Hide Away, page 20
“Oh, you know. Appearances. Of the town, its moral fiber.”
“He didn’t think it was that immoral to associate with the same man who kidnapped me.”
“He associates with a wide variety of people. He doesn’t do a background check on everyone he meets.”
“Maybe he should.”
“That woman. . .Beverly, isn’t it?”
Adam nodded, knowing full well she knew Beverly’s name. After all, she “had coffee” with her the other day. And Adam had the sudden feeling he knew precisely why Zelda wanted to meet him today, which was verified by her next question.
“She’s a lovely woman, and you seem to be getting closer to her. But surely you understand she’s not right for you?”
“Like you weren’t right for me? Or more the reverse—I wasn’t right for you.”
“Adam, I didn’t come here to quarrel. I’m not in the mood for it.” She grabbed her napkin as the butternut cider bisque arrived and took a tentative taste of the soup. “As good as always.”
He had to agree with her there. He also had to agree he wasn’t in the mood for a fight with her. So he kept it apolitical. “Yep. Pretty good.”
After a couple more spoonfuls of the soup, she said, “My mother isn’t doing well. It’s the rheumatoid arthritis acting up again.”
“Sorry to hear that. The methotrexate not working anymore?”
“Not as much. The doctors are thinking they’ll try biologics. They’re genetically engineered proteins.”
“Hope it works.”
Zelda drew circles in her soup with the spoon. “She tells me all the time what a mistake I made by divorcing you.”
“Kalinda said that? Thought she hated me.”
“That’s what she wanted people to think. Mom had such a rotten childhood, being abandoned at a gas station. She finds it hard to trust anyone, but she did trust you.”
“I guess I’m flattered.”
They continued eating their soup in silence, Adam struggling for what to say. He was married to the woman sitting across from him for ten years, and yet he couldn’t think of anything to talk about. Make that anything “safe” to talk about.
She only ate half her soup then pushed it away. “I overheard something. Something Titus said, and it made me troubled.”
He waited expectantly and put his spoon down to focus on her.
“It was his end of a phone conversation, so I’m not sure who he was talking to. But he said he ‘hoped this would teach Detective Dutton a lesson and keep him in line.’ I can’t believe he was behind framing Harlan. But I don’t know what he might be talking about.”
Adam wracked his brain, trying to think of anything other than Harlan’s case that would fill that bill. He knew the mayor wouldn’t truly rest until Adam was fired. Or worse.
“I heard him say something about a property bond, Adam. Did you secure Harlan’s bail with our house?”
“With my house, no. It was Agnes Flamm, a former antiques store owner who’s setting up a new wine shop. I guess antiques people stick together in times of need.” He wasn’t about to add that Agnes was Beverly’s friend. “Was there anything else your husband said that’s worrying you?”
“Not recently. He mostly talks shop or rants and raves about Vermont’s cap on political action committees. The other day I heard him going on and on about some thefts. Minerals, rocks, dirt, something like that.”
“Rare earths?”
“You know how I am with science. I flunked chemistry. Twice.”
Creighton Querry’s case suddenly got more interesting. If Mayor Lehmann was involved somehow, that opened up multiple cans of political and legal worms.
He was still mulling that over when he noticed Zelda’s blouse sleeve had pushed up further when she rested her elbow on the table. He grabbed her arm and pulled it closer to him. Her eyes widened as he fingered the needle marks, and she pulled her arm out of his grasp.
“When did you start shooting smack?”
She picked at her earring so violently, it threatened to fall out. “Don’t get angry, Adam. I got bored. It’s only a phase. I can quit any time.”
“Did Lehmann get you into this?”
She didn’t reply, but her look toward the windows and away from him spoke volumes. He said, “I should turn him in. I should turn the both of you in.”
“But you won’t.”
Adam rubbed his eyes, trying to quell the desire to speed over to the mayor’s house, tie him to a tree and run one of Harlan’s swords through him. Instead, he reached for her hand, gently this time. “I won’t turn you in if you’ll go to a doctor about this. Get him to prescribe some Suboxone.”
“Adam, I—”
“Promise me.”
She rubbed along his thumb with her own. “You do still care. I knew you did.” Then she looked at him with a watery smile. “I promise.”
He relaxed and held onto her hand. Maybe Zelda’s mother had a hint of all this. She’d always seemed like the perceptive type. And he knew she was probably right—if Zelda had stayed married to Adam, this likely would never have happened. But Zelda hadn’t stayed married to Adam. And now she was hitched to the closest thing to either a non-jailed or non-comatose enemy Adam had.
He wanted to hold her, tell her everything was going to be all right. But they were already in dangerous territory if one of Lehmann’s spies reported back to him about this “brunch” of theirs. Adam could take what Lehmann dished out, but the part of him that still did care about Zelda didn’t want Lehmann taking out his anger on her.
So he said simply, “Want some cake?”
Chapter 34
Cray Querry was mostly silent on the ride from Ironwood Junction to Concord, New Hampshire, as Adam filled him in on the case to date. Then Cray turned the tables by filling Adam in on his rare earths case while Adam listened.
As they arrived at a modest-looking house with Georgian architectural roots, Cray said, “So, Beverly Laborde was at your house when that bomb went off?”
Adam gave him a sideways glare. “Don’t go there, Cray. It was business-related, okay?”
“Business, right.” Cray hauled himself out of the car. “Let’s go do some business, shall we? The real kind that is.”
They knocked on the door which opened to reveal an elderly man, eighty-ish, with a surprising lack of white hair to go with his facial map of wrinkles. Bill Rotheimer guided them to an old-fashioned den with vintage Queen Anne chairs and antique glass lamps. Adam had a momentary twinge at the sight of the antiques, thinking of Harlan.
Adam thanked Rotheimer for letting them drop by after taking a page from Beverly and introducing Cray as his “assistant.” Then he asked, “I hope you don’t mind if we ask about your late brother Payton’s lawsuit with Wallace Ryall.”
The other man’s face darkened. “That evil bastard. A frivolous lawsuit, but Ryall pushed it through the courts. Payton fought hard and won eventually, but not before he’d lost a lot more than money.”
“I understand his health failed him afterward.”
“Health, yes. He became so obsessed, he lost his job with the bank. His wife left him because he couldn’t let it go. And she turned the kids against him, too.”
“Kids?” Adam couldn’t imagine sixty-year-olds being so easily swayed.
Rotheimer explained, “My brother married a much younger woman, Mori, about fortyish. They had a couple of small kids when all this happened.”
Adam struck the kids off his list of possible suspects in Wallace’s murder, and he’d already learned the wife was in Europe when the murder happened. “Must have been hard on you, too.”
“I hated Wallace Ryall. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I heard about the murder. You want to know if I did it.”
Adam stared at the man. That was direct and to the point. “We need to cover all bases. And hear your thoughts about the victim and any persons who might have wanted him dead.”
“The news reports didn’t say how he died, but like most of my friends, I’ve got ail-itosis.”
“Ail-itosis?”
“My heart’s on the fritz, my kidneys are barely hanging in there, and I’ve got one new hip and two new knees, all titanium.”
Adam had noted the man’s shuffling gait when he led them inside. It wasn’t impossible he’d be able to run a sword through Ryall but highly unlikely. Not that he couldn’t have hired someone else to do it for him.
He started to ask about those friends of his, when Rotheimer added, “And I’ve got an alibi. That’s what you need, right?”
“It certainly helps to know where people are when something violent occurs.”
Rotheimer pulled out a piece of paper from a pocket and handed it over. “That’s my doctor. I was in the hospital for tests the day Ryall died.”
Adam took the paper and smiled. “Thanks, and I hope the results of those tests were in your favor.”
“At my age, they’re never in your favor. But the doc says I’m good for another year if I live right. Whatever that means. Hardly a day goes by that some study says something you’ve done all your life is bad. Until the next day, another study says, no, it’s good.”
“Mr. Rotheimer, your brother’s lawsuit involved a business deal, is that correct?”
“That Wallace fellow duped my brother into investing in some pie-in-the-sky project of his. He was a pretty talented woodworker, near as I understand it. Custom skis, or snowboards, or boogie boards, or something. It had to do with that.”
“Did any of your brother’s friends have any dealings with Wallace Ryall?”
“You mean, did they kill him? Nah, they’ve all got ail-itosis, too. It was brutal what that lawsuit did to my brother, but people move on, that’s how it goes. When you don’t know how much time you have left, you tend to want to spend it on family. ‘Cause you never if you’ll see them again.”
That brought an image of Harlan to Adam’s mind, and his distress must have shown on his face because Rotheimer added, “Sorry not to be much help, Detective Dutton.”
Adam smiled reassuringly. “Every bit of information helps. To rule something in, you have to rule other things out.”
After he and Cray had bid the older man farewell, they headed for the car as Cray said, “That man didn’t have anything to do with your murder, you know that?”
“He could have hired—”
“No, he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. I got instincts, you got instincts, we both know it.”
Adam sighed. “Hope springs eternal.”
As they drove off, Cray asked, “We going to see my contact next?”
“That’s the plan. And thanks for the tip.”
“When you told me about your Sergeant Moody, it rang a microscopic bell. Okay, not so microscopic. Former colleague of his is a friend of a friend. Didn’t have very many good things to say. Make that no good things to say.”
“Which is why this may be the highlight of my week.”
Cray laughed. “Just follow my directions, and pick up the tempo, slowpoke. You drive like a little old lady. Actually, I’ve known little old ladies who drove faster.”
Cray had set up the meeting, and when Adam reached their destination, he did a double-take. The term “dive” was a polite way of describing the falling-down wooden structure held up by hope and a prayer and rusty nails. Half a dozen Doberman Pinschers were penned in a caged-in area in the back.
Adam looked at Cray. “You sure this is the place?”
“Yep, come on.”
They entered and spied a man about Cray’s height sporting a blond buzz cut and a black eyepatch who was working on a ‘60s-vintage Chevy. He turned to them with a scowl, but at the sight of Cray, he started smiling. “You owe me twenty bucks, Cray.”
Cray grabbed his wallet and handed over a twenty. “You cheat at poker, Joey.”
Joey McCullock grabbed the bill. “I’m just good. But you won’t admit it.” He gave Adam a close scrutiny. “Detective Dutton, I assume?”
Adam nodded. “Cray says you know Sergeant Mike Moody?”
Joey snorted. “Knew, as in we were colleagues.”
“In the Concord police department.”
“That’s right. Until he pushed me out.”
Adam kept his expression blank but wasn’t sure about Cray’s tip after that. A man with an axe to grind wasn’t the best character witness. “How’s that?”
“He’s very competitive. Wants to be first in everything. Has aspirations to climb the blue ladder, chief or higher someday. Anyway, he wanted our chief to think he was hot shit, so he planted evidence at a crime scene.”
“Drugs?”
“Heroin. The perp was trash, I’ll hand you that, but planting evidence is not in my code. When it was found out, Moody blamed me. He’s got the connections, I don’t.”
“Connections as in...”
“He’s cousins with your Mayor Lehmann, for one. Was dating a Concord councilman’s daughter at the time, too. Me, I’m a poor farmer’s kid.”
“Ah. You didn’t appeal?”
“What good would it do? Although you’d think that with his record, questions would have been asked long before he got this far.”
“Record?” Adam looked at Cray, who shrugged.
“Moody was in the army for a while. Discharged dishonorably for fighting and other code violations. Worked in an explosives unit.”
“And no one else questioned this planted evidence scheme?”
“A lot of the guys were suspicious. They knew it wasn’t like me. Most of ’em were sure it was Moody, but what could they do? They didn’t see it happen. Everybody was thrilled when he left, though, that’s a fact.”
Adam raised an eyebrow at that. He wanted to ask more questions, but Joey said, “Look, I got a work gig in forty-five minutes. Part-time security guard at a warehouse to pay the bills.”
Adam took the hint and thanked Joey for his time. When he and Cray were back in the car, he mused, “Was the pipe bomb courtesy of the red-bearded NAL thug Mr. X told me about? Or Sergeant Moody’s handiwork?”
Cray snorted. “I’d give ‘em fifty-fifty right now.”
“That puts me in a dilemma. I should alert the FBI and ATF working the bomb case, but they might think it’s sour grapes on my part about Moody. No evidence and all.”
“Hold off for a bit. Until you absolutely have to.” Cray scratched his chin. “This Mr. X fellow who thinks the Redbeard burglar is the bomber...you said he also thinks Redbeard has ties to the NAL and Reginald Forsythe’s goons? I thought Forsythe was in a coma after shooting himself.”
“Doesn’t mean he can’t have an accomplice from his one of his criminal pursuits who’s on a vengeance kick, does it?”
“Maybe it’ll help to know I’d heard of Ivon Kozak before, the guy Mr. X mentioned as being Redbeard’s boss.”
“How?”
“You’re going to love this. Mike Moody mentioned him to Joey McCulloch once.”
Adam stared at him. “Moody? In what context? Why didn’t you tell me sooner so I could ask Joey about it?”
Adam started to turn the car around when Cray stopped him. “Wouldn’t do any good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because I can tell you verbatim what Moody said. And because Joey doesn’t want to talk about Ivan Kozak. He’d clam up. Or toss you out on your ass.”
“Cray—”
“Ivan Kozak’s a nasty piece of work who has his tentacles into everything. Joey’s up for a job with the Nashua PD, and he doesn’t want to queer the deal.”
Adam uttered an exasperated sigh. “What did Moody say, then?”
“After Moody framed Joey for the planted evidence, Moody told Joey he should walk away. That he was friends with a guy who could make Joey regret it, if he didn’t.”
“Ivan Kozak.”
“The same. Joey wasn’t afraid for himself so much as he was his family. So, he walked. Resigned before he could get fired.”
“And the Nashua PD aren’t aware of the reason for his resignation?”
“It’s a small state. Word gets around. Let just say Moody’s the one who better watch his back if he tries to return. Or do anything funny.”
“I wish Joey the best of luck, then.”
“I’ll tell him that. He thinks highly of you.”
“Me? Why?”
“Your infamy precedes you, Dutton. You’re a regular Detective Do-gooder. In the best sense.”
“Thanks, I think.” Adam sniffed the air. “By the way, I keep getting a whiff of something that smells like fresh compost. Or wet sneakers. You changed colognes recently?”
“My sister’s a door-to-door cosmetics rep. I bought some cologne to make her happy. And believe me, you wanna keep Cherry happy. It’s called ‘Manly Muse.’ Like it?”
Adam rolled down the window and used his hands to push the air out. “Try some motor oil or baking soda or something.”
Cray laughed. “Now I know you hate it, I’ll put on double next time.”
“I’ve got a bunch of clothespins at home. Thanks for the warning.”
Dubious cologne aside, Adam was grateful to Cray for looking out for him, especially regarding Sergeant Mike Moody. But what Adam had thought was a simple case of zealous ambition was turning out to be something else altogether. If Moody and Redbeard both had ties to Ivan Kozak and Kozak had ties to Reginald Forsythe—who had painted a bullseye on Adam’s forehead—then Cray was right. It was fifty-fifty as to which of the two might behind the bombing at Adam’s house. And how did Harlan’s case and Ryall’s murder fit into all of this?
What was intended as a geographical detour with Cray for a brief Q&A had turned out to be a detour into some pretty dark waters. Adam just had to find the right bridge to get across it all.
Chapter 35
After dropping Mr. X off at his castle, Beverly headed over to the Apple Peel, a combination cider presser-brewery, gift shop, and cafe. She needed something to bring her down off her adrenaline high. Plus, the place had a small stage with live music like Agnes wanted to add to her wine shop. Beverly didn’t think it would hurt to do some scoping out the competition, and besides, Fern Gery had suggested they meet there.
