He figured he had until Sunday, four days from now, when Judith was scheduled to return from Bermuda. Meanwhile, if she phoned here and her brother mentioned newfound cousin Keith, she’d more likely exhibit pleasant surprise than suspicion. As far as he knew, Judith had no idea he’d gated out, and he intended to keep her in ignorance—for the time being. When she did find out, it would be on his terms. That promised to be one interesting, long-overdue meeting.
Hal lifted an armful of books out of the car trunk. “Did you guys leave any books in the library?” Tom was hooked on science books and kids’ mystery novels. For Cuba, it was graphic novels, funky craft books, books on music and film, and sweet, old-fashioned romance novels, of all things. These last she tried to hide under a thick coffee-table book about body piercings. Hal found it kind of endearing, the bad-ass chick with a secret taste for hearts and flowers; crunchy on the outside, soft and gooey on the inside. She was a good kid.
They were both good kids. He’d had some decent conversations with them during the past few days, and more than decent conversations with Gabby, who was sexy in a confident, seasoned way. She’d been just as confident, though less seasoned, twenty-five years ago when he’d known her as the Baineses’ pretty French au pair. He and Gabby had flirted every time their paths crossed at the Astoria Studios, where In No Time was shot—right up until the moment he’d pulled his gun. He’d been in full disguise back then: the uniform, makeup to darken his complexion, mouth inserts to fill out his face, a fake mustache, and a short, dark wig, which he’d almost lost at the scene when that bird had attacked him.
Hal had bided his time at the studio, studying the child star’s movements, anticipating when he’d be in that deserted corridor with the vending machines. And with no one but his nanny to defend him; Gabby rarely left his side. He couldn’t recall what, precisely, he and Gabby had discussed in the days leading up to the kidnapping, but it certainly hadn’t been his plans for her precious charge or where he intended to bury the ransom money.
No matter what angle he examined it from, he kept coming back to Ricky himself. The kid had been blindfolded, paralyzed with terror, and doped to the gills, once he’d lost his finger. Besides which, the windows of the bus—the Puny Earthlings’ decrepit tour bus, a shooting gallery on wheels—had been sealed with blackout shades. How could Ricky have seen what his abductor did with the ransom money? And if by some miracle he did, wouldn’t he have informed his folks? Yet in all the news reports that followed, there was no hint of the money having turned up. Everyone assumed the bad guy had lit out for some tropical paradise where two million of Daddy Baines’s unmarked bucks would buy plenty of pink drinks with tiny umbrellas, and just as many bikini-clad honeys to share them with.
Maybe Daddy didn’t get the money back. Maybe Will didn’t have it either, but he knew who did. Hal wasn’t concerned about Will recognizing him. It was raining like hell the day Hal hauled that shrink-wrapped suitcase and the shovel out to the boulder; he wore a dark green rain poncho, the hood pulled low over his forehead.
Judith was the one who doped up the kid after the finger thing, with injectable morphine she’d scrounged from who knew where. She flipped out when she saw that bloody little stump, went completely off the wall, even tossed her cookies. Hal had to knock her around pretty good just to get her settled down. That was all he needed, Ricky Baines recognizing his half sister’s voice and telling the cops about it later. She’d give Hal up in a heartbeat.
Either you shut your yap or I’ll shut him up for good, Hal warned her. That got her attention faster even than his fists, which he wielded with cool deliberation. Hal wasn’t stupid; he was careful to leave no marks where they’d be visible and cause Daddy Baines to ask all sorts of inconvenient questions.
Snuffing the brat hadn’t been on the menu when he’d cooked up the kidnapping idea. All Judith had wanted was money, assurance she wouldn’t be shut out of the family fortune. Treating her coddled prince of a half brother to an all-expense-paid trip to the woods had seemed an acceptable way to accomplish that. It was Hal who’d come up with the scheme, but he couldn’t have done it without someone on the inside. He’d convinced Judith it would be a lark, a prank—one that would pay off handsomely. By the time he’d finished with her, the silly girl had thought it was her own idea, thought she was in charge of the operation and could call him off with one flick of her queenly little hand. That had been her first mistake.
Tom chattered nonstop as the three of them lugged their haul of books toward the house—about his next science experiment, about his next Lego project, about some trick he was teaching Josephine. It wasn’t hard for Hal to hold up his end of the conversation. A well-timed grunt here, a “Yeah?” or “Cool!” there, proved sufficient. Cuba acted ostentatiously bored with Tom’s prattle, but when the overburdened boy started to trip on his way up the porch steps, she sprang to his rescue, catching him and keeping him from tumbling after his books.
By the time they’d brushed the snow off the books and trudged up to the porch, the front door had swung open. Gabby stood framed in the doorway, looking like a tarted-up yoga instructor in a stretchy top, flared white leggings, and the ever-present high heels.
“You make so much noise, I heard you all the way across the lawn,” she complained, but she was smiling. Hal figured she’d been keeping an ear cocked, waiting for his return. She’d freshened her makeup, he noticed, and marinated herself in more of that perfume she always wore.
He scooted past her through the doorway with his pile of books, deliberately brushing against her with a silky smile of his own. He murmured, “Oops.” She quietly scolded him in French even as she pressed a little closer.
That was as physical as their flirtation had gotten. As much as he wanted to jump her bones, she didn’t seem inclined to take it further than this teasing byplay, at least for the time being. Hal could deal with that. He’d already taken out a quarter century of sexual frustration on murder groupie Karen Schultz. Not that Karen had objected, even when it meant she couldn’t sit without wincing.
Cuba, coming up behind him, witnessed the entire exchange. Without a word she tucked her pile of books under one arm, shook out a couple of smokes from a pack of Kools, and offered them to the grown-ups.
“Très drôle,” Gabby said, as she snatched the contraband pack from the girl and crumpled it.
“That’s dumb,” Tom told Cuba as he scooted past the three of them and headed for his room. “They don’t smoke.”
Hal had been concentrating on how hot Gabby looked and thus failed to prepare himself for Quint’s inevitable reaction to his presence. “God Almighty,” he muttered, as the bird let loose a brain-rattling scream. “I will never get used to that thing.”
At least Quint was confined inside his cage at the moment—which didn’t keep him from screeching and hissing as he punished the antique ironwork with his beak, struggling to open the door and get at his old adversary.
Will’s voice sang out from up on the third floor, “Something tells me the cuz is home.”
“The Keith alarm,” Hal’s housemates called Quint’s berserk reaction to him. He’d been startled to see the TV parrot again after all these years; he’d had no idea Ricky Baines had adopted it. The scar behind Hal’s ear throbbed every time he laid eyes on the damn thing.
Gee, that’s odd, Will had said that first night. Quint likes everyone. Why’s he going on like that? Thinking fast, Hal had convinced his housemates he had a phobia about birds. Outwardly he managed to act calm, he’d explained, but birds always sensed his fear and always went off the wall like that. They’d bought the explanation, and Quint’s performance around Hal had turned into a household joke.
Hal stared into the bird’s orange eyes, the pupils shrunken to pinpoints, and sent a silent promise: Next time it won’t be just the wing.
Cuba started up the stairs with her load of books. “Yeah, he’s happy to see you, too, Quint. Hey,” she greeted the stranger lumbering down the s
teps.
The man was immensely fat and sweating profusely. He barely managed to squeeze past the girl as she flattened herself to the banister. “’Scuse me, dear,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”
“Ah. Archie,” Gabby said. “Did you see the old club-foot tub? You must remember it, no? It is the original.”
Archie clung to the newel post at the base of the stairs, huffing like a locomotive. “Club-foot? Oh, claw-foot. Yes, yes, I took many a bath in that old tub.” He sneezed into a wad of tissues as Gabby introduced him to Hal before excusing herself to re-join the poker game upstairs, which apparently had expanded to include Will and Lucy. She invited the two men to accompany her. Archie said thanks anyway, he had to go, and Hal said he’d promised to sand and oil Ming-hua’s butcher block.
“What’s with him?” Archie pointed to the parrot, still screaming, still trying to get at Hal. “He was happy as a clam before.”
“I can’t stay in here with this racket.” Hal went back out onto the porch. Archie followed him.
“And the heat. Jeez, is it hot in there or is it me?” Archie opened his suit coat to the cold breeze. He mopped his face with more tissues. “Maybe it’s me. I bet I have a fever.”
“Lousy cold, huh?” Hal pushed on the wooden railing, testing his repair.
“You got that one right. So you’re Will’s cousin.”
“That’s right.” Something about this man didn’t ring true. Nothing more than an ex-con’s paranoia, maybe, but he couldn’t shake the feeling.
Archie settled his bulk on the porch swing, which creaked alarmingly. “Nice, having relatives nearby.”
Watching him, Hal realized what it was. He didn’t move like a guy that size should move. Most men that big developed a kind of grace, a way of carrying themselves, of moving past and around obstacles. Hal had spent the past two and a half decades honing his people-reading skills in an environment where the slightest misstep could mean a shiv between the ribs. Archie was waiting for a response. Hal said, “I guess.”
“Gabby told me about you,” Archie said. “Your mom taking off like that all those years ago. Then one day you just show up on Will’s doorstep, the long-lost cousin. Didn’t know things like that really happened.” He honked into some tissues. “So. You thinking of settling around here?”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, well, this place is nice and secluded.” Archie gazed around the sprawling property, fringed with woods. “Most of the Island’s more built up now. What would you do, move in here with your cousin? Like permanently?”
“I don’t know about that. For now, yeah, it’s a job and a place to crash. At least till I get on my feet. Will’s a generous fellow.”
Archie glanced at the closed front door. He lowered his voice. “Yeah, well, there’s generous and there’s, like, being a sucker. No offense. I’m not talking about you, you’re a relative. But those others? You can’t tell me they’re earning their keep. And this place. Jeez, it must cost a fortune to keep up. The property taxes alone.” He shook his head. “And don’t even get me started about the heating oil. For both these buildings? I know, trust me. I used to help my dad maintain the furnaces.”
“It’s gas.”
“Huh?”
“Natural gas heat. Not oil. Both buildings.” Hal watched the other man closely, watched as his mind braked for this mental speed bump where moments before there had been nothing but smooth macadam.
Archie said, “You sure?”
Hal nodded. His hunch had paid off: The man’s snooping hadn’t taken him as far as the heating plants. “So that’s kinda funny, you remembering oil-burning units.”
Archie waved away the discrepancy. “They must’ve converted to gas at some point—you know, with the cost of oil so high.”
“Not according to Will. This place went straight from coal to gas the same year the new church building went up.” Hal nodded toward the Goo. “I’m thinking that’d likely have been before you were born.”
Archie cogitated on this. “You know, I think you’re right? What threw me, we had oil in the place we moved after. I remember ’em now, the gas heating systems they’ve got here. So, Keith. Tell me.” Archie leaned forward as much as his ponderous gut would permit. He paused for a sneezing fit, then asked, “Where does your cousin get the bread for all this?”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“Forget I said anything.” Archie raised his palms as he slumped back onto the bench swing. “I’m too curious about things that are none of my beeswax. It’s the salesman in me, I guess. Always schmoozing with the accounts, trying to boost the assortment.”
If this character was a salesman in town for a trade show, then Hal really was the Baineses’ long-lost cuz. Whoever Archie really was, there was a more pressing question: What did he want? Maybe he was some kind of tabloid hack sniffing around for mud to sling at a former child star. Could it be that simple? That relatively benign? In Hal’s experience, complications were rarely simple and never benign. This man was after something, as in some thing, and Hal couldn’t discount the possibility it was the same thing—or two million things—he’d set his own sights on.
So far he’d had no luck in tracking down his money. He’d spent every free moment doing what Archie had doubtless spent the past couple of hours doing: searching for money, evidence of money, documents about money, oblique references to money, the faintest, most ephemeral whiff of money. For a guy who was basically a slob, Will Kitchen was careful about not leaving the important stuff lying around.
Or maybe Gabby was the careful one. Hal figured Will’s surrogate mom still picked up after him, or at least squirreled away financial records where they couldn’t be violated by prying eyes. One thing Hal had been able to ascertain during the past couple of days was that Gabby paid the bills. Not out of her own pocket, of course, but she doled out Will’s dough to the butcher, the baker, and the purveyor of chains and duct tape. So at the very least, she knew how much there was and where it was. If he was lucky, she was also authorized to make withdrawals. Wiping-out-the-account-type withdrawals. Which would make Hal’s mission that much easier.
All this was assuming Ricky Baines had managed to come into possession of his own ransom payment, the cash his old man had finally coughed up. Until a likelier candidate emerged, Hal would follow the only lead he had.
And nobody, this nosy son of a bitch included, was going to beat him to it.
“Well . . .” It took three tries, but Archie finally succeeded in grunting himself out of the swing. “Gotta head back to the city—I’m taking a buyer to dinner.” He looked at his watch. “Jeez, hope the traffic’s not too bad.”
Hal asked, “Where’d you get the Maxima?”
“What?” Archie pressed a snot-rag to his dripping nose.
“Your wheels have New York plates, not Missouri. And they’re not rental plates. It’s the weakest part of your scam.”
Archie met Hal’s hard gaze without flinching. “Listen, my friend, I don’t know what your problem is.”
“I’m hoping I don’t have a problem, Archie. At least where you’re concerned. What’s your real name, by the way?”
Archie shook his head as if to clear it. “This conversation’s getting too weird for me.” He began to shamble down the snow-dusted porch steps. “Tell Will thanks and I’m sorry I had to run. And for the record,” he tossed over his shoulder, “the car belongs to a buddy of mine that works in the showroom.”
Hal rattled off a series of three letters and four numbers. Archie stopped halfway down the steps.
“Old habit of mine,” Hal said, “memorizing license plates. You never know when it’ll come in handy.”
Archie turned and faced him squarely. Neither of them stated what they both knew, that a resourceful person could trace the vehicle’s owner with that one piece of information.
Hal stared down at the man from the top step. “And for the record, your first guess was on the money. This place uses oil heat and always ha
s. I’m curious. How much of that is padding and how much is you?” He couldn’t resist rubbing it in. “Score—the Cuz two, Fat Fraud zero.”
“I wouldn’t be so cocky, Hal.”
The sound of his real name was a fist to Hal’s solar plexus. He glanced quickly behind him at the closed front door, then descended the steps to join Archie, who ticked off a point on an imaginary scoreboard. “Score one for the Fat Fraud.”
Hal was hyperaware of the switchblade in his back pocket. He recognized the itch, respected it, but had no intention of succumbing to it. The ability to exercise restraint, to delay gratification, was one of the traits that had separated him from the lower life-forms at Attica.
It had to have been Mick, that loudmouth loser. He was the only person who knew who Hal really was. Kid probably got drunk and ran his mouth about all this bread he was going to split with his old man, leaving Hal to mop up after him. How many others were going to come poking around?
“So. What now?” Hal spread his hands. “Do we march inside and bust each other? What’ll that accomplish?”
“Two million dollars is a lot of money,” Archie said.
“Not split three ways.” Hal folded his arms across his chest. “Even assuming the principal is intact.”
“‘The principal.’” Archie shook his head, amused. “Listen to you, the investment banker. How much principal could there still be after twenty-five years?”
“The whole wad plus some, I figure.” He peeked over his shoulder at the house again. “Kitchen has his TV money, too, don’t forget. He’s got expenses, no doubt about it, but these people don’t eat caviar. They don’t drive Bentleys.” He tossed his arm toward his own recent repair of the railing. “They don’t even put that much into the place.”
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