by Ralph Dennis
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
They sat over their coffee. The table had been cleared. He’d had steak cooked with a green peppercorn sauce and he could feel the beginning of a burn. Either the barbecue sandwich he’d had earlier in the day or the green peppercorns he’d just eaten. One or the other, it didn’t matter which, might make the rest of his day uneasy.
Diane had used the half an hour well. Her dress was black and fashionably long but there was a hint of sleek, long legs. On the walk from the entranceway he’d heard the eyeballs clink like billiard balls. And the maitre d’ seated her with a flourish that might have had a bit of a trumpet sound scored into it.
“You didn’t tell me what I did to deserve this,” Diane said. She held a cigarette and he reached across the table and lit it with a battered Zippo and flipped the cover closed.
“It’s our farewell for a time.”
Her eyes closed as if he’d struck her. Then they were open again and she blinked. “I don’t think I understand your sense of humor, Wilton.”
“It’s a fact of life.” He lowered his voice and told her about the visit from Bottoms, the Federal Marshal.
She relaxed. She still didn’t understand him.
“Look at it this way. I won’t let Bottoms play games with me. But he’s going to play hardball because that’s his way of getting what he wants. If the Task Force can’t find anything, they go in for the best smear job they can put together.”
“It doesn’t concern you and me.”
He shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. He mentioned the Blue Lagoon when he didn’t have to. He’s pointing. He knows something about you and me. I don’t know what he thinks he knows. My guess is that he misreads it.”
The waiter appeared behind Diane. He refilled her coffee cup and circled the table and topped his cup. Wilt waited until he moved away. “One thing you’ve got to do. You’ve got to keep complete control over what happens at your club. Nothing illegal. Nothing that can be pinned to you. No suggestion that the girls go off with the customers, no late alcohol sales. No drug deals in the parking lot or the men’s room.”
“I can’t swear …”
“Put it to Kyle. He’ll know how to enforce it.”
“Why all this caution?”
“Lady, he wants my hide and if he can get at me through somebody I care about, then that’s a Christmas surprise and bonus for him.”
“How will finding something on me help him dirty you?”
“He’ll try to turn you. If he gets something on you, he’ll try to deal. He’ll tell you you’re looking at so much time in the slammer and then he’ll ask you about me. What he’ll want is some handle on me. And most people sell their grandmother when it comes to the crunch. I don’t want you in that position.”
“You think I’d sell you, Wilt?”
“No, I don’t. But if the offer is made to you, and you turn it down, then there’ll be no deal when it goes to court. No plea bargaining, no settling for a guilty on a lesser count, and no chance of probation. The Feds will push for the maximum the law and the codes call for. I don’t want that to happen to you. I don’t want you in that position.”
“You’re afraid for me?”
“Some.” He didn’t want her to know how worried he really was. The Feds, when you got on the wrong side with them, could grind you down from bones to dust.
“How long will it be?”
“Until I burn some tailfeathers. Until I get those slicks running back over the county line.”
“My bed’ll be empty.”
“It better be.”
“It would serve you right if it weren’t.”
“Fill it if you need to. What happens between you and somebody else doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
“You crazy, crazy man.” Her eyes watered. She blinked and fought it back.
He reached across the table and placed his hand there, palm up. Her hand touched his and remained there. Her cigarette burned to the filter, forgotten. His coffee cooled.
Their waiter tapped his feet and checked the time on his watch. This last deuce of the day was taking the whole afternoon and the man looked like he was the type who thought tip was something you did with a canoe.
Joe Croft had a pout on. Maybe he felt he’d been left holding the main desk too long. The pout went away when Wilt brought him in his office and laid out what he’d learned about Thorpe.
“You’ve got sources.” Joe said.
“A few.”
“How do we use what we know?”
“This instant friendship between Jonathan Plowden and Ray Thorpe. Does that bother you?”
“Now that you mention it …”
“What’s the common ground between a small-time hood and Mr. Society? We need an answer to that before we can put pressure on Thorpe.”
“Maybe we should ask Plowden.”
Wilt got his heavy coat. “That’s what I was thinking.”
There was no answer at the Plowden’s front door.
Wilt led the way around the side of the house. He reached the top of the stairs that angled down to the patio. What he saw there stopped him.
The wheelchair was halfway down the stairs, wedged against the handrail. Just past the last step, Jonathan Plowden sprawled face-down on the patio. He was wearing pajamas and a heavy bathrobe. One foot was bare, the other covered with a brown leather bedroom slipper.
“Check him,” Wilt said.
Joe went down the steps at a trot. He avoided the wheelchair. When he reached Plowden, he squatted and felt for a pulse, trying the wrist first and then the neck. After a few seconds he stood and stared up the stairs at Wilt.
“Nothing,” he said.
Wilt turned away. The other bedroom slipper was there, in the gravel that had been used to surface the parking area. Wilt squatted over the slipper and gave it a close look. The toe was badly scuffed. The natural grain of the leather showed in a few places beneath the dye.
Standing again, he paced the distance to the stairs. Roughly six or seven feet. And, as Wilt faced the stairs, the slipper was to the left, about four feet from the edge of the shoulder.
Joe stopped at the head of the steps and looked at the slipper. “There’s no answer at the house.”
“Use the cruiser radio.”
“Doc and the photographer?”
“Yeah.”
After Joe moved out of sight, Wilt took his time getting down the stairs. He had trouble stepping around the wheelchair. When he reached the patio, he rested a few seconds to let the hip end its screaming at him. He limped over and stood staring down at the body of Jonathan Plowden. He noticed two details immediately.
One. The back of Plowden’s skull was caved in. Blood matted in his hair but there was little pooled blood on the patio surface.
Two. The bare right foot was turned inward at some impossible angle, Broken, Badly broken, Wilt thought.
He’d leave the rest to Doc Simpson.
Wilt was on the steps, about even with the wheelchair, bracing himself to swing around it, when the back door slid open and Edna, the black maid, stood there. She froze in the doorway and stared at the body of Jonathan Plowden.
She reared back her head and screamed.
The scream peeled a layer of skin from Wilt’s chest.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
He could see the two women in the house, through the window. Charlotte was trying her best to comfort Missy in the breakfast room. He swung away and saw that the two men from the ambulance had wrestled the gurney to the top of the stairs and settled it on the ground level.
The photographer had come and gone. Wilt took time to direct his shots, what he wanted and from which angles. He sent Joe for a tape measure and charted the position of the single slipper and the distance from the slipper to the stairs and the ledge.
Doc Simpson, making some last notes, stopped next to Wilt and studied the two women inside.
Doc said. “It’s murder, sure as hel
l.”
“Glad you agree with me.”
Doc tipped his head towards the house. “Was it the wife?”
Wilt shook his head. “She was out shopping and the maid was with her the whole time.”
“You got other suspects?” Doc said.
“One or two,” he said.
Wilt remained in the patio until Doc climbed the stairs and disappeared, obscured by the ledge. Another look around and he began his slow climb. The last ten steps or so were the hardest. The hip was playing out. He stopped and took a deep breath. Joe leaned over the ledge and grinned at him.
“You need help with the last few steps, Wilt?”
“Screw you.” He gutted it up and climbed the last steps. “You must be happy. There’s another empty bed in town.”
Joe whirled away without answering him.
That makes us even, Wilt said to himself.
This time the maid almost bowed them into the living room. “Miz Plowden’ll be right with you.”
It was a high-ceilinged room, bright and colorful and perhaps a bit girlish for a woman Missy’s age. Wilt had a sense that he’d walked into a teenager’s dream of the perfect apartment to go with a matching bedroom.
Wilt dropped his outer coat and cap on the sofa next to him. He watched as Joe took a stuffed chair and eased into it and carefully arranged his crease.
“A hell of an accident, huh?” He kept his eyes level with Joe’s.
“I didn’t like that slope the first time I saw it,” Joe said. “Should have had a rail of some kind around the patio.”
“You buy accident?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“The bedroom slipper.”
“That’s easy,” Joe said. “He dropped the slipper and couldn’t or didn’t want to bother to pick it up.”
“Cold day to be there with a bare foot. How about the broken ankle?”
“He caught it somehow as he tumbled down the stairs.”
“The caved-in back of his skull?”
“He struck it when he landed in the patio.”
“And then rolled over and put his face to the tiles?” Wilt shook his head.
“You’re saying it’s murder?”
“I say it is. Doc says it is. Whoever it was started pushing Plowden toward the ledge. Plowden tried to use his right foot to stop the wheelchair. The man pushing it rams him forward harder. The foot caught and turned under and broke. My guess is that the fear and the pain had Plowden screaming. The man sapped him hard with something and caved in his head. Then a push that landed Plowden in the patio. If he’d landed on his back, maybe we wouldn’t have noticed the head wound was more than it seemed. It’s possible that the killer didn’t care one way or the other. He thought we’d assume Plowden struck his head on one of the hand rails.”
“You think it was Thorpe?”
“I’d sure like to know what he was doing a bit over an hour ago.”
“That the time slot?”
“Doc says it’s hard to say. He thinks a shade over an hour because of the weather, the old temperature.”
Missy Plowden came in, pale and red-eyed, and the lack of makeup revealed the coarse skin and the sagging pouches under her eyes. Charlotte had an arm around her, bracing and supporting her. The way Charlotte cut her eyes toward Joe, Wilt knew it was hard on her. Here she was trying to be a good friend to Missy and what was singing in her blood was really how much she wanted Joe.
“Dr. Withers prescribed something to help her sleep,” Charlotte said.
“I haven’t taken it yet. I understand you want to talk with me.” Missy eased into a stuffed chair across from Wilt. Charlotte patted her shoulder and stepped back.
“Just a few questions and we’ll leave you to rest.” Wilt looked over his shoulder. Joe had his pad in one hand, the pen in the other.
“Anything, Sheriff.” She said.
Wilt checked his watch. “You left here to go shopping. What time was that?”
“My maid, Edna, and I left a little after ten.”
It was twelve-twenty-five. Wilt and Joe had found the body forty-five minutes earlier. “Did you see Raymond Thorpe this morning?”
He and his car weren’t on the property. It was the first thing Wilt and Joe had checked after finding the body.
“Usually we see Raymond either on the way to work or on the way to the guest house. This morning he stopped by while we were having breakfast. He had a coffee with us.”
“Do you remember what you talked about this morning?”
“Is it important?”
“It might be,” Wilt said.
“I didn’t hear much of what was said. He’d hardly arrived before I had to leave and bathe. What I did hear was rambling, general … you know, business and the weather and things like that.”
“I see.”
“And when I came down twenty or so minutes later, Raymond was gone.”
“Did your husband say anything that indicated they might have had a quarrel?”
“No. Why are you …?”
“It’s an investigation. I’ve got to cover all the possible angles.”
“It was an accident. Why are you …?”
Wilt ignored her question. “Did he say anything about Thorpe?”
Missy closed her eyes. There was a moment or two of deep concentration. “Well, Jonathan’s mood had changed. He’d been … well, happy … before Raymond dropped by. Now he was distracted. He seemed under a strain. I thought at the time it was his illness. You see, he didn’t feel good after a heavy breakfast.”
“He say anything?”
“He said he needed to go into town this afternoon to see Benjamin Wallace. Benjamin’s his lawyer.”
“Did he tell you why?”
Missy shook her head. “I thought it was because he didn’t feel well. His illness had a way of getting him on edge. I remember several times it happened this way. He wouldn’t feel well and he’d talk to Benjamin Wallace and they’d go over his will and make certain that everything was covered and they’d discuss his investment portfolio. He always appeared to feel much better after one of those meetings with his lawyer. So, to please him. I called Benjamin and made an appointment for two and …” Her voice broke. “I’ve got to call Benjamin and tell him what happened.”
“Charlotte will make the call for you.” Wilt turned toward her. “Would you do that now, please?”
“Of course, Sheriff.” Charlotte said.
Wilt waited until the door closed behind Charlotte before he faced Missy again. “One final matter. Where did your husband meet Ray Thorpe?”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Go on.”
“Jonathan got into trouble with the I.R.S. and the best lawyers in the state couldn’t keep him out of prison. For six months he was … there … and he met Raymond. They weren’t good friends but Raymond helped him get by and I guess Jonathan is grateful.”
“Where was that?”
“Danbury, Connecticut.”
“Why there?” Wilt knew that usually the Feds put a man in a minimum security prison near his home, in his home state, if it was possible.
“The case was heard in the New York courts. That’s where … what they called the fraud took place. Jonathan could have served his time here, in North Carolina. He didn’t want to. He wanted to be away from the state, as far as he could be. That was how embarrassed he was.”
“When was that?”
“That was 1979 … no, 1980.”
It was all coming together. They needed to talk to Thorpe. Wilt thanked her for her help and pulled Joe aside, out of Missy’s earshot.
“You have the name and the number for the deputy we met in Raleigh?”
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
The badge and the I.D. were in the open leather case on the counter at the front of the insurance office. The girl Billy Egan faced had bright red hair and a small hook-shaped scar on her chin.
“Mr. Thorpe’s been out of the office all day,” sh
e said. “He’s following up on inquiries.”
Egan looked over his shoulder at Wilt.
Wilt stepped forward until he was shoulder-to-shoulder with Egan. “Did he come in at all today?”
There was a hesitation. “He called in. It happens that way when his schedule is full. He calls in and lets us know that he’ll be out most of the day.”
“Do you have a list of his appointments for the day?” Wilt watched as Billy Egan picked up his case, folded it and put it away.
“The agent makes his own appointments. A lead might come in through us but we pass them on to him and he sets up his own schedule.”
“You have any way of getting in touch with him?”
“Not unless he calls in,” the girl said.
“And he hasn’t?”
“Not since he called in around …” The girl checked her watch. “I think it was just before my break. That would make it ten-thirty or so.”
Ten-thirty or so. That would place it about the time Jonathan Plowden had gone over the edge and down into the patio, Wilt thought. The call could even have been made from the Plowden home. A check with Southern Bell could establish whether a toll call had been made from the Plowdens in Edgefield to Raleigh about that time. It would, if it checked out, be a small beginning in a case against Thorpe.
They stopped in the lobby downstairs. Through the doorway they could see the sky, the grayness there, the hint of rain or ice. A strong, gusty wind blew trash down the sidewalk past the doorway.
Egan lit a filter-tip. “A nasty day.”
“You should have been around for our morning,” Wilt said.
“You think Thorpe’s coming back here?”
“Not if he knows we’re looking for him. There’s a good chance he’s running.”
“Where’ll he run?”
“To a Federal Marshal who will babysit him no matter what.” Wilt said. “And you won’t make any friends if you get in that Marshal’s way.”
“That’s one good reason to back you,” Egan said.
Wilt nodded at Joe. He turned up the collar of his heavy outer coat. “I’ll call you.”