Spiral (5 page)

I said, ”Colonel, I’m not licensed in Florida, and even if I were, the police wouldn’t tolerate my having access denied to them.”

”Lieutenant, those resources of mine put a United States congressman and three state senators in their seats. Behind the scenes and quietly, but they know who buttered their bread for them. Mother
Goose,
if they can’t hand-carry the application for a private investigator’s license through the bureaucracy, I’ll see to it they don’t get to take home with them so much as a paper clip when they lose the next election.”

Quietly, I said, ”That still leaves the police problem.” Helides grew still, almost serene. ”The police ‘problem’ is that in nearly two weeks, they have not found diddly, because I’ve received personal briefings every other day. We were MPs together in Saigon, Lieutenant Cuddy. You know what the passage of so much time does to the odds of their ever determining who killed my granddaughter, much less being able to prove it in a court of law.”

”Colonel, at best the police would wait till I’d gathered information they want themselves, then subpoena me to provide it.”

”Lieutenant Vega can protect you in court, though I’m not sure I’d mind your sharing what you’ll have learned with the police. And we have ten thousand in cash for you, plus a credit card in your name and a cellular phone. Duy?”

How Tranh brought the things into his own hands without my noticing, I don’t know, but there were the stack of bills, the card, and a tiny black object with a corded socket adaptor, held out in his palms like the proverbial horn of plenty.

”I don’t think I—”

”Lieutenant.” The Skipper cleared his throat again.

”Please?”

A word I’d never heard Colonel Nicolas Helides use before.

I looked from Justo Vega to Duy Tranh before returning to the Skipper. Watching his eyes, I thought of standing at Beth’s graveside the night before, about her thoughts on my being spared from Nancy’s flight for a purpose.

Helides just watched me back. He’d said all he could on the subject, and he knew I realized that.

”I’ll do my best to help you, Colonel.”

A tear trickled down the sagging right side of his face. Thank you, Lieutenant Cuddy. For my granddaughter’s memory.”

”Mr. Vega said he will be back to take you to dinner tonight. He also will arrange for you to see the police tomorrow. But now, the Colonel wishes me to show you the rest of his house for... orientation purposes.”

Duy Tranh spoke the words like a jaded tour guide. He and I were standing by ourselves in the corridor outside the ^n, the Skipper feeling he needed some rest after reliving his birthday.”

”Mr. Tranh, when I asked you those questions in the pool area, I wasn’t trying to single you out. Anyone investigating a homicide would focus first on the person finding the body.”

”Do you wish to start with a certain place in the house, or just have me take you around?”

Tranh’s tone hadn’t changed. ”I was thinking of a given room.”

”Which, please?”

”Yours.”

A faint twitching of the lips, almost a smug smile, as if he knew all along that’s where I’d begin. ”Come.”

I followed him down the corridor to a staircase and up that to the second floor. He took a key from the pocket of his athletic pants and stuck it in the knob of the first door we came to.

”You keep your room locked?”

”I often have important papers of the Colonel in my suite.”

His suite.

As Tranh swung the door open for me, though, I saw he wasn’t kidding.

The large room had a living area pardoned by a low bookcase, a collection of exotic knives on the longest wall. To the right of the shelves were a love seat and an armchair separated from each other by a coffee table. Off to the left, the floor-plan dog-legged right and back to create a sleeping L with a nice double window over the bed. Next to the bed was a fairly elaborate computer system occupying a hutch designed to hold all the different components. The bathroom door was ajar, two towels hanging from their rack next to a shower stall that looked big enough for a barbershop quartet.

”Nice digs,” I said.

”The Colonel is a generous man living in a large house.”

”Can we sit a while?”

Tranh motioned me to the love seat. He took the arm-chair.

I pointed at the computer. ”What do you use that for?”

”The usual things.”

”How about some details?”

Tranh watched me for a moment. ”You do not know
much about computers, do you?”

”Honestly? No.”

He said, ”Then I am probably not skilled enough to explain them to you.”

”Mr. Tranh, let’s cut the shit and talk about what you use that computer setup for.”

The smug smile, maybe his reward to himself for getting a rise out of me. ”Surfing the Net, crawling the Web. E-mail, data- and word-processing, spreadsheet analysis—I notice you are not taking notes. Should I go on?”

”What kind of work do you do for the Colonel?”

”On the computer?”

Disingenuous. ”Overall.”

”I am his personal assistant.” Tranh began ticking his duties off raised fingers. ”I coordinate the household here. I maintain the Colonel’s checkbook. I help him in the online execution of his investment decisions. I replace physically some of the faculties he lost due to his stroke.” Tranh had reached his pinkie finger. ”And I am his confidant, because while I am not blood, I am family.”

The Skipper had said as much downstairs. ”How did you come to know Colonel Helides?”

”In Vietnam. My father served as an undercover ‘operative’ for Colonel Helides in the black market. A ‘business rival' assassinated him just before the fall of Saigon to the Communists. They would have put me into a re-education Camp, but the Colonel felt he owed something to my father, and so I was brought to the United States and raised in the Colonel’s home.”

”This home?”

”Not originally,” said Tranh. ”The Colonel built here only after Mrs.... After he married his second wife, Cassandra. We moved to Florida twenty-two years ago.”

”So you’ve been with Colonel Helides...?”

”... since I was six years old. He became my surrogate father, putting me through secondary school and university.”

”Where?”

”P.M.I. and V.M.I.”

Both military schools. ”You went into the service, then?”

”No.”

I gave Tranh a chance to follow that up. When he didn’t, I said, ”How come?”

”I have an arrhythmic heart, Mr. Cuddy, but it was not discovered until I collapsed during a soccer game my senior year of college.”

I glanced up at the wall of knives. ”Is that when you began collecting?”

Tranh followed my eyes. ”Yes, though not all of those are merely decorative.” He pointed toward a matched trio of quarter-moons about a foot long each, made of something like tungsten steel, with different diameter circular holes in the handles. ”Those, for example, are for throwing.”

”Which doesn’t hurt your heart?”

”Mr. Cuddy, we can learn to live with all kinds of limitations.”

”And you help Colonel Helides live with his.”

A pause, like Tranh was measuring something on the inside before responding. ”The Colonel has not been lucky in the children his first wife bore him. Spiro—the one who calls himself ‘Spi’—came back to his father only when money was needed. David has never been able to leave.”

The Skipper had mentioned that in the pool area. ”Why?”

”Why does David still live with us?”

”Yes.”

Another measured pause. ”David is chronically, clinically depressed, Mr. Cuddy. He has never been able to... function normally in the world. So, we—and now I—must take care of him.”

Interesting, but maybe more interesting was the way Tranh identified with Helides in the royal ”we” format. ”David’s under a doctor’s care?”

”Yes, a psychiatrist. More so now.”

”Now?”

”Since Veronica’s death. Even with Dr. Forbes at the party, David was very upset by the incident, and by the police interrogating him afterward.”

”I don’t recall Colonel Helides mentioning this doctor as one of the guests.”

”Since his stroke, the Colonel does not always remember every detail.”

As I thought about that, Tranh said, ”If you wish to see David’s psychiatrist, it can be arranged.”

”What about patient confidentiality?”

”The Colonel can pierce that.”

I wouldn’t bet against it. ”Mr. Tranh, what do you think happened here that day?”

A long stare, the man gauging something that required a string of discreet measurements. ”I believe that someone Very carefully planned the killing of a very difficult girl.”

”Difficult how?”

”Perhaps it would be best for us to start with the ‘careful Plan’ first.”

I decided to let him have his head. ”Whatever you think best.”

Duy Tranh rose gracefully from the armchair. ”Come.”

* * *

”The Colonel refers to this as ‘Central Control.’”

We had walked back downstairs and now stood outside a solid-looking door, Tranh fishing another key from his pocket. He used it on a lock about a foot above the knob.

As the door swung open, you might have thought you’d stumbled into a television studio. Monitors ringed the level just below the ceiling, several chairs and desktop machines positioned at various angles. The monitor screens showed different intersections of the house, both interior and exterior.

I said, ”The video cameras must be pretty well camouflaged.”

”Because you did not notice them?”

A subtle challenge there. ”Partly. They record as well as display?”

”Usually.” Tranh passed his hand over a vertical stack of VCRs.

I moved toward them. ”Meaning, not always.”

”The Colonel has already explained to you about his acceding to Kalil’s request.”

”On the interior locations. But only because Veronica insisted.”

”Yes.”

Again nonjudgmental in tone, though the curtness of his response seemed to carry Tranh’s seal of disapproval. I said, ”How about the exterior cameras?”

”All functioning perfectly.”

”And showing nothing unusual during the party?”

”Correct.”

I glanced back at the door Tranh had opened for us. ”This room kept locked?”

”Unless someone is inside it, as we are now.”

”And who has access?”

”If you mean by key, I have one, the security staff—Mr.
Jack Byrne and Mr. Umberto Reyes—each were given one, and of course the Colonel has his own.”

”So somebody with a key—or access to one —could have tampered with the external video stations.”

A slight shrug. ”Yes, but not with the tapes recorded from each.”

”Because?”

Tranh glanced at the stack of VCRs. ”Each camera is chronometered by day, date, and military time. None of the videos had been altered, according to the police, who told us they examined each rather carefully.”

”So the external ones show—”

”—precisely what our outside security, Mr. Umberto Reyes, maintains. That no one entered the grounds during the party.”

”Up till the time you found Veronica dead.”

”Correct.”

I looked around the room again. ”Who knew about Kalil wanting to shoot his home movie?”

Tranh gave me his smug little smile. ”I believe everyone. It was announced with the invitations weeks before.”

”Announced as in printed on something?”

”No, nothing so formal. Everyone was simply told the party would be ‘filmed’ that way.”

”And that the other, security cameras on the inside of the house would be turned off?”

”If not everyone was told directly, everyone could have heard about it.”

I watched Tranh. ”Which is your ‘careful plan’ part.”

He watched me, too. ‘Yes. Whoever killed Veronica had carefully planned her death for the one time many people Would be
in
the house without being watched
by
the house.”

”You also said in your suite that she was a ‘very difficult’ girl.”

”
I did.”

”Difficult how?”

Tranh paused. ”Veronica had learned too much too quickly.”

”About what?”

”How to get what she believed she wanted.”

”Like having her grandfather order the interior cameras turned off during his party?”

Duy Tranh paused again, then said, ”Perhaps you should speak with Mr. Umberto Reyes now.”

We walked through the house and out the front door toward the gate. The guy in the blond crew-cut was standing next to his little security gazebo, most of the media and gawkers gone from the street.

Duy Tranh waited until we were an arm’s length away from the guard before saying, ”Mr. Umberto Reyes, this is Mr. John Cuddy. The Colonel has hired him to look into the death of Veronica.”

”I know.”

Reyes’s lips barely moved as he looked at Tranh, and I got the distinct impression there was no love lost between them-I turned to Tranh myself. ”Thanks for your help so far, but I think I can take it from here.”

He hesitated, then said, ”Please advise me if you need anything further.”

When Duy Tranh disappeared around a corner of the house, I turned back to Reyes. ”I’m told you were in the MPs, too.”

”That’s right.”

Still terse, any accent buried. ”Then we both know there are two ways of doing this.”

Reyes moved his tongue around inside his cheek. ”I’m ‘Umberto’ by birthname, but you can call me ‘Berto.’”

”And I prefer John.”

I stuck out my hand, and we shook on the truce. Reyes let me speak next, though.

”Tell me about the day Veronica Held was killed.”

”You want overview first, then detail?”

I nodded.

He took a breath. ”Big picture, a lot of people came on the grounds for the party, but once they got here, they all stayed inside the house because of the cold, and nobody else came in behind them.”

”Or around them, Berto?”

Reyes pointed to the gazebo. ”I’ve got six video monitors in there. Small screens, but they do the job. Four exterior corners, two interior intersections. Since both the interior cameras were nonoperational—you been told why?”

”Yes.”

”Okay, that left me just the four exterior ones, and I knew everybody who came through that gate for the party.”

”Meaning?”

”Meaning I just had to glance up at their faces to recognize them.”

”So, you didn’t have to spend much time looking away from the screens.”

”Right. Nobody else came in. Or out.”

”None of the guests left early?”

”Or even went outside. Like I said, it was cold that day.”

”How cold, Berto?”

”Fifty, maybe even forty-five.”

Everything’s relative, but at least Reyes was warming up to me a little. ”You pretty familiar with the video monitoring equipment in Central Control?”

”We had the same system, my last post in the service.”

”And?”

”Worked fine back then, worked fine that day.”

”You keep a guest list for the party?”

”Negative, man. Like I told you before, I knew everybody.”

”Can you name them?”

Reyes reeled off a dozen or so, both first and last, some I recognized from my talks with the Skipper. Impressive, or well rehearsed. ”How about your logbook?”

”The police took the entry page for that day. Evidence.” I was about to ask him if he’d copied it first when a Porsche Boxster convertible screeched to a halt outside the gate and a young woman with platinum hair leaned into the horn on the wheel in front of her. Through the car’s windshield I could see opaque blue sunglasses and a wide, Kewpie-doll frown.

”Berto, you bastard, open this fucking gate.”

Reyes took a long, slow step toward the gazebo, and then he flicked at something. The gate swung outward, and the woman burned a little rubber moving her car the twenty feet to where we were standing.

She wore a placket-collared shirt over a tennis skirt that rode about eighty percent of the way up her thighs. The veined hands and facial lines also brought her a little closer to forty than to twenty. ”And just who might you be?”

”John Cuddy.”

”Ah, Nick’s dick from Boston. You’ll want to talk with me. Duy can guide you to my suite.”

The woman took off, leaving a little more tread on the driveway as she spun the convertible around the corner of the house toward the garage doors.

I said to Reyes. ”Let me guess. She refers to herself as
‘moi,’
too.

”And to the rest of the world as ‘bastards.’”

”Well, she’s got some standing to be upset.”

Reyes looked at me oddly. ”I don’t get you.”

”The woman just lost her daughter.”

Umberto Reyes started to grin, then iced it. ”That’s not Jeanette Held.”

”It isn’t?”

”Uh-unh. That’s Mrs. Cassandra Helides, the Colonel’s wife.”

I just closed my eyes.

”You found your way.”

I’d knocked on the door at the end of a second-floor corridor, and Cassandra Helides’s voice had told me to come through it. She stood hip-cocked—and nearly six feet tall — in front of a four-poster bed, wearing a powder-blue terry-cloth robe with some emblem on the left breast.

Helides said, ”I’ve got to take a shower, or I’ll be late for a drinks date. Sit down and you can yell to me through the sliding glass door.”

‘That might be kind of awkward.”

Without the sunglasses, her eyes were big, white showing around both irises. ”Then maybe you should join me?”

I gave it a beat. ”That would be more than awkward, Mrs. Helides.”

She wagged her head, the tip of her tongue sticking out between her lips. ”My Nick sure can pick them.”

I wasn’t thinking the same thing.

Helides stood hip-cocked a moment longer. ”So sit. Won’t be two minutes.”

She broke the pose and swayed under the robe, entering the bathroom without closing the door. As water began drumming against tiles in the other room, I moved to a chair and looked around me.

Helides had a suite with the same floor plan as Tranh’s but maybe a third again as large. The living area where I sat included pink upholstered chairs and a settee that might have been an antique but struck me as schlock. The color motif was carried over to the four-poster, the cloth skirting the box spring bordered with white lace, though the pink bedclothes themselves lay tousled, pillows at domino angles to each other. Full-length mirrors rose on either side of a walk-in closet, and the wall paintings were all of flamingos. The entertainment center contained components of so many sizes and shapes, I could identify only about half by function.

”Told you I could do it quickly when I had to.”

Turning toward the bathroom again, I realized I couldn’t hear the water anymore. Cassandra Helides’s platinum hair was plastered against her skull, and she wore only a large towel wrap this time, her breasts pushing forward more dramatically through the tucked towel than they had under the robe.

Helides smiled slyly. ”Caught you, didn’t I?”

”Caught me?”

”Licking your chops over my little babies here. Want to see the wonders modem surgery can wreck?”

I guessed she meant ”wreak.”

”You always come on this strong?”

Helides pouted, the lips seeming glossed. ”Strong is what I never was before.”

”Before what?”

”Before marrying Nick.” She stopped and pouted again, putting a bit more into it. ”No, that’s not right. It was after I seduced him but before I married him that I felt it.”

”Felt what?”

Her sly smile again. ”The power.” Helides raked a hand through wet hair. ”I’ve got to dry this, but the portable’s pretty quiet. So, what can I tell you?”

As she rummaged through the unmade bedclothes, I
said,
”You’re the one who said I’d want to talk with you.” Helides turned back around, a Star-Wars appliance in her right hand. She clicked something on it, and the thing came to life, even though I didn’t see any cord running to a socket. ”About who killed Very, right?”

”Your husband seems to prefer Veronica.’”

Helides began running the snout of the dryer back and forth across her hair. ”Nick’s ‘preferences’ aren’t exactly uttermost in my mind.”

Another Norm Crosby malaprop, for ”uppermost” this time, but I decided to go with the spirit. ”And why is that?” A theatrical shrug. ”You ever see the TV shows about the old bastards playing softball?”

”I
'm sorry?”

”They’re all over the place down here, especially on the Gulf Coast The geezers have leagues, uniforms, and all that other guy stuff.”

”Must have missed the coverage.”

”Yeah, well, let me tell you then. They pull on those cleats and pick up a bat, they think they’re kids again. Or at least young. But you watch them take a swing or try to run the bases, and it’s pathetic, you know?”

”Pathetic.”

”Yeah.” She switched the dryer to her other hand.

That’s kind of my problem, too.”

”Your problem?”

”
Nick. When I married him, it was like I got a new daddy, but one with real money who I could sleep with and not have it be some kind of crime.”

Christ. ”You married the Colonel for his money.” Another switch of the dryer. ”Hey, even the sex wasn’t bad at first. Only problem is, when you marry your father, nobody warns you that ten years later you’ll be stuck with your grandfather, you know?”

From what Duy Tranh had given me as chronology, I thought it had to be over twenty years, but I also didn’t want to hear any more on the subject. ”Maybe if you’d tell me what you can about Veronica’s death, I won’t make you late for your date.”

”Oh, I don’t know.” The sly smile. ”That might be kind of fun.”

”What might?”

She clicked off the dryer. ‘You making me late for my date.”

Relendess. ”Veronica’s death?”

Helides tossed the dryer back onto the bedclothes. ”I don’t know anything about it.”

”What?”

She turned and shook her head like a horse does to settle its mane. ‘You deaf? I don’t know a fucking thing about it. I got drunk pretty early that day.”

”Why?”

”Hey, Nick living out another birthday isn’t exactly a reason for me to celebrate, you know?”

I spoke slowly. ”But you told me out in the driveway that I should talk with you.”

”That was just a fucking line, boytoy. When did you fall off the turkey truck?”

”‘Turnip truck,”‘ I said before standing up and walking away.

From by the bed, Cassandra Helides asked, almost meekly, ‘You sure it’s not ‘turkey’?”

* * *

As I closed her door behind me, I registered a flash of movement in my peripheral vision. By the time I turned my head, I had only one frame of a man with shaggy hair in dark clothes disappearing around the corner to the stairway.

”Just a second,” I called out. When I didn’t hear any footfalls on the steps, I went over to them. Empty, and no other sounds I could hear.

At the bottom of the stairway, I got my bearings and walked through the living room toward the corridor leading to the den. From the door, I could see Justo, speaking into a telephone, the Skipper sitting in the same chair again, Duy Tranh standing at his side.

”Lieutenant Cuddy,” said Helides in his garbled voice. There was something in his eyes that told me he wasn’t completely in the present. Then I noticed his hands on the binder of a photo album in his lap.

”Colonel.”

”Come in, please. Duy and I were just looking at some old photos from our time over there.”

I approached them, Helides using the good hand to swing the album toward me on his bent knees.

He said, ”A shot of you and Lieutenant Vega.”

One look, and I remembered. It was during the Tet Offensive, probably somewhere into our twentieth hour on duty that night, some jerk from
Stars and Stripes
magazine snapping pictures of us coming in off Tu Do Street and appearing impossibly young. I had the blood of a private first class all over me, an MP whose name I never got because most of him had been blown away before I pulled him into relative safety of an alley mouth. Justo was forced to empty his forty-five into two of the ”enemy” rushing us with grenades, neither of the kids more than twelve years old. I could recall seeing the photographer, grinning from ear to ear as he got a shot he was sure would bring him some kind of prize. Or maybe just a ticket home.

If the Skipper hadn’t been there, I would have taken that jerk’s camera strap and—

”Lieutenant,” said Helides, ”I’m the one who’s supposed to be going senile.”

”Sorry, sir.”

A different expression came over the good side of his face, the black, bushy eyebrow arcing in concern. ”Are you all right?”

”Just kind of a flashback.”

The Skipper nodded once, chin almost touching his chest. ”We all have them. One way or another.” Then he straightened in the chair. ”Have you satisfied yourself that the killer had to be someone invited here?”

”Almost.”

”Meaning?”

”I was pretty much convinced until I just saw a man on the second floor that I couldn’t account for.”