Laura shook her head. “No. Why should I?”
“His sister is Clara Shelton. Do you know that name?”
“I don’t,” Laura said. “Vic, do you?”
My cell phone suddenly rang, making me jump, and without looking, I reached down, opened it up, and toggled it off.
Vic said, “No. I can’t say that I do. Where is this going, Mr. Cole?”
“Ron’s sister, Clara. She’s a singer. She’s sung at a number of clubs and local venues. Ron’s very proud of her, but he says she never got the break she deserved. That certain … club owners took advantage of her. Do either of you remember anything like that happening?”
Vic seemed stone-faced, his teacup gingerly held by both hands, and Laura said, “This is all news to me … so why are you bringing it up?”
“I was wondering if there was any legal action being brought against you by Ron’s sister, or by Ron on behalf of his sister, if she thought she was being treated unfairly by the Stone Chapel.”
“No, not at all,” Laura said. “We’ve never had problems like that. I still don’t understand what this has to do with us.”
I put my teacup on Laura’s desk. “Mrs. Toles, it’s like this. Ron Shelton is an avid hunter. You have secured the services of a prominent entertainment lawyer in Boston. David Foster. I believe there’s a connection, especially if someone who has performed here has brought a legal action against you and—”
Vic spoke up. “Wait just a minute. David Foster. How did you find out about David Foster?”
I said, “In doing research—and in talking to him.”
Laura’s face turned red, and Vic said, his voice rising, “You talked to him? You talked to David Foster? What did he say?”
Laura tried to smooth things over. “Vic, calm down. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Vic turned to her, his face mottled white and red, his voice rising. “Mom! Did you hear what he said? He talked to that snake Foster! Cole talked to him! I told you we couldn’t trust that bastard!”
Laura held out a hand to her son. “Victor Henry Toles, you calm down, now … you calm down…”
That rising voice.
I had heard it before.
In the woods. With a hood over my head.
Victor Henry Toles …
John Todd Thomas …
Calling each other by their middle names as some sort of code.
Victor Henry Toles.
Who grew up living off the land in a commune in Vermont.
I looked at Laura, who seemed angry, trapped, and upset that something important was slipping away, and I looked at her son, and his cold, dead-eyed gaze chilled me to the bone.
I grabbed my cup of tea, threw it at him, and got up and ran out as Laura screamed and Vic shouted.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I ran down the hallway, heading to the entryway and from there to the door and a sprint out to the parking lot to my Ford with the keys inside and a quick call to Diane Woods and—
I threw open the door.
Haleigh Miller stood there, face red, crying.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Lewis,” she said, and from behind her back, she produced a softball bat and slammed it across my forehead.
I fell back, fell back, and then tumbled down the set of stairs as loud voices approached from up above. The cement stairs were hard and sharp against my spine and the back of my head, and I stopped tumbling at the bottom, everything aching. I forced myself to my knees and looked up at the top of the stairs, where Haleigh shouted, “Hurry up! He’s down here!”
A flash of memory. A pink ribbon tied onto my knapsack, back at the demonstration—to mark me as a target. Not a mark of friendship. To my right and rear were blank walls. To my left was an open door. I got up with some effort and went through the door and slammed it shut behind me.
* * *
It was dark. No windows. No openings. I felt around with my outstretched hand, thankfully touched a light switch. I flicked it on and the room lit up and came into focus. A low basement with a concrete floor, and overhead, beams and planks. Some old wooden church pews stacked on one side of the room. Boxes. Trays. Tables. Chairs.
From the other side of the door, feet clumping down the concrete steps. I turned and locked the door, and for good measure threw a bolt. Then I stepped back, took a breath.
The doorknob wiggled. I heard the slippery metal sound of a key being inserted, and then the doorknob rotated, but the door wouldn’t budge. A couple of thumps as the person on the other side—Vic Toles, I’m sure—threw his weight against the door.
I looked around. Boxes and boxes in front of me. The basement stretched out to the other side and ended with shelves and boxes and industrial-sized cans and bottles of food and drink.
No windows. Nothing. Just the door I had just come through, the door I had locked, and on the other side, one young and very cold-blooded killer.
I felt at my side, sighed with relief at finding my cell phone. One quick phone call and this would end quickly, and end well.
I brought the cell phone up, flipped open the cover, looked at the screen, and—
Capital letters in the center of the screen:
SEARCHING FOR SERVICE.
Damn.
All this thick wood, thick concrete, and metal around me …
I was certainly stuck.
Another thump from the other side of the door.
“Cole!” Vic shouted. “Come on, give it up!”
I looked some more, hoping that Vic kept his firearms in a locker down in this part of the building, but I was out of luck. Off to the right was a pile of kitchen gear that went with their catering business: tablecloths, chafing dishes, silverware, and glassware.
No shotguns, rifles, or pistols.
“Cole!” Vic shouted. “Come on out!”
I couldn’t help myself. “Why? So you can shoot me out there, like you shot your stepdad, and John Thomas, and Paula Quinn?”
He laughed. “Missed that bitch, didn’t I. I was hoping to splatter her brains over her kitchen so you’d do something else besides sniff at me and my mom—but she dropped something on the floor just as I pulled the trigger.”
I kicked at the nearest cardboard box in frustration and the box burst open, spilling reels and reels of old-fashioned tape recordings, brown tapes that rolled out onto the dirty concrete floor. There were dozens of these boxes carefully stacked up, with names and dates written on the outside with black marker. Seeing those tapes, something suddenly made sense to me so quickly that it almost made me dizzy. These weren’t just tapes. They were gold. They were diamonds. They were silver.
“That’s why you killed Bronson, isn’t it,” I shouted back at Vic. “Because of all these tapes! He had the rights to recordings made by rock and folk groups before they got famous, tapes that could be worth millions of dollars—and now you and your mom own them! What happened, was he too greedy? Didn’t want to share?”
Even through the door I could sense the anger and frustration in his voice. “Greedy? Greedy? I wish that goody-two-shoes bastard was greedy—because he’d still be alive. Those tapes are worth tons of money, and you know what he wanted to do with all that money? Save the fucking rain forest. Save the polar bears. Save the shoreline. What about me? What about Mom? Years and years of living on food stamps, shivering in the cold, shitting in a cold outhouse—we had the chance to get away from it all and live like royalty but that fucking moron wouldn’t do it.” He banged against the door one more time. “No more talking, Cole. Your last chance. Come out or I’m coming in.”
“Come out and face what?”
He laughed. “My good nature, what else? But if I have to come in—only one of us will be going back up those stairs.”
I looked around the basement again. “What are you going to use to get in? A super key?”
“Yeah,” he said. “A fucking Remington loaded with twelve-gauge buckshot. It’ll take care of that lock in under a second, and will ta
ke care of you in just under two. See ya.”
I heard him running back up the stairs. I took out my cell phone again. Still looking for a signal. Good luck with that. I went over to the boxes of tapes, recognized some of the names inked on the side. Poor old Bronson Toles. Kept these tapes over all these years, finally found out that they were worth money … and then you’re killed because of what you want to do with it.
Precious.
These tapes were precious.
I went over to the catering gear, started looking, hands shaking, wondering how long it would take for Vic to grab his shotgun, load it up, and come back down. A minute. Two? Maybe three if I was lucky.
There. Tablecloth. Silverware. Took a knife, tore some strips from the tablecloth.
Some chafing dishes fell over with a crash that startled me. Come on, I thought, come on … there.
Matches.
Nice blue box of matches.
Over there.
Some six-packs of India Pale Ale, in tall bottles. Grabbed a bottle, twisted the top off, laid it on the floor, let it drain while I searched the other catering stuff, looking, kicking with my feet, this part of the room smelling of beer, and—
Thank you.
A little cardboard box with four bottles inside.
“Hey, Cole!” came the voice from the other side of the door. “Your last chance. What do you say?”
I shouted back, “Can you give me another minute?”
“How about no for an answer? How does that sound?”
Plastic bottle in one shaking hand, pouring its contents into a glass bottle with another shaking hand, overfilling it and then putting it on the floor. Stuffing the torn bits of the white tablecloth into the glass bottle.
Grabbing the matches, picking up the bottle, and back to the door.
“All right,” I said, throwing the bolt open. “I’m coming out!”
With the matches, I tried to light the cloth.
The match head crumbled as I dragged it across the side of the box.
Damn.
Again.
The matchstick broke in half.
My chest was heavy and thumping, and Vic shouted, “That door handle better be moving in five seconds, or I’m opening fire!”
Another match … a scrape … a little hiss, and it blossomed into flame. I held it underneath the white rags until they caught fire, and then took the doorknob in my free hand and pushed the door open. It opened just fine, and I ducked my head around the opening, holding the lit bottle in my hand, and Vic was there, his mom standing behind him. Vic’s shotgun was pointed at the door, and he was grinning.
“What are you going to do, scorch my eyebrows or something?”
“Or something,” I said, and I turned and tossed my homemade Molotov cocktail at the priceless collection of tapes.
* * *
The bottle shattered itself on the concrete floor with a very satisfying noise, and then a whoomph of burning lamp oil flared out into the open box of tapes, and the flammable tapes caught fire instantly, curling up and exploding in a beautiful blossom of flames and smoke. Vic and Laura both yelled, and Vic burst into the room, looking at the burning tapes, and I grabbed the shotgun with one hand and punched him on the side of the head with the other. He might have put up more of a fight, but the tapes … the tapes were everything. His mother ran in and picked up a tablecloth and started battling the flames.
“Water!” Laura screamed. “Get some water!”
With shotgun in hand, I swung it around and caught him in his chest, and he fell back on his butt with an audible oomph! I got out of the room, still holding the shotgun, slammed the door, and ran upstairs and—
Haleigh Miller was there just outside the door, trembling, face pale, holding her hands together in a tight fist. No softball bat in sight.
“Go,” I said.
“What?”
“Go, run for it. I’ll tell the cops somebody slugged me and I didn’t see a thing. So get out of here. Now!”
Haleigh turned and started, then stopped, turned again. “I … I was in love with Vic. That’s all. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was in love with Vic and—”
“For God’s sake, stop talking and get moving! The cops and firefighters will be here in a couple of minutes.”
She wiped at her tear-filled eyes. “You … you’re doing this for me?”
“No, you silly girl,” I said, shifting the shotgun from one tired hand to the other. “I’m doing it for your dad.”
“I don’t understand … you don’t even know my dad!”
“I know enough. Your poor overworked dad, stationed overseas on behalf of a grateful nation that’s not too sure why he’s there, getting paid crap, working eighty or so hours a week, open to being blown up at any time … I don’t know your dad, but I know he doesn’t need to have his daughter arrested. So get moving … now!”
No more talking from her. She turned once more and started walking, then trotting and running, across the parking lot.
I looked back to the Stone Chapel. Smoke was rolling up the stairway to the basement, hugging the top of the slanted ceiling. A person with sympathy and empathy would probably make his way back to the cellar, open up the door, and free Laura and Vic.
Instead, using the shotgun as a cane, I went along the side of the Stone Chapel to the closed entrance, tore the sign down from the fire call box and popped it open, and tugged down on the white handle.
Then I limped back to my Ford, opened up the door, and sat down and waited to hear the sirens.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Hours later, I drove down the bumpy driveway to my beach house, body aching and head spinning, as if it had been pumped with nitrogen. My forehead also throbbed with a deep burning feeling, after being whacked by the softball bat wielded by a young woman in love. Earlier, after I’d pulled the fire call box, it took less than five minutes for the firefighters from the uptown Tyler fire station to get to the Stone Chapel, followed by one and then two and then several police cruisers, including the unmarked one belonging to Detective Sergeant Diane Woods and a dark green one belonging to State Police Detective Pete Renzi.
Ambulances arrived as well, and after the fire was knocked down, stretchers were dispatched, and after talking and retalking to both Detective Woods and Detective Renzi, it was time to go home.
Home was where I wanted to be.
I pulled into the shed that served as a garage and walked over to the front of the house, hearing the reassuring sound of the Atlantic rolling in and out. I went up to the front door, grabbed the knob, and—
It spun open.
It was unlocked.
I pushed the door open and heard the low murmur of a television, and lights were on, and I called out, “Annie?”
“Not quite,” came the reply.
I stepped into the living room, and a question I had earlier, of where Paula Quinn had gone after being shot at, was answered.
She had come to my home.
I went back and closed the door and returned to the living room. Paula was curled up on my couch, a blue comforter wrapped around her, and she had a weak smile on her face. “You don’t like answering your cell phone, do you?”
I pulled my cell phone out, flipped it open, and saw three voice mails. I remembered the call that had come in when I had been talking to Laura Toles.
“Been busy,” I said.
“I guess,” she said, burrowing deeper into the comforter. “What happened to you? It looks like you’ve got a hell of a bruise starting up on your forehead.”
“Ran into a baseball bat,” I said.
“Want to tell me more about that?”
“Not at the moment,” I said.
“Fair enough,” Paula replied. “My friend, you really should move your spare key to another place. I could have been anybody you know, especially somebody with a bad intention.”
I said, “Only a very few people know where that key is. And everyone of them I trust.”
<
br /> Her smile got wider. “Glad to know that.”
I went over and sat down on the couch, and she moved her legs to give me room. Her right hand was on top of the comforter, and I softly took her hand in mine and said, “It’s over.”
“What?”
“It’s over. The man who shot Bronson Toles and the Colby College student and who took a shot at you earlier today—he’s been arrested. Done. You’re safe. Nothing more to be afraid of.”
She squeezed my hand tight and closed her eyes. “Tell me more.”
“It was Vic Toles. The stepson. He was working with his mom.”
“My God. What the hell was going on?”
“What was going on was that Bronson had the rights to years of tapes he had recorded, of musical and comedy groups that had their start at the Stone Chapel, and those tapes were worth millions of dollars. Bronson wanted to spend the money for a variety of causes, and his wife and stepson wanted to take a break from the causes and to see how the other half lives.”
“And the college student? And me?”
I squeezed her hand. “He tried to kill me in the marshes after I interviewed Curt Chesak, and that poor John Thomas—he was the only witness to me and Vic being together, just before my supposed murder.”
Her voice lowered to a whisper. “And me?”
“I was pushing around, asking too many questions, and he thought that by … by causing you harm, I’d step away.”
Paula said, “I guess he doesn’t know you that well.”
“You guess right.” I looked around my small living room. “You been here long?”
“Long enough,” she said.
“How are you doing?”
She sighed and sank back into the couch. “Much, much better since you came through that door and brought me that news. Lewis, I can’t thank you enough, and—”
“How was it, back at your condo?”
Paula looked over my shoulder, at a distant point, and she started talking, in one long breath, as if whatever was inside had to come out, and had to come out quick.
“I was in my living room. It had been a long day. I was just tired … felt empty, like all the stories I had written since the gunshot had just drained and drained me. I went to the bathroom … my mouth felt foul and I was brushing my teeth, and then I went out to the kitchen to see what I might have for dinner … and I dropped my toothbrush…” Tears were rolling down Paula’s cheeks, but her voice didn’t quaver. “So I bent down … and the noise all sort of blended together … that glass breaking, the bang of the rifle being fired, and so many thoughts went through me, all at once … thinking I was hallucinating about what had happened at the Falconer campground, maybe I was sleeping and this was all a bad dream … but I hit the floor and knew it was real … knew he was out there, trying to kill me … I called the police by pulling my phone down off the wall … and then I scooted out, like a scared little girl … and I ran and ran to the east … to the beach … and I knew I had to be someplace safe … and this is where I ended up, Lewis … this is where I ended up…”
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