The Witchfinder
Page 25
I told her. It was still fresh because I’d gone over it several times for the cops and again for Furlong. I was typing it all up in the office for whoever cared to read it when I got the call from Henry Ford Hospital, where he’d checked in after leaving the Marriott. When the airline called later to report that all the arrangements had been made I’d just had time to call Jean Sternhagen, throw a change of clothes and a razor into the bag, and drive out to catch the 1:28 nonstop to LAX. Then the flight was delayed two hours because of twisters in Oklahoma and Kansas.
“So Royce Grayling’s dead,” she said when I finished.
“He was DOA at Detroit Receiving, but that’s just for the blotter. The cops pulled a dead man out of the Packard.”
“Are you in trouble with the law?”
“The answer to that question is always yes. But not as much as I was a couple of days ago. I called Sergeant St. Thomas in Allen Park and Lieutenant Thaler in Detroit and gave them the whole story before I met with Stuart Lund. I had a hunch he’d cut and run. I needed the backup. Two homicides solved for two departments in one afternoon is worth some points. Not that you’d know it from the way they interrogated me.”
She said nothing. I moved a shoulder.
“It’s a job. It’s not as pretty as running an art gallery.”
“I still don’t understand why Grayling shot Stuart.”
“Professional pride. He had a lot of it. Enough anyway to cowboy the job when he learned from his plant at Detroit Police Headquarters that I was meeting with the man who tried to frame him for that bald-faced murder in Allen Park. He still might have gotten away with it, but there were twice as many cops on hand as he expected.”
“How is Stuart?”
“Still in a coma at Receiving last time I checked. He won’t be much good for anything even if he comes out of it, and I doubt he will. One of Grayling’s slugs severed his spinal column. Getting yourself paralyzed from the neck down is a hell of a way to cure a bad case of gout.”
“Poor Windy.”
“It would’ve been a short run even without Grayling. His wife was talking, and Rio de Janeiro has all the lawyers it needs. Anyway, Poor Windy was a killer and a corrupter. He tried to ruin your life.”
“He didn’t ruin it.”
“That wasn’t his fault.”
She looked away, toward the crowded gate area. “Three dead, and one might as well be. All over a broken engagement eight years old.”
“Engagements get broken every day without people getting killed. Furlong’s estate is worth millions. It all comes down to greed. Sooner or later everything does.”
She looked at me. “Do you really believe that?”
“I do today. My head hurts and I hate to fly.”
“It wasn’t greed. It was love. Stuart loved Jay, don’t you see that?” Her slightly Oriental eyes were dry and clear.
“He knew Furlong was straight.”
“That isn’t what I’m talking about and you know it. Or maybe you don’t. Jay didn’t. He could be remarkably blind for an artist; even I knew that in the short time we were together. But he wasn’t always that way. He trusted Stuart with a secret he wouldn’t even share with me until he was absolutely certain we were going to spend our lives together.”
“You mean the fact that he really did steal one of Vernon Whiting’s designs when they worked together?”
“He told you?”
“No. I figured it out when he said he thought Whiting had put you up to seduce him. He’d only have considered that if he thought Whiting had a good reason to want revenge.”
“It was an act of desperation, when Jay was overworked and blocked and not thinking straight. He regretted it the rest of his life. It put a bitterness in him, right at the core. I think that bitterness would have broken us up in the end. That’s the ironic part. The fake picture was unnecessary.
“It wasn’t a homosexual thing, Stuart’s love for Jay,” she went on, “although Stuart himself might have thought it was. When two people share a vision for years they develop a bond much stronger than sexual attraction. When one or the other breaks that bond, anything can happen. The money was just an excuse. Scar tissue over a broken heart. What do you think of that?”
“I think you should take Jean Sternhagen out to dinner before she smashes a Monet over your head.”
She stared at me.
“Or a Manet,” I finished.
After a second she smiled.
Airport security approached in the person of a bearded party in black-rimmed glasses and a blue serge suit cut badly over his shoulder rig. He was carrying a Motorola and had a gold ring in one ear. “Mr. Walker?”
“Miss Talbot.” I indicated her. “She wants to see Mr. Furlong.”
Just then the clerk at the counter got on the P.A. and announced general boarding.
“There’s my ride.” I offered my hand.
Lily Talbot took it. “Thanks. For trying. I guess that makes two blind artists you’ve known.”
I said good-bye. Security took charge and she accompanied him through a door he opened with a computerized ID card, on out to where the cargo-handlers were getting ready to load Jay Bell Furlong’s coffin aboard the plane.
A Biography of Loren D. Estleman
Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.
Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once The Oklahoma Punk was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.
Estleman’s most enduring character, Amos Walker, made his first appearance in 1980’s Motor City Blue, and the hardboiled Detroit private eye has been featured in twenty novels since. The fifth Amos Walker novel, Sugartown, won the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for best hardcover novel of 1985. Estleman’s most recent Walker novel is Infernal Angels.
Estleman has also won praise for his adventure novels set in the Old West. In 1980, The High Rocks was nominated for a National Book Award, and since then Estleman has featured its hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, in seven more novels, most recently 2010’s The Book of Murdock. Estleman has received awards for many of his standalone westerns, receiving recognition for both his attention to historical detail and the elements of suspense that follow from his background as a mystery author. Journey of the Dead, a story of the man who murdered Billy the Kid, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
In 1993 Estleman married Deborah Morgan, a fellow mystery author. He lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Loren D. Estleman in a Davy Crockett ensemble at age three aboard the Straits of Mackinac ferry with his brother, Charles, and father, Leauvett.
Estleman at age five in his kindergarten photograph. He grew up in Dexter, Michigan.
Estleman in his study in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, in the 1980s. The author wrote more than forty books on the manual typewriter he is working on in this image.
Estleman and his family. From left to right: older brother, Charles; mother, Louise; father, Leauvett; and Loren.
Estleman and Deborah Morgan at their wedding in Springdale, Arkansas, on June 19, 1993.
Estleman with actor Barry Corbin at the Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City in 1998. The author won Outstanding Western Novel for his book Journey of the Dead.
Loren signing books at Eyecon in St. Louis in 1999. He was the guest of honor.
Estleman and his fellow panelists at Bouchercon in 2000. From left to right: Harper Barnes, John Lutz, Loren D. Estleman, Max Allan Collins, and Stuart M. Kaminsky.
Estleman and his wife, Deborah, signing together while on a tour through Colorado in 2003.
Estleman with his grandson, Dylan Ray Brown, shown here writing an original st
ory on “Papa’s” typewriter at Christmastime in 2005 in Springfield, Missouri.
Estleman with his granddaughter, Lydia Morgan Hopper, as he reads her a bedtime story on New Year’s Eve 2008. Books are among Lydia’s favorite things—and “Papa” is quick to encourage this.
Estleman and his wife, Deborah, with the late Elmer Kelton and his wife, Anne Kelton, in 2008. Estleman is holding his Elmer Kelton Award from the German Association for the Study of the Western.
Estleman in front of the Gas City water tower, which he passed by on many a road trip. After titling one of his novels after the town, Estleman was invited for a visit by the mayor, and in February 2008 he was presented the key to the city.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1998 by Loren D. Estleman
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
978-1-4532-2059-7
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
A Biography of Loren D. Estleman
Copyright