Death Dines Out hf-5

by Claudia Bishop

"You," said Ange sternly. "Don't leave. I'm giving myself a good hard think about arresting you for interfering with evidence." He scowled. "Step away from the witness, ma'am."

  Meg saluted smartly. "Yes, sir, officer, sir."

  Quill gave an exasperated tcha! and pulled Meg aside. She looked for an appropriately secure place to yell at her sister and found one in the maid's room. It was just off the kitchen, next to what Quill realized was a set of triple ovens concealed by cherry paneling. She shoved Meg into the room. It was small, with a neatly made twin bed, wicker chest, a print of the Scared Heart on the wall, and a small television set. Quill closed the door firmly and sat down on the bed. Meg prowled restlessly around the room. "Good idea, Meg, pissing off the police."

  A look familiar to Quill - mulish in the extreme - spread over Meg's face.

  "You know why it's not a good idea to piss off the police? Because if you get arrested, you can't present your potted rabbit at the banquet on Friday. And good-bye third star."

  Meg's face cleared. "You've got a point."

  "Of course I've got a point. Now what did that poor maid tell you before you called us in?"

  "I called you in right away," Meg said indignantly. "I know you, Meg. You grabbed the chance to question her, didn't you? What'd she say?"

  "That she didn't know anything was happening until she heard the glass door smash."

  "Did she know what time that was?"

  "About six-thirty."

  "Good Lord. That's just after we met him. This must have happened just after we left."

  "I know. It's horrible."

  "Is she sure about the time?"

  "How should I know? Anyhow, she ran to the living room, thinking maybe a seagull had hit the door or something."

  "A seagull?"

  "She said it's happened before. And she said the security alarm hadn't gone off. The whole place is wired, Quill. The robbers must have disconnected it somehow."

  "You're making a highly speculative assumption that they were robbers, Meg."

  "No, I'm not. I'll tell you why in a minute. Anyhow, Maria said she thought a seagull came through the glass."

  "Meg, there's no way a seagull could smash those thermal pane doors. Not even a three-hundred-pound seagull."

  "I'm just telling you what she said. Will you shut up and listen? She ran to the archway leading onto that womb with a view..."

  "Pretty funny, Quilliam."

  "All that pink marble, Quilliam. Ugh! Anyhow, she saw two men struggling with Verger Taylor. Burglars, she said."

  "Did she recognize them?"

  "Of course she didn't! What self-respecting burglar would burgle with his bare face hanging out? Both of them had those arctic masks on their faces. You know, the woolly thing you wear to keep the cold out when you ski."

  "How were they dressed?"

  "I couldn't get that out of her. She screamed, ran back to the kitchen, and hid in the closet."

  "She didn't call 91l?"

  "She was too scared."

  "Oh, dear."

  "Anyhow, she hid in the closet and said the burglars came looking for her."

  "How did she know that?"

  "Because they were calling, 'come out, senorita, come out. We will not harm you if you come out.' Devils, she said."

  "Were they hollering in Spanish?"

  "They must have been. Her English isn't very good. Anyway, they flung open the door of the closet, found her, blindfolded her, tied her up, and left her for dead. She says. But as far as I can tell, they didn't mean to harm her at all. She was tied up pretty tightly, but she could breathe. And she wasn't beaten or anything. Then one burglar came back."

  "Came back?"

  "That's what she said. She was lying there, scared out of her wits, crying, and praying when she heard this devil come back. 'This devil, snapping like the flames of hell.' That's her words."

  "This was all in Spanish, Meg?"

  "Yes. What of it?"

  "Your Spanish sucks, that's what of it."

  The door to the bedroom flew open. Ange the policeman stood there. His face was red. He called over his shoulder, "Here they are!" and stepped back. "Out."

  He motioned with one hand. The other was on his pistol. "Out now. The sergeant wants a word with you two."

  He shepherded them back to the living room. As huge as it was, it had become crowded. An ambulance team waited with a stretcher. Five or six forensic technicians were crawling around the floor, vacuuming, taking pictures, and otherwise gathering evidence. Two men in dark three-piece suits conferred by the fireplace with Evan and Corrigan. A policewoman sat with Shirl and Beth. The intact door next to the shattered one where the robbers had entered was open, and a man and a woman in plain clothes were headed towards it.

  "Sarge!" Ange called out. "Here they are."

  The woman looked over her shoulder and snapped, "Hold 'em."

  Ange gestured sternly at a pair of Louis Quinze chairs on either side of an occasional table. An ormolu clock ticked away in the center of the table, and Quill noted the time: eleven-fifteen.

  She and Meg both sat down. Ange took up what Quill thought of as the guard-dog stance: feet braced apart, hands on his position belt, a stem and unforgiving look on his face.

  "Ange?" she said chattily. "Are you from around here?"

  "New Jersey, ma'am."

  "Is crime more interesting here or in New Jersey?"

  Meg rolled her eyes. Ange didn't respond at all. Quill tried again. "Been on the force long?"

  "Two years, ma'am."

  "So you've had some experience," Meg cracked. "Mostly traffic though, right? Don't even bother asking him stuff, Quill. He doesn't know a thing."

  A tinge of red crept over Ange' s cheeks. Quill looked at Meg, bemused at her rudeness. Meg dropped the merest wink and Quill murmured, "Oh, of course." Then, with indignation, she said, "What a mean thing to say, Meg. Officer..." She darted a glance at his uniform. His last name had more consonants than syllables. "That is, Ange knows what's been going on here. Don't you, Ange?"

  "Seen this before, ma'am."

  "Where, on that dumb TV show Cops?" Meg snorted. "Hah."

  Ange's gaze drifted downward. Meg was wearing a gauzy white cotton dress that she'd picked up in Bloomingdale's that afternoon. Despite her tough-guy diction, she looked a lot younger than thirty. "Home invasion, miss."

  Quill, a little huffy that she'd been 'ma'amed' and Meg had been 'missed,' said with more force than she'd intended, "Home invasion? You mean armed thugs breaking into people's homes and taking their valuables? That's ridiculous!"

  "Oh?" Officer Ange, despite his youth, had an un- expected depth of shrewdness. "You two know any different, you'd better let the sergeant know."

  "Know what?" The female detective's companion, the one who had gone out the door to, presumably, examine the body of the security guard, approached with a frown. "Your names?" he snapped. He was of medium height, with very broad shoulders and a big chest. His hair was fair-mixed heavily with gray and thinning on top. His nose dominated a thin, tanned face. Quill liked his looks.

  "Sarah Quilliam. This is my sister, Meg."

  The set of his shoulders shifted a little. "Sarah Quilliam? You involved in that business with Hedrick Conway up in Hemlock Falls?"

  "Why, yes. I was."

  "Hm. It's all right, Corporal. I'll take it from here."

  Ange straightened and put his hands behind his back. "Sir?"

  "I said it's all right. I know them. Or of them, at least." Quill, who had the sudden, undeniably thrilling thought that news of her exploits as a solver of crime had gotten as far as Miami, smiled brilliantly. "Nosy," the detective added, "but harmless."

  "If you say so, sir."

  "Those two bimbos of the Taylor boys will need an escort home. Why don't you take them and report back here in half an hour. No more than that."

  "Yes, sir." Ange marched off. Quill noticed that the tips of his ears were red.

  The detective
shoved both hands in the pockets of his sport coat, balanced on the balls of his feet, and said unexpectedly, "How's Myles?"

  "Myles?" Quill blinked at him. "Oh, my goodness! You must be Jerry. Myles's friend from his days in New York."

  "Hear he's fallen into a pretty lucrative line of work."

  "Yes. He's an investigator for a company that handles corporate crime. He spends a lot of time overseas."

  His eyes went to the ring on her left hand.

  "And yes, we're getting around to that. At some point."

  "Good to hear it. Thought things were kind of rocky there for a while."

  "Oh?" Quill's voice was cool.

  "We thought we might get him on the force in Miami a while back. Just before he took that investigator's job. Didn't say much, Myles. Never does. But I gathered that if you two were really going to get married, he wasn't interested in moving down here. So." His tone shifted. "You two know anything about this?"

  "We might," said Quill. "Actually, um... Jerry... I'd been expecting that something was going to happen to Verger Taylor."

  "You had, huh?"

  Quill ignored Meg's warning glare. "In the past few days, I've heard no less than two significant threats against Verger Taylor's life."

  "No kidding?"

  Quill, a little uncertain at the sarcasm in his voice, nodded.

  "You realize that keeping track of people who want to murder Verger Taylor is a full-time job? The list's pretty long. In the past month we've had" - he paused, drew a small notebook from the breast pocket of his jacket, and flipped through the pages - "three significant death threats against him."

  "Three?" said Quill.

  "Significant?" Meg asked. "What do you mean by significant?"

  "Threatening letters, phone calls, that sort of thing. Taylor's attorney, Frank Carmichael, turns them over to us pretty routinely."

  "Corporal whosis, that is, Ange."

  "Wisc. Just like it's spelled."

  "Yes. Him. That is, he. Said that all the evidence pointed to a home invasion."

  "That's right. It's a typical M.O. for this part of Palm Beach County. The perpetrators scope out the victim's home beforehand, posing as television repairmen or electricians, then pick a night when there's not a lot of activity. They don't care in particular if anyone's home or not. They disable any alarm systems, shoot whomever's in their way, and take off with what they can steal. In this case, it was a bag with twenty thousand dollars cash, a lot of small silver and jade. The contents of the safe in Taylor's office."

  "Twenty thousand in cash?" Quill was stunned. "The boys say keeping that amount of money on hand was typical of him. It's not all that unusual around here."

  "Couldn't have it been premeditated murder? Planned to look like a home invasion?"

  "Anything's possible," Jerry said agreeably. "But I'll tell you one thing about police work, if Myles hasn't told you already - the simplest explanation is usually the best. We checked the security log, and two telephone repairmen checked in to the mansion three days ago. One of our guys just contacted the phone company - and no such team was sent out. The security guard was shot through the head, execution style, and all the indications are that Taylor's been shot, too."

  "Do you have any suspects yet?" Meg asked. "A home invasion is usually staged by young kids without anything to lose. Except their lives. Most of them don't care about that. Half the time around these parts, the homeowner's armed and blows at least one of them away. The other half of the time, they shoot to kill, but the victim survives to put them in jail. Seems to me if one of Taylor's business victims want to blow him off, they'd choose a much less risky way. But then, you tell me."

  "Where's his body?" Meg demanded. "If this was a home invasion, where's Verger's body?"

  "Now, that's a good question. I don't know." He grinned. Quill, who had been feeling a little intimidated, couldn't help but grin back.

  "I know you two have been involved in a number of cases. Myles tells me you're actually pretty sharp at solving crimes. So, you have any ideas? I'll listen."

  "Where do you think the body is?" asked Meg. "If the types of criminals that stage home invasions just leave the bodies, where is Verger Taylor?"

  Jerry nodded. "Now that, Miss Quilliam, is the best question anyone's asked all night. There's one possible explanation. And if it's true..."

  "Jer!" Jerry's woman partner, a pleasant-featured, heavyset woman in her fifties, waved at him urgently from across the room. "We got it. We got the call."

  "Oh, my goodness," Quill said. "Kidnapping. Of course!" She and Meg sprang up after Jerry and trailed behind him to the living room telephone. Evan, his face tight, was listening intently on the telephone. A wire was attached to the head of the phone by the same kind of rubber suckers that used to tip Meg's play arrows when she was six. The wire ran to a recorder that was spinning slowly. Evan held the receiver away from his ear, so that the police officers nearby could hear the conversation. The kidnapper's voice was heavily distorted. And from the look on Jerry's face, Quill knew that they were either unprepared or technically unable to trace the call.

  "But is my father all right?" Evan said. He was sweating. It seemed hard for him to get his lips under control.

  "Waaann hunnnnert t'ouusaanndd..." the voice hissed. "Leeffttt onnnn theee noooommmbbber nine buoy oonnn the chhhannnell. Byyyy tenn-thhhirty tommorroowww."

  Evan's look at Detective Fairchild was desperate. "One hundred thousand dollars," he repeated, "left on the number nine buoy in the Port of Palm Beach Channel at ten-thirty tomorrow night."

  "Nnoooo pollisss. No ppolllosss. Orrr..." A sudden scream, agony-filled, clearly male, blared from the receiver. Evan dropped it with a shout. There was a click and then the dial tone droned implacably.

  "Did you hear him, Detective?" Evan's voice was high and uncontrolled. He stopped, put his hands over his face, and took several deep breaths. When he took his hands away, his face was pale, but calmer. "You didn't hear it all. He said that if we didn't get that money there, tomorrow night, without police involvement, they'll send Dad back to us. Piece by piece." He shuddered.

  There was a clatter and thump. Quill turned. Corrigan had fainted.

  "Cor!" Evan leaped for his brother. The two medics stepped over the stretcher and knelt by him. "Don't touch him! Leave him alone!" Evan shoved one medic aside and snarled at the other to move. He cradled Corrigan's head in one hand and slapped him lightly, swiftly across the cheeks with the other. "Cory," he said. "Cory!"

  "Good God," Meg said, "this is terrible."

  Quill went quietly to Evan's side. She knelt next to him and touched him on the shoulder. "Evan? Evan." The boy turned to her with dilated eyes, not seeming to see her at first, free hand raised, the other still fiercely clutching his brother's head. Quill closed her hand over his. "Here. He's just fainted. Let him down. Gently. That's it. Let me take him. You see how his eyelids are fluttering open? The shock's just been too much for him." She looked around. "Anyone have any smelling salts, or whatever it's called?"

  "Ammonia carbonate," said one of the medics. He was a slight man, with a pencil-thin mustache and sympathetic brown eyes. He pulled an ampule from his breast pocket, broke it, and waved it under Corrigan's nose. The boy coughed and his eyelids opened and closed. The color began to seep back into his face and he sat up. Evan grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "Cor! Cor! It's me. Evan! Wake up. Wake up!"

  Corrigan held up his hand and nodded. He sat up, then shakily got to his feet. Quill, still on her knees, thought she had never seen anyone look so pale.

  "Dad?" Corrigan said.

  "Dad's going to be all right, Cor." Evan, fiercely determined, hugged him. "We're going to get him back. We're going to get the money."

  "How?" asked Corrigan simply. "We don't have any. Where are we going to get it? Where are we going to get a hundred thousand dollars?"

  "We'll get it, Cor."

  "But it's all Dad's! And that will take time! And they
said no police! How are we going to get Dad out of this mess without involving the police?"

  For the first time since Quill had met him, Evan showed some of his father's behavior. He snapped his fingers. "Hawthorne. Hawthorne!"

  There had been two men in three-piece suits conferring with Evan and Corrigan just before Meg had found Maria in the closet. The older of them wound his way through the crowd of policemen, medics, and technicians surrounding Evan and his brother. "Yes, Evan."

  "I want my brother and myself out of here. Right now."