Borderlines (24 page)

“So, business or pleasure?” “The meal was a pleasure, the fact that we had it here was, I admit, oncession to curiosity.” “Nicely put. So, what do you think?” He pulled out a hand and tured around the room.

“It’s pretty similar to the way The Common se Restaurant is set up in Island Pond, but, as they say, imitation he highest form of flattery.”

“I think it’s materialistic as hell. How do you justify it, given your ‘Iosophy?” “Of which you know next to nothing, I might add.” “Okay, but isn’t there some truth to that?” “Perhaps. What you fail to recognize is that we deal with principle ed with pragmatism. We intend to outlive you to the end of this ented world, and to do that we must live on the fringes of your rId, not utterly apart from it.” %158 “I hear you collect all valuables from entering members and that you have insurance on all your buildings. How’s that fit in?” “I doubt you are truly curious how that ‘fits,’ as you put it. Suffice it to say it’s perfectly legal and that you needn’t waste your time trying to prove I’m a despot leading a bunch of deranged half-wits to poverty.” “I have heard that.” “I don’t doubt it. You’ve probably also heard about sacrifices in the night.” “What about Julie Wingate? Have you seen her around?” “No, I’m afraid not.” His manner was consistently relaxed on the outside, ice-cold on the inside. I had to give him high marks for composure. So far, he had avoided all the easy cliches-no temper tantrums, no outright refusals, no bald-faced lies that I could immediately expose, although I knew in my bones his last comment was pure baloney.

“I hear you’re not cooperating in locating her.” His eyebrows shot up.

“Really?” “You claim you can’t force your followers to help us out, and they won’t move a muscle without your okay.” I glanced at the man behind the counter. “Or one of your lieutenants.” “The first half of that is true; not the second.” “That’s not what we just witnessed. We asked our waitress a simple question, and she immediately was replaced by that man over there.” He followed my pointed finger. “She didn’t know the answer to your question, I suppose.” “I asked her if she knew Julie. Surely she knew the answer to that.” He smiled. “It would seem so. I have no explanation.” It was a wonderful answer, a total roadblock disguised as beguiling truthfulness.

It occurred to me that until we had some concrete evidence that the Order was involved in all this, Sarris would be happy to play verbal footsie ‘til the cows came home. As he’d said earlier, he was quite good at it. I glanced at Laura. “You finished?” She nodded.

Sarris looked disappointed. “No dessert?” “Not this time.” I put a twenty on the table, more than enough to cover the bill and tip.

He reached for the money. “Let me get you your change.” “No, keep it.”

I rose and helped Laura into her coat. Sarris unhooked mine and handed it to me. “After this is all over, Lieutenant Gunther, I’d like it if you could come back informally.

%159 re antagonists now, to be sure, but I have enjoyed our conversas”’

“Seems like all I do is ask questions and all you say is, ‘No ment.’”

“Surely, you’ve glimpsed better than that.” “I haven’t glimpsed much of anything.” Laura preceded me through the door. We stopped on the walkway ide and adjusted our coats against the chill, which, compared to the th of the restaurant, had a pleasant bite to it. “You two guys sure have strange conversations. I can’t figure out u like each other or not.” “I don’t like him but he has a certain style.” She shivered slightly, getting used to the cold. “He gives me the ps. Thanks for dinner, though. It was nice.” “Let me walk you back to your car.”

“Okay.” I stuck out my arm in a Cary Grant gesture. She didn’t know to her arm through mine, and instead patted my elbow awkwardly rent movies.

Suddenly, I heard a soft crack beside me, along the dark wall of estaurant. I turned my head in time to see Rennie Wilson standing e shadow.

“Rennie. We’ve been looking all over for you.” He turned in an instant and vanished around the edge of the ing.

“Rennie. Hang on, goddamn it. We gotta talk.” I bolted after him but had to contend with a small picket fence that ked the alley. By the time I cleared it, his crashing footsteps were e far end of the building.

The narrow alleyway that ran alongside the restaurant was pitchand choked with high weeds and brush. I ran with my hands in of my face like a blind man, praying I wouldn’t lose an eye or be ked senseless by something hanging low from overhead. I was driven as much by desperation as by adrenaline. Christ only what risks Rennie was running by not coming in, but one of them ure was a small army of policemen, armed and convinced he was lent killer.

I broke through the end of the alley into the overgrown rectangueld behind the Order residences. The grass was chest-high and wasn’t much more light here than in the alley. The sky was cast and there were no streetlights aside from the one blocked by ark hulk of the firehouse.

%160 I stopped dead in my tracks and listened. A dog balked far away a car door slammed. Somewhere I heard muted laughter. In the house’ to the north, lights shone through the windows. I watched them, hoping to catch some movement between them and me. My eyes scanned slowly, trying not to skip from light to light trying to see more than was humanly possible. About midway from Ief to right I saw a short shadow, too broad for a sapling, too narrow fo a shed, about a hundred feet away. I moved slightly to one side, sIidin~ a distant-lit window along so it would backlight the shape. It was man, standing stock-still. I crouched and began moving toward him, hoping to hell wouldn’t step on anything that would give me away. I got about thre’ yards before my left shin struck something thin, horizontal, and resist ant-a wire. As my momentum pushed me forward, I tried to lift mj foot over, got my shoe caught, and began to fall. I made a giant ster with my right leg, hit the same low-strung piece of wire, and fel headlong into someone’s abandoned fenced garden.

I scrambled up as quickly as I could, but I knew I’d lost my on’ chance.

The shadow was gone, leaving only the faint sound of a distanz body moving swiftly through the grass. Again, as when I’d seen Bruce Wingate lying dead at the bottotr of that ravine, I felt as if I’d let something slip through my hands something that was to cost me dearly.

I called Hamilton after losing Rennie, and he’d rallied the troops For most of the night, we drove, walked, and talked our way acros’ what seemed like the entire county, all for nought. It was Rennie” backyard, and he obviously knew it well enough to stay out of our way On the other hand, it gave me plenty of time to think. Despite the case against him, I still couldn’t shake the feeling that Rennie was running for reasons other than Wingate’s murder. There were too many inconsistencies; too many leaps of logic, like the assump. tion that a punch in the face merited a lethal revenge. Also, there were the other actors in the play-Sarris, Ellie, Gor.

man, Julie among them-none of whom glowed with innocence. Ren’ %161 e’s actually running only made him the most blatant of these, but the hers were just as shy of the limelight.

All night long, I mulled this over, leafing through flashcards in my ind, trying to piece together some reasonable sequence of events. ter hours of this, the only common denominator was the opening line each and every scenario-Julie’s migration from home to college and the Order had set the whole game into motion. The more I looked at it, the more I saw the missing Wingate as e catalyst for most of the police’s problems.

We’d been spending tually all our efforts trying to locate Rennie and prove him guilty, gely because he custom-fit the role. The evidence was against him, actions were self-incriminating, and warrants with his name on em were easy to secure: He was a natural.

Just what Julie was not.

With her, warrants were unobtainable, evidence was nonexistent, d no one had even set eyes on her. And yet there she was, like a ge-front actor with no lines to deliver.

All that, after less than two hours’ restless sleep, had brought me wn out of the Northeast Kingdom and into Massachusetts-to Nak, specifically-to find out all I could about the elusive Julie Wingate. I parked just shy of the town’s central square of updated turn-of-century red brick buildings. It was still dark, although dawn’s first y blush was just beginning to touch the sky. I stretched, rubbed my es, and crossed the street to a small restaurant. Inside, I sat at the unter and ordered coffee and a sugar-covered cinnamon roll. Natick, m the little I knew, had been transformed over the years from a small ral town to one of Boston’s “bedroom communities,” meaning, I had ays supposed, that its population decreased during the workday. It built low and spread out, with lots of quiet residential streets lined th middle-aged trees, occupying an economic middle ground among ston’s wide variety of satellites. A good town, as they say, in which raise a family, benefitting from a nearby metropolis and an inordinate mber of nearby malls, and yet enjoying the slower pace of suburban On the surface, Bruce the banker and EIIie the secretary fit in here e peas in a pod white, middle-class, hard working. Looking enough the restaurant window at the early, Boston-bound commuter fflc, I wondered what had made Julie so desperate to escape. As I ate, I flipped through the pages of a borrowed phone book. uce Wingate was listed as living at 4 Maple Avenue. I got directions m the woman behind the counter. Maple Avenue was a short dead-end street, very pretty and quiet, %162 lined with smM, W ottd W aT One-vitttage homes Ioeated oh liny, M’~~ Bare trees stood guard by the sidewalk and pinned down the neatly mowed, frost-covered lawns. An occasional tricycle and swing set attested to warmer weather scenes of children enjoying life on a street with no through traffic.

Number 4, with its narrow front, high-peaked roof, and dark wood trim, seemed right at home. The Wingates’ residence, however, was not my primary interest. I wanted to talk to someone, anyone really, who might tell me of its inhabitants. I parked in the middle of the block, where I could see most of the street, and waited for some activity. The first sign of life appeared as a concession to the day’s gathering light-the bulb above Number 7’s porch was switched off.

I got out of the car and climbed the steps to the porch. Whoever had hit the switch had also seen me coming. The door opened a crack, too narrow to let me see who was standing there. “Yes?” It was a woman’s voice, sharp and thin. I pulled out my badge and showed it to the crack. “Sorry to disturb you so early in the morning. My name is Joe Guntherz I’m a policeman working with the Vermont State’s Attorney’s office, and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions.”

“Vermont?” The woman stayed hidden behind the door. “I’ve never been to Vermont.” I gave my best genial smile, feeling like an idiot with no one to look at. “No, ma’am, this isn’t about you. I wanted to find out a few things about the Wingates.” “Who?” “The Wingates-they live right across the street.” “Oh. I don’t know them. I’ve only lived here a few months. What did they do?” “Nothing. I just need some background.”

“They kill someone?” “Not that I know of.” It wasn’t strictly a lie, although I had my suspicions about Bruce Wingate.

“Rob a bank?” “No. I wonder if you could tell me who on this block might know them.” “Try Number 6 she’s pretty nosy. Name’s Grissom. They in the drug business?” “Thank you for your time.” I left Number 7 and crossed the street to Number 6. The door opened wide to my ring of the doorbell, revealing a pleasant-faced elderly woman wearing a full-length fluffy robe. She gave me a smile as I ran through my cumbersome introduction.

%163 “Vermont-you’re a long way from home.” “Yes, ma’am.” “What questions could you possibly have that I might answer?” “I’d like to know about the Wingates, what they were like as eighbors; things like that. Did you know them?” “Oh, yes. I’ve been living here for quite a while.” She eyed me arefully for a couple of more seconds, and then opened the door wide.

Would you like to come in? I was just fixing myself some tea.” I thought of the gallons of coffee I’d been swilling half the night nd suppressed any thought of caffeine poisoning. “Sounds wonderful.

hanks.” I followed her through to the back of the house, a combination of ark wood, flowered upholstery, and ancient, sturdy carpeting. The air melled of warm wool and medicine. I could hear a parakeet upstairs.

The kitchen was catching the first sun of the day, giving the room bright, embracing warmth. The woman, who confirmed she was Mrs.

rissom, gestured me to an alcove with a permanently mounted breakast table lined on either side with a wall bench. It made me think of iding in a train.

“So, you’re interested in the Wingates,” she stated. She was movng about between the stove and the sink, accumulating the paraphernaia necessary for her tea tray.

“Yes.” “Why?” It wasn’t said with any hostility; it was merely direct, which seemed to be Mrs. Grissom’s general approach to everything.

“We’re investigating a crime, and the Wingates might have some nvolvement with it. I just need some background, something to help e understand what makes them tick.” She was pouring hot water into the teapot with her back to me.

‘It must be a pretty serious matter for you to come all this way just or that.” “It is.” She finished pouring and brought the tray over to the table. “You ook tired.” I smiled at that. “A little. I’ve been up all night.” “Would you like a doughnut? I make them myself.” “Thank you. That sounds great.” She crossed over to a cabinet and brought back a Tupperware ontainer filled with dark brown doughnuts. I bit into one and immeditely eyed the rest; best doughnut I’d ever tasted, even without a reamy middle.