Carrion Comfort (42 page)

“Can you think of anyone else?”

“No. Where is Germantown? Is it a real place? Do you think it relates to Saul’s Oberst in some way . . . like a code?”

“I know of a couple of Germantowns,” said Gentry. “Parts of cities in the north. Philadelphia has an historic section with that name, I think. But there may be a hundred towns around the country actually named that. My little atlas didn’t show them, but I’ll get to a library to check better references. It doesn’t sound like a code . . . just a place name.”

“But why would somebody tell us where she is?” asked Natalie. “And who would know? And why tell us?”

“Great questions,” said Gentry. “I don’t have any answers yet. If Saul’s story is true, then there seems to be a lot more to this than even he understood.”

“Could that guy last night have been . . . like an agent for Mrs. Fuller herself? Somebody she used the way Saul said the Oberst used him? Could she still be in Charleston, trying to throw us off the track?”

“Sure,” said Gentry, “but every scenario like that
I
come up with is full of holes. If Melanie Fuller is alive and in Charleston, why tip her hand to us in any way? Who the hell are
we
? They’ve got two city agencies, three state law enforcement divisions, and the damned FBI lookin’ into this. All three TV networks did stories last week, there were fifty reporters at the D.A.’s press conference a week ago Monday, and a few of them are still sniffin’ around . . . though they don’t pay too much attention to our office anymore. Another reason I didn’t specify in the log that you were parked right across from the Fuller house last night. I can see the
National Perspirer
headlines: KILLER CHARLESTON HOUSE ALMOST CLAIMS ANOTHER VICTIM.”

“So which scenario makes the most sense to you?” asked Natalie. Gentry finished tidying up the room, moved the tray table aside, and sat on the edge of her bed. For a big man, he gave a strange sense of lightness and grace, as if there were a honed athlete beneath the pink skin and fat. “Let’s say Saul’s story was true,” Gentry said softly. “Then we’ve got the situation where we had several of these mind vampires turnin’ on one another. Nina Drayton’s dead. I saw the body before and after the trip to the morgue. What ever else she was, she’s a memory now . . . ashes . . . folks who claimed her body had her cremated.”

“Who claimed the body?” asked Natalie. “Not family,” said Gentry. “Nor friends, really. A New York lawyer who was executor of her estate and two members of a corporation that she served on the Board of Directors of.”

“So Nina Drayton is gone,” said Natalie. “Who does that leave?” Gentry held up three fingers. “Melanie Fuller, William Borden . . . Saul’s Oberst . . .”

“That’s two,” said Natalie, staring at the remaining finger. “Who’s left?”

“A set of millions of unknowns,” said Gentry and waggled all ten fingers. “Hey, I’ve got a Christmas present for you.” He went over to his jacket and returned with an envelope. Inside were a Christmas card and airline tickets.

“A flight back to St. Louis,” said Natalie. “For tomorrow.”

“Yep. There weren’t any available for today.”

“Are you running me out of town, Sheriff?”

“You could say that.” Gentry grinned at her. “I know it’s taking liberties, Miz Preston, but I’d feel a hell of a lot better if you were out and away from here until all this nonsense is over.”

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” said Natalie. “Why am I safer back in St. Louis? If someone’s after me, why couldn’t they just follow me there?”

Gentry folded his arms. “That’s a good point, but I don’t think some-one’s
after
you, do you?” When she did not answer he went on, “Anyway, you told me the other day that you had friends there . . . Frederick could stay with you . . .”

“I don’t need a bodyguard or baby-sitter,” said Natalie in a cold voice. “No,” said Gentry, “but back there you’d be busy and surrounded by friends. And you’d be out of what ever is going on here.”

“What about finding my father’s killer?” said Natalie. “What about watching the Fuller house until Saul gets in touch?”

“I’m going to have a deputy keep a watch on the Fuller house,” said Gentry. “I OK’d it with Mrs. Hodges to have someone stay in her house . . . upstairs in Mr. Hodges’s den. It looks down on the courtyard.”

“And what will you be doing?”

Gentry lifted his hat off the bed, creased the crown, and put it on. “I sorta thought I’d take a vacation,” he said.

“A vacation!” Natalie was startled. “In the middle of all of this? With everything going on?”

Gentry smiled. “That’s almost exactly what they said downtown. Thing is though, I haven’t gone on vacation for the last two years and the county owes me at least five weeks. Guess I can take a week or two off if I want to.”

“When do you start?” asked Natalie. “Tomorrow.”

“And where will you be going?” There was more than curiosity in Natalie’s voice.

Gentry rubbed his cheek. “Well, I thought I might mosey up north and visit New York for a few days. Been a long time since I’ve been there. Then I thought I’d spend a day or two in Washington.”

“Looking for Saul,” said Natalie. “I may look him up,” drawled Gentry. He glanced at his watch. “Hey, it’s getting late. Doc should drop by about nine. You can probably leave right after that.” He paused. “Let’s back the conversation up to where you said you would have come to my place to be a house guest . . .”

Natalie propped herself up on the pillows. “Is that an invitation?” she asked.

“Yes’m,” said Gentry. “I’d feel better if you didn’t spend much time at your place before you leave. Course you could get a hotel room somewhere to night and I could ask Lester or Stewart to work shifts waiting with me on the . . .”

“Sheriff,” she said, “before I say yes there’s one thing we have to settle.” Gentry looked serious. “Go ahead, ma’am.”

“I’m tired of calling you Sheriff and even more tired of being called ma’am,” said Natalie. “It’s going to be first names or nothing.”

“That suits me,” said Gentry with a grin, “ma’am.”

“There’s only one problem” said Natalie. “I can’t bring myself to call you Bobby Joe.”

“Neither could my folks,” said Gentry. “The Bobby Joe didn’t catch on until fellows called me that when I was a deputy here in Charleston. I sort of kept it when I ran for office.”

“What did the other kids and your folks call you?” asked Natalie. “The other kids tended to call me Tubby,” said Gentry with a smile. “My mother called me Rob.”

“Yes,” said Natalie. “Thank you for the invitation, Rob. I accept.”

They stopped by Natalie’s home long enough for her to pack and to call her father’s lawyer and a few friends. The settling of the estate and dealings for the sale of the studio would take at least a month. There was no reason for Natalie to stay.

Christmas Day was warm and sunny. Gentry drove slowly and took the long way back to the city, taking Cosgrove Avenue across the Ashley River and coming down Meeting Street. It was a Thursday, but it felt like a Sunday.

They had an early dinner. Gentry prepared baked ham, mashed potatoes, broccoli with cheese sauce, and a chocolate mousse. The round dining room table was set near the large bay windows and the two sipped their coffee and watched the early twilight seep color out of the houses and trees of the neighborhood. Afterward they put on jackets and took a long walk as the first stars came out. Children were being called in from playing with their new toys. Darkened rooms flickered to the colored lights of tele vi sion.

“Do you think Saul’s all right?” asked Natalie. It was the first time since morning that they had discussed serious things.

Gentry stuck his hands deep in his jacket pockets. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I have a feeling that something happened.”

“I don’t feel right about hiding out in St. Louis,” said Natalie. “What-ever’s going on, I feel I owe it to my father to follow through on it.”

Gentry did not argue. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let me check out where the professor’s got to and then we’ll get back in touch and plan our next step. I think it’d be easier for one person to take care of this part.”

“But Melanie Fuller might be right here in Charleston,” said Natalie. “We don’t even know what that guy meant last night.”

“I don’t think the old lady is here,” said Gentry. He told her about Arthur Lewellyn’s short drive to the cigar store on the night of the murders— a drive that had ended up with a ninety-seven-mile-per-hour impact with a bridge abutment on the outskirts of Atlanta. “Mr. Lewellyn’s cigar store wasn’t far from the Mansard House,” said Gentry.

“So if Melanie Fuller is capable of what Saul was talking about . . .”

“Yeah,” said Gentry. “It’s absolutely nuts, but it makes sense.”

“So you think she is hiding in Atlanta?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” said Gentry. “Too close. My guess is she would’ve flown or driven out of there as soon as possible. So I’ve been on the phone all week. There was a ruckus out at Hartsfield International Airport a week ago Monday— two days after the murders here. A woman left twelve thousand dollars in cash in a bag there . . . no one could describe her. A redcap there . . . a forty-year-old man with an almost perfect health record . . . died after having a grand mal seizure. I checked into all the deaths that same night. A family of six killed in an accident on I-285 when their station wagon was rear-ended by a semi; the truck driver had fallen asleep. A man in Rockdale Park shot his brother-in-law in a dispute over who owned a boat that had been in the family for years. They found the corpse of a derelict near Atlanta Stadium . . . Sheriff’s office said the body had been there almost a week. And a cabdriver named Steven Lenton committed suicide at his home. Police said his friends reported he’d been depressed since his wife left him.”

“How can any of that relate to Melanie Fuller?” asked Natalie. “That’s the fun part,” said Gentry. “Speculatin’.” They came to a small park. Natalie sat on a swing and moved easily back and forth. Gentry held on to the chain of the next swing. “The funny thing about Mr. Lenton’s suicide is that it was while he was on duty. Most folks don’t take time out from their jobs to kill themselves. You’ll never guess where he was when he called in his last fare . . .”

Natalie stopped swinging. “I don’t . . . Oh! The airport?”

“Yup.”

She shook her head. “That doesn’t make any sense. If Melanie Fuller was flying somewhere from the Atlanta airport, why would she leave money behind or bother to kill a redcap or cabdriver?”

“Let’s just imagine that something alarmed her,” said Gentry. “Maybe she changed her mind in a hurry. The cabdriver’s personal car was missing— his ex-wife had been bugging the police about it for almost a week before it finally turned up.”

“Where?” asked Natalie. “Washington, D.C.,” said Gentry. “Right downtown.”

“None of this makes sense,” said Natalie. “Isn’t it more likely that the man simply committed suicide and someone stole his car and abandoned it in Washington?”

“Sure,” said Gentry. “But the nice thing about Saul Laski’s story is that it replaces a long column of coincidences with a single explanation. I’ve always been a big fan of Occam’s Razor.”

Natalie smiled and swung high again. “As long as you handle it carefully,” she said. “If it gets dull you can cut your own throat.”

“Mmmm,” said Gentry. He felt very good. The evening air, the rusty, childhood sound of the swing, and Natalie’s presence all conspired to make him happy.

Natalie stopped again. “I still want to be involved in this,” she said. “Maybe I could go to Atlanta and look into that stuff while you’re in Washington.”

“Just a few days,” said Gentry. “You touch base in St. Louis and I’ll be in contact soon.”

“That’s what Saul Laski said.”

“Look,” said Gentry, “I have one of those phone-answering devices. I’ve got an instrument that lets me play back the message over the phone when I can’t get home. I always lose things, so I have two of the tone things. You take one. I’ll call my own number every day at eleven
A.M.
and eleven
P.M.
If you have anything to tell me, just leave it on the recorder. You can check the same way.”

Natalie blinked. “Wouldn’t it be easier for you just to call me?”

“Yeah, but if you needed to get in touch with me it might be difficult.”

“But . . . all your private phone messages . . .”

Gentry grinned at her in the dark. “I have no secrets from you, ma’am,” he said. “Or rather, I won’t after I give you the electronic thingamawhatsis.”

“I can hardly wait,” said Natalie.

Someone was waiting for them when they returned to Gentry’s house. From deep within the shadows on the long porch a cigarette glowed. Gentry and Natalie stopped on the stone walk and as the sheriff slowly unzipped his jacket Natalie caught sight of the handle of a revolver tucked in his waistband. “Who’s there?” Gentry asked softly.

The cigarette glowed more brightly and then disappeared as a dark shape rose to its feet. Natalie gripped Gentry’s left arm as the tall shadow moved toward them, pausing by the front steps of the porch. “Hey there, Rob,” came a rich, raspy voice, “good night to be flying. Just came by to see if you wanted to go for a ride up the coast.”

“Howdy, Daryl,” said Gentry and Natalie could feel the big man relax.

Natalie’s eyes had adjusted to the dark and now she could make out a tall, thin man with long hair going to gray on the sides. He was dressed in cut-off jeans, thongs, and a sweatshirt bearing the legend CLEMSON UNIVERSITY in faded letters. His face had a craggy-reflective quality which Natalie found reminiscent of a younger Morris Udall.

“Natalie,” said Gentry, “this here is Daryl Meeks. Daryl’s got himself a charter flyin’ ser vice across the harbor. Spends part of the year travelin’ with a rock and roll band, flyin’ them places and playin’ drums too. He thinks he’s part Chuck Yeager and part Frank Zappa. Daryl and I went to school together. Daryl, this here’s Miz Natalie Preston.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Meeks.

The man’s handshake was firm and friendly and Natalie liked it. “Pull up some chairs,” said Gentry. “I’ll get us some beers.”