Primed for Murder

by Jack Ewing

  A two-story frame house on Buckley Road, 4.6 miles north of Liverpool, was perfect.

  “It was my grandma’s house,” Luci—“with an ‘I’”—Sanderson said. Luci was eighteen, pretty with streaky blond hair. Her frayed cutoffs exposed mile-long tanned legs. She was standing in for her mother to show the house. “Mom is making funeral arrangements. Granny just died after a long stay in a nursing home.” She ran a hand across a flowered couch in the tidy, spacious living room.

  They did a quick tour. Luci chattered the whole time. “The house has been listed for weeks. Fireplace works. You’re only the second person to call. Color TV. That smell is lavender potpourri—grandma loved the stuff. The kitchen has all modern appliances, including dishwasher and garbage disposal. We cleaned food out of the fridge and cupboards.

  There are dishes and pots and pans and eating utensils you can use. I wouldn’t want to live here myself. We live over in Bayberry. There’s a washer and dryer in the basement. It’s got central air conditioning. I mean this house is so far away from everything. Furnace and water heater are only two years old.”

  Upstairs were two bedrooms, one large with a queen-sized bed, one small with twins, and a full bath with a shower-whirlpool combo. “You’d have to provide your own sheets and towels, since we took all the linens,” Luci said.

  The house was completely furnished throughout—a little feminine, perhaps, but Toby didn’t care—as though granny had only stepped out, to return any moment. “How much?” Toby asked, as they dawdled across the back yard towards a detached two-car garage. A half-acre of lawn—interrupted by a square redwood deck, a 50′ x 20′ vegetable garden where tomatoes and peppers ripened, and a bed of blooming roses—was surrounded by a four-foot-high picket fence. Maple trees in full leaf crowded closely beyond the fence at the rear of the yard.

  “Mom said I should ask two hundred a month, plus the same again for a deposit. You’ll have to pay your own utilities.” She squinted at him in afternoon sun.

  “Sold.” Toby reached for money. “When can I move in?”

  “Anytime you want.”

  “Great. I’ll do it today.” He laid four hundred dollar bills across Luci’s palm and she gave him the key. “Do you have a rental agreement for me to sign? I’ll take it month-to-month, if possible.”

  “I’ll have to ask Mom.”

  They strolled towards the driveway where Toby’s truck was parked beside Luci’s neon-orange subcompact. “Everything’s still hooked up,” she said, “in case grandma ever came home again. But she never did.” She wrote down the Sanderson address and phone number for him. “Cable, phone, electricity and water are all still in Granny’s name but you can probably get them transferred over if you call.”

  “I’ll do that.” They shook hands and Luci drove off with the promise to return with a rental agreement soon after grandma’s funeral. Toby dumped painting gear in a bay of the garage, unloaded new clothes and toiletries onto the dining room table. He stuck the rescued manuscript in the oven—that had worked before, hadn’t it?

  Toby locked up and climbed into his vehicle again. He stopped at a grocery store on Morgan Road, stocked up on $100 worth of food and beverages and small kitchen items, bought inexpensive sets of towels and sheets and matching pillowcases at a bed & bath shop, and returned to his new home. He got everything put away, made the bed in the larger bedroom and sat down with a beer in a comfortable flowered wing chair to phone the public utilities. In hours all the various companies had agreed to bill Toby in the future.

  That accomplished, he called the police station. Dixon and French were out, so he gave his new address and phone number to the desk sergeant to pass along. Then he dialed the number Mac had given him. “I am not available at present,” the professor’s scratchy voice said on the pre-recorded message, “but if you leave your name and number at the tone, I shall return your call.” As instructed, Toby punched in the code number the old man had given him. There was a short pause and Mac’s voice cut in breathlessly again.

  “In an emergency, phone the Apocalyptic Horsemen, the Deadly Sins, the Senses, the Muses, the Graces, the Wonders of the Ancient World and the Unicorn.” An electronic beep sounded, signaling message end. What did all that gibberish mean? He listened to the message twice more before he had everything written down:

  • Epoch elliptic (?) horsemen

  • Deadly sins

  • Senses

  • Muses

  • Graces

  • Wonders of ancient world

  • Unicorn

  There were seven words and phrases. The same amount as digits in a local telephone number. That must be what the professor, in his own inimitable way, was trying to tell him. If so, Toby would need help deciphering it. He looked up the number for the reference desk at the public library and punched the proper buttons. “Reference,” a woman’s voice said. “May I help you?”

  “I hope so. Do you like mysteries?”

  “What kind?” Her voice carried an edge of suspicion.

  “A little one. This brainy friend left me his phone number, in code. Guess I’m too stupid to figure it out. That’s why I called the library.”

  “Look,” she said, “I’m awfully busy—”

  “It won’t take long. What number does ‘Epoch elliptic horsemen’ suggest?”

  She gently corrected his pronunciation. “Four: War, Pestilence, Famine, Death.”

  Toby wrote down 4. “How about Deadly Sins?”

  She clucked her tongue like a teacher disappointed in a slow child. “Seven, of course. Greed, Lust, Sloth….”

  Toby wrote 7, waited for the tabulation to end. “Now, ‘senses?’”

  “Five, naturally. Sight, sound, smell, taste, feel.” She was warming to the game. “Give me a tougher question.”

  “All right: The Muses.”

  “Good one! Nine, I think. Hang on.” There was the sound of computer key tapping at the other end. “Yes, I was right, nine muses,” she said breathlessly. “I had to look it up to be sure.” She read off the names while Toby tapped his pencil.

  “The Graces?”

  “Three: Faith, Hope and Charity.”

  “Wonders of the ancient world?”

  “Seven. Let’s see if I remember. The Pyramids of Egypt, Colossus of Rhodes, Hanging Gardens of Babylon…” She got six on her own before resorting to an online encyclopedia for the last, a mausoleum.

  “The unicorn?”

  “One, I’d say, for the single horn.”

  Toby wrote down the digits: 475-9371. “That’s a big help. Thanks.”

  “Is that all?” She seemed disappointed the fun was over. “Well, if you need assistance again, don’t hesitate to call. Ask for Helen.” She had a nice, warm voice.

  “Are you the one whose face launched a thousand ships?” he asked.

  “I wish.” She sighed and hung up.

  Toby punched up the number he’d obtained. A man’s gruff voice, not the professor’s, said, “Speak.”

  “Is Professor MacFarland there?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Toby Rew. He left me this phone number.”

  “Ain’t here.”

  “How can I get in touch with him? It’s important.”

  “Gimme a number. He’ll call.” Toby read off his new number and the man at the other end abruptly hung up.

  Chapter 17

  Toby waited by the phone, watching reruns of old sitcoms with canned laugh tracks, the best afternoon cable could offer until a baseball game at five.

  By late afternoon Mac still hadn’t called, so Toby went upstairs, showered and changed into clean, dark clothes. Back downstairs, he built a sandwich, carried it with a bag of chips and a beer into the living room to watch the Yankees and Orioles do battle. The contest was pitching heavy, the score knotted at 0-0 when Toby dozed off in the fifth inning.

  When he awoke the game was over and an action movie was playing. A car exploded on the small screen as Toby rubb
ed crud from his eyes. On the infinite screen outside the curtained windows the sun was low in the sky. After eight and still nobody—neither cops nor Mac—had phoned. He lifted the receiver to check: yep, there was a dial tone. He opened and heated a can of chili, added hot sauce, grated cheese and chopped onions, and ate while watching the rest of the movie. He gobbled packaged chocolate-chip cookies and milk for dessert.

  Ten o’clock arrived and it grew full dark outside. Time to go.

  In the truck Toby went west on Buckley, south on Morgan, took Old Liverpool Road past Onondaga Lake to Route 81, got off at Salina and turned left onto Court Street. He pulled up beside the curb in the middle of a block within sight of the Puterbaugh house. In his headlights the tan sedan gleamed dully beneath its dusty coat.

  Toby shut down and got out. He stood beside the truck, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark beyond a pool of light cast by a street lamp at the end of the block. Somewhere, a stereo played, the bass cranked up so high the music was no more than a pulsing thump, like the amplified heartbeat of an angina victim. Toby sidled to the driver’s door of the sedan, his eyes searching the night for movement. Using a clean handkerchief to keep his fingerprints off the metal, he tested the handle. Unlocked. Closing his eyes against a burst of interior light, Toby quickly swung open the door. He fell into the seat and pulled the door so it clicked shut again. He opened his eyes, sat without moving until his breathing regulated. Sweat oozed from his pores. There was a strong scent of overheated vinyl. Stale smoke. Faint citrus smell.

  Using the side of his hand, Toby rolled down the window to let in air. He pushed in the cigarette lighter with a knuckle. When it popped, he withdrew the lighter in hanky-wrapped fingers and searched the interior in the brief glow from the little red coils. The ashtray was filled with half-smoked, pencil-thin cigars. Paper bands just below the chewed ends read: HANDMADE IN MATACAN MEXICO.

  The glow dimmed. Toby waited for the lighter to reheat. The glove box was locked. There was nothing behind sun visors, under seats, in the back seat, beneath carpeted mats in foot-wells, or stuffed in cracks between seat bottoms and backs. Nothing either in the open catchall between front bucket seats except a few American coins, a ballpoint pen, a plain book of matches.

  In a circular well, where the driver could reach it conveniently, was an insulated paper cup. Toby pried off the lid. Empty, with a residue of coffee. He picked up the cup. There it lay: the car key. Toby used it first on the glove compartment. He withdrew an owner’s manual printed in Spanish and English, and a pink copy of a car rental agreement printed in both languages. The renter hadn’t pressed hard when filling in blanks on the form, so name and address were illegible chicken scratches.

  Lights of a car approaching from the rear gleamed through the back window. Toby flung himself flat until the vehicle passed.

  There were a couple of maps in the glove compartment. One in Spanish covered all of Mexico and Baja California, plus Belize, Guatemala and parts of Honduras, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Insets contained street maps of Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara and Puebla. A line drawn in ink snaked from the eastern Yucatàn coast, bent north around the Bay of Campeche, passed through Brownsville and ended at a mileage chart in kilometers.

  The hand-drawn line continued on the other map from a gas station and printed in English, which showed the United States east of the Mississippi. The blue path meandered northeast from Arkansas, through Tennessee to Kentucky, bent east to Washington, D.C., then curved north to Syracuse, where it stopped. A circle, heavily inked, surrounded the yellow blotch representing the city.

  At the bottom of the glove compartment was a fat pack of matte finished 4″ x 6″ photographs. Toby shuffled through them with faint help from the cigarette lighter, which grew hot in his hand despite the hanky. They were all candid snapshots of the Puterbaugh family. In a group of pictures, taken from several different angles, Jim sat shirtless against a backdrop of exotic greenery, fingers curved on the keyboard of his manual typewriter.

  There were other long shots and close-ups: Jim before an adobe building beside a small man dressed in white clothes and straw hat, hunched over reading with library stacks full of books behind him, dining at a sidewalk cafe in the company of a round-faced Mexican with pencil-thin mustache and slicked-back dark hair.

  Here was a whole mixed-up series that, through the miracle of auto-advance, had caught Sandy Puterbaugh in a string bikini at various stages as she traveled from ocean to beach.

  Toby put the photos in order and riffled the corners. It was like watching an old-time, herky-jerky, gents-only flick.

  At long distance, an inch tall against an endless expanse of turquoise water, Sandy splashed through a wavelet, hair flying, teeth gleaming in tanned face, heavy breasts bobbing to the right.

  An inch-and-a-half tall: arms pumping, breasts swinging left.

  Two inches tall: her foot hit the beach, sent beige sand flying.

  Her head and feet touched top and bottom of the frame. Winded, she slowed. Visible only from knees up and walking directly at the camera, she hooked a finger into the clinging bikini bottom, pulled cloth away from sleek, wet flesh, exposing white skin underneath, and let the elastic snap back into place. Her lips parted as her face and chest filled the frame: End of movie.

  Next, a dozen shots of the Puterbaugh daughter: She was cute and willowy in late teens, already filling out a thigh-high, navel-deep one-piece swimsuit in a way that said she might, in a few years, give Mom a run for her money in the looks department.

  There were a couple of the son: a chubby pubescent with a glazed look on his face, as though he’d been out under the sun too long. The boy was mahogany-brown in trunks that hung halfway down his calves.

  Toby took everything but owner’s manual and cigar stubs. With a last glance around, he rolled up the window, swiped at any surface he might have accidentally touched, then snapped off the interior light and stepped out. He knuckled the button so the door would lock when he shoved it closed with a knee. He put the new stuff with the papers in the truck’s glove compartment, then keyed open the sedan’s trunk. There was nothing in the carpeted space but a suitcase. Toby hefted the case. It was heavy, made of leather. Locked. He closed the trunk, slung the suitcase into the truck cab and drove off.

  A half-hour later, he carried everything he’d found into his new home on Buckley Road. With a narrow-bladed screwdriver he went to work on the suitcase locks and in minutes the latches popped open. Toby rummaged through the contents. A plastic bag held dirty laundry. Neatly folded clean clothing, mostly earth-toned slacks and short-sleeved shirts, matching socks and complementary ties, plain white cotton briefs and a pair of worn but gleaming brown loafers wrapped into a paper bag filled the suitcase. Many items had tags: HECHO EN MEXICO. He found an unopened bundle of the thin Mexican cigars. There was a kit containing the usual shaving gear and toiletries. At the bottom lay a man’s heavy silver ring nicely sculpted into a snarling cat’s head.

  No initials on the bag, no name and address tag attached to the handle, no passport or other identification in the suitcase. All in all, it was disappointing, though circumstantial evidence—cigars, Spanish-language map and the sedan’s Texas license plate—pointed at the dead man as the owner. But who was he? And why had he followed the Puterbaughs and/or the Mayan book from Mexico?

  Toby was uncertain what to do with the information or the physical property. Should he put the bag back where he’d found it, or lose it? For now, he stashed the suitcase behind a couch. He borrowed a cigar, cracked a beer and sat down to study the Mexican map to see if it could tell him something. It couldn’t.

  Later, after midnight, the phone rang. He picked up the receiver, got an earful of crackling static. “Toby?” a thin voice said through the noise. “Is that you? It’s Mac.” It sounded like he was calling from the moon, using a can attached to a string.

  “Yes, Mac, it’s me,” Toby yelled. “Are you all right?”

  “F
ine, thanks. I see you figured out my little puzzle.” There was the suggestion of a chuckle over the wire.

  “With a little help. Where are you?”

  “Far, far from Morrisville, in another country altogether. Marta’s with me, of course. I tell anyone who asks she’s my granddaughter. No one seems to care.”

  “Any trouble getting away?”

  “None. I took all photos and written material with me, by the way. I didn’t see why, if I’m to be driven from my home, I should leave them anything.” There was a burst of electrical sound, then the line cleared. Now it was like Mac was in the next room. “This is a different phone number than you gave me.”

  “I moved. My apartment house burned down. Somebody was killed in the fire.”

  “Oh, dear. What happened?”

  “The police think it was arson.”

  “Is it connected with the codex?”

  “Could be. Or it might have to do with the dead man I found in the Puterbaugh house. Either way, it’s not good.”

  Toby could hear the professor’s muffled voice as, speaking Spanish or some other language, he passed the news to someone else, probably Marta. “The dead man,” Mac said, “do they know yet who he was?”

  “Haven’t a clue so far. He turned up again in a cemetery. No I.D. on him but it looks like he came from Mexico.”

  “What was he doing at the Puterbaugh’s?”

  “I’m guessing he was after evidence of the codex, same as Giambi’s man. Or maybe he was after the actual manuscript.”

  A woman’s voice, unintelligible, sounded in the background. “Marta asks what the dead man looked like,” Mac said.

  “Maybe five-seven, slim. Long, gray hair tied back in a pony tail.”

  He heard Marta speaking. “What about his face?” Mac translated.

  “Dark skin, big nose, dark eyes.”

  Marta babbled again. “Did he look like a figure from the codex?”

  Toby remembered the painted men, who all resembled one another. “Yes, except the dead man wore modern clothes instead of feathers.”