by Stephen Frey
“I spent months learning about you and Melanie,” he continues. “I’d follow you to work, and I’d follow Melanie when she’d meet that Carlucci guy at his apartment to fuck him. I was there the very first night she danced at the Two O’Clock Club too. That’s how I found out about her affair with Frank Taylor. Then I found out about the insurance policies from that woman she did the routine with. Erin. I kept tipping her real well and she mentioned it. When I saw Melanie and Taylor get into it one night outside the club, I knew I could frame him. The only thing left would be to do away with you, and I’d have the money when I showed up at the table as your only living relative. The law is pretty straightforward there.
“But the cops went right for you as the murderer, Augustus, so I had to ‘help’ them see the error of their ways. I had to throw them another more believable suspect. So I murdered Erin and planted evidence on Taylor. I guided them toward that silver Mercedes as well. Made them see Taylor had plenty of motive to kill Melanie too.” He smiles proudly.
“You were Reggie’s anonymous informant,” I say quietly.
“Yes, I was very helpful to him.”
“Were you the one who went through my desk and my house?”
“Yup. Left those nude pictures of Melanie for you to see too. I wanted you to get a load of what a slut your wife was,” he snarls.
“Why? What did I ever do to deserve that from you?”
“You got our father all those years. I always hated you for that. I figured you deserved a little suffering too.”
“Having our father around was no bonus, let me tell you.”
We’re silent for several minutes, staring at each other. Both of us looking for the similarities—and the differences.
Finally Roger waves the gun at me and smiles. “I’m sorry to see you so depressed, Augustus.”
I don’t say anything. I was waiting for this.
“You’ve come here all alone to do something rash,” Roger continues. “Something terrible. Your grief has finally caught up with you, hasn’t it? You hid Slammer’s gun after he jumped, then went back to Bedford the next day to retrieve it. That’s what you were doing there that Saturday,” he says, taking a long look at the revolver he’s pointing at me. “Getting the gun so you could end it all.” He looks around. “Such a beautiful spot too. The cops will call it a horrible suicide after I’ve wiped my prints from the gun and wrapped your dead fingers around it. And they’ll just be glad to be finished with the case so quickly.” His eyes narrow. “In a couple of months, when things have calmed down, I’ll claim your estate. In Virginia all estate proceeds automatically flow to the closest living relative if there isn’t a will. Which there isn’t. I’ll receive the insurance proceeds and the money you’ve made day trading. And Reggie Dorsey will continue to think Frank Taylor killed Melanie and Erin,” he says confidently.
“How did you make the cops think Taylor had killed Erin?”
“I murdered her while wearing a pair of Taylor’s shoes with carpet fibers from his house all over the soles. Fibers that the D.C. police have probably already discovered on Erin’s apartment floor. It was tight squeezing my feet into his shoes. He’s a size eleven, and I’m a twelve, just like you, but I managed. I dropped a couple of his dog’s hairs around her place as well, just for good measure. Just to make certain those idiots made the connection.”
“And Melanie?”
“I planted the knife I killed her with in Taylor’s garage. Spattered a little of her blood on the Mercedes wheel as well. I had to make certain the police couldn’t convict you as the killer. Because of the—”
“Slayer statutes,” I finish for him.
“That’s right.”
“You were the one who went through my desk and took the letter.”
“Yes,” he says. “And those million bucks are almost mine.”
“You could kill me that easily? Your own blood?”
A cruel smile comes to his face. “Absolutely,” he says simply.
I smile right back. “But didn’t you ever wonder why I made this so easy?”
He turns his head slightly to the side as he aims the revolver at me. “What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t you wonder while you were following me out Route 211 why I would come to such a remote place right after being released from jail?”
Roger stares down the shiny barrel at me, eyes focused on mine for a long time. Suddenly he swings the gun to his left, but it’s too late and the stillness of the summer afternoon is shattered by the loud report of a gunshot. Roger tumbles backward toward the edge of the cliff, teetering on the brink for a moment. Then his body disappears, plunging down toward the treetops below.
EPILOGUE
I may not be a religious man, but autumn in New England makes me stop and think about a higher power. The colors are incredible and I have to wonder if all of this beauty could really be just a random result of the massive explosion that occurred billions of years ago to form the universe. I’ll never know the answer as long as I’m alive, which is the most frustrating aspect of being human.
Not that I’m complaining. It’s thanks to Reggie that I’m still around to have such thoughts. Reggie was the one who stepped out of the forest and shot Roger dead before he could shoot me. We stood in silence at the edge of the cliff for a long time, long after the gunshot had echoed away, gazing down into the treetops cradling Roger’s body.
Two weeks later Great Western Insurance Company sent me a million dollars. I’ll never forget the expression on the bank teller’s face when he saw the amount on the check. I would think they’d be trained to show no emotion, but he actually gasped out loud and raised both eyebrows, then smiled at me and tried to start up a conversation. In eleven years of using the branch, I’ve never received so much as a hello from that old guy. The other tellers were nice, but this guy was always a jerk. I just picked up my deposit slip, smiled back at him, and left. Money has a strange effect on some people.
Vincent called me out of the blue the same day I accepted an offer on my house. It was about a week after the insurance check showed up, and I was shocked to hear from him. I figured we’d never talk again after I left him sprawled on the floor of his apartment with a separated shoulder and his flavor of the evening cowering in the bedroom doorway, looking at me like I was the Boston Strangler as she held a towel around herself.
I was apprehensive when Vincent asked if he could come over and talk. After all, my supposed friend of more than twenty years had turned out to be full of secrets. And venom. I wondered what else I didn’t know about him, and I was tempted to call Reggie, who has come to be a great friend, and ask his advice. But there was no reason to worry. Vincent didn’t come over to threaten me. He just wanted to talk. He was more subdued than I’d ever seen him as he sat in a chair at the kitchen table, his arm in a sling. He apologized to me over and over for everything. For trying to use me to make money for his friends. For never telling me that he and Melanie had been sleeping together since high school. And for taking her to the Two O’Clock Club. I pointed out to him that maybe deep down he had been trying to come clean with me by taking me to the club that Thursday night after the baseball game. After all, I could have easily recognized Anna or Erin and started putting things together, and he knew that. He shook his head at my amateur psychology and told me that Anna never appeared in the main room and that Erin had switched to working only weekend nights a few weeks before. He had actually called the manager that afternoon to make certain neither of them would be there, just in case. But he had no explanation for Melanie’s photograph in the hallway, which he admitted he knew was there. We shook hands and smiled at each other when he left, but I’ll never see him again. I know that for sure.
Frank Taylor’s law practice crashed and burned, and I was happy about that. After all, I’m only human. But Taylor will grow a new skin and come back to the jungle. Snakes like him always do. It’s not right, but it happens.
Mary wasn’t a
double murderer. She really had been married to a real estate developer named Jacob, and he really had left her two million dollars, a huge house, and a Jaguar. The only thing she’d lied to me about was the size of her MicroPlan purchase. She hadn’t bought one million dollars’ worth of its stock, she’d actually put everything she had into it. All two million. When the IRS came looking for its share of estate taxes, which she didn’t even understand that she had to pay, she was forced to sell the house and the car to cover the debt because by then her portfolio was worth less than fifty grand. She’d lost almost everything in six months. Reggie told me she ended up going back to Kentucky. Go figure.
After I sold my house in Springfield, I packed a bag with a week’s worth of clothes, threw the bag in the trunk, put everything else in storage, and headed north on I-95. I’d always heard that New England was beautiful, so I put Van Morrison on the CD player and just started driving. There was nothing keeping me where I was.
I ended up near a little town called Massey in northeastern New Hampshire. It’s on a small river called the Androscoggin very close to the Maine border. For two hundred thousand dollars I bought a three-bedroom cabin on top of a mountain a few miles from town, and I have my own little piece of heaven. From my porch I look out over a picturesque valley and the mountains on the other side. The closest house is a mile away, and I can see only two other homes far below me from the rocking chair I bought for the porch. I got a dog too. A golden retriever I named Drexel Burnham. Drex to his friends. He’s more loyal than any human being I’ve ever known.
I gaze out over the landscape with its splashes of red, orange, yellow, and green, brilliant before me in the noon sun, taking it all in for the tenth time today. Then I ease myself into my black beauty and head carefully down the winding dirt drive toward the valley floor and the thin ribbon of pavement that leads to Massey.
But I don’t stop in Massey because I can’t get the access I need there. Fortunately there are still some places that refuse to be touched by fat pipes.
So I keep going a few miles farther to a bigger town named Berlin and a bar there called the White Mountain Bar and Grill, known simply as “the Grill” by locals. For a few hundred dollars a month I was able to get a T-1 line brought in. It’s kind of expensive, but in the end it worked out great. I get to go to my regular booth in the back of the bar overlooking the Androscoggin, plug in my laptop, and day trade for a few hours almost every afternoon while I sip single-malt scotch. In a month I’ve made another twenty-five grand. Not a huge profit, but I paid cash for the cabin and prepaid what was left on the car. In return for letting the locals use my T-1 access when I’m not, I eat free anytime I want from the Grill’s kitchen, which serves surprisingly good food. The Internet access has quickly become a big attraction, and business at the Grill has never been better. So my only real monetary responsibility is Drex’s food. But he eats free at the Grill too, so come to think of it, that’s not a problem either.
“Mr. Augustus?”
I look over from my laptop screen, which is just firing up. “Yes, Claire?”
Claire is the ten-year-old daughter of the Grill’s owner, a stout woman named Eunice whose husband left for California a few years ago and hasn’t come back. Claire is a cute little thing who hardly knew what a computer was a couple of weeks ago and could now probably hack into the CIA’s mainframe.
“Can I use the computer?” she asks, a sly grin on her face.
“Claire, don’t bother Mr. Augustus while he’s working,” Eunice calls from behind the bar as she changes a keg.
“Hey, it’s Monday. Shouldn’t you be in school?” I ask, grinning back at her.
“Teacher meetings,” she replies in a tone that suggests I should have known about such a momentous day.
I chuckle as I stand up. “All right, but what are you going to do?”
“Going to a couple of Beanie Baby Web pages,” she says as she hops up onto the bench seat and settles down on her knees in front of the computer. “Mom bought me a couple when she went to Boston last week, and I think I can sell them for a lot more than she paid.”
I shake my head and move to the bar. Claire is ten years old, and she’s already learning how to trade. In fifteen years she’ll make a fortune on Wall Street.
“Sorry about that,” Eunice says, handing me a cold glass of club soda. “She loves that computer.”
“It’s okay,” I say, smiling as I take a seat on the stool. People have started to straggle in for lunch but the place is still pretty empty. “Just club soda for me today?” I ask, raising the glass to my lips.
“Well,” she says in a drawn out voice, “the last thing I figure you need is another scotch after Saturday night. Why don’t you take it a little easy today?”
A band from Manchester was playing at the Grill Saturday night, and we all had a pretty good time. I met a pretty young woman who lives down on Lake Winnipesaukee—about an hour south of here—and we ended up going back to my cabin. She was nice, and she likes the mountains. I think I’ll drive down there to see her next weekend.
“Okay,” I agree, taking another sip of soda. It’s funny. People have taken to me right away up here. They look out for me. “Thanks.”
“Mr. McKnight?”
There’s a young man sitting on the stool next to mine. I didn’t see him sit down. “Yes.” I study his face, but I don’t recognize him. I don’t know how he knows my name. Maybe we were introduced Saturday night and I just don’t remember. “But call me Augustus.”
He holds out his hand and we shake. “Tim Price. I live over in St. Johnsbury.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I heard that you’re a day trader.”
I chuckle. “How did you hear that?”
“Friend of mine talked to a guy in town who knows about you. Said he’s watched you on the computer back there,” Tim says, nodding toward Claire. “Says you’re pretty successful, and I was just wondering if you could show me some of the basics.”
I stare at Tim for a few moments. I can’t help but think about the last time I agreed to teach the basics of day trading to a virtual stranger. Roger. My brother.
“Sure, why not. Meet me here tomorrow afternoon and we’ll see how it goes.” I guess I’m still a sucker for somebody who wants my help.
ALSO BY STEPHEN FREY
The Takeover
The Vulture Fund
The Inner Sanctum
The Legacy
The Insider
Trust Fund
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2002 by Stephen Frey
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
is available upon request from the publisher.
eISBN 0-345-45393-X
v1.0