“Promise. I promise.”
Very quietly, as if we were sitting in a crowded restaurant and not in an outdoor cathedral at a picnic table among five other such empty tables, I said, “Somebody may have taken a contract out on Roger Vale.”
She reared back. “Contract? What?”
“You heard me, Jenny. Someone may have paid to have him killed.”
She was shaking her head, earrings having none of it. “No, that kind of thing just doesn’t happen. Not in real life.”
“Sure it does. People kill people for money all the time. But this isn’t an unhappy hubby in a bar, handing a shady character fifty bucks to kill the missus. This is...it appears to be...something, well, higher up the food chain.”
Still shaking her head, but more slowly, she said, “I don’t follow. ...”
“A contract killing is expensive, Jen. And something not just anyone can afford, much less arrange. Someone may...I haven’t confirmed this, it’s rumor, understand...may have paid a considerable amount of money to bring in a professional killer.”
Halfway through that she had begun shaking her head again. “No, that’s crazy. No. Just impossible. This is Stockwell, Jack. Small-town Stockwell, Missouri, remember? That kind of thing just—”
“No, it happens. Just like pretty high school girls sometimes get kidnapped and defiled and murdered.”
She was frowning—frightened and irritated. “Why tell me this? What can I do about it?”
“You heard your father say that he didn’t want my help. He didn’t want a newspaper’s help. That he has...how did he put it? ‘The situation in hand.’ ”
She swallowed, nodded. “He said that. He did say that.”
“Okay, then.” I reached past our respective half-eaten plates and took her hand. “Stay calm. We’re just talking, here, okay? This is small-town Stockwell, I get that, but your family is very wealthy. Is there anything in the past that might connect your father to...don’t freak out on me now...organized crime? You know—Mafia. The mob.”
She laughed, a little hysteria around the edges. She drew her hand away, getting ready to light up a Camel. “Now you’re so far out there, it’s ridiculous. There’s nothing....”
And then she frowned, the unlit cigarette hanging off her lower lip impotently.
“What?” I asked.
She fired up the Camel with her lighter, took a deep draw, expelled blue smoke, eyes narrowing. “Well...years ago, there was a dog track here. Must have been the twenties, early thirties. There was gambling. I don’t know if it was legal or not, but...I do remember hearing that Daddy had partners from Chicago in that track.”
That would do it.
She went on: “I don’t think it lasted long—maybe eight or ten years? It was turned into a stock-car track for a while. I think that closed in the early seventies.”
“I asked you about this Mafia possibility,” I said gently, “because that’s how, where, someone like your father or your brother might be able to hire that kind of—”
“Not my brother,” she said, shaking her head so hard the hoop earrings damn near flew off. “That’s not Larry. He wouldn’t be a part of anything illegal or...violent.”
“He threatened to strangle Vale.”
She batted the air. “Come on, Jack. That’s just a father out of his mind with grief talking.”
“What about your father?”
“Oh,” she said, unhesitatingly, “in his case? Credible. Highly credible.”
“Really?”
“Really. He loved his granddaughter. And he’s an old man. He doesn’t want to go to his grave without seeing Candy’s killer brought to justice. I buy it entirely. Never mind that we don’t even know for sure that she’s dead.” She shivered, though the sun was still warm.
“There may be another concern....”
Her eyes rolled. “Jesus fucking Christ, what else is there?”
I spoke as if this were all just occurring to me. “If I heard this rumor, then the real killer...as you say, if there is a killer... may have heard it, too. Vale may have heard it. And even if your father is innocent in this—and it is just a wild rumor—he could be in danger.”
All this enormous bullshit brought forth a tiny smile from her. “My father? In danger? Hard to imagine.”
“Why? Does he live in a fortress?”
She laughed a huff of smoke. “No. It’s just hard thinking of anything... touching him. He’ll be eighty next year, and he hasn’t spent a night in the hospital since he had his tonsils out as a kid. Except for when we kids were born, and when Mom died. He still has an office in the bank building, and keeps regular nine-to-five hours. He’s a brick. He does live in a big house... but alone.”
I frowned. “A man of his position surely he has a live-in cook and housekeeper...?”
“He has a cook-housekeeper, but not live-in.”
“Then he must have a security staff.”
“No. A security system, but he never turns it on when he’s home. He’s often up and down all night. Goes to bed at eight, sleeps a while, then rises, wide awake again at one or two and reads in his study, then maybe back in bed at four.”
“Oh. So then his security system is motion-activated, something he only turns on when he leaves the house.”
“Right. Do you really think he’s in danger?”
I sighed. Pretended to think her question over. “Probably not. If your father were to meet with foul play, that would only confirm what he’d said about Candy’s murder, and for that matter Vale. The investigation that followed would be so extensive that...no, I shouldn’t have mentioned that. He’s safe enough.”
Tension seemed drain out of her. “Thank you for saying that. I hope it’s true.” She swallowed, frowned, stubbed her cigarette out on the picnic table. “Because I don’t know if I could handle another...another family tragedy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That would be terrible.”
After lunch, she walked me up a path that began gentle and got quickly steep. Before it turned into anything treacherous, she led me through two high sandstone ledges to a small log cabin nestled among some pines.
“During the season,” she said, gesturing toward the idylliclooking structure, “my family pays for a ranger to be on duty. Just something nice to do for the town.”
“Ah.”
“It’s vacant now. I have a key. There’s usually some beer in the little fridge. Would you like one?”
“I wouldn’t mind. Five minutes of hiking really takes it out of a guy.”
She laughed gently and took me by the hand.
The interior was just one big room, with a desk, some file cabinets, a floor heater, a small restroom, and a single bed covered in a red-and-black plaid blanket. Also, the promised fridge with several bottles of Olympia. I got out two bottles and opened them for us.
She sat on the bed and patted the spot next to her. I took it.
“Can’t you please stay?” she asked, her expression painfully earnest. “And work on your story? If you could crack this case, think of what it could mean. To your career. To me, and my family.”
I sipped the beer. “I hope you didn’t bring me here to try to bribe me.”
She smiled a little. The lines in her face only made her prettier. “What would it take?”
“Nothing would work. I’m too principled.”
She pulled off the red sweater. No bra. Probably the implants made that unnecessary. I kissed her breasts. I kissed her neck. I kissed her lips. She kicked off her sneakers. Tugged off her jeans. Nothing under them but bush. She was a nude woman in white socks.
“Jack...nothing fancy...not in the mood...just missionary style, okay? Like two old married people....”
I got out of the rest of my clothes, and I used a rubber though I don’t think she cared, but I had been stupid last night and maybe caught something off that wild little teen, and I wouldn’t want to hurt Jenny any more than I already was going to.
So we ma
de love, and it was lovemaking, not fucking, and that was the difference with a real woman, as opposed to some silly girl, wasn’t it? This was a woman whose emotion was deeper than the part of her I was plunging into, again and again, sunlight streaming through pines and a filmy curtain, giving her a glow that didn’t require fucking black light.
Nothing fancy.
So much better than fancy.
* * *
Around three o’clock, following my phone call, Roger Vale let me in the stage entry of his dance studio. Already in the black tights for tonight’s class, he led me to the steps at the side of the stage that led down into the auditorium, where we took seats next to each other in the first row.
“Yesterday,” I said, catching him up, “the surveillance guy showed back up. I’ve taken care of him.”
Dark eyes flashed in the narrow fake-tan handsome face. “My God, how? When? Where?”
“Goddamnit, you do not need to know that. You don’t need to know any of it. It’s bad for you if you do.”
“Sorry. Sorry.”
“Yeah.” I sat back, shrugged. “Didn’t mean to snap at you, Roger. It’s just that time is getting critical. The surveillance guy coming back to check on his partner, that could mean whoever they’re working for may know something went wrong.”
“The person who hired them, you mean?” He nervously stroked his mustache with a thumbnail.
“Possibly. More likely a broker they work through, a middleman. It just means that I...we...have to act very soon. Actually, today, if possible. Tonight.”
While his forehead and eyes frowned, his mouth formed a small smile. “You mean...you know? You know who hired this awful thing—for certain?”
“That’s the problem. It’s not for certain.”
“No?”
“Roger, I’m not the police—I don’t have a forensics lab. I don’t have computers. And I sure as hell don’t have the luxury of conducting a full-scale, leisurely investigation.”
He risked another little smile. “Sally says you did well at the school last night.”
“In the sense that it became clear there are plenty of better suspects than you in this thing, yes. But somebody doesn’t give a damn. Somebody took that contract out, anyway.”
His eyes flared. “Who, damnit? Who do you think did this?”
“The same person who you’ve suspected from the start—the old man, the family patriarch, Clarence Stockwell. The only other possibility is the girl’s father—Lawrence. But he’s just too weak a sister. It has to be the father.”
“What about the other Stockwell?”
“What other Stockwell?”
“The aunt! The sister who isn’t weak! She and Candy were close. You said you’d talked to her.”
I nodded. “Yes, and she’s your only rooting section. She doesn’t suspect you at all.”
“But...couldn’t she be playing you? She’s got a reputation as a wild character around town.”
“I suppose she could be playing me. You never know in a situation like this. Which is why you have a decision to make, Roger. Not an easy one.”
He frowned, narrowed his eyes, cocked his head, His Master’s Voice. “...Okay.”
“I would give it ninety-five percent that Old Man Stockwell is behind this. All by his lonesome. That taking him out will make you no longer a target.”
“Even though he’s already put it in motion?”
“The team sent to take you out is dead. Once Clarence is dead, the contract is dead, too. If there was a final payment due, who would pay it? No. You’ll be free and clear.”
He frowned again, a deep groove forming between the heavy eyebrows. “But you say there’s a five percent chance that—”
“Roger, I just pulled that number out of my ass. It could be higher, it could be lower. That’s why you may prefer to send me on my way. Without paying me another red cent. Which is only right. I haven’t delivered. I’m cool with that.”
“Take my chances...I don’t understand....”
I sighed. “The team Old Man Stockwell hired didn’t deliver. They in fact wound up toast. That may be enough to discourage the old man from trying again. Might even be enough to discourage that middleman from sending another team. Might.”
“Might,” Vale said hollowly.
“The question is, are you okay with me removing the old boy? Strictly on the circumstantial evidence I’ve been able to gather? I could try to get a confession out of him, before I drop the hammer, but that could get messy. And I would frankly have to ask for more money. Say, another five thousand.”
“Stop it! You’re making my head spin....”
“I will stop. Right now I’ll stop.”
He looked like he might cry. “Good.”
“All I need from you is that decision. Are we both comfortable taking out the old man? Do we feel confident enough that this solves the problem to go ahead with it?”
“What’s your opinion?”
“You know my opinion. He hired it. No question in my mind. But if there’s a question in yours, then I’m out of here.”
Vale’s eyes were moving; his hands were chest high, fists opening and closing, clenching, unclenching.
“Do it,” he said finally. “He’s made my life miserable. Fucking do it, Quarry.”
“No problem,” I said. “I’m going to make a move tonight, but just in case I have to abort, you keep your head inside this concrete bunker till you hear from me. Should be tonight. Could be two days. It’ll be by phone. Till then, just keep your head the hell in.”
“What about an alibi? You said I should have an alibi.”
“Get Sally to come stay here. You are aware she’s living alone, right? No real aunt out there?”
“I am,” he admitted.
“Okay then. Neither of you stick your damn heads out.”
“Understood,” he said. The normally half-hooded eyes were wide. “And, Quarry? I do thank you for laying it all out like this. You might have come around and said, ‘It’s the old man,’ and I’d have said ‘Fine,’ and you could have done it and gone. Instead, you showed real integrity.”
“No thanks necessary,” I said, getting up, shrugging. “You know how it is. I’m a professional.”
TWELVE
Clarence Stockwell lived, apparently alone, in a near mansion at the crest of a rise, with the downward slope of his backyard adjacent to the ninth hole of the Stockwell Golf & Country Club’s eighteen-hole course. According to a squib in the latest issue of Stockwell Living (complimentary to Holiday Inn guests), the “showplace” had been built on the site of the old clubhouse; twenty years ago, the nine-hole course had been expanded to eighteen, and the “new” clubhouse (likely paid for by Stockwell, too) was a mile down Country Club Lane.
The two-story beige-brick structure with black shutters and roof, a late ’60s take on French Provincial, might have been a small, exclusive hotel. The front entrance, its black wrought-iron door guarded by black urns, had an overhang with pillars; two cherubs on pedestals guarded the sloping lawn. The circular drive had an offshoot around right to a three-car garage that faced the side street, taking up most of a one-story addition; that and a similar but smaller annex on the other side hugged the house like irregular bookends.
This impressive but not obnoxious rich man’s mini-manse was on the northwest side of town—not far from the park where Stockwell’s daughter and I shared Kentucky Fried Chicken— perched on the corner of Country Club Lane and Park View Avenue. This was a residential area running to expensive homes built in the teens or twenties; Clarence’s castle, on the former country club site, seemed strikingly more new than its neighbors, and just enough bigger to make its point.
My stakeout began around quarter to five, dusk having already given in to evening. I’d gone from the dance studio back to the Holiday Inn, to collect the nine millimeter and snubnose .38, and to change into the white shirt, skinny brown tie and brown slacks I’d worn in journalist mode.
That glimpse of propriety under my fleece-lined jacket might make me less conspicuous in this upscale neighborhood. Even if I was sitting in a Pinto. Next time I wouldn’t be such a damn cheapskate.
I was parked across the way, just slightly down Park View, when a silver-gray black-vinyl-roof Town Car rolled into and up the circular drive. No one else in the big car, just Clarence Stockwell himself at the wheel—no sissy move like using a chauffeur for him—who swung the Lincoln around, raised a garage door with a remote, and sealed himself within. Jenny said her father worked regular hours, nine to five, and it was five-fifteen. That seemed right.
At five-thirty, I had just moved the car to a position on Country Club Lane when a black woman in her fifties in a cloth coat and a headscarf emerged from a door alongside the triple garage doors. The second non-white I’d seen in Stockwell. She walked to a vehicle parked off to the right, a ’70s piece of shit Buick. Like I could talk, in my Pinto.
This would be the housekeeper-cook. She had stayed just long enough to report to her boss that her work was done and a meal she’d prepared was warm and ready. Hers had been the only car parked on the cement apron. Unless someone else with garage privileges was already in that house, Clarence was alone in there.
Five minutes after the help departed, I got out and trotted across the street onto the golf course. The flag of the ninth hole was near enough that I could hear it flapping, but I couldn’t see it. The night was breezy, dark and cold, my breath visible. By late afternoon, dark clouds had said, Enough of this Indian summer shit, and rolled back in to take over; a fairly good-size moon would be up under there somewhere, but no visible evidence supported that theory.
At least the sky wasn’t grumbling tonight. If it exploded, though, we’d get snow this time, and what remained of yesterday’s rain was ice now, little patches of it here and there, my sneakers crunching on occasion as I stayed low and made for the house.
Where the golf course ended and Stockwell’s back yard began was a slope up to a flat area, much of it consumed by a private putting green and a patio, no lawn furniture out this time of year, not even a cherub standing guard. I knelt by a bush and studied the place. The big house was dark but for one room, the kitchen, right there on the first floor, near the garage.
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