Death Under the Lilacs (16 page)

“What is it?” Bea asked as she arrived in the kitchen.

“There's a woman under here. I think she's hurt.” Bea's hand gently pulled at his shoulder. He moved away, and she took his place.

“Come,” Bea said in a voice that was compassionate yet firm. “Come now.” She tugged on the edge of the robe, and the woman gradually moved toward her. She put her hands under the woman's shoulders and helped her to stand.

The woman clutched the side of the table with both hands as she hunched forward and groaned.

The robe fell open, and they could see that she was wearing nothing underneath and that her thighs and stomach were laced with red welts. “My God!” Lyon said.

Bea glanced at him sharply in a gesture for silence as she put her arms around the woman's shoulders. The woman groaned again.

Her face was haunted. There were dark rims under her eyes, and the left one was blackened in a dark bruise that covered half her cheek. Her long hair hung down in wispy strands.

“Are you Bates' wife?” Bea asked gently.

The woman shook her head.

“His girlfriend?”

The woman laughed abruptly, and then her body jerked as she clutched her side. Lyon realized that she probably had a fractured rib. “Friend? Do I look like a friend? I'm his woman, his old lady, his roommate. Not his friend.”

“He did this to you?”

“I fell down the stairs.” Again the short laugh, which ended in a grimace of pain.

Lyon retreated across the room and pulled himself onto the kitchen counter, where he silently watched his wife talk to the battered woman.

“Not the stairs,” Bea said. “He punched you and then he hit you with something. Something like a belt.”

“A harness. Where in the hell did he find a piece of horse harness? It hurt like hell.”

“Where did he go?”

She turned to face Bea with fright in her eyes. “Please go. If he comes back while you're still here, it will only make it worse for me.”

“Honey, if it gets any worse you'll be dead,” Bea said gently. “Would you make some coffee?” she said to Lyon.

Lyon searched through the wide wooden cabinets surrounding the sink and found a half-empty jar of instant coffee. He grimaced at the thought of what it would taste like, but it would have to do. He turned a porcelain knob on the gas stove, and a burner popped lit.

“Why did he do it?” Bea asked.

“I don't know. He just does it sometimes. He's usually very gentle. He writes poetry, you know. I can show you some of it.” She half rose from the chair.

Bea put a hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps later.”

Lyon handed them coffee.

“He takes some sort of pills to keep him calm. I think that's his problem, you know. He's okay if he stays off the booze, but if he drinks with those pills in him he kinda goes insane.”

“And no specific reason for the beating?”

“He goes into a rage about some man called Rent-wroth, or Wendforth, something like that. I think he's really hitting him.”

“Wentworth?” Bea asked. “Is that the name?”

“Yes, that's it.”

“When will Bates come home?” Lyon asked.

“I don't know. Sometimes he's gone for hours, sometimes for days. I can never tell.”

“You have to leave,” Bea said.

“I can't. He always finds me. Last year I left and went to my sister's, and he found me. He hit me, and he hit her.”

Bea sat down next to the battered woman and glanced at Lyon to signal for him to leave the room.

Lyon walked through the house feeling like an alien. There was something unconscionable and obscene in searching through someone's dwelling. He disliked the invasion of privacy, but his compunctions were not so profound as to make him stop.

There were three square bedrooms on the second floor, each room shut off from the sun and lit with a brownish glow through faded shades. The front bedroom was the one obviously in use. A large box-spring mattress had been placed in the center of the room; the only bedding was a tattered sleeping bag. An old bureau and a straight chair completed the furnishings. He opened the closet door and found it filled with men's and women's clothing. He checked the bureau and found men's socks and underwear. It seemed obvious that Bates had left only temporarily and did not intend to stay long.

One of the other bedrooms was empty, while the third was filled with cartons and miscellaneous pieces of furniture piled haphazardly. Lyon walked back downstairs to the room filled with books.

The stamp albums were aligned neatly on the middle shelf. He flipped through one of the bound volumes, noting that it was the work of a serious collector who had been involved for many years. He replaced the volume in its place and sat down in the captain's chair behind the small desk.

He stretched out his arms and locked his fingers together. A desk lamp placed to the side hung over a half-empty box of typewriter paper. The typewriter that had once occupied the center of the desk was missing.

The machine could have been pawned, taken to the shop for repairs, or it could have been destroyed.

Lost in thought, Lyon sat another ten minutes before he left the study and returned to the kitchen. Bea had her arm around the girl.

“We're going to a women's shelter,” Bea said.

“Is that what she wants?”

The girl nodded her head violently.

“I'll help her pack some things and then let's get out of here—fast,” Bea said.

Kim sat Indian-fashion on the floor while Rocco sprawled across the leather easy chair. Bea stood by the door as Lyon took his place in front of the blackboard he had trundled into his study.

“If you scratch chalk, Wentworth, I'm leaving,” Kim said.

Lyon smiled wryly over his shoulder and then drew three columns on the board, which he labeled Stockton, Burt Winthrop, and Traxis.

“How about a fourth column labeled ‘Other'?” Rocco suggested.

“I'm going to restrict this to what we have.” Lyon wrote “motive” in each of the columns. He stepped back from the board and folded his arms. “Bates Stockton has held a deep resentment toward me since he was a student of mine.”

“He waited a long time,” Bea said. “That happened years ago, and why come after me?”

“I can't account for the long wait,” Lyon said, “unless his life has deteriorated over the years and I became a symbol of his troubles. In Bates' case, I think he would have abducted Bea because I might recognize him. I think he fully intended to release her until he made the mistake of allowing her to see him without the mask. If revenge were his motive it would be accomplished by harming my wife and hurting me financially.”

“Which would account for the disguised voice,” Rocco added.

“I did the rundown on his family that you asked for,” Kim said. “The once noble Stockton family is wealthy no more. They are in hock up to their eyeballs.”

“What about that mansion the grandmother lives in?” Lyon asked. “That's expensive property out there.”

“It was put up for sale two years ago, and the Fernwick Association, composed of all the property holders there, purchased it. They let old Mrs. Stockton live there as a life tenant. Rich folks do that sort of thing occasionally.”

“Anything on Bates?”

“Lousy credit rating because of bounced checks, and no visible means of support. I think the grandmother gives him money from time to time out of what she has left,” Kim said.

Lyon made a dollar sign in the column under Bates' name. He also wrote “stamp collector” and added the same notation under the Traxis column.

“Are you knocking out the Winthrops because they don't collect stamps?” Bea asked.

“We don't know if they collect stamps or not,” Rocco said.

Lyon wrote “opportunity” in Bates' column and put a series of question marks after it. “Until we talk to Bates, we don't know if he has an alibi for the night Bea was taken prisoner.”

“That knocks out Traxis,” Rocco said. “We have proof he was at a town meeting during the time Bea was picked up.”

“But his employee Reuven was home alone,” Lyon added as he jotted the name in the Traxis column. He wrote “opportunity” under the remaining two columns. “Burt Winthrop had a motive in his desire to obtain Nutmeg Hill. The execution of the plan could have been carried out by his sons.”

“And those twins have done just about everything else,” Rocco interjected. “They have an arrest record in Middleburg that's an arm's length long.”

“What in heaven's name for?” Bea asked.

“Hell-raising. Mostly drunk and disorderly, with one attempted rape. The rape charges were dropped when the woman involved refused to testify. They drink after work and get mean.”

“What about Winthrop's finances?” Lyon asked.

“Shaky. As Kim found out, their development in Middleburg is in trouble. Their notes are overdue and their debt load is too high.”

“He came up for the money for Nutmeg Hill fast enough,” Lyon said as Bea winced.

“We suspect that came from something called the Xavier Corporation,” Rocco said.

“And who's behind that?”

“We don't know.”

Kim was on her feet. “All right, guys. I know, I know. Who owns the Xavier Corporation? I'm on my way.”

“I'll go with you,” Bea said. “I'm going stir-crazy sitting around the house.”

“Make sure you take Jamie Martin,” Rocco said.

“Come on. He follows us like we're trustees on a chain gang.”

“He goes.”

“Then can't he at least wear civilian clothes?”

“Have you ever seen Jamie in one of his suits?”

“No,” Bea admitted, “I haven't.”

“Believe me, keep him in uniform.”

Lyon held a half-filled snifter of Dry Sack sherry in both hands as he sat before the blackboard and studied the diagrams and clues. The house was quiet. Rocco had had a drink with him and then gone home. Bea and Kim were still checking into the Xavier Corporation, and the ghosts of their past life seemed to fill the rooms of this house they would soon have to leave.

He had added more items to the lists under the names on the blackboard. Most prominent was “Chloroform Charlie” under Traxis. He had placed four exclamation marks next to that entry.

A heavy pounding at the front door jolted him. His abrupt movement knocked over the chair. “Bea!” he said aloud. Something had happened to her. They had been ambushed, and Jamie Martin had been cut down before he could protect them. He dashed for the front door and threw it open.

The man on the front stoop burst into the hallway. His hands gripped Lyon's shirt front as his forward momentum crashed them against the wall.

“You bastard! You filthy bastard! Where is she?”

Lyon's shirt ripped as he forced the man's hands away. “Knock it off!” he yelled as his attacker hurled a roundhouse punch toward his head. Lyon threw himself to the side and the blow landed on the wall, causing his assailant to gasp in pain.

“Damn you!”

“Bates!” Lyon yelled. “Bates Stockton!” There was madness in the eyes of the man standing before Lyon. His face was contorted into a grimace of hatred.

“You couldn't leave well enough alone, could you? You had to ruin me in college and now you took my old lady. Why me, Wentworth?”

Lyon beckoned toward the study. “In here.”

Bates glowered at him for a moment. He seemed to do battle with himself over taking another punch at Lyon or following his command; finally he stalked into the study.

Lyon followed his former student. Bates Stockton, after more than a decade, was little changed. His profusion of dark hair was beginning to be speckled with white, and the lines on his face were now etched deeper.

“A drink?”

“Something strong. Straight whiskey.”

Lyon poured and handed the glass to Bates, who had slouched back in the leather chair. “You want to tell me what's going on?”

Bates drained his drink in two quick gulps and then rumbled in his pants pocket for a piece of paper, which he threw at Lyon's feet. “Read it.”

Lyon stooped to pick up the note, smoothed it out on his knee, and read the few scrawled words. “I have gone away with the Wentworths. They are taking me to a place where you can't find me. I cannot be hurt anymore.” It was unsigned, but it was obvious who had written it. “She's in a women's shelter,” Lyon said.

“So I figured,” Bates said as he dropped his empty glass to the floor. Two ice cubes slithered across the carpet. “I called a couple. The bastards won't even tell me if she's there or not.”

“That's the way they operate.”

“What put you on my case again?” Bate's eyes swiveled across the room and stopped at the blackboard. He took two steps toward the board. “What in hell is this?”

“Just some notes I made.” He inwardly cursed himself for the lack of foresight that had let him bring one of the suspects into this room.

“What kind of notes?” Bates turned to face him with anger raging in his face.

“It has to do with my wife's kidnapping.”

“You're going to try and lay that on me too. You never stop, do you?”

“She was held in the cemetery where your family plot is located.”

“The Stockton Pie. Christ! That's a weed-choked anachronism. I haven't been up there since we planted the old man.”

“You collect stamps.”

“So do thousands of other.… Oh, the guy who pulled it off got paid in stamps.”

“Something like that.”

“And you came to my place to accuse me, right, teach?”

“To ask you certain questions.”

“And you found the old lady whimpering in the corner.”

“You had beaten her.”

“You took her away in order to zing me.”

“We took her because she had no other place to go.”