Death Under the Lilacs (17 page)

“Bull! She had a place with me.”

“She didn't want to stay.”

“Listen, Wentworth. You screwed me to the wall once, but you don't get a second chance. Don't try and lay what happened to your wife on me. Understand?”

“You're only one suspect.”

“No way! When did it happen?”

“The night of the twelfth.”

“That leaves me out. That night I was tucked away in jail.”

“Where?”

“A little town in New York State called Raleigh. So forget it. This is one you can't get me for.” He stalked to the front door. “So lay off!”

12

Lyon pulled the Datsun between the parking lanes so that the car's nose pointed directly at the Murphysville Police Station. He turned off the ignition with a resigned flick of his wrist. He felt tired and knew that the feeling was caused by malaise and depression.

“Are any of the others here yet?” Bea asked.

Lyon glanced in both directions. The parking spaces before the station were vacant. “I guess not. Rocco wanted to talk to us first.”

Murphysville's police headquarters was a new building in the sense that any construction within the past decade was considered new by the locals. It was a squat one-story building with oblong windows on each side of its glass front door. A massive skylight roofed almost half of the interior, and an abstract mural covered part of the right wall. Most townspeople said the art was a rendering of the Burning Bush; others argued that it was a nonrepresentational view of the hand of justice. Rocco insisted that it was the pointed index finger of the fickle finger of fate.

Lyon and Bea, followed by the ever-present Jamie Martin, walked up the short walk to the entrance. The heavy glass door opened into a four-by-six-foot anteroom facing a waist-high counter above which a thick glass partition rose to the ceiling. The harried communications clerk sat before a maze of radio equipment, ADT warning boards, and a computer terminal.

Jamie Martin tapped on the glass until the clerk turned toward him with a frown. He waved, and she pushed back a strand of long blond hair that had fallen over her forehead and smiled in return.

“Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth to see the chief,” Jamie said through the intercom.

She held up a finger and turned to pick up the telephone. Cradling the phone on one shoulder, she entered their names on a sign-in sheet, then passed two plastic visitor's badges through a low slot at the base of the bulletproof glass. A door to the right of the communications module clicked open as she pressed the release button.

“Pin the badges on, please,” Jamie said as he escorted them through the door and down the hall to Rocco's office.

Rocco was bent over a Mr. Coffee machine on the credenza behind his desk. He waved at them.

“What's with this new Fort Knox security?” Lyon asked.

Rocco shrugged. “It's the new first selectman's idea. He's afraid we'll be attacked by radical groups who will steal all our weapons.”

“That was Dillinger's game, but he was killed forty years ago,” Bea said.

“Maybe our new first selectman watches a lot of old movies,” Lyon suggested.

“Could be,” Rocco said as he served coffee without being asked. “All that I know is that it's a pain in the ass.”

Bea picked up her Styrofoam cup with a broad gesture, took three steps to the window, and turned to face them. “I am going to finish my coffee. I am then going out to our car and driving to my office. No more of these endless meetings that don't seem to get us anywhere.”

“They're all coming here this morning, Bea. It took time and arm-twisting to set up, and I wish you, of all people, would be here.”

“What's the agenda?” Lyon asked.

Rocco pulled a yellow legal pad from his center desk drawer and ticked off names with a slender silver pen. “They're staggered as to their time of arrival. We'll record everything, and Bea will watch through there.” He gestured to a small mirror on the wall.

“One-way?” Lyon asked.

“Right,” Rocco replied. “There's an entrance to a small room behind the mirror through the hall supply closet.”

“I get claustrophobia,” Bea said.

“You'll only be in there a short while,” Rocco said.

“Thanks. And if I make a positive identification, I come through the looking glass.”

“Something like that.” Rocco reached into a side desk drawer and pulled out a tape cassette which he placed into a small player. He adjusted a small microphone on the edge of his desk. The intercom buzzed and he picked up the phone.

“Mr. Traxis is here to see you,” they heard the woman at the front desk say.

“Send him in.”

Lyon wondered if things weren't more rational when the Murphysville police headquarters shared quarters with the tax assessor's office and the town library. In those days security had consisted of placing the room key over the door molding. Visitors were shunted by an aged lady who acted as secretary, radio and telephone operator, and librarian. The inexorable march of progress was turning their small town into a gigantic corporate headquarters.

“I'd better go to my compartment,” Bea said as she hastily rushed for the door. She turned with her hand on the knob. “By the way. Traxis is one of the principals in the Xavier Corporation. In other words, he and the Winthrops are in bed together.” She left the room.

“Well, I'll be damned,” Rocco said.

Robert Trainor Traxis wore a conservative pinstripe business suit that Lyon estimated had cost several hundred pounds in London. The lines of the suit hid the bulk of his pyknic physique and gave him a taller appearance. His bald head glistened, but his facial features were now nearly expressionless.

Traxis sat stiffly on the straight chair in front of Rocco's desk. Lyon lounged on the couch to the side.

“As a good citizen, I am honoring your request, Herbert, but this is the last time. You are disrupting my schedule. In addition, I am sure that Went worth has informed you that I was at a town meeting on the night Mrs. Wentworth was kidnapped.”

“I have a copy of the minutes for that meeting,” Rocco said. “You were certainly there during the time period in question.”

“Then our business is concluded.” Traxis half rose in his chair until Rocco extended a hand and gestured for him to remain seated.

Traxis sank back reluctantly. From across the room, Lyon could see a small muscle in his cheek begin to throb. The man was angering.

Rocco opened a folder. “There are a couple of items that I would like to go over.”

Traxis spoke abruptly. “I think I've had just about enough.” He held up his right hand and began to tick points off in an angry staccato. “Item: I collect stamps. Rebuttal: So do a million other people, thousands in the state of Connecticut alone. Item: I make frequent trips to England. Rebuttal: I have a legitimate business reason to so do. Item: I have a dislike for Beatrice Wentworth. Rebuttal: I stand not alone. She is one of the most controversial figures in the state senate. Need I say more?”

“How much do you dislike Bea Wentworth?” Rocco asked mildly.

There are code words that tend to trigger explosions in persons of narrowly focused convictions. Lyon watched with a certain morbid fascination as Traxis burst out, “She stands against everything sacred to our nation. Her sanctimonious backing of welfare cheats and other boondoggle programs is a rape of the middle class for the benefit of the shirkers. Her stands on feminism are a feeble excuse for the emasculation of all men.”

Bea, sitting on a high stool in the cramped room behind the supply closet, looked out through the mirror into Rocco's office. She was staring into the face of Robert Traxis and realizing that she was seeing a man ravaged with hate. Hate directed toward her. She felt a cramping in her stomach and shivered in revulsion.

“Do I want her annihilated?” Traxis continued. “You bet your bottom dollar I do. I want her politically dead and expunged from any position she holds in our government.”

“Shipped back to where she belongs?” Rocco suggested.

“She was born in Rocky Hill, Connecticut,” Lyon said. “That's about a five-minute row across the Connecticut River.”

“If you were half a man, Wentworth, you'd stand up to your wife and keep her home where she belongs. Or did she crop your balls long ago?”

Lyon catapulted from the sofa and took two steps toward Traxis before Rocco reached him and held him back.

“I know what all of this amounts to,” Traxis said. “This whole damn meeting has nothing to do with some so-called kidnapping. It's dirty politics. You want me to shut up about her. This meeting is a thin disguise to muzzle me. Well, it won't be done. I will not leave her alone.”

“Get out of here,” Rocco said quietly but with an ominous edge to his voice.

“Damn right!” Traxis stormed from the room.

Lyon shook off Rocco's arm. “I don't know what that little incident proved. We already knew how he felt.”

“You knew. I had only heard secondhand.” Rocco made several notes in the folder.

“His alibi is tight.”

“And he has enough money to hire any damn hood he wants.”

“For God's sake, Rocco. Upper-middle-class industrialists don't exactly move in the same social circles as hired guns. How many cases do you know where housewives have tried to recruit killers in bars to do their husbands in?”

“And half the time they seem to approach off-duty cops.” Rocco laughed. “What about the hood Traxis already has working for him?”

“Is Reuven coming today?”

“A little down the list. Our next guest is your friendly neighborhood builder.”

Burt Winthrop knocked his boots together before he sat down and flaked cakes of mud across Rocco's floor. He smiled affably and waved at Lyon on the sofa. He gestured over his shoulder toward one of his sons who stood in the doorway. “Sit down, boy.”

Rocco frowned. “Which one is he?”

“That's Roy,” Winthrop said as the twin sat on the edge of the sofa as far from Lyon as possible.

“Where's the other one?”

“We're not rich kids like the rest of you,” Burt said. “Someone has to mind the store. We've got nailing and selling to do. Talk to one of the boys, and you've talked to them both.”

“The law does not exactly consider people carbon copies of each other, Burt,” Rocco said.

“Come on, Chief. Get on with it,” the builder said impatiently. “We've got foundations to enclose.”

“You or your boys collect stamps?” Rocco asked offhandedly.

“Stamps? We probably got some postage and documentary stamps for deeds in the petty-cash box.”

“Postage stamps,” Rocco pressed.

“We use a meter,” Roy said eagerly from his heretofore silent spot on the couch. “You put the letter in one end of this little machine and turn the little handle, and it comes out sealed and stamped.”

Rocco sighed. “Even we have one of those. That wasn't exactly what I meant. Let's try another area. You're involved with the Xavier Corporation.”

“We got a lot of different corporations. Hell, each one of our jobs is a different one. It's smart business. If the job goes sour, we can fold our tents and it don't hurt anything else we got on the drawing board.”

“And cuts off the legs of your subcontractors,” Lyon said in a low voice.

Burt Winthrop glared at Lyon. “What's that got to do with you, Wentworth? They're big boys and know the rules of the game. Besides, you just can't walk away from a job anymore. The banks have gotten sensitive and don't want to foreclose. They'll haunt you forever and dry up your credit. It ain't like the good old days when you could play games.”

“The Xavier Corporation,” Rocco said again.

“It's a financial company we set up to obtain venture capital.”

“And Robert Traxis is an investor?”

“We have several money backers.”

“And you used the money from that company to buy Nutmeg Hill?” Lyon asked as more of a statement.

Burt Winthrop shrugged. “So?” He looked slowly from Lyon to Rocco. “What gives? What does any of this have to do with Bea Wentworth getting snatched?”

Rocco turned to face Roy. “Tell me about the night of June the twelfth.”

The twin looked blank. “That was a couple of weeks ago.”

“Make a stab at it.”

“Gee, I don't know. I'd have to look at a calendar and count back.”

There was something about this splinter off the professional country boy that bothered Lyon, that gave him a feeling, without a logical basis, that there was more here than was being displayed.

Rocco pointed to a calendar on the wall. “Are the numbers and letters big enough?”

“Sure. I think that was the night my brother and I banged a couple of college chicks in Middleburg.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so. I can confirm it with my brother.”

Burt Winthrop smiled benignly at his son's recitation.

Lyon repeated the phrasing “my brother and I” to himself. He had it. The speech patterns of the professional country boy the younger did not match the words and delivery of Winthrop Senior. “Where did you go to college, Roy?”

Roy smiled at Lyon with an ingenuous grin. “Wesleyan.”

“Political science or history?”

“Both. A major in history and a minor in poli-sci.”

Burt Winthrop winced. “You trying to destroy our image, Wentworth?”

“Does it really help sales?” Lyon asked.

“Who knows? But when you negotiate, every small edge helps. Better people think Roy and I got walking-around IQs than any of that fancy college stuff.”

“Quit the games,” Rocco snapped. “I want to know the names of the girls you partied with that night.”

“Mine was a girl called Gretchen Fowler. Rob's girl was Lucy Something-or-other.”