Something Rotten, page 12
Whoops. I hadn’t considered that everyone who didn’t understand that message would want to know what it was all about.
“Claude wanted everything Dad had, couldn’t you see that?” Hamilton said. “He wanted the paper plant. He wanted respect. He wanted you. But the only thing he ever did to earn any of that was to kill my father.”
Mrs. Prince backed away. “Hamilton. Listen to yourself. Listen to what you’re saying!”
“Are you listening? You married the man who killed your husband!”
Mrs. Prince turned and walked back past me toward the house, putting me quite literally in the middle. I pretended to study a twig on the ground.
“Don’t walk away from me,” Hamilton told her.
Mrs. Prince kept walking.
“I said don’t walk away from me!” Hamilton yelled. It was barbaric and over the top and it made the hair on my arms stand up. I could see it had an effect on Mrs. Prince too. She froze, then slowly turned.
“Or what, Hamilton? Will you shoot me? Do you hate me that much?”
Faster than I could think to duck or yell, Hamilton whipped the rifle up to his shoulder and pulled the trigger. The air exploded. Mrs. Prince dropped to the ground.
“Hamilton, what the—” Then I saw somebody else behind Hamilton’s mother, a man dressed in bright orange camouflage. He staggered like he’d been punched in the chest, then fell backward like a dead man.
Hamilton hadn’t shot his mother, he’d shot Claude Prince.
Mrs. Prince crouched a few yards away, her hands on her head like she was practicing a tornado drill. Hamilton stood in shock, the gun still at his shoulder. I pushed the rifle down so it was aimed at the ground and rushed to Claude’s side.
Only when I got there, I saw that it wasn’t Claude Prince. It was Paul Mendelsohn, the family lawyer. He was staring at the sky like he couldn’t for all the world figure out why he was lying here in the forest on a damp Saturday morning. He was wearing what I guessed was Claude’s hunting vest from Hamilton’s description of it. It had been orange once, but a dark black-red stain was wicking its way out from his chest.
“Mr. Mendelsohn?” I asked. “Mr. Mendelsohn, can you hear me?”
“I just—I just came to get Mrs. Prince to sign some papers—” he muttered.
I saw now there was a wad of papers in his hand, and I took them from him and tossed them aside. I tore the vest open and saw where the blood was coming from, just north of his heart.
Apparently it was open season on lawyers.
I ripped my own vest off and pressed it into his wound, then fumbled my cell phone out of my pocket with one hand and flipped it open.
Out of area.
“Hamilton! Oh my God!” Mrs. Prince was crying behind me. “Hamilton, what have you done?”
“What have I done?” Hamilton asked. The question seemed to wake him up. “What have I done? Nothing worse than what he deserved! Nothing worse than murdering my father and marrying my mother!”
“Hamilton—” Mrs. Prince said, sobbing. “Oh, Hamilton.”
“It isn’t Claude, Hamilton,” I yelled. “It’s Olivia’s father, and he needs a hospital. Now.”
Hamilton and his mother stared at me like I was speaking Martian.
“Mrs. Prince,” I said, looking her right in the eyes. “Get back to the house and call an ambulance.”
Her universal translator kicked in, and she finally comprehended what I was saying. She nodded frantically and ran back up the path toward the house, giving me and the family lawyer a wide berth. Paul had slipped into unconsciousness while I’d been barking at the Princes, and I cursed. The wadded-up vest I held against his chest was getting hot too. Hot, wet, and sticky. I tried to reposition it, but it didn’t help.
There was no way around it. No matter what I did, I was going to have blood on my hands.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
An ambulance finally came for Paul Mendelsohn, and a police cruiser came for Hamilton. Ordinarily, the family lawyer would have been able to help him out of a jam like this. The trouble was, Hamilton had just shot the family lawyer.
The initial news on Olivia’s father was good—the bullet had shattered his shoulder blade but missed the things that made him tick. He’d be in the hospital for a while, but he’d live. It remained to be seen whether he’d press charges or not. He was still unconscious.
Hamilton was taken down to the station for questioning, then released. They asked me questions too, but I didn’t have to get taken downtown for it. I told them what I saw, but with the mute button on: We took a walk in the woods, Hamilton thought he saw a squirrel or a wildebeest or a lion or something, and he shot it. It turned out to be his ex-girlfriend’s dad.
Mrs. Prince was a mess, but Claude was there to console her just like always.
“It’s my fault,” he told her. “I sent Paul out there with those papers. If I hadn’t—”
I wondered if Claude had dressed the family lawyer up in his hunting vest and sent him to Hamilton on purpose, to test the waters. The thought gave me a shiver, which wasn’t helped any by the calculating look on Claude’s face when Mrs. Prince buried her face in his shirt. If Claude was willing to trade pawns in a chess match, who would be the next piece to fall?
After the fun of life support and police interrogation died down, the Prince house got quiet. I passed through it like a ghost, trying to decide who I was going to haunt next. I wanted to rattle the chains for Claude, but it would have to wait until things cooled down. Instead I went out by the pool, where Hamilton lay hiding behind his sunglasses. He looked pretty relaxed for having shot a man this morning, but I think the half-empty bottle of whisky by his side had a lot to do with that.
I sat down on the lounge chair beside him but didn’t say a word. He knew I was there just the same.
“Don’t,” he told me. “Just . . . don’t.”
The French doors to the house banged open and Olivia Mendelsohn marched around the pool to where we sat. Her face was streaked with tears, and her fists were balled for action.
“Stand up,” she told Hamilton.
He didn’t budge.
“Stand up, you bastard!” she screamed.
Hamilton pulled himself up with extraordinary effort and stood in front of her. He swayed.
“Take off your sunglasses and look me in the eyes.”
He did what she asked, dragging them slowly away from his face. His look was vacant, but somehow he trained his gaze on the girl in front of him.
I figured it would be a slap, but Olivia reared back and socked him a good one in the eye. He almost went down from the booze and the belt, but I was there to catch him—and hold him in case the alcohol made him forget he’d never hit a woman. Hamilton shrugged me off like he knew what I was doing and was insulted, but his head must have been ringing from that shot and he let me push him back down in his chair.
It hurts like hell when you hit a guy right, and Olivia held her hand like she’d broken it. She also wasn’t complaining. She didn’t say a word to me as she turned and stalked away, and I didn’t expect her to.
Hamilton raised a hand to his already swelling eye and recoiled in pain.
“Sonuva bitch,” he moaned.
There was an ice bucket on the table for Hamilton’s drinks, and I put a couple of handfuls in a towel and offered it to him. Hamilton snatched it and winced as he put it to his face.
“So, you’re there to catch me, but not stop her from punching me.”
“I figure you had it coming.”
Hamilton slid his sunglasses back on and tried to work the ice bag up under them.
“You’re a strange kind of friend, Horatio.”
“Yeah,” I told him, “but don’t forget that I am one. And you’re running out of them.”
Hamilton probably would have questioned my friendship further if he’d known where I went after I left him. I had promised him that I wouldn’t tell a soul, that we would solve the puzzle of his father’s murder without anyone else’s help, but as far as I was concerned even a double-swear spit-shake deal was over when somebody got shot.
Denmark was a tiny town, and it wasn’t terribly difficult to find the local cop house. I parked my off-white, off-cool Volvo in one of the parking places out front and went inside. It was a small building, just one room with a couple of little cubicles to one side. Wanted posters and public service announcements were tacked onto every free space on the wall, and there was a distinct smell of leather polish and chewing tobacco in the air. Two messy desks sat behind a long, high counter that separated the officers of the law from the common rabble like me, and the only policeman in the joint sat at one of them eating a sandwich and reading a newspaper.
The venetian blinds on the door announced my presence with a rattle and a slap.
“Help you?” the cop said. His accent was pretty thick, but luckily I’m fluent in both English and Appalachian.
“My name’s Horatio Wilkes. I’m a friend of Hamilton Prince. Staying with him for a few weeks this summer.”
“Gonna stay with him in jail too?” He snorted at his own joke.
“Has Mr. Mendelsohn pressed charges?”
“Naw, the shyster’s too loyal. Woke up and told us it was just an accident. No charges. Unless you got something more to add . . .”
“No. Not about that. About a murder.”
His eyebrows went up at that one.
“Murder?”
“Is there a detective I can talk to?”
The officer grinned like I was an idiot. “Oh, I think I can handle it. Let’s see,” he said, standing and patting his pockets. “Now, let me just find my detective’s notebook.” He grabbed his sandwich wrapper and smoothed it out on the counter that separated us.
“Here now. That oughta work.” He clicked a ballpoint pen and grinned at me. “Now, who’s been murdered?”
I hate adults who treat teenagers like we’re still in grade school, but I needed this buffoon to listen to me so I swallowed it.
“Rex Prince. My friend Hamilton’s dad.”
He licked the pen and said “Rex Prince” as he wrote it. “The one who’s already dead, you mean?”
“Already murdered. Yes.”
“Doctors said that was cancer. Not likely to miss a thing like that, eh?”
“I think he was misdiagnosed. Was there an autopsy done?”
He laughed. “I think you’ve been watching too much TV, son. Tell me, how are you so sure he was murdered?”
“He said so. In a videotape he left for his son. He said someone was trying to kill him.”
That got the guy serious for a second.
“You got this video with you?”
“No. But I can get it.”
He nodded and leaned forward conspiratorially. “And uh, who do you suspect did it . . . Professor Plum, in the billiard room, with the rope?”
He had himself a good laugh at that one, and I learned he’d ordered onions on his sandwich.
“No,” I told him. “I think it was Claude Prince, in the entertainment room, with the poison.”
He stopped laughing real quick and wadded up the sandwich wrapper.
“That’s a pretty serious charge, young man. Claude Prince is well-liked in this town. Especially down here at the station. He’s a volunteer firefighter, member of the Fraternal Order. Hell, he’s almost an honorary deputy.”
I closed my eyes and cursed my own stupidity. Why hadn’t I remembered those honorary trophies in Claude’s office? Of course Claude had the local police in his pocket. He’d never earned anything, but you give enough money and anybody will make you a member.
“You say there’s a videotape?” the policeman asked me.
Yeah, I thought, but the only way you’re gonna see it is on the six o’clock news. I needed an honest cop, and that might mean having to call my sister Miranda.
Before I could answer him, the door behind me clattered open and Claude Prince strolled into the office.
“Hello, Claude.”
“Heya, Jimmy,” Claude said. Great. He was on a first-name basis with the local constabulary. Smart, Horatio. Very smart.
“Just here to settle this mess with my son,” said Claude. He turned to me. “Hello, Horatio. I’m surprised to see you here.”
“He’s here with some very interesting information,” Officer Jimmy said.
“Actually, I was just leaving,” I told them. “I’ll tell your ‘son’ you were down here looking out for him.”
I pushed past Claude before Jimmy could rat me out, but I was just delaying the inevitable. I slid behind the wheel and turned the key and the Volvo coughed to life. Inside, Jimmy was leaning over the counter, no doubt giving Claude the rundown on my accusation. He pointed in my direction, and Claude glanced over his shoulder and caught my eyes.
So he knew for sure now we were onto him. Fine.
I threw the car in reverse.
Game on.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I flew down the road to the plant and talked my way in through the gate. Hamilton’s pals Frank and Bernard weren’t on duty yet—they worked the late shift—so a different security guard met me at the little concrete bunker.
“You say Hamilton sent you down here for something he left? We ain’t found nothing.”
I walked inside the guardhouse like I’d been there a hundred times before.
“We were down here the other night saying hello to Frank and Bernard,” I said, doing some blatant name-dropping. It seemed to work, and the guard relaxed a little. Inside the control room, another guard sat half watching the bank of television monitors scanning the plant grounds. He was surprised to see me walk in, but not so much that he could be bothered to get up.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m just looking for something Hamilton left the other night.” I spied the coffee tin up on the shelf and hauled it down.
“Here we go. Thanks, guys.”
The guy who greeted me outside stood in the doorway.
“Hamilton didn’t leave that,” he told me. “That thing’s been there for ages.”
“Long as I’ve been working here, easy,” the other guard said. “Ain’t nothing in it.”
I gave the can a rattle, partially to prove to myself that what I wanted was still in there. It was.
“There is now,” I told them. “Uh, listen guys,” I said low, like we were pals sharing a secret. “Did I say Hamilton and I came down here to say hello the other night? I meant to say we came down here for a little nightcap. I just didn’t want to get Frank and Bernard into hot water, you know? Thought we’d uh, get rid of the evidence, so to speak.”
The boys nodded and grinned, sharing a conspiratorial look of their own.
“That Hamilton, he’s a good kid,” one of them said. “Never too good to come down here and, uh, ‘say hello.’ ”
“Yeah, he can be cool like that.”
The guards let me go, and I went outside and opened the Volvo’s trunk. I rearranged the box of used books and the tire jack and the toolbox, and hid the tin can under my emergency blankets. There wasn’t a bottle in there, of course; it was the videotape of Hamilton’s father telling us he’d been poisoned. I couldn’t leave it in the car for good—just the heat of a Tennessee summer afternoon could melt the thing—but I certainly wasn’t going to bring it into the house until I had somewhere to hide it.
The 4x4 Claude had driven down to the police station was already parked out in front of the house when I drove up, which meant he’d hightailed it back here trying to beat me home. I left the car for the valet service and took the front steps three at a time. Crashing into the house and bolting upstairs to the entertainment room, I found Roscoe and Gilbert camped out in front of the giant screen, as usual. No one else was in the room. They spared me a glance and went back to watching an old movie called Strange Brew. Panting a little from the dash, I crossed to the liquor cabinet and had a look. The bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label—Hamilton’s father’s favorite drink—was gone. I laughed once mirthlessly under my breath and nodded. Then I had a moment’s panic.
“Hey, you guys didn’t drink the Johnnie Walker, did you?”
“Naw, man,” said the thin one. “And we ain’t seen nobody come in here and take it neither.”
The fat one gave him a nudge.
I closed the cabinet. “Thanks for clearing that up.”
Either Claude had gotten it sometime in the night, or he’d just burst in on Chang and Eng here and promised them Ultimate Fighting Championship Twenty-six on pay-per-view not to mention they’d seen him take it. It looked like my hunch was better than Quasimodo’s.
I had to think. Roscoe and Gilbert were like a mental black hole, so I wandered down the hall to my room. I stopped short when I saw one of the hired help tidying my personal effects.
“Um, can I help you?”
“Excusa,” the fellow said. “Just straightening up.”
“Straightening up what?” I asked.
“The room, señor. It was a mess. Clothes and things all over the place.”
I’m kind of anal about keeping my clothes folded and in drawers, not on the floor. Hamilton and Olivia would probably use that as exhibit Q in the case for me being a control freak, but there it is. Long story short, I didn’t leave the room all messed up.
“There were clothes on the floor? Thrown around?”
“Sí,” he said with a nod.
Leave it to a Prince to tear somebody’s room apart and then call in a servant to clean up afterwards. Claude had beaten me home not only to snag the last bottle of Johnnie Walker Hamilton’s father had been drinking before he died—which I suspected was laced with the same weak poison he’d been drinking steadily for weeks, maybe months—but also to ransack my room looking for the videotape.
Game on, indeed.
Hamilton appeared at my door, his sunglasses barely hiding the huge black ring around his left eye.
“Hey,” he said, still drowsy. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” He saw the guy behind me folding clothes and putting them away. “What’s he doing?”
