Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  “Wait—any message for Mick, in case I see him?”

  “No. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing him soon.”

  * * *

  Altamont Pass is the gateway to the Central Valley for those approaching from the Bay Area. The 580 freeway cuts through barren, rolling hills that are dotted with hundreds of science-fictional wind turbines. On a good day their appendages whirl against the sky, giving off flashes of silver; on a bad day they drag or remain stubbornly still. This morning was one of the good ones; the mills spun briskly, and I imagined they were waving in greeting as I drove by in the compact I’d rented at the airport.

  Maybe it was an omen that everything would turn out okay, I thought. Maybe Suits wouldn’t kill anybody or get himself killed. Maybe I’d reach him in time. …

  Once over the pass, I was into level brown-and-green land, stretching fifty miles toward the Sierra Nevada. Most outsiders think of California as Los Angeles and San Francisco, or perhaps Yosemite and Big Sur; few realize that a vast portion of our state is farmland, as fertile and flat as the Midwest. In recent decades the farmers of the four-hundred-mile-long Central Valley have been hard hit by tough economic conditions and persistent droughts; farms have been sold off piecemeal to developers, and some of our best agricultural land is now under asphalt and concrete.

  Once-peaceful little valley towns have swelled to tractrimmed bedroom communities for commuters from the Bay Area. Families move there for the relatively low home prices, the schools, the crime-free atmosphere, the small-town life. But too-rapid growth has brought much of what the newcomers are seeking to escape: crime, higher prices, racial tension, and resentment from longtime residents. If future growth isn’t planned and controlled, one day the motto on Modesto’s town arch—Water, Wealth, Contentment, Health—may describe nothing more than a memory.

  Cassie Court was in an older tract on the far north side of town. All the surrounding streets bore women’s names; it made me wonder whether the developer had been paying homage to female friends and relatives or if he’d merely picked them out of a what-to-name-the-baby book. Enid Tomchuck Blessing’s house stood at the far end of the cul-de-sac where the tract backed up on a walnut grove; light yellow with dark brown trim, its single-story design repeated that of every third dwelling. I glanced around, half expecting to see my old red MG parked at the curb, but if Mick had come here, he’d already departed.

  The young woman who answered the door of number 704 was very pale; dark smudges underscored her eyes, and strain lines marred her oval face; her long, straight hair looked dry and brittle. When she saw me, her fingers tightened reflexively on the doorknob.

  I introduced myself and handed her my card, asked if I could talk with her about her husband’s death. She barely glanced at the card before crumpling it and dropping it to the floor.

  “First the others, now you,” she said. “I told the blond kid I didn’t want to talk to him when he called a few days ago, so he showed up anyway, and—”

  “Mick Savage was here?”

  “Last night. Real late. The bell woke Ariel, and she cried for hours. She misses her father.”

  Dammit, Mick! “I apologize for my assistant’s intrusion. I hope he didn’t make trouble.”

  “You don’t call a screaming kid trouble? That was enough for me. I ran the son of a bitch off with Sid’s old hunting rifle. And don’t think it wasn’t loaded!”

  My God, what if she’d shot him? I’d better do something about Mick—and the sooner the better.

  Tomchuck added, “I suppose the other one was with your agency, too.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Skinny little guy, looks kind of like a rat. Total asshole.” She grasped her wrist, exposed the underside of her forearm; it was purpled in a series of bruises that looked like finger marks.

  “He did that to you?”

  She nodded. “You really ought to rethink your hiring policies, if you know what I mean.”

  Suits, getting violent with a young woman. Not good, not good at all. “He’s not affiliated with me,” I said, “but I know him. When was he here?”

  “Yesterday morning. I’d just gotten the girls off to play with the neighbors’ kids. That’s not easy these days; all they want to do is hang around the house; I guess it makes them feel safe. And then this guy comes pushing in here, demanding to see Sid, and all the time Sid’s dead. When that finally sank in, he started asking me a lot of questions, and when I wouldn’t answer them, he twisted my arm.” Her hand moved over the bruises.

  “What kinds of questions?” I asked.

  “About what Sid was doing the week he died.”

  “You answer them?”

  “What choice did I have? I answered them, and then he went away. And that’s when I got out Sid’s old rifle and loaded it.”

  “Has the man tried to contact you since?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, I wouldn’t worry about him. He got what he wanted, and I doubt he’ll be back.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Someone who knew your husband in San Francisco.”

  She tensed, drawing her lower lip in under her teeth.

  “Ms. Tomchuck, can we talk?”

  “About Sid? What’s the use? He’s dead and never coming back. And don’t call me Ms. Tomchuck. It’s Mrs. Blessing. Sid made me use my maiden name for legal things because of his … activities.”

  “What activities?”

  Silence.

  “Mrs. Blessing, don’t you want Sid’s killer arrested?”

  “… Of course I do. I want to see him sitting in the gas chamber.”

  “Then why not talk with me?”

  “What good’ll it do? The police haven’t done anything.”

  “I think I know some things that may help them.”

  “Why do you want to? What’s in it for you?”

  “Talking with you will help me with a related case.”

  She hesitated, still massaging her forearm. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want … It’s just that I’m scared.”

  “Of what? Of whom?”

  She glanced over my shoulder, as if she was afraid someone was listening. I used the opportunity to suggest, “Why don’t we talk inside?”

  “… I guess it wouldn’t hurt. I’m alone; the kids’re at my sister’s.”

  Inside, the house had the impersonal feel of a place that the occupants hadn’t yet made their own. It didn’t help that there was scarcely any furniture. Enid Blessing started toward the living room, which contained only an entertainment center and a scattering of big flowered pillows, then detoured to the adjacent dining area and motioned for me to sit at a white plastic table that was better suited to a patio.

  “Sid and I ordered new furniture,” she said as she sat down across from me. “When he died, I had to cancel, and I lost the deposit. Couldn’t help it, though; I’ve got those two little girls and no job, so I need to save the money we … I’ve got left.”

  “I understand you came into quite a bit of money last summer.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Who told you that?”

  “Your friend who bought the contents of the Pacifica house mentioned it to one of your former neighbors.”

  “Craig? He’s got a mouth on him! That’s nobody’s business but ours.”

  “Where did the money come from?”

  “… I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Enid.”

  “It’s God’s truth! Sid didn’t tell … Look, don’t you people sometimes pay for information?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “How much would you give me if I told you everything I know?”

  “That depends on what you have to offer.”

  “I’m supposed to tell you before we set a price?”

  “I won’t know what the information’s worth until I hear what it is. Besides, is anybody else offering?”

  She thought about that, drumming her fingertips on the tabletop. I noticed that the nai
ls were bitten to the quick. “Okay,” she finally said, “this probably isn’t worth all that much, anyway. But money’s money, and I’ve got my kids to think about. Last July, the first week, Sid came home all excited. Brought a bottle of champagne for us and ice cream for Ariel and Ariadne. He’d taken on an important job for somebody he met at Bay Vista, and he said we could go looking for a house. It had to be away from the Bay Area, though.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess because of whatever he had to do for this job. We moved a lot because of his …” She looked down at her hands. “Sid was into things, you know?”

  “Things?”

  “Scams and stuff. That’s why we sort of hid behind my maiden name, so people couldn’t check public records and catch up with him.”

  “I see. So you found this house …”

  “My sister, who lives here, knew the people who were selling. I loved it right off; I’d always wanted a house of my own. We got a fast escrow, and it closed early in August.”

  “But you stayed in Pacifica until late that month. Why?”

  “Sid needed to be at Bay Vista for a while, to do whatever it was he had to do. And anyway, the girls had day camp and stuff. So I picked out the color schemes and drove out here a few times to paint and wallpaper, and we ordered the furniture and … oh, God!” She leaned forward, pressing her palms against her eyes.

  This was another of those days when I hated my work. I looked away, waited until she calmed herself, then asked, “Do you know what Sid was doing during those last weeks at Bay Vista?”

  “Uh …” She took her hands from her eyes, brushed away tears with her fingertips. “Well, he was gone a lot of nights, and he never worked nights at the condo complex. Was gone once on his day off. The day we moved in here, he drove our van out with the stuff we were keeping, offloaded it, then turned around and went right back to San Francisco, and was gone all night. I was mad at him for leaving me alone with the unpacked boxes. Now I’d give anything …”

  “I know.” I touched her hand. First she looked surprised at the gesture, then pathetically grateful. I asked, “You moved here when?”

  “The last Tuesday in August.”

  And that night Suits was attacked in his condominium. “What happened after that?”

  “Two days later Sid left here again, in the morning, and stayed away all night and most of the next day. I guess he didn’t get back till ten or eleven.”

  The night he’d stayed away was the one Suits, Anna, and I had spent together at Moonshine House—the night before the explosion.

  “How did Sid seem when he got back?”

  “Seem?”

  I began to feel impatient with her. “Was he upset? Happy? What?”

  “Well, more excited than anything else, I guess. He told me he’d taken care of the final thing he had to do to get us the rest of our money.”

  The final thing. Damned right it was final. He’d ended Anna Gordon’s life.

  It was a moment before I could ask, “He gave you no idea at all about what this final thing was? Or of what the job was?”

  She shook her head, ashamed. “Sid was real secretive about the … stuff he was into. He said it was safer if he kept me out of it. I should’ve made him tell me; I know that now. But then … I knew that what he was doing was wrong, but I couldn’t’ve stopped him. And knowing what it was and not being able to do anything about it … well, that would’ve been worse than not knowing at all. You see what I mean?”

  I’d never had the desire to shield myself from reality, no matter how bad it might be, but I could see a certain logic in what she said. “I think so. Did Sid get the rest of the money?”

  “Oh, yeah, he had it with him when he came back. Twenty-five thousand dollars, cash. It sounds like a lot, but it isn’t, really. We … I’ve got an awfully big mortgage on this place.”

  It also wasn’t a lot when you measured it against the worth of Anna’s life. “Okay,” I said, “what happened on the night your husband died?”

  Her gaze blurred with fresh tears, but she blinked them away. “He got a phone call. Around ten, I guess. He said it was the person he’d done the job for, that there might be more money in it for us. A couple of hours later he went out to meet whoever it was that called. And he just … never came home.” Her head flopped forward and she clutched the edge of the table with her fingertips.

  “And he never told you anything about the person, not even the smallest detail?”

  She shook her head; a tear dropped to the tabletop.

  I took one of my business checks from my wallet, filled it in for a generous amount, and laid it in front of her. She didn’t even look at it. I touched her arm, got up, and let myself out of the house.

  Enid Blessing, I thought, had deliberately blinded herself to what her husband was doing, and in a way that made her equally culpable. Still, I sensed a vein of strength in her that might prove valuable, at least to her little girls.

  It was warm outside, the autumn temperatures in California’s Central Valley being a far cry from those in southwestern Pennsylvania. When I got to my rental car I took off Anna’s cape, which I’d worn all the way across the country since my extended thirty-some-hour day had begun in Monora.

  So the killer I’d traveled all those miles to find was dead and, anyway, nothing more than a hired technician. I’d suspected as much, but behind him I’d already sensed the outline of a second person. The person who had ordered the explosion at Moonshine House and suggested that there might be a way to take me out in the process.

  I needed to fill in that outline before Suits compounded the tragedy.

  Eighteen

  Suits’s silver Corvette was no longer parked in its space in the Bay Vista garage. I went to the complex’s security office and, to my surprise, found Sue Mahoney at her desk.

  “How come you’re working on a sunny Sunday afternoon?” I asked.

  Mahoney scowled. “My assistant’s wife picked today to have her damn baby. Ruined my plans to go sailing.”

  “That’s tough,” I said insincerely.

  “What d’you want, McCone?”

  “What happened to T. J. Gordon’s car?”

  “I guess he took it when he was here Friday.”

  “He was here at Bay Vista?”

  “Friday afternoon. Man sure has gone downhill since his wife got killed.”

  “How so?”

  “He looks like hell—shaggy hair, bloodshot eyes, stubbly chin. Must’ve been sleeping in the same clothes for weeks. Personality’s the same, though—lousy.”

  “The man’s wife died, Mahoney.”

  “So?”

  “Compassionate, aren’t you?”

  “There’s nothing in my employment contract that says I have to be.”

  I let that conversational thread go. “You talk with him?”

  “Yeah. He wanted the current address of our former concierge, Sid Blessing. I don’t have it, but Payroll does, so I sent Gordon to them. Blessing’s a nervy bastard; he walked off the job without giving advance notice in August, then had the gall to call up Payroll and tell them where to send his final check.”

  So that was how Suits had found Enid. “Blessing’s dead, Mahoney.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Who killed him?”

  “How come you know somebody killed him? I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s a joke, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Hilarious.”

  “You know, McCone, I’ve never liked you.”

  I smiled. “There’s nothing in your employment contract that says you have to.”

  * * *

  Josh Haddon answered my knock at the door of Suits’s penthouse. The pilot had lost weight since I’d last seen him, and his freckled face was more lined.

  “You’re back from Monora,” he said.

  “How’d you know I went there?”

  “Noah Romanchek told me.” Josh stepped aside and motioned for me to come in. The bloodstains a
nd scuff marks had been cleaned from the foyer, and the card table and papers had been straightened, but the place had a desolate feel in spite of the sunlight that slanted through the glass wall.

  I asked, “Have you seen T.J.?”

  He shook his head.

  “He was here at the complex on Friday, spoke with Security, and took his car. He didn’t come up?”

  “No, and I was around all day. Wonder why not?”

  “He seems to have gone underground. Josh, why’re you still staying here?”

  “Waiting on T.J., just like always. I’ve got no idea what he’s going to do, so I decided I’d better camp out for a while.”

  I glanced around the room. With the exception of a couple of folding chairs on the balcony, Josh had added no furnishings. It was as if he had tried on Suits’s lifestyle and decided it fit him. “Camping out is a good description,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me. I’ve never cared much for creature comforts. T.J. pays me this huge salary for being on call twenty-four hours, and all I’ve done for years is bank it. Look, why don’t we sit outside?”

  I followed him to the balcony and took one of the chairs, propping my feet on the lower crosspiece of the railing.

  “So what’d you think of Monora?” Josh asked.

  “It’s grim.”

  “You find out anything interesting?”

  “I talked to a lot of people—Chief Koll, a writer named Amos Ritter, Herb Pace. Jim Spitz.”

  Josh grew very still. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, I thought.

  “Of course you knew all those people,” I added.

  “I didn’t really know Ritter, but I’ve heard of him. The others—well, sure.”

  “And you knew Ed Bodine.”

  “… Yeah. You see him, too? I thought he was in prison.”

  “He escaped.”

  “No kidding. When?”

  “A year ago last July.”

  “He didn’t go back to Monora, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t go back to Monora.”

  Josh didn’t say anything. I let the silence lengthen. Finally he sighed. “All right, you know about us setting Bodine up.”

  “Yes. I want to hear your version of it.”