Vengeance is Mine - A Benjamin Tucker Mystery

by Harry James Krebs

  She filled our glasses a third full. I took a gulp and continued evaluating the damage.

  Lainie pointed at the painting hanging over the fireplace. “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “That is the great Henry Marshak,” I said, “Maggie’s father. He died a few years ago, and his memory is sacred around here … like he’s a god. No one dares say anything negative about the great Henry Marshak. No sirree. I think of him as Saint Henry.”

  She walked over and looked at the painting.

  I examined the grand piano. “No damage that I can see to Nora’s piano. Thank you, god!”

  “Ben?” Lainie asked.

  I examined the sofas. “Two bullet holes in the back of one of the sofas. The other one got away unscathed.”

  “Ben?”

  “A broken Lladró ballet dancer.”

  “BEN!”

  I spun around and faced her. “What?”

  She had pulled a step stool over to the fireplace and was standing on it looking at the large portrait. I walked over and looked up at the painting. In the center of Henry Marshak’s forehead was a bullet hole.

  “It’s a large hole,” Lainie said. “Yep, .44 caliber. Ben, you shot Maggie’s father in the head.”

  I rubbed my weary eyes. “Fuck … fuck, fuck, and fuck!”

  CHAPTER 42

  I plopped down on the damaged sofa and put my face in my hands. “It’ll be Roberta who kills me,” I muttered. “She’ll probably use that twelve inch carving knife.” I slowly lifted my head toward Lainie. “You should see that thing. It’s got Benjamin Tucker written all over it.”

  “Quit sulking,” Lainie said, “no one’s going to kill you.”

  The doorbell rang as I took a very large swig of scotch. “That’ll be Marcus,” I said. “Shit!”

  I looked out the drawing room window to confirm that Marcus’s Mercedes was, indeed, parked in the driveway. I opened the door and let him in. He looked at my bandaged arm, hesitated, about to say something, and then walked past me to the great room.

  He stopped in his tracks and surveyed the damage. He looked from me to Lainie, still standing on the chair, holding a glass of scotch in one hand and touching the portrait with the other.

  He wiped a hand over his face and finally spoke. “Margaret loves this house … and so do Nora and the rest of the family.” He focused on the image of Henry Marshak with the bullet hole in his head. “You’re a dead man, Ben.” He took a deep breath and pointed to my glass. “You better get me one of those … a large one.”

  Lainie poured Marcus a tall glass, half full.

  After further assessment, he said, “Let me get somebody to come over right away and cover that window.” He went to the drawing room and made a short phone call.

  A few minutes later he returned. “A guy is on the way. Name’s Johnny Walker.” He lifted his glass. “How ironic is that?”

  Marcus looked around the dining room and the foyer to see if there was more damage. “Looks like it’s pretty much confined to the great room. Too bad we didn’t have that damn security system in place. What’s the status?”

  “I think they’re ready to install the fence panels. They might start working on the main house system tomorrow.” I looked at the clock. “Make that later today.”

  Marcus shook his head. “Wouldn’t ya know it?” He returned to the fireplace and looked at the painting again. “This portrait was created after Henry’s death from family photographs. Maggie gave it to Nora on what would have been her fortieth wedding anniversary. I believe the man that painted it is still around.” I watched as Marcus transformed into damage recovery mode. “I can’t remember his name, but I probably have it at the office. I’ll have him contact you to see if it can be repaired.”

  We decided to search the house, starting upstairs and working our way down. When we got to Nora’s bedroom suite, the door that led to her verandah appeared to have been pried open. This was where Plum had gained access to the main house, and I silently thanked the Lord that Nora was safe out at Larkspur.

  We went back to the great room to refill our glasses.

  “Doesn’t look like anything was stolen, does it?” Marcus said.

  “He’s not a thief, Mr. Bradley,” Lainie said. “He’s a killer.”

  “Please, call me Marcus, Ms. MacKenzie.”

  She smiled, “Lainie.”

  The telephone rang, and I looked at the clock. “It’s almost five o’clock in the morning. Who would be calling at this hour? Netter would call my cell.”

  “It’s probably Walker,” Marcus said. “I gave him both your cell and landline numbers.”

  I picked up. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Ben.” It was Plum! “I’m glad to hear your voice. You looked pretty bad a few hours ago. How are you?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said. “You almost caught me earlier. I have to admit our relationship has developed even better than I had hoped.”

  “Look, we don’t have a relationship. Why don’t you just turn yourself in? You’ve made your point, and this has gone far enough. No one else needs to get hurt … or killed. I can help you, if you’ll let me. Let’s meet … just the two of us … and we’ll go in together.”

  Lainie had quickly realized who I was talking to and dialed 911.

  “I’m not a fool, Ben,” Plum said. “Your buddy, Netter, would have someone pick me off before I even walked through the door.”

  “Not if we were dressed alike,” I said.

  There was a long pause, as if he was actually thinking about what I said. “You’re a good man, Ben. I believe you’d really try to help me. But no, I still have things I need to accomplish. I have a list, and I’m just getting started. When I’m done, you and I will leave this earth together.” There was another pause. “It’s our destiny.”

  Plum hung up.

  I looked at the log of recent calls on the phone, surprised that he’d called from a phone that didn’t have caller ID blocked. I gave the number to Lainie, who was still on the line with the 911 dispatcher.

  Johnny Walker pounded on the front door, and the three of us almost jumped out of our skins.

  I opened the door, and he hesitated uncertainly when he looked at my face. “You were expecting me, right?”

  I smiled. “Yes. Please come in. It’s been kind of a crazy night.”

  He followed me into the great room and whistled. “So I see.”

  Lainie hung up her phone. “The call came from a pay phone at a gas station in Raleigh. They’re sending a patrol car over now. But he’s gone.”

  “Look, Ben,” Marcus said, “you and Lainie have had a rough night. Why don’t you guys head off and get some sleep? I’ll get Mr. Walker started.”

  I looked at Lainie. She was exhausted. “Okay. Thanks, Marcus.”

  He smiled. “Ya know, Ben, things were pretty dull around here before you came into the picture. It’d be kinda nice to get it back that way.”

  Back at the guesthouse, I got Oscar out of his crate and took him out to pee. “Big action last night, buddy. Next time I stay in the crate and you go.” He looked at me and wagged.

  I locked us up tight when we came back in. Lainie yawned and said, “I’m so tired. I’m not getting up until noon. And I’m sleeping with you tonight.” I snapped around to look at her. “Not like that. We made a deal. But I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  We set our weapons on our respective bedside tables, and climbed into the bed in the master bedroom, fully clothed.

  “How’s your arm?”

  “Starting to throb.” I reached over with my good arm and turned off the lamp.

  CHAPTER 43

  It was a man’s voice coming from outside.

  “Fire in the hole!” KABAM!

  Lainie and I shot out of bed, grabbed our weapons, and aimed them: hers at the bedroom door; mine at the french door leading out to the courtyard. Oscar was in a barking frenzy, racing back and forth
.

  “What the hell was that?” Lainie shouted to me in a whisper.

  “I don’t know. Sounded like a gunshot.”

  “Fire in the hole!” KABAM!

  Lainie jerked her aim toward the French door. I slowly crept over to the shuttered door with Pure Reason raised in front of me. Oscar was under the bed, shaking. I put my ear to the door and listened, and then carefully opened the shutter a crack and peered out. I lowered my weapon.

  “It’s the Brackus guys,” I said, continuing to look out the door. “Looks like they’re using explosive anchors to install the fence panels.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” Lainie said as she lowered her weapon. “What time is it?”

  I looked at my watch. “8:15.”

  “Fire in the hole!” KABAM!

  She was furious. “I just want some damn sleep! Could this possibly get any worse?” She returned her weapon to the nightstand and threw herself back on the bed.

  “Fire in the hole!” KABAM!

  Each time, Oscar would go ballistic, shooting back sharp, ear-piercing barks.

  “Tucker, do something!” Lainie was beside herself.

  “Like what?”

  “You have an armory here! Go shoot them!” She covered her head with her pillow.

  I set Pure Reason on my nightstand and crawled back into the bed. Fortunately for the Brackus guys, the explosions lasted only another fifteen minutes or so.

  We had just drifted back asleep when my cell phone rang at eight forty-five. The murderous look on Lainie’s face made me decide to take the call in the living room.

  I returned a few minutes later and pushed open the bedroom door. “It’s Netter,” I said softly. “He wants to know if you’re going to make this morning’s meeting.”

  Lainie bolted up. “I just want some damn sleep! Tell him to fuck off!”

  I winced, closed the bedroom door, and walked back to the living area. “Sorry, Lieutenant. She said to please accept her apology, but she’s not going to make it today. It seems she has a headache.”

  The sun was streaming in the kitchen window as I poured myself a glass of orange juice and took an antibiotic pill. My arm hurt like hell, but I loathed taking drugs of any kind and opted not to take the Vicodin. At nine o’clock, I received a call from Dimitri Ezzel, the artist who created the injured portrait of Henry Marshak that hung in the great room. I asked him how long it would take to paint an exact replica. A month.

  “I’m in a bind here,” I said. “I need it in a week. How much if you drop everything else and just focus on this? It’s really important.” We agreed on eight thousand dollars—two thousand when he picked up the damaged portrait, and the remaining six thousand when it was replaced. I think I got screwed, but if there was any chance at all of replacing that portrait before the family returned, I had to go for it. I briefly considered hampering the Plum case to buy time and then mentally slapped myself.

  I took Oscar outside to take care of business and explained to him that he might be on death row. “You might want to lay low and steer clear of Lainie for awhile.” He looked at me and wagged again.

  We walked over to take a look at the progress on the fence installation. One of the workers stopped what he was doing to talk to me for a few minutes. “I hope we didn’t disturb you too much. We waited until eight o’clock to start with the blasting.”

  “No, no. We’re early risers around here. It’s looking great.”

  When we went back in, I called a local florist and then stretched out on the sofa to rest. After two more hours of sleep, I showered and put on fresh blue jeans and a T-shirt.

  Lainie finally got up just before noon and staggered into the living area. “Do I smell coffee?”

  I went to the kitchen and returned with a large mug and handed it to her. She was a black coffee drinker, but had told me she added cream on the rare occasion when she needed something special. She smiled when she saw that I had laced her coffee with cream.

  “Sorry I was so grumpy earlier,” she said. “I get that way when I’m really tired.”

  “You weren’t grumpy,” I smiled. “You were sweet … like a princess.” She pretended to be offended but couldn’t help smiling back. Oscar looked up at her warily, and she reached down and ruffled his ears.

  While Lainie took her shower, Dimitri called to say he was at the front door of the main house. I hurried over and let him in. There were at least three Brackus technicians inside installing the main security control system.

  Dimitri took a good look at the portrait. “No. This can’t be repaired. I’d never be able to match the pigments close enough. It would look like he had a wart removed.”

  We took it down and carefully packed it in a picture storage crate. He extorted the two thousand dollars, I thanked him, and he left. I wasn’t used to carrying much cash, and Nora’s stash was coming in handy. I’d replace it before she knew the difference, but there was still something just plain wrong about dipping into her money bag to pay for the replacement of her treasured portrait of Henry.

  I looked around and surveyed the wreckage. Walker had covered the back window with thick polyethylene plastic sheeting. He had also fastened the exterior door closed in Nora’s bedroom suite with long wood screws. He’d left a note on the kitchen counter saying he would be in and out making repairs.

  Lainie was waiting for me when I returned to the guesthouse. She had on the navy blue pantsuit she had worn the first day I saw her at the task force meeting. The Glock was on her right hip in a belt holster.

  “What time are your parents flying out today?” she asked.

  I struggled to put on my shoulder rig, and looked at my watch. “In about fifteen minutes.”

  “Did you call them?”

  “Nope.”

  “How’s the arm?” she asked.

  “Hurts like hell. I’ll have to take a Vicodin, but I’m not taking any more of those things than I absolutely have to.”

  Lainie put her hand out. “Give me your keys. I’ll drive today.”

  I laughed. “Nice try, MacKenzie. Let me give you a little fact of life about men. You can steal a man’s wife, but you don’t touch his car … or his dog. That’s just the way it is.”

  We had burgers at McDonald’s and then swung by Marshak’s at the Cary Towne Center. I waited in the car while Lainie went in and bought two pairs of shorts and a couple of nightshirts that fit. As I waited, I watched a father goose patrol the shrubbery near the entrance where his wife was tending to their nest. It was the damnedest thing. These geese have hundreds of square miles of forests and wooded areas around here, and yet these two knuckleheads chose to make their nest right outside Marshak’s north entrance. And what’s more astounding—they do it every year!

  Our next stop was Rex Hospital in Raleigh to visit Officer Stanton. We stopped on the way and picked up the flowers I’d ordered earlier.

  When we got to the hospital, Lainie went in first to see if Stanton was up to the visit. We also wanted to give her a heads up, so she wouldn’t think it was Plum walking into her room.

  Lainie buzzed my cell and said it was okay to come up. I passed through several hallways that smelled of antiseptics and cleaning agents as I made my way to Officer Stanton’s room. She beamed shyly from ear to ear when I walked in, and she saw the flowers. I had two dozen yellow roses in a tall crystal water pitcher.

  “Oh, they’re so beautiful,” she said. “Thank you so much, Mr. Tucker.”

  I smiled and squeezed her hand. “No more Mr. Tucker. Please call me Ben.”

  There was a big teddy bear sitting on the table next to her bed. “That’s from the Lieutenant,” she said. “I don’t think he knew what to get me.”

  “He cares a lot about you,” Lainie said.

  “And he’s kicking himself for what happened,” I added.

  “He really shouldn’t.” Stanton hesitated and said, “And I’m very sorry I told him you were the one who shot me. The guy looked just like you, and I was so
confused about what was happening.”

  “Don’t give it one more thought,” I said. “There was no way you could have known it wasn’t me.”

  We spent the next fifteen minutes visiting with her, and left.

  I dropped Lainie off at the Cary Police Department, where she would spend the rest of the day in a borrowed office working on the investigation into a series of deaths in the Baltimore area. She ordered me to invest my time getting a haircut.

  After stopping at the bank to withdraw two thousand dollars to replace my self-service loan from Nora, I finally broke down and got a damn haircut. When I was finished, I looked like a moron. There was a white ring around my neck and ears where it hadn’t been exposed to the sun in years. I looked like a damn whitewall tire. Well, fine. Screw it. At least they wouldn’t mistake me for Plum unless he decided to make himself look like a moron too.

  After parking in my usual spot at the Cary PD, I spent the next forty-five minutes talking to my brother George and correcting my father’s version of his and Mom’s visit. “No, Maggie did not leave me. No, I do not have a new girlfriend living with me. No, I am not selling drugs. Yes, I told them to leave. And yes, I did ask them if they had donated sperm and eggs.” By the time I hung up, I could have pulled my hair out—if it had still been there.

  When Lainie got in the car, she eyed me and said, “You got a haircut. Looks good.”

  I raised my eyebrows and waited.

  “What?” she asked.

  “What about my stripe?”

  She laughed. “You look like a farmer who just got a haircut. Get out in the garden and do some work for a few days, you lazy, rich Republican.”

  “How about we just drive with the sunroof open—and I’m a Democrat.”

  We headed back to the estate, so Lainie could get a change of clothes. She’d been around Netter all day and said her clothes “stunk like a stale cigar.” I had to agree. Another reason for the open sunroof.

  We picked up a pizza for dinner and arrived at the guesthouse just after dark. I had just gotten the table set when Lainie came out of her room wearing a pale green linen skirt and a slightly darker jacket. But the look on her face told me something was wrong.