”

  “Mr. McFarland?”

  “Professor McFarland, actually.” His voice was papery. “Though I’ve been retired for years. What can I do for you, Mr.—?”

  “Rew. Toby Rew. I’m sorry to disturb you so early in the morning.”

  “Quite all right. I’m often up at odd hours. We old folks sometimes don’t sleep too well, you know.”

  “Sorry to hear it. Look, I need to know if you’re acquainted with Professor Puterbaugh at Syracuse University?”

  “I am. Did he send you?”

  “Not exactly. You’re working on a project for him? A translation?”

  Professor McFarland studied Toby. “Come inside where we can talk.” He swung the door wider. Toby stepped inside. The professor closed and locked the door. “This way,” he said, and moved through a doorway right of the staircase.

  They traversed a plank-floored bedroom with a fireplace, next to a king-sized bed that hadn’t been slept in. A door off the bedroom opened onto a hallway. Left was a carpeted kitchen, also featuring a fireplace, where the dark-haired woman sat at a small table drinking from a cup. “Marta,” the professor called to her, “coffee, please.”

  He touched Toby’s elbow and motioned in the opposite direction, leading Toby through another door. The room, twenty by thirty, was combination library, family room and study. A loveseat in muted stripes sat before a brick fireplace dominating one wall. Loaded floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered every inch of available wall space, interrupted by a bay window facing pastureland out back. Two comfortable-looking leather armchairs, separated by brass floor lamp and leather-inlaid table, were aimed at the blank face of a television screen in one corner. At the far end of the room, bracketed by deco-style torchères, sat a glass-topped table, its surface cluttered with papers and manila folders spotlighted by twin halogen-bulb gooseneck lamps.