A Penny for Your Thoughts (37 page)

Still, a nearly audible sigh of relief seemed to sweep through the waiting policemen as the detective snapped handcuffs on Bennet’s wrists. They put down their guns and made jokes and laughed away the tension. I blew out a deep breath myself and headed for the tarmac.

I looked around as I walked, noting that the airport itself wasn’t much more than a big open field with one paved runway, a few gas pumps, a hangar, and a main building. There were about ten small private planes parked in a row alongside the hangar, and an old tower out behind the main building. That was about it.

Walking among the small crowd that had gathered, I tried to be unobtrusive but observant, watching as they pulled Bennet’s luggage from the plane and listening as they read him his rights. The pilot was claiming that he didn’t even know Alan and hadn’t ever met him before he was hired to fly him to Vermont.

As they were leading Alan to the car, he happened to look my way. Our eyes met and I held his gaze, thinking how hard it was to believe that I was looking into the face of a murderer, or at least an accomplice to murder.

I noticed movement off to my left, and I glanced that way, stunned to see a dented red pickup truck tearing into the parking lot. It came to a screeching halt, dust flying, and out jumped Monty Redburn, a high-powered rifle in his hands.

“Gun!” I screamed, dropping to the ground and flattening myself against the pavement. I heard a cracking boom and then more gunfire in response. “You liar!” Monty screamed from the parking lot. “You’re a liar! A thief and a liar!”

I clutched my hands around my head, too frightened to move. Finally, I heard people running, and I looked up, shocked to see Alan Bennet lying on the pavement, shot in the chest. In the parking lot, Monty had also been shot and apprehended by the police, his own blood seeping onto the leg of his pants as they handcuffed him.

Paramedics were laboring over Alan, who seemed to be unconscious but not dead. A bright red stain radiated from his chest in a jagged circle.

I turned and headed to the parking lot, wanting to come face-to-face with the man who had tried to kill me this morning. Keegan saw me and grabbed the sleeve of my jacket, pulling me back, away from the confusion. He gestured toward Monty, his voice soft.

“He look familiar to you?”

“Monty Redburn,” I said. “He tried to kill me this morning in a vehicular homicide. He very nearly succeeded.”

“
I
know it’s Redburn. But how do you know? What’s your connection with him?”

“Before today, not much. He’s been tailing me, trying to scare me. Yesterday, he lured me out to the cemetery and then pushed me into an open grave.”

“And you didn’t report that incident to the police?”

“It’s part of an ongoing investigation,” I said, shrugging. “I survived. I managed to get his prints, and I asked Duane to run them.”

Keegan grunted angrily.

“Sometimes I like to know the identity of the people who are trying to kill me,” I added sarcastically. “Surely that’s not a crime.”

“No,” he said. “But avoiding the police when you know you’re being sought for questioning isn’t exactly what I call being ‘mutually cooperative.’”

“You think I’ve been obstructing justice, Keegan?”

He rolled his eyes and let go of my sleeve.

“I think you’ve been biting the hand that feeds you,” he replied.

Then he stalked off, leaving me to feel guilty, knowing that in a way, I had done just that.

I watched all of the activity for a while, standing on the fringe of the crowd, watching as first one ambulance was loaded with the still-unconscious body of Alan Bennet and then another with the angry and struggling Monty Redburn. Once both vehicles sped away, I sought out Detective Sollie, who was filling out some paperwork near his car. I approached him carefully and apologized for avoiding them the first half of the day. He seemed distracted, but not angry the way Keegan had been.

“Can I ask you a question?” I inquired gingerly.

“Mm-hmm.”

“How do you guys know Monty Redburn? Why did his name send off red flags when we tried to run his prints?”

“You’re shameless, Webber,” I heard from behind me. I turned to see Keegan, hands on hips, lips pursed. He seemed irritated with me, but no longer truly angry.

“He’s been fencing some of Marion Smythe’s jewelry around town,” Sollie replied, obviously unaware of the dynamic between me and Keegan. “Because of his prior criminal history and his connection with the Smythes, he was at the top of the list of suspects.”

“Do you think that he and Alan and Judith all worked together to kill Wendell Smythe?”

The two men looked at each other, then Keegan exhaled slowly.

“Redburn’s got an ironclad alibi for the time of the murder,” Keegan said. “He may have been involved peripherally, but he definitely wasn’t there the day the man was killed.”

“So it couldn’t have been him I heard in the bathroom?”

The men looked off into the distance.

“Nope,” said Sollie. “Wasn’t there. That’s for certain.”

Keegan shook his head, confusion evident in his face.

“He’s a low-life scum with a long list of priors and a brief work history with the Smythes,” he said. “Beyond that, how he fits into this whole thing is anybody’s guess.”

Forty-Two

I needed to think. All I really wanted was to go somewhere all alone for a little peace and quiet while I sorted out my thoughts. But I still had to pick up Harriet and deliver her back to the train station. Looking at my watch, I decided that if I could find her cousin’s house without too much trouble, I would be able to get Harriet to the station in time for the next train, and then I could head for Fairmount Park or someplace where I could take a walk and clear my head.

The cousin lived in a small town in Montgomery County on a main highway. I found the road without too much trouble, and I finally slowed down at the 8100 block, stopping to turn in at a little red mailbox marked 8127.

The driveway dipped down to a small but very pleasant tree-covered lot with a tiny Cape Cod house perched in the center. The front door was wide open, so I parked my car and headed up the walk, noting the lovely geraniums blooming on each side of the front porch. When I arrived at the door, however, I nearly ran right into it. To my surprise, I realized the door wasn’t really open at all. It was shut tight and painted to look as if it were open.

My knock brought Harriet to the door, laughing when I told her what I’d done. As she led me into the house, she told me to be careful, that it was only a hint of things to come.

She wasn’t kidding. As we walked through a series of tiny rooms, we were assaulted on all sides by a sort of
trompe l’oeil
nightmare. There were “windows” painted into walls, furniture painted to look like animals, walls that seemed not to exist at all. Harriet led me to the kitchen, which was done up like ancient
ruins, painted with pillars and statues and crumbling walls, fallen to reveal lovely gardens and more statues “outside.”

I suppose it could’ve been lovely were it not so overdone. But then I looked at Harriet’s cousin, the woman sitting at the table, and I realized it probably suited her perfectly. She looked warm and friendly but eccentric in a paint-speckled shirt and overalls. She wore a baseball cap on her head over wiry gray curls, and she had the weather-lined face of someone who had been many places and seen many things.

Harriet introduced Lorraine as her “first cousin, once removed,” and the woman rose to shake my hand and offer me some coffee. I glanced at my watch and then reluctantly accepted. We needed to be on our way in ten minutes or so if Harriet wanted to make her train.

“We were just about to get out some of the old photo albums,” Harriet moaned when I told her we needed to leave soon. “Some of the family reunion pictures, from when I was younger and prettier, if you can imagine such a thing.”

I looked at Harriet, settled comfortably in the warm kitchen of her relative, and felt a twinge of guilt.

“Well, why don’t you stay, then?” I said, pulling out a wad of money and peeling off a few twenty dollar bills. “This should cover cab fare back to the station, not to mention a nice dinner.”

“If you say so,” she replied, grinning, taking the money from me and tucking it into her pocket.

I sat down then and joined them for coffee, thinking I needed to get going. My head felt like it was swirling with unanswered questions, my mind a blur. But it seemed impolite to drink and run, so I allowed myself ten minutes to unwind, sip coffee, and chat with the two older women.

As we talked, my eyes wandered out of the window beside the table. Though houses pressed in on both sides, the backyard was lovely, filled with autumn leaves, shady and beckoning. The end
of the property seemed oddly defined until I realized that it backed up on some sort of water.

“Is that a pond out there?” I asked, squinting to look through the bushes.

“A creek, sort of,” Lorraine replied. “A branch of the Schuylkill.”

“Lorraine’s grandson keeps a fishing boat out there,” Harriet said. “You can see it, propped up against that biggest tree.”

I looked, and sure enough, I could detect the glint of aluminum among the fallen leaves. Suddenly, I felt an urge, stronger than any I’d had in a long time, to run out there, slip that boat into the water, and go for a row.

“Harriet—”

“Oh boy, why’d I even mention it?” Harriet cried. “I can see it in your face already!”

“Just for half an hour,” I said, grinning at her. Then I looked hopefully at Lorraine. “You wouldn’t mind terribly, would you, if I borrowed your boat?”

It wasn’t exactly a canoe, but it would do. After flipping the heavy boat and dragging it to the water through what I hoped wasn’t poison ivy, I stood on the bank for a moment and caught my breath. My best canoe at home was a 60-pound, 16-footer. This sucker, though probably the same length if not shorter, surely weighed at least twice as much. Still, a boat was a boat, and I was nearly desperate for some time on the water. I put in one foot, grabbed the sides, and pushed off with the other, settling onto the bench as I quietly sailed forward toward the deeper part of the creek.

I had left my jacket and purse with Harriet so that all I carried with me now was a pair of old wooden oars. I slid them through the oar locks and into the water and gave a stroke, the feel of them heavy but comfortable in my hands.

Ah, blessed water! I looked back at the bank one last time, memorizing the landmarks that would indicate home. Then I took
off, rowing even and hard up the creek as fast as I could manage in the unwieldy fishing boat.

I didn’t exactly glide, but still it was better than nothing. I found a steady pace and eventually settled into a comfortable rhythm.

The view was lovely on both sides of the bank—modest homes at first, their cluttered yards filled with swing sets and trampolines and sandboxes. Eventually, as the creek became wider, the homes became larger and more luxurious, their manicured lawns sweeping down to the water from ornate stone decks.

Still, for all of the lovely houses, I didn’t see any people outside enjoying their yards on this quiet weekday afternoon. I knew they were all out working, just as I should’ve been. With that thought, I sighted a bridge up ahead and decided to do my turnaround there and head back in.

I rowed at a faster pace all the way to the bridge, working up a sweat, bringing up my heart rate. Then I picked up the oars and held them over the water, gliding as I sailed under the bridge. I looked up as I drew under, not surprised to see what looked like a thousand splatters of bird droppings, several abandoned nests, and a few tiny bats nestled among the eaves. I coasted to a stop about ten feet on the other side, did a careful sweep and brace, and eventually worked myself around toward the opposite direction.

The ride back was slower and more thoughtful as I allowed my mind to turn toward all of the happenings of this day. I had seen two men get shot right in front of my eyes. I wondered when I would finish reeling from the shock of that; I knew wise old Eli would tell me to deal with it right now, right away.
These things can build up in you,
he had told me after my first traumatic day as a detective.
Find a way to let off some steam, or you’ll end up going a little bonkers
.