Bad Move zw-1

by Linwood Barclay

  Even though I knew they were gone, I made my way back to the car moving along the edges of buildings, ducking behind front-end loaders. I wasn’t taking any chances. I wanted to take a look through Stefanie’s purse-it was probably too small to hold this ledger they’d been talking about, but it might offer some clues as to where I might find it. First, however, I had to get out of the neighborhood. I drove to a twenty-four-hour doughnut place on the outskirts of the subdivision and parked back by the Dumpster.

  I decided the purse could wait two more minutes.

  I went into the doughnut shop and swung open the door to the men’s room. After taking a whiz, I stood in front of the sink and as I washed my hands took a look at myself. I looked bad. The front of my jacket, shirt, and pants were scuffed with mud and grit, and my face was smeared with dirt. I took a moment to wash up, attempted to dry myself with the hot-air machine. (I still felt my book about the guy who goes back in time to keep the inventor of this infernal gadget from ever being born was my best.)

  I lined up to buy a large coffee with triple cream and two double-chocolate doughnuts. It hit me that I was running on empty in every sense of the word. I took my order to a table in the corner and surveyed my fellow customers. A couple of teenagers on a date. An old man reading the paper by himself. Two cops, evidently bucking tradition, eating muffins. Upon seeing them I tried to draw into myself, to disappear. Even though I had no reason to think they were looking for me, specifically, I couldn’t help but feel I looked like a suspect.

  I wolfed the doughnuts, guzzled the coffee. I exited the shop through the door furthest away from the cops and got back into my Civic. I turned on the overhead light and grabbed Stefanie’s purse from behind the passenger seat. I wanted her car key. It was a thick, black plastic thing, like a rounded oversized skipping stone emblazoned with a VW symbol, with buttons for opening the trunk and locking and unlocking the doors.

  So Greenway and Rick wanted a ledger Stefanie’d run off with. It was too big for Stefanie’s purse. But it would fit in a car. And I knew where she’d last parked.

  I turned over the engine. It was time for me to return to the scene of my crime.

  23

  Every time I saw headlights in my rear-view mirror, I held my breath. Maybe it was the police. Maybe they’d figured out I was involved in the Stefanie Knight matter, at least as some sort of witness, if not the actual perpetrator. Or maybe it was Rick. I guessed that he’d be cruising the neighborhood, looking for my car. He’d probably gone by the house, and when he hadn’t seen it there, had trolled the neighborhood in the hopes of finding me.

  The Mindy’s Market parking lot was nearly empty, no more than half a dozen cars scattered about. Two of them, as it turned out, were Volkswagens. A Jetta and a Beetle. I seemed to remember Stefanie’s mother saying that Stefanie drove a Beetle, a blue one, and the one in the lot here was a dark blue that reflected the lamps of the parking lot.

  Not wanting to make my approach to the car too obvious, I parked the Civic across the street, in the lot of a darkened McDonald’s. I locked up, the VW key held tightly in my fist. By the time I crossed the street I figured I was close enough to determine whether I had the right car. I aimed the key at the Beetle and tapped the unlock button. The taillights flashed.

  I came around from the back and opened the driver’s door. The floor was littered with candy wrappers, coffee cup lids, wadded tissues. I flipped the switch to unlock the trunk and walked around the back, lifting up the hatch that went all the way to the top of the rear window. The trunk was littered with debris as well, plus a couple of pairs of shoes, some Valley Forest Estates flyers and floor plans, an empty box of low-fat cookies. There was a strap at the front end of the trunk that lifted up the floor, revealing the spare. I peeked under there, but found nothing.

  I looked under the front seats, in the glove compartment. I flipped the seats forward, ran my hand down the pouches behind each seat, came up empty. I lifted each of the four floor mats, found seventy-eight cents in change, which I left, and began to think that maybe this car had no secrets to share.

  The car, as I’d noticed, was a hatchback, which meant you could fold the rear seats down to create a modest cargo area. It appeared that before you could fold the back of the seat down, you had to flip the base of the seat up.

  I reached my hand into the crack where the two parts of the seats met and pulled, and as I’d suspected, the seat pulled away from the floor.

  And there it was.

  A pale green ledger book. I grabbed it, put the seat back in place, got out of the back and flopped into the front driver’s seat, pulling the door shut. There was enough light from the parking lot lamps to see without turning on the inside light and attracting any more attention.

  I opened the book up and saw dates and names and amounts. As I’ve mentioned, I can’t balance a checkbook, so I wasn’t sure what all this meant, but I had a pretty good idea. And I had an even better idea who’d be able to interpret what it all meant. I needed Trixie.

  At that moment, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. A car slowing as it drove by on the street in front of Mindy’s. A small foreign sedan. Just like Rick’s.

  The car’s brake lights came on. The car stopped, backed up, idled in front of the McDonald’s. Then moved forward, swung into the lot, parked alongside my car.

  I slunk down into the seat of the Beetle, but not so low that I couldn’t see what was happening across the street. Rick got out of the sedan, walked slowly around the Civic, confirming that it was in fact my car. He must have been cruising the neighborhood, hoping to find me, and when he spotted a car similar to mine, wanted to investigate. Chances are he wouldn’t have taken notice of the plate number the other times he’d seen the car at my home.

  He peered through the windows, looking first in the back, then the front, and his eyes landed on the purse in the front seat. If he was anything like me, he couldn’t tell one purse from another-this skill shortage had led me to hide in this Volkswagen in the middle of the night-but this purse looked close enough to Stefanie’s that he figured he had the right car. He tried all four doors, found them all locked, and walked calmly back to his own vehicle, reaching for something from the back seat.

  A baseball bat.

  He swung it hard and took out the driver’s-door window. Shards of glass flew across the interior. Inside the Beetle, with the windows up, I could barely hear it. He pulled up the door lock, opened the door, and took the purse, which he tossed into his own car. But he’d looked through this purse once before and knew it hadn’t contained a ledger. Maybe, he thought, it was in my car somewhere.

  So he began a search of it, not unlike mine moments earlier of the Beetle. He rooted through the trunk, looked under the seats, ripped up the back seat. Frustrated, he glared at the car, paced back and forth angrily, looking like Basil Fawlty getting ready to beat it to death with a tree branch. The bat, I suspected, would be more effective.

  He took out the front window first. It took about ten swings of the bat to break out all the glass. Then the three remaining passenger windows, and finally, the back. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He smashed off the mirrors, then swung the bat into the middle of the hood. The fenders were next, followed by the headlights, taillights, and trunk lid.

  Jeez, I thought, why don’t you just set fire to it?

  Rick went back to his car to hunt for something. He had a rag, possibly part of an old shirt. Then he opened the driver’s door on my car, pulled the lever next to the seat that popped the tiny door on the back fender that covers the gas cap, unscrewed it, and stuffed the rag partway down the tube.

  Then, with a lighter, he set it ablaze.

  Now he had to move fast. He jumped back into his car, backed so far up the drive-through lane of the McDonald’s that he was almost behind it but still able to watch his handiwork, and waited for the explosion.

  It was a good one.

  The back of my car was facing the fron
t of the McDonald’s, and when the car blew up, erupting into a huge ball of flame, the front windows of the restaurant shattered and fell, setting off alarms. Rick got out of his car, and even from where I was sitting, I could see the big grin on his face.

  It must not have occurred to him until then to wonder why my car was parked there in the first place. He scanned around, looking to see where I might be, figuring that the noise of the explosion would draw me out. Finally, he looked across the street to the grocery store parking lot and saw the Beetle. I tried to slide even lower into the seat but still keep him in view. He knew Stefanie, and it was a pretty safe assumption that he knew the kind of car she drove.

  He started coming across the street.

  I slipped my hand down into the front pocket of my jeans and took the Beetle key out, then slid it into the ignition. Before I turned the engine over, I pressed the button to lock the two doors.

  I had to slide up now to be able to see over the wheel, and when I did, Rick saw me and started to run. Perfect, I thought. I want you as far away from your car as possible before I pull out of this lot.

  The engine caught as I turned the key. I threw my left foot down on the clutch, jammed the stick shift into first, and heard the rear tires squeal as Rick came up alongside, screaming obscenities, shaking his fist. He’d left his baseball bat in his car, and managed nothing more than a swat at the car as I peeled out of the parking lot.

  Looking at him in the rear-view mirror, I gave him a friendly wave goodbye.

  It was late to be calling on Trixie, but these were, as they say, desperate times. I drove quickly through the streets of our neighborhood. I sped down Chancery Park, approaching the corner of Greenway, and slowed only a little as I went past our house. No cars in the driveway, no unfamiliar lights in the house. I checked out all the nearby streets, including the block behind, to make sure Rick’s car was nowhere nearby. It wasn’t safe to go back to the house-Greenway and Rick would be looking for me there-but I was curious about whether they were already waiting for me. It appeared not.

  I couldn’t leave the Beetle in our driveway, or Trixie’s. I left it on Rustling Pine Lane, which was two streets over from Chancery, and hoofed it back, the ledger tucked under my arm. Even though our house appeared to be empty, I knew it was possible someone might be waiting inside, looking out the window, waiting for my return, so I got to Trixie’s place by working my way through backyards, then coming up the side of her house that was the furthest away from ours. It was, as it turned out, a good thing Sarah had been called in to The Metropolitan to work an overtime shift. She wasn’t going to be home until daybreak, and by then, I’d decided, I was going to go to the police with everything I knew. But before I did that, I wanted to be sure I had the deck well stacked against the friendly folks at Valley Forest Estates. And Roger Carpington, even though I was less than certain he’d killed Stefanie Knight. Not that the police wouldn’t be able to find plenty of other things to charge him with.

  I came around Trixie’s garage, noticed her car and one other in the drive, and rang the front doorbell. I figured one simple ring wouldn’t be enough to wake her, so I leaned on the button, let it go for a full ten seconds before taking my finger off it.

  The tiny speaker next to the door crackled almost right away. “Hello?” Trixie didn’t sound as tired as I thought she would.

  “Trixie, it’s Zack. Let me in.”

  “Zack? It’s one in the morning. What are you doing here?”

  Down at the end of Chancery, a small car’s headlights appeared.

  “Trixie, listen, I don’t have time to explain. Please let me in.”

  “I’ll be over in a couple of minutes, I’m-”

  “Trixie! I can’t go home! You have to let me in! It’s an emergency!”

  “Hang on.”

  The headlights were getting closer, slowing as they approached the corner of Greenway. I pressed myself up against the wall, sliding down and behind a bush.

  From inside, I heard a bolt being turned, and then the door opened a crack. I was grateful that Trixie did not turn on the front light and expose me to whoever was coming up the street.

  I forced the door open and burst in, closing the door behind me and throwing the bolt even before Trixie had a chance to do it.

  “Oh God, thank you,” I said, turning to face her, holding the ledger out in front of me. “You’ve got no idea the mess I’ve gotten-”

  And then I stopped.

  Trixie had not come to the door in her pajamas. Clearly, I had not roused her from a deep sleep.

  She was decked out in a leather corset, wide garters that supported thigh-high black stockings, shiny high-heeled boots that came over the top of her knees, and in her right hand she held what appeared to be a whip.

  “You picked kind of a bad time,” she said, somewhat sternly.

  From someplace else in the house-it sounded like the basement-came a very strange sound. Muffled sounds, of a man, it seemed to me. Groaning.

  “Why don’t you pour yourself a coffee,” Trixie said, nodding her head in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m gonna have to go untie this guy and send him on his way. You’ve done me out of a thou, you know, and that’s not counting the tip.”

  24

  “So you’re not an accountant,” I said when Trixie sat down across from me at the kitchen table. She had slipped on a robe, but every time she shifted in her chair, or leaned forward to get some cream for her coffee, or got up to put something in the fridge, I could hear the erotic creak of leather, the swish of nylon rubbing up against nylon.

  “Yes, I’m an accountant,” Trixie, slightly indignant, said. “I’ve got my degree and everything, worked for one of the big firms downtown. I was very good at it, still am. I can still do your taxes if you want. But I’m making a lot more now than then, and ever since Enron and Andersen and all that, I think I moved into a profession with more respect and dignity.” She blew on her coffee and took a sip, leaving lipstick marks on the edge of the cup.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. “About barging in.”

  “Whatever. It’s just as well you showed up when you did.”

  As it turned out, she’d done up the chest strap on her client a little too tightly, and had asked me to come down to the basement to help her undo it.

  It was not your typical rec room. The walls were painted black, and the red bulbs screwed into the sockets cast a sensuous, eerie glow. One wall was covered in pegboard, with hooks, the kind of thing you see in a well-organized workshop for hanging tools of every description. But these hooks were draped with ropes and straps and handcuffs and bungee-cord-type thingies with bright chrome buckles that looked like they would do a terrific job of strapping your luggage to a roof rack if you were taking a long vacation with the kids. But that, clearly, was not their intended use, as evidenced by George, the man strapped to a huge X made of timbers that was leaned up against the back wall. George, pasty, overweight, and extraordinarily white, was wearing nothing more than a black leather jockstrap arrangement, and a red ball in his mouth held in place with straps that went around the back of his head.

  A broad leather strap around his chest helped secure him to the crossed timbers, and when Trixie had tried to release him, she couldn’t pull far enough back on the buckle. That was when she called me down.

  “Zack, this is George,” Trixie said. “George, Zack.” George, still gagged, nodded. “George, I did this thing a bit too tight, but let’s not forget who asked for it that way. Now, I don’t quite have the strength to pull this back, and I could cut it, but I hate to do that, so I’m going to get Zack here to help me out.”

  I obliged, pulling the belt back far enough that it was cutting pretty deeply into his flabby bosoms. “There,” I said.

  Trixie went about untying his wrists and ankles, and removed the ball. “I’m really sorry about this, George. I know it’s very unprofessional, sending you on your way early, but something’s come up.”

 
; “That’s okay,” George said meekly. “Nice to meet you,” he said, extending his hand to me. We shook.

  George slipped into a downstairs bathroom, where he changed back into his regular clothes. Through the door, Trixie said to him, “No charge tonight, George.”

  “Are you sure?” he said from behind the door. “I still got half a session, so I’m not complaining.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be right. I tell you what, we can just let this one go, or you can pay me, and next time it’s on the house. I’ll even do the thing with the cream cheese, no extra charge.”

  That sounded fair to George, who, once he’d emerged from the bathroom in a pair of dress pants, a crisp white shirt without a tie, and a sports jacket, discreetly slipped Trixie a wad of bills.

  “Have you been coming to Trixie long?” George asked me as we went up the stairs together.

  “Uh, no,” I said.

  “Well, you won’t be disappointed. She’s the best. I can’t recommend her too highly.”

  “Really.”

  Trixie saw him off at the door. “Say hi to Mildred for me,” she said, giving George a peck on the cheek and sending him on his way. I watched through the glass as he got in his car and backed out of the driveway.

  “Mildred?” I asked.

  “His wife. She’s not really into this. It’s been a real load-off for her ever since she started sending George to me.”

  “She sends him?”

  “She saw my ad. First time she sent him, it was for his birthday. Now it’s a semi-regular thing, every month or so. Some people are very open-minded.” She grabbed a silk robe hanging on a hook just inside the door to the basement, slipped it on, and went into the kitchen. “Did you get yourself some coffee?”

  “I was about to, and you called me downstairs to help free George.”

  “That was so embarrassing. I could have cut him out of it, but that strap alone was three hundred bucks.” She shook her head. “Now, what’s got you so wound up you’re busting in here in the middle of the night?” She smiled. “Did you see my ad, too?”