“Billy,” said Marge. “Start at the beginning.”
“We’ll be here all day.” Charlie Croft pulled a small notebook from his back pocket and scanned the first page. “The old woman died a natural death. We searched the house to make sure there was nothing missing. You see, a robbery complicates things, ma’am. And Howard Chainy—that’s the medical examiner—he had a damn bug up his butt. ’Scuse me, ma’am. He thought the hired girl might’ve run off with the old lady’s valuables, and maybe that’s why she never reported the death.” He closed his notebook and waved one hand to say,
That’s it—all done.
Ali wondered where this was supposed to lead her. The truffle found in the child’s jacket did not fit with the old lady’s quaint mushroom collection. “You went through the whole house?”
“Every room—basement to attic.”
“Did the basement have a dirt floor?” She asked this more for the sake of politeness than information. She had lost the threads of the exotic fungus quest, only now recalling that one would need an oak tree in addition to the dirt.
“A dirt floor?” Chief Croft consulted his notebook again. “One minute, ma’am. We’ve been through a lot of houses in the past week.” When he had scanned a few pages, he looked up at her again. “I took the upper rooms. Billy here and Phil Chapel went through the parlor floor and the basement.” He turned to his most junior officer. “Which one of you searched the basement?”
“I did, sir. I’m pretty sure it had a cement floor. It was just a little laundry room. I remember the washer and dryer.”
Now Charlie Croft turned in his chair to face the younger man. “Must’ve been more to it than that.”
“There was a furnace,” said Billy. “A big one. But there wasn’t much room down there for anything else. No boxes, nothing like that. It was real cramped.”
Marge leaned close to Billy’s ear, and in the manner of a prompting stage mother, she said. “So it was a real small house?”
“No, ma’am,” said Billy. “Big place, maybe fifteen rooms.”
Charlie Croft was nodding in agreement. “That damn house sprawls out all over creation.” He turned back to Billy. “And you’re telling me the entire basement was a
cramped
laundry room?”
Seconds dragged by as the two men stared at one another, and finally Charlie Croft said, “Oh shit.”
“I’m just telling you what I saw,” said Billy, sinking in his chair. He stared at the paper plate of cold french fries on the corner of Ali’s desk. “You gonna finish that, ma’am?”
“Help yourself, Billy.” Ali pushed the plate toward him. “Do you remember seeing a door in the basement?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Did you look for one?” asked Charlie Croft.
“No, sir. We were just making sure the place hadn’t been robbed.” Billy had demolished the fries, and now he was appraising a box of doughnuts on the desk next to Ali’s. “I didn’t think there could’ve been anything down there worth taking.”
“That’s okay, baby.” Marge ruffled Billy’s hair as the young man inhaled a glazed doughnut and reached for another. She handed Ali the list of house-to-house searches in the lake district. “One of the investigators crossed off the old lady’s place.”
“Well, we searched it, didn’t we?” Billy had downed two sugar doughnuts at amazing speed, and there was one left in the box—at the moment.
Charlie Croft looked at Ali. “This is my fault.” He turned back to the junior officer. “You can go now, Billy. I guess we can handle it from here.”
The young policeman was cramming the last doughnut into his mouth, and he was nearly to the door when Marge called after him. “Billy? You checked the old lady’s refrigerator, didn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Marge grinned. “How do I know these things?”
“Nice catch,” said Ali. “So, Billy—no mushrooms in there, right? Nothing strange-looking?”
“No ma’am, nothing at all. Clean as a whistle. I guess the mushroom lady was planning to go on a trip.”
After Billy Poor had left the room, Charlie settled back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “Marge, if you promise not to mention this little screwup to Costello, I’ll take a run out there now and check the basement.”
“You got it, Boss.” Marge squeezed his arm to assure him that her allegiance lay with the signer of her pay-checks and not with the temporary camp of the State Police.
“Mind if I come along?” asked Ali. It was better to be in motion tonight, even if she only moved in circles.
“Glad to have the company.” Charlie was flipping through his notes again. “I seem to remember one other odd thing about that place, but I can’t think what it was.”
It was a pity that Oz Almo’s lawyer hadn’t spent more money on his toupee. The thatch of young brown hair sat atop graying temples, appearing to have crawled up there of its own volition. Special Agent Arnie Pyle wondered if the attorney had given the hairpiece a name and bought it a flea collar.
Arnie leaned back in the leather chair and lit a cigarette, despite the absence of ashtrays. Almo’s attorney waved his hand in the air, batting at smoke that had not yet reached him. This was the man’s first physical motion since sitting down to a polite round of plea bargaining. But the lawyer’s head never moved. He always remained in profile, and the FBI agent was spellbound by the single round, unblinking eye.
After taking a deep drag on his cigarette to produce the longest possible ash, Arnie smiled at the attorney, whom he had christened Fisheye. “According to these ledgers—” He paused to open up the heavy volume. “Oz has income from a lot of different sources, and only two legitimate clients. Interesting? Some of these entries are out-of-state wire transfers. But the one I especially like is probably a local man. His payments are tagged with a
D
after every entry. Always the same cash increments every month. I can backtrack these payments for at least ten years.”
He slammed the book with a loud crack. Fisheye jumped, and Arnie’s smile widened. Anything that cracked an attorney’s composure was progress. “Looks like your client is into blackmail.”
“But you don’t know that for a fact.”
“I didn’t interview the marks, if that’s what you’re asking. And you don’t want me to, Counselor. Once I do that, I have to do the paperwork. You think I’m blowing smoke?” Arnie made a conciliatory shrug. “Okay, I’ll give you a name—Rita Anderson.”
The lawyer turned to his client, who sat at the edge of the couch with his hands cuffed behind him. The look on Oz Almo’s face told him the threat was solid. So Rouge had been right about the overpaid cleaning lady.
“Let’s say we got your guy on blackmail.” Arnie put his feet up on the soot-crusted bag of ransom money. “Among other things.”
The point was not lost on Fisheye, but neither did it seem to worry the man that his client was involved in conspiracy charges for the death of Susan Kendall. The lawyer was also aware that two other children might well be dying as they spoke. Yet he retained his composure, showing no angst, no compassion, no hint of any warm blood. Evidently Fisheye’s mother had laid her eggs in cold pond water.
“The ransom is old business, Agent Pyle. Unless you have more—”
“Let’s see if I can guess where you’re going with that. The statute of limitations? It starts rolling on the day of discovery, and that’s today.”
“No, I was about to mention the minor detail of the man convicted of murdering Susan Kendall.”
“Right you are. But it looks like the priest didn’t act alone. We got Oz nailed for conspiracy.” Arnie absently stroked the cover of the closed ledger. “I’m interested in the cash entries for the local man.”
The lawyer glanced at the ash on the end of Arnie’s cigarette; it had grown. “
Mr
. Almo will be happy to assist the police in the current investigation, under certain circumstances.” Fisheye made a polite cough, the nonsmoker’s indication that the cigarette should be put out.
Arnie shook his head. “Sorry, pal. Can I call you pal? No? Well, Counselor, for Oz’s sake, I hope the girls don’t die while you’re jerking me around.” Arnie took another drag, and now the long log of an ash hung out over the arm of the chair, the handwoven rug, but best of all, it threatened the hem of the lawyer’s cashmere coat. “With the interstate wire transfers, the FBI’s got your guy on extortion. But with the ransom money, the State Police get dibs on his hide for kidnap and murder—hard time in the pen, even if he weasels out of murder in the first degree. Let’s say he wrote the ransom note himself. That would knock down the jail time.”
Fisheye had already framed his rebuttal and would have spoken, but Arnie held up one finger to say he was not done yet. “This morning we turned up a dead BCI man named Sorrel. He ties in, too. Federal and state—everybody’s pissed off.”
The attorney held out an empty nut dish for the agent to use as an ashtray. Arnie ignored this suggestion and let the dish hover in the air between himself and Almo’s lawyer. The man’s single unblinking eye roved over the cops, who were shifting their weight, tensing their bodies, churning and building the energy in the room.
And then the ash dropped into the dish in Fisheye’s hand.
“I’m going to advise my client to cooperate.”
“Very sound advice, Counselor.”
“But I can’t advise him to incriminate himself.” Fisheye set the dish on the table with a grimace of distaste. “Under the circumstances, I think immunity from federal prosecution would be a reasonable exchange for full cooperation.”
“You’re counting on the pressure of two little girls who don’t have much time to live.” Arnie nodded. “Okay, it’s a deal. The government won’t pursue federal charges.”
“I’m glad to see we’re in accord on this, Agent Pyle, but I need to talk to someone a bit higher up, someone in a
position
to make a deal.”
“There’s no way the brass won’t support me. You know the drill, Counselor. This is a one-time-only offer, and time is running out for the kids.”
“So? Use the phone.”
“It’s Christmas Day. You—”
“I have the home telephone number for a U.S. Attorney.” Fisheye rummaged through his wallet, withdrawing a business card with a number penned on the back. “We play golf.”
Charlie Croft was making good time along the deserted Lakeshore Drive, though there were no streetlamps to light the way in the dark evening hour. The beams of the car picked out the trunks of trees and encroaching low branches reaching into the road.
“Like I said, ma’am, this is probably a waste of time.”
“Call me Ali.”
“Billy might’ve been right about that cramped cellar. As I recall, that old house was added onto quite a bit—but not all at once. It’s got a brick wall and a stone one running along the front. The extension in the back of the house is made of wood. Could be the original house only had a small cellar. Buildings on lower ground have crawl spaces, no cellar at all.”
“You were trying to remember something odd about the house. Was it something you saw on the upper floors?”
“Well, no. There were four floors, but not much to see. Looked like the old lady wasn’t using the upstairs. All the beds had bare mattresses, and most of the rooms were closed off with weather stripping. She was using the back parlor for her bedroom, so I figured maybe she was trying to save money sealing off the rest of—Oh shit.” One hand slapped his forehead. “That was the one odd thing I couldn’t remember—the utility bills. I saw them on her desk when Phil Chapel was going through all the clutter looking for an address book. The electricity charge was a whopper, even for a big place like that one.”
“Maybe electric heating?”
“No, ma’am—Ali. There were radiators in every room—all steam heat. And that water bill was high, too. I run across that combo once before—big water and electric bills. This damn hippie rented a summer house on the lake. He was growing his own weed in the house and selling it to local kids. Now if that old lady hadn’t been the only resident, I would’ve tossed the place looking for seeds or maybe a growing shed near the house. In a slow week, I might’ve done that anyway.”
They turned off Lakeshore Drive and onto a narrow road with no marker.
Rouge stood by the window overlooking the private driveway. It was almost empty of cops and cars. Only Donaldson and his partner remained behind, waiting for the lawyer to do his backdoor deal with the U.S. Attorney.
When Oz’s lawyer had hung up the phone, he turned to the federal agent. “So we’re in agreement? You neglect to pursue an investigation of the interstate wire transfers, and Mr. Almo is immune from prosecution on federal charges. Now, about the local charges. The ransom will be turned in by my client as found money.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“It is now, Agent Pyle.”
“All right. Let’s get on with it.” In peripheral vision, Arnie could see Rouge moving toward them. Apparently the young cop did not like the idea of Oz walking away from every charge. Arnie only glanced at him, and with a slight nod, managed to convey that this was a very good deal indeed—for the lives of two small children. So much was riding on Ali’s profile of a local man, her belief in the priest’s innocence, Oz’s proximity to a kidnapping. The slender lead of a local blackmail victim might come to nothing, but this was the only game plan left. The hour was late—children were waiting.
Rouge melted back into the company of the two troopers, who were going over the bags and boxes of collected evidence. He went on with the business of looking for local faces in the photographs of blackmail victims. It was almost a race between the young cop and the lawyer. Who would turn up the local man first?
And now this was also dawning on Fisheye. He turned to his client. “All right, Oz, give them the name for the
D
entries.”
“I was blackmailing William Penny. He’s a local doctor, a heart specialist. I found—”
“That’s quite enough,” said the attorney. His glare was fixed on Arnie again. “I suggest we get on to clearing up the remaining charges. A call to the—”