Sinister Heights

by Loren D. Estleman

  “You can get it from Mrs. Stutch after I tell her.” I reminded her about the garage door and hung up.

  I stopped at the counter to buy cigarettes. The woman behind it, a native by the look of her, glasses with swoop frames and just enough peroxide to turn her hair the color of mud, looked at me, then glanced out the window to see if I had a rig parked out front. I’d wiped my face, combed most of the dirt and dust out of my hair, and shaken out my jacket, but the stink of battle takes a long time to wear off. She slapped down a pack of Winstons, took my money, and gave me change.

  The locals, who had moved off to watch me in silence, started up again as I hit the door.

  “So far they’re leaving the residential sections alone. Whoever their fight’s with it ain’t us.”

  “I don’t figure to take that chance. I broke out the collection and armed everyone in the house. Tim Junior’s got the .22. Any gear-jammer aims his bucket at my place is gonna get a windshield full of lead.”

  “If you’re that worried, what the hell you doing down here?”

  “We’re out of beer.”

  Rayellen Stutch’s house was dark except for a light in the kitchen window and the overhead bulbs burning in the garage. Mrs. Campbell had opened the door on the left side, as before. I drove the Ram inside, got out, took the automatic out of my pocket, and stuck it down inside my waistband in front. I didn’t go to the side door. Instead I walked around to where the Land Rover was parked.

  It hadn’t been moved. The chunks of dried mud and clay that had fallen off one of the rear tires still lay on the concrete, preserving the tread in relief. I crouched, picked up one of the pieces, and crumbled it in my fist. I sniffed at the granules. The dank potatoey smell put me back in the escape shaft between Connor Thorpe’s office and the abandoned plant building. When crushed, the grains of sand separated themselves from the hardened clay. I dusted off my palms and straightened. Rayellen Stutch was standing in the side doorway.

  She wore a long black dressing gown that shimmered like her hair, which hung loose about her shoulders Indian-princess fashion, and the toe of one black velvet slipper stuck out under the hem where it rested on the threshold. The light coming from behind her showed off her slim athletic build. The cleanly curving lines were like something shaped by human hands and baked in a kiln and then enameled. “Hard-fired,” she’d called herself. I’d seen the same body in boxing trunks and a halter, but that was daytime, and we hadn’t been alone, and there had been no black satin present.

  “Amos? Are you all right? You look worse every time I see you.”

  “I was buried alive for a little while. I can’t recommend it.” I didn’t tell her about getting shot. I didn’t feel like answering unnecessary questions. “I got the boy out. He’s okay. He’s on his way to his grandmother’s, like Red Riding Hood.”

  “What about Connor?”

  “I had a little trouble there. I may have killed him. I’m pretty sure I killed one of his security men. The plant’s gone, too. I didn’t do that, but it was my idea, kind of. I wasn’t expecting anything so thorough. They took out part of the city while they were at it. Not enough, but then the Romans left some of Carthage for the archaeologists. What we really need is a good old-fashioned flood.” I was babbling. I reached up to push my mouth shut. My hand got as far as the automatic and rested there.

  “Come inside.”

  “Not yet. I like the fresh air. Tonight I added claustrophobia to my little shop of horrors.”

  “You can’t live without sleep.”

  “I’m not sure you’re right. Not having slept got me through this night. When you’re too tired to think you become all senses and instinct. You see things you might overlook otherwise. Smell smells you might not have noticed. It’s like quitting smoking, or starting cocaine. Or so I’m told. I’m thinking of trying one or the other.”

  She touched her throat. It was entirely the right gesture, and the timing was in place. All it needed was a locket on a tiny gold chain; a gift from a lover’s dead hand. “Amos, why did you come back?”

  “To get the dirt.” I snickered, but gave it up halfway through as a bad job. The pitch was a little high, for one thing, borderline hysterical. But I’d needed the laugh track. “Earlier tonight you told me you never go the Stutch plant. Did you mean that as in not ever, or as in ‘I never watch television’?”

  She said, “Leland took me there once, just after we were married. Of course he wanted to show me off. That was the only time. Everyone was very polite. Subservient, actually, like tenant farmers groveling in front of the landlord’s new lady. He ran that kind of shop. I’ve never felt more out of place in my life. It wasn’t an experience I cared to repeat. Why did you ask me that?”

  “The Heights may be right out of Yoknapatawpha County, but the streets are all paved; never mind that the asphalt’s cheaper than what’s on the books. The only spot in four square miles you can get serious mud on your tires is on the driveway up to the plant, where the heavy trucks keep breaking through the crust. It’s built on a hill made of clay and sand, with no little thanks to the glacier that cleared the land for this mistake. You ought to have someone hose down the Land Rover’s tires more often.” I still had some dirt on my hand. I wiped it on the front of the Windbreaker.

  She realized she was stroking her throat. She let the hand drift back down to her side, like a leaf. “I—I never use the Land Rover, except when there’s snow. When I drive I take one of the roadsters. On special occasions I ride in the stretch.”

  “Who uses the Rover?”

  “I do.”

  I knew who was speaking before I turned. You know you’re tired when you start asking questions you know the answers to. Mrs. Campbell, looking grayer than ever in her jail matron’s uniform with her silvering hair pinned back as tight as a bathing cap, stood on the concrete pad outside the pull-up door. The harsh light from the ceiling bulbs inside carved black hollows under her eyes and at the corners of her unpainted lips. Something glinted in her right hand: a small, nickel-or chrome-plated revolver. There are guns in two out of three households in metropolitan Detroit. They run prettier and more expensive in the better neighborhoods, but they make the same ugly holes.

  “Keep your hand where it is,” she said.

  It was still against the front of the Windbreaker. I didn’t move it.

  “Mrs. Campbell—” Rayellen said.

  “Please be quiet. It’s like when I play the piano. I have to go back and start from the beginning when I’m interrupted. That’s why I left the Detroit Symphony. They were renovating the Hall and we were supposed to rehearse right through the jackhammers. Fortunately, I had a fallback job.”

  “Working for Mrs. Stutch,” I said.

  “Mr. Stutch,” she corrected. “There was no Mrs. then. I worked for him since I was very young. He was very supportive when I left to play professionally. Not at all condescending when I came back to fluff and fold his sheets, stinking of old man as they did. And the salary was generous. He even put a provision in his will to keep me on after his death, with regular raises and a bonus at Christmas. I make more than most headwaiters.”

  “Not as much as five million, even if we’re talking Tavern on the Green,” I said. “Or was the split better than fifty-fifty? Usually the one who maps out the job takes the bigger cut.”

  “Thank you for that much, at least. Most men would think Connor was in charge.”

  “Not if their name was Borgia or Barrow. Thorpe didn’t have the imagination required. Also he had nothing to gain on his own from eliminating a fresh crop of heirs. That’s why I couldn’t figure out why he was against tracking them down from the start. It had to be a partnership, and the partner had to have a stake. That’s why I suspected Mrs. Stutch.”

  Rayellen took in her breath. “I thought we settled that before.”

  “We took it as far as it could go as of then. Later, when Thorpe said Matthew was more trouble than he was worth, he added, ‘I told her h
e would be.’ Okay, so I misplaced the object of the feminine pronoun; then wasn’t now. I don’t take jobs to flush out quail for the shooting, so I decided that story about doing right by Cecilia Willard after all these years was just a blind. If so, it worked. I tracked them down.”

  “It wasn’t a blind,” Rayellen said. “A wrong was done.”

  I said, “I’m glad to hear you say it. You’re not as hard-fired as you like to make out, even when you’re trying to seduce the bloodhound. That bit about DNA changing the dynamics of the paternity suit, and throwing a lot of money now at a problem that might clean you out in court later, made you look a little less like the gooey all-day sucker a woman in your position can’t afford to be taken for. That’s what all this New Age cynicism gets you: Shylock for a role model, Attila chairing the Dream Team. But I think writing your housekeeper into your will is taking things too far the other way. Especially this housekeeper.”

  Mrs. Campbell made a noise in her throat. It was like a clump of earth striking a coffin. “Is that what you think it was about? Sweepings from thirteen million annually, out of a billion-dollar-a-year enterprise? How do you justify charging a fee to act as anyone’s detective?”

  “I validate parking.”

  I didn’t like the theory either. It had more holes in it than a hip-hop band and gave me a headache besides. I didn’t try to defend it. The Dodge key with the panic button was in the Ram’s ignition a dozen feet away, and anyway you can’t work a pin like that twice, even in different garages. She was going to need the opportunity to talk if it would keep her from remembering the pistol in my waistband.

  “As a matter of fact, I have arranged for a substantial allowance,” Rayellen said.

  “That’s funny, too,” said the housekeeper. “An allowance from my stepmother.”

  And this time she opened her mouth and laughed. Even the crickets shut up. They thought a hungry owl was hooting.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-TWO

  I was just exhausted enough to take everything in with an unreal clarity, as through reflecting waves of heat in a desert, transmitting close-up details of fauna and flora in an oasis ten miles distant. I could see the cross-hatching in the skin of Mrs. Campbell’s face and the way the shadows exaggerated its stern lines, like a Greek mask designed to drive home the character’s state of mind for the dimmest spectator in the back row. I wondered who Mr. Campbell might have been, and if he’d ever seen her in that light. Maybe there never was a Mr. Campbell. I never found out.

  “My mother balanced the books up on the hill forty years,” she said. “They never exchanged a word during the first sixteen. Then Mr. Stutch came to her hot little office in the smelting room to discuss a change in the entry system. It was like Mount McKinley paying a visit. She never told me if anything happened that time. Probably nothing did. Mr. Stutch would have assigned his lust to its own department, somewhere between the power station and the glass facility. Whenever it started, it lasted twenty years. I came along after ten.

  “Mother never complained. According to the way she looked at things, she had nothing to complain about. She retired at fifty-eight with a full pension, and she died knowing her daughter had a place in the Stutch household, assisting the cook. I was fifteen—I said don’t move!” Light starred off the revolver’s shining barrel.

  I returned my hand to my chest, a couple of inches south of where it had been. In another hour I’d be close enough to grab the automatic and pick up a bullet on the way.

  She went on in the old tone. “I may be the only person still around who remembers the original Mrs. Stutch. When she was younger she avoided publicity, and when she got old and sick, no one saw her except her husband and children and her doctors and the servants who brought her meals to her in bed. I was one of the servants. She asked for me in particular. We never talked about anything but how she wanted her eggs cooked—she liked the yolks firm and would send them back if they were runny, I remember she was quite ruthless about it—but she followed my every movement with those sharp eyes. I would see her looking at me when she was talking about eggs, and know that she was studying my features and coloring and comparing them to her husband’s. I’m certain she knew. I’m just as certain it was she who arranged for me to take piano lessons. I was fascinated with the Steinway in the front parlor and when I wasn’t needed in the kitchen and Mr. Stutch was out I would climb onto the bench and try to pick out notes; she probably overheard me and found out who was playing from one of the other servants. I have no doubt she was the one who persuaded Mr. Stutch to arrange an audition with the Detroit Symphony when I turned twenty-one. He wouldn’t have considered refusing. Giving in was easier than discussing the truth. For all the talk about being a fearless pioneer and a savage competitor, he was a coward when it came to the really important things.

  “Old Mrs. Stutch died before I could disappoint her with my failure,” she said. “I suppose it was out of respect for her memory that Mr. Stutch welcomed me back to the staff. He never said a word about the time and money that had been wasted on me, never gave me cause to believe the thought ever occurred to him. I hate him more than any other man who ever lived.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder.” Rayellen spoke sympathetically, without pity. “You were old enough to understand when Carla Willard was born and the press covered Cecilia’s suit against Leland, and you must have known about the arrangements he made to support Carla after the case was dismissed. If it weren’t for his first wife, he’d never have done a thing for either of you. He supported you both, but he never gave you his name. What he gave you came from guilt, not love. Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have—”

  “You’re as bad as he was. You both snatched up a fistful of cash, and neither of you had the courage not to feel guilty about it. So you decided to write checks until you felt better. You think just because you’ve hiked the price you’re some kind of hero. That’s just inflation.

  “Well, I’m not much better,” she continued. “I want more. You can keep the name; it’s ugly, and I’ve never liked anyone who had it, including the first Mrs. Stutch. I’ll take the fortune. And I won’t feel guilty about it.”

  I said, “You forgot something. Your lever’s safe with his grandmother.”

  “I’m reasonable,” Mrs. Campbell said. “The situation’s changed again. I’ll settle for the ten million Connor proposed. He’s a better bargainer than he is a lover. All those wives just wore him down in bed. Rayellen—I’ll go ahead and call you Rayellen, since we’re related—you can set me up an account in the Caymans. I’ve watched you do it for yourself on the computer. Aren’t you glad we don’t have secrets? You could close it out later, of course, when my gun and I are gone. It wouldn’t be a smart idea. You can ring yourself with guards, all the new relatives, too. One day a guard will be pushing little Matthew on a swing and he’ll come down without a face. It wouldn’t matter much to him what happened to me after that. Ask Mr. Walker. His friend was sitting right next to him and his gun when she lost her head.”

  I heard Rayellen’s nails scratch the doorframe. She’d staggered and caught herself against it. The movement attracted Mrs. Campbell’s attention for an instant. I lowered my hand six inches. It still wasn’t far enough, and just to make it interesting my hand had begun to shake. Fatigue, loss of blood, and stress of the posttraumatic and present variety were kicking in like a triple hangover. I would have one shot, if I didn’t drop the gun first.

  “Messy picture,” I said. “You should stick to the piano and leave the artwork to your boss. Maybe set it to music for when you come back for another ten million.”

  “I’m not sorry about your friend. Why should I be? I didn’t know her. No guilt, remember. As for my coming back, we’ll have to wait and see. Connor told me his end of the ten would be as much as he needed to finish out. I’m younger. I want to travel. I wasn’t with the symphony long enough to go on tour. Concorde tickets and five-star hotels can really kick a hole in a girl’s budget. Als
o I’ll need a whole new wardrobe. The first thing I’m going to do is burn these gray rags. I won’t need to wear a disguise after tonight. Now put that hand back where it was.” Her face had gone smooth and tight. The shadows slid away in a sheet, leaving behind skin as white as polished bone. I did as she said.

  The garage shuddered delicately. Overhead, the pull-up door began sliding forward, its rubber rollers making almost no noise at all in the tracks. Rayellen had pushed the button next to the side doorframe.

  Mrs. Campbell was standing directly underneath. She stepped back reflexively and pulled the trigger, but the bottom edge of the door struck the end of the revolver; the bullet plucked at my jacket and whacked the back of the Land Rover. I jerked out the automatic and fired five shots practically in one piece, like a movie cowboy fanning his hogleg. The door was halfway down, only Mrs. Campbell’s lower half showing underneath. All five slugs tore through the bottom panel in a group no bigger than my fist. Her feet did a foxtrot, but I couldn’t tell if she’d been hit or if she was just backpedaling. The door touched down without a sound.

  I backed around the end of the Land Rover, jerked open the door on the driver’s side, and rested my forearms on top of it with the pistol steadied in both hands, using the door as a shield. I shouted to Rayellen to open the garage door. Then my hands began to shake for real. I forced myself to breathe and they settled down. I’d fired six, counting Andy at the plant. I didn’t know how many the gun carried. The next one would have to count.

  There was a pause, then the building shuddered again and the door lifted. My skin twitched. I ground my teeth to choke off the tremor before it got to my hands. Nothing would ever raise itself more slowly than the door of that garage; not the Titanic nor the lost city of Atlantis nor the Tigers’ pitching staff. It rose like the curtain on the last act of King Lear, operated by a crew that didn’t care for Shakespeare. But it rose, and it wasn’t two feet off the floor when I relaxed my shoulders and straightened.