Suddenly one of the marshmallow back cushions on the sofa fell forward, the upper body of Steven Stepanian facing me, leveling and cocking a revolver from about ten feet away. He raised the index finger of his other hand perpendicular to his pursed lips. I didn't say anything. Lana Stepanian moved behind my chair, pushing me gently at the shoulders as she felt around my back and sides for a wire or weapons. I had on the same suit I'd been wearing at Nancy's the previous Friday morning, and Lana found the Scottish fiddle tape in my jacket pocket, putting it back once she saw what it was.
After as thorough a search as she could manage without risking my grabbing her, she said, "Nothing," and then perched back on the armchair.
Steven Stepanian used his free hand to flip the seat cushion in front of him off the sofa, stretching his long legs out from a yoga-style, ankles-crossed position. "Ah, that's better. I was afraid I'd cramp up before you told us everything we ought to hear."
I inclined my head toward the loft. "I figured you to be upstairs."
"You'll appreciate why I'm not in a minute. To answer your earlier question, though, we needed Andrew's car for the bodies."
Until those words, I'd hoped I was wrong about that part.
Stepanian wiggled his right foot, as if he had a kink in the ankle. "Your version of what happened was really quite accurate. Very impressive, but also very . . . threatening to us, as you said before. After Lana told me about your first visit here and your peculiar questions, we were concerned. And then when we heard Andrew ranting and raving about being 'investigated,' we knew that he and his 'ladyfriend,' as you called her, had to take a 'trip.' Unfortunately, Lana can't drive a stick shift, so that left it to me to take the Porsche. Quite a machine, actually. I'm sorry I couldn't have enjoyed the experience a little more.
Lana said, "I followed Steven to Boston, where I parked our car and rode with him to the airport. Then, after we left the Porsche in the terminal lot, like you said, we took a cab back to our car and drove home."
Like a den mother, explaining the logistics for her troop's last scout trip.
I needed more than wanted the answer to my next question. "How did you kill them?"
"It was rather easy, actually," said Steven. "We keep a gun here—Lana, show him our gun, would you?"
She reached under the cushion on her chair, coming up with a small semiautomatic in her hand.
Steven nodded toward it. "Nothing showy, just for home defense. But effective enough. On Thursday night, Lana went knocking next door, supposedly with a question about the condo association. Andrew answered her knock and started to say he didn't really have time just then. The sight of me behind Lana, pointing our gun at his head, seemed to change his mind. With the four of us in the living room, his ladyfriend became quite nervous. Fortunately, I thought to search Andrew, much as Lana just did you. And what did I find but this revolver? Andrew wasn't very coherent—I imagine the stress of the situation was wearing on him—but he tried to talk us out of killing the two of them, offering us cash. It turned out to be . . . Lana?"
"More than sixteen thousand dollars, dear."
Steven's expression was almost rueful. "When the money didn't do the trick, the poor devil even trotted out some cock-and-bull story about being in the Witness Protection Program?
"He was telling you the truth."
Steven squinted at me. "No."
"Yes. Dees was planted here." I turned to Lana. “Your C.W. Realty Trust stands for 'Cooperating Witness.' Basically, the feds own the complex."
Lana looked to her husband, who was frowning at first, then smiling. The first I'd seen of it, his teeth tiny, like his sister's and at the same time like a child's.
Steven's head wagged slowly. "Ironic, isn't it?"
"Ironic?"
"Yes. All the time we lived next door to him, Andrew was lying, and we believed him. Then, as we're about to kill him, the man tells us the truth, and we think he's lying."
Very quietly, I said, "The killings happened in Dees' unit, then?"
"Yes. Oh, we made up our own cock-and-bull story, telling them we had to 'get away,' so would you both please just go upstairs into the bathroom and we'll lock the door and then give us an hour . . ." More head wagging.
I said, "What did you tell them you had to get away from?"
Lana broke in. "They never asked."
I turned to her.
She shrugged. "I think they were so frightened—and also so relieved, from what you've told us, that we weren't whoever Andrew 'cooperated' against—that they believed us without really caring about our reasons."
Steven said, "They wanted to believe us. You could see it in their eyes. They wanted so very much to believe that once they were in the bathroom, we were going to let them live."
Quietly again. "But you didn't."
He got indignant. "We've never killed anyone we didn't have to. For whatever reason, that ladyfriend started you investigating about us, invading our privacy."
Lana said, "We're not monsters, Mr. Cuddy. We simply love each other." An affectionate glance toward her brother. "We always have." Then back to me with, "Only people wouldn't think we were normal if they knew. They'd report us, like my roommate or our parents were going to."
"Or just discover the truth," I said, "like Yale Quentin, and maybe try to . . . use it?"
Steven shook his head. "He never got that far. We don't gossip or pry into anyone else's life. Why can't people like you respect our privacy as well?" Stepanian reverted to the matter-of-fact tone. "Anyway, we sent ladyfriend into the bathroom first, then I hit Andrew from behind with the butt of my gun, and he stumbled against her. They both fell, Andrew unconscious. I was on the woman before she could scream." His fingers flexed. "I choked her. She thrashed around some, but it didn't take long. Then I did the same to Andrew. He never even woke up."
Lana said, "And there was very little mess."
I just looked at her. If Olga Evorova hadn't retained me, if I hadn't thought to use the "questionnaire" as cover, if Olga hadn't confronted DiRienzi with what Steven said, "Are you wondering why we didn't kill you as wel1?"
I turned to him. "No. You wanted to make it look like Dees left town, and you didn't believe him about being in the witness program. So you had every reason to think it would look odd to have me turn up dead right after they took their 'trip.' But that still means you had to do something with the bodies."
"Correct. Can you guess?"
"No."
"Think about it. We have to dispose of Andrew and ladyfriend, but we don't want to go very far with them, either. We drove the Porsche to the airport, but why not use Andrew's car for that?"
Steven was giving me hints, so I'd play the game. "Because the Porsche stands out."
"Yes, but you're looking at the right hand instead of the left."
"Because the Toyota hatchback can take the bodies more easily?"
Steven grew impatient. "And?"
The left hand, not the . . . "And because the Toyota doesn't stand out."
The tiny-toothed smile.
I said, "You used the Porsche for the airport because you needed a drab car like the brown Toyota for the bodies."
Still the smile.
It came to me. “The bog."
The loving wife said, "And there's plenty more room in it, too."
I looked at her. "Won't wash, Lana. You try to sell me on going peacefully 'to the bathroom,' I'm not going to believe it, and the neighbors will hear any shooting."
Steven said, "I've been thinking about that, actually. It seems that your fingerprints are nicely on our sliding glass door. What if you slipped in because we accidentally left it unlocked, then found you here and shot you for a burglar?"
"Sitting in your chair?"
"You slumped there after I fired, but before I realized the intruder was you."
Given Kourmanos and Braverman finding me breaking in next door, Boyce Hendrix and Tangela Robinette might believe that. Because, like Dees' "running away,
" they'd “want" to believe it. And they might sell the Plymouth Mills police on it, too.
I said, "One problem, Steven."
"What's that?"
"You're holding the wrong gun.”
"Wrong?"
"The revolver belonged to Dees, may be traceable. Lana would have to be the shooter."
"Oh, that's not a problem." She came off the arm of the chair. "I don't enjoy killing, Mr. Cuddy, but it is my turn." Now backing toward the staircase, glancing toward her brother, "Would this be far enough, dear?"
Raising my voice and speaking sharply, I said, "Primo."
The sliding glass door, which I'd unlocked, whistled open. Shots blazed from the muzzle of my Chief's Special in Zuppone's hand as I hurled a throw pillow at Steven. Lana being closer to the door, Primo took her first, the weapon flying from her grasp and somersaulting through the air. Rising, Steven got off two shots, but my pillow hitting his wrist sent them high and wild as Primo's next bullets nailed him to the sofa like spikes driven by a sledgehammer.
My ears were ringing from the gunfire. "You hear what they said?"
"About the swamp and all? Yeah. Look, I gotta get out of here." Zuppone tossed the Chief's Special to me.
"Primo, thanks.”
"Don't mention it." He went back to the glass door. "And I fucking mean that."
Moving out onto the deck, he hopped over the low railing and was gone.
=25=
I know where you can find Andrew Dees."
Tangela Robinette stared at me from the front stoop of the Stepanians' unit. Empty-handed and arms raised, I was standing in the entrance foyer after having answered her pounding on the door. You could see the adrenaline surge in the whites of her eyes around the irises, and in the way she gripped her weapon, combat stance and chest high.
Robinette said, "Lace your fingers behind your head and tum around. Slowly."
I complied.
"All right, now walk forward till I tell you to stop."
Again.
"Jesus Lord," said Robinette behind me.
"They're both dead as far as I can tell from a pulse. The revolver on the dinner table is mine."
"Sit in that chair there, hands where they are."
Taking a seat, I saw her going toward the telephone.
"You might want to hear me out before calling the locals."
Robinette hesitated. Then she moved toward my chair, stepping carefully around Steven Stepanian's splayed legs in front of the sofa. "Short and sweet, Cuddy."
* * *
The police chief of Plymouth Mills was named Niebuhr, a human bowling ball in flannel shirt, uniform pants, and anorak, hood down. A reed-thin detective named Hertel wore a turtleneck sweater and khaki slacks the way a scarecrow wears its waistcoat. I stood with them at the edge of the bog. Behind us, both Robinettes, Kira Elmendorf, and Paulie Fogerty were among maybe twenty other people from the complex and town. The two patrol officers who had initially responded to the scene in the Stepanians' unit held the rubberneckers back from the action.
A big tow truck with four rear wheels was parked nose to road, the driver playing out metal cable from the winch in the bed of it. A town diver and a State Police one in scuba gear buddied up on parallel ropes to enter the chocolaty water.
Niebuhr said, "I don't envy those boys this one."
Hertel spoke from the corner of his mouth. "Cuddy, let's have your story for the chief, huh?"
I began the version Hertel already had heard, the one Robinette and I had agreed upon in the Stepanians' townhouse. "A banker from Boston named Olga Evorova hired me to look into the background of her almost-fiancé, Andrew Dees."
Niebuhr said, "Whatever happened to romance?" then spat. "Go on."
"I figured a good way of investigating Dees would be to visit his neighbors, using as a cover story this fictional condo complex that was thinking of changing management companies to the outfit that oversees Plymouth Willows here."
Hertel spit too, not quite as well as Niebuhr. "Would have been nice to let us in on that when you started asking around."
"I saw it as harmless at the time, and it would have been, but for the two psychos who lived next door to Andrew Dees. Apparently my questions about their background—so I could do the same with Dees—pushed the wrong button in their heads, and they came to think I was investigating them somehow. So, when they overheard Dees and Evorova arguing about me questioning his neighbors, the Stepanians decided to protect themselves the only way they'd learned how."
Chief Niebuhr inclined his head toward the bog. "By killing Dees and your client."
"Right."
Hertel said, "Which the Stepanians supposedly did already to a college girl and their own parents in Idaho."
"That's what I realized from my trip out there."
"And you flew across the country on a hunch that maybe this couple wasn't kosher?"
"All I had to go on was a school transcript and the bad feeling I got talking to the Stepanians themselves?
Niebuhr said, "Bad feeling?"
"They were trying so hard to be normal, Chief, they seemed off the beam."
Hertel followed up. "And you had yourself a second client, right? This other banker who was willing to pay the freight for the trip."
"That's right."
One diver surfaced, looking like a bug stuck in the icing on a birthday cake. The town guy, I thought, but it was tough to tell.
Taking the regulator out of his mouth, he said, "We got a vehicle."
Niebuhr said, "How can you see anything down there?"
"You can't, Chief." The diver caught the clamp end of the cable swung out to him by the truck driver. "But you can feel the bumpers and tires and stuff." Then to the driver, "When I give this three tugs, start your winch, but really baby it." Putting the regulator back in his mouth, he slid beneath the surface again.
"Alright," said Niebuhr to me. "I get why you thought the Stepanians were hinky. Off the record, I went to one of the School Committee meetings, and the guy seemed to have a rod up his ass the whole time I was there. What I want to hear real slow and clear, though, is why you had to do a Wild Bunch routine back there in the condo unit."
I took a breath. "All I had was a missing client that another client was paying me to find, and some odd things involving the Stepanians as brother and sister in Idaho when they were playacting at being husband and wife here. I couldn't see your department doing anything about that beyond charging them with incest. Especially when the only evidence about what had happened to Evorova was a nearsighted parking-lot attendant who saw a man and a woman leaving her neon Porsche with suitcases outside an airline terminal in Boston."
Hertel said, "So tonight you came visiting the Stepanians to—what, bluff them into making a confession or something?"
"Or to eliminate them as suspects in my client's disappearance, the same as I'd done with the other neighbors."
The chief nodded. "But instead, the Stepanians tried to eliminate you."
"As soon as I was in their unit, they got the drop on me. The wife did a quick search, but she never thought of an ankle gun."
"And after they told you their story . . ."
". . . the two of them had me get up and move to the sliding glass door, which I did. Then I faked a stumble, drew the revolver, and came up shooting."
To Hertel, Niebuhr said, "Check out?"
"Dispatch logged in calls from first an Elmendorf, K-I-R-A, then three minutes later from a Robinette, T-A-N-G-E-L-A. Both reported shots fired, and I interviewed them. They confirmed that Cuddy made the rounds last week, talking to the neighbors about all kinds of shit they thought was goofy." The detective glanced at the crowd behind us. "Elmendorf looks like a punker, but Robinette's a service widow and a steady head, far as I can tell. Both the Stepanian corpses had weapons near them, two shots discharged from the husband's. Assuming the crimescene techies don't throw us a curve, the physical evidence I could see supports Cuddy's version."
&nbs
p; All three of us noticed the tugging on the tow-truck cable, like a big fish had just taken the bait. The driver cranked a lever, and the winch began drawing the cable tight, then whining a little as it strained to break the inertia of something heavy on the bottom. After five seconds, the driver goosed the lever, and the cable started winding onto the reel of the winch.
Chief Niebuhr said, "I am not looking forward to this shit."
The divers surfaced before anything appeared at the bog end of the cable. They were ashore, walking backwards to accommodate their fins, just as the roofline of the hatchback broke water.
When the front doors were visible, the town diver held up his hand to the truck driver, who stopped the winch. The diver waded back into the bog, using a wet-suit glove to wipe the gunk from the driver's-side glass. Then he shook his head.
Niebuhr said, "What've we got?"
"The stuff of nightmares, Chief," the diver waving toward the truck to start the winch again.
As Hertel turned to the uniforms, asking them to keep the crowd back, I said a silent prayer for Olga Evorova.
* * *
Sitting at her kitchen counter, Tangela Robinette said, "Would you like some privacy?"
I lifted the phone receiver off the wall. "No, thanks."
Trying Nancy Iirst, I left a message on her machine in Southie that I was fine, despite what she might hear from a news bulletin. Then I dialed Claude Loiselle's home number.
A sleepy voice answered.
"Claude?"
"Yes?"
"It's John Cuddy, Claude. I'm sorry to be calling so late, but something's happened, and I didn't want you getting—"
"John, is Olga dead?"
I gave it a beat. "Yes."
"Aw, no." Then, not into the phone from the pitch of her voice, "No, no, no."
"Claude, I'm so sorry."
Back at me, snapping. "How? How did that son of a bitch Dees kill her?"
"He didn't. A couple that lived next door was psychopathic, thought Olga had somehow hired me to look into their lives, and they had something to hide they thought was worth killing both Olga and Dees to protect."
"No. No, that's not fair, not fair."
"Listen, Claude. I'm sorry to impose on you, but I think Olga's uncle ought to be told too. The problem is, I'm going to be here in Plymouth Mills for a while longer, and I don't have his number with me."
Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy Page 28