The Payback Man (25 page)

S
TEVE LOOKED OUT
the car window as they passed the house he’d shared with Chelsea. There were lights on both upstairs and down, and a child’s bicycle lay on its side by the front door. For a moment he couldn’t breathe. He prayed the people in the house were happy there.

If only he and Chelsea had had children. They’d both wanted them badly, but no matter how hard they tried, she couldn’t carry a pregnancy more than three months.

Apparently it was genetic, because her sister, Posey, hadn’t been able to conceive, either. Steve thanked God Neil didn’t have children. Children would have made what he planned to do even harder.

Steve’s driver dropped him in the shadows at the back corner of Neil’s yard. Steve had expected Neil to build a high solid perimeter fence, but apparently he hadn’t. It was still possible to walk from Neil’s yard through the trees to the back of what had been Steve’s house.

Neil’s house was dark except for a single light in his study. Steve moved closer.

Neil sat at his fine Napoleonic campaign desk under a Tiffany lamp that Steve knew was no modern copy. A fire blazed in the ornate stone fireplace. The heavy raw-silk drapes over the French windows were wide-open, so Steve’s view into the room was unobstructed.

He slid his hand under the drooping pot of late mums beside the set of French doors. The key was there as it had always been.

He knew from Schockley that Neil never set the alarm
system until he went up to bed, and that Posey usually took a sleeping pill and went to bed early. Neil generally worked alone until midnight or later. That much hadn’t changed. Neil had always been a night owl.

So much for being awake to provide her husband with an alibi,
Schockley had said.

Steve slid the key into the French door and, bracing the door handle with his other hand, turned it silently.

Before he stepped into the room, he checked the automatic his driver had provided one last time to make certain there was a full clip and one in the chamber. He eased the slide back into position and stepped into the room.

Neil surged to his feet, gaping at the intruder. Then he shaded his eyes with his hands. “Steve? My God, it
is
you.”

Neil’s face went gray, but he recovered quickly. “You out on parole already? Man, am I glad to see you.” He stuck out his hand.

“Knock it off, Neil, and take your other hand off your desk drawer. This isn’t a pipe in my hand.”

“I can see that. A gun? Hey, come on, Steve, this is Neil, remember, old friend?”

“Old enemy, you mean. The reason I’m in prison.”

“Steve, that’s not true and you know it. Why, I tried to convince that jury—”

“You damned me beautifully with every word you said. Just the way you framed me when you killed Chelsea.”

Neil spread his hands. “Killed Chelsea? My God, Steve, how can you even think that? I was fond of Chelsea.”

“I thought you were
fond
of
me.
”

“I was. I am. You’re the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever had.”

“No doubt Cain said the same thing about Abel just before he bashed his head in.”

“You know I didn’t kill Chelsea. I was home in bed with Posey.”

“I’ve had three years to work out how you did it. I may
be wrong on a couple of points, but overall, I think I know.”

“Fantasy.” Obviously playing for time, Neil started to sit down behind his desk.

“Don’t sit there. And keep your hands where I can see them.”

“Come on, Steve, if this is going to be a long tale, the least you can do is let me sit down. How about like old friends on either side of the fire?”

Steve said nothing.

Neil put his hands palms up in front of his chest and walked carefully around the desk without taking his eyes off Steve. He sat in one of the two armchairs in front of the fire, eased back with a sigh and crossed his legs at the ankles as though perfectly relaxed.

Steve didn’t buy his act.

“I’ll stand, thank you. Put your hands on the arms of the chair and keep them there.”

“I can’t believe you’re treating me like this, Steve, after all we’ve been through.”

“Good one, Neil. What have you been through, precisely? You bought my half of the company for pennies on the dollar because you knew I was in a bind and needed the money for my defense. When I was convicted and couldn’t benefit from Chelsea’s estate, Posey inherited her money, as well as her life insurance, and now you’ve sold out to one of the conglomerates for one hell of a lot more money. You’ll be a gentleman of leisure in sunny Arizona. The only thing you had to do to get there was to kill my wife and frame me for her murder.”

“I tell you, I didn’t kill Chelsea.” Neil glanced at the fire. “I couldn’t kill her. I was in love with her.”

Steve’s gun hand wavered momentarily in surprise, but he recovered quickly.

“That’s right, Steve. I was in love with her from the minute I met her. I dated her first, remember? But when she laid eyes on you I knew I’d lost her.”

“You said you’d broken up with her. You didn’t mind if I dated her. Hell, you were best man at our wedding.”

Neil shrugged. “So I lied. You’re easy to lie to, you know that?”

“I do now.”

“I never stopped loving her. Posey was a poor substitute, but at least it kept me near Chelsea. I could see her, be close to her.”

“And the fact that she had inherited the bulk of her father’s money didn’t mean a thing?”

“Sure it did. She was rich in her own right while Posey only had that trust fund. But I’d have been in love with her even if she’d been some penniless little coed from the Delta. God, she was beautiful.”

“If you’re going to tell me you had an affair, I won’t believe you.”

Neil laughed but without mirth. “I wish. God knows I tried. I knew you two were having problems, that the bloom was off the rose. She had her life, you had yours—hell, I saw you every day, heard all your grandiose schemes for making the world a better place to live. I gave Chelsea a shoulder to cry on. I was as much her confidante as I was yours. But then I tried to take it further….”

He looked away to stare into the fire. “She blew up at me. Said I was betraying Posey and you. From that point we never saw each other except when the four of us got together. It tore me apart.”

“That’s why you killed her? Because she turned you down? And you hated me so much you framed me?”

“I never hated you. Envied you, yes. Envied you your good looks and your easy manners. Envied that you could play polo and tennis and golf well and never care what the score was. I’d have given my right arm to do the things you did.”

“The business wouldn’t have succeeded without you, Neil. I could do the engineering, but I can’t sell snow to a nomad in the desert. You made the business, not me.”

“You think I don’t know that? But you were always the one who got the kudos. Wonderful idea, Steve, great innovation, Steve. And they
were
great.”

“None of this gets to the nitty-gritty. You’re a killer. You’ve got to pay for that.”

Neil sounded tired. “Okay, I’m a killer. Just how did I do it when I was home in bed with Posey?”

“You weren’t. And I can prove it.”

For the first time, Neil sat up and gave Steve his full attention. “Prove it, how?”

“In good time. I’ll tell you before I kill you.”

“That’s what this is all about? Killing me? You’ll never get away with it.”

“That’s what I would have said about you. We were both wrong. So how’d you get the drug into my wine at the restaurant? What was it? Some of Posey’s sleeping pills?”

“Who says I did?”

“I say. And into Posey’s, as well. You may have made love to her when you got home, Neil, but then she went off to lala-land, while you walked through your backyard and into mine, opened the back door with Posey’s key, killed Chelsea, took her jewelry and broke the window. Two minutes, tops. You knew I’d call you the minute I found her. You were there before the police—through our yards again. Any trace of forensic evidence they might have found could be explained by that second trip. Of course Posey said you were in bed with her. What was she going to say? She was blotto and never heard you leave? Then all you had to do was sit tight and make certain the jury convicted me. Would you have let me take a lethal injection?”

“No!” Neil bolted out of his chair. Steve stopped him with the gun. “No, I’d never have let you die. I did everything I could to get you off on a lesser charge. When they sentenced you to six to twelve, I knew you’d be out
in three or four years. What’s three or four years? You’re still a young man.”

“You have no idea how long three or four years can be. So you admit it. You killed her.”

“I don’t admit it. And you can’t prove it, no matter what you say.”

“Yes, I can. Amazing that evidence still exists. You’re not the only one who knows I’m innocent. Ever hear of a cold case investigation, Neil? That’s what my lawyer has been running. You made a mistake that would send you to prison if I was to let you live.”

“For God’s sake, man, what?”

“The knife that you used to stab Chelsea. It supposedly came from the drawer beside the stove in my kitchen. You identified it. Just like the one you had.”

“Yes, I identified it.”

“Wrong. Chelsea wasn’t much of a cook, and definitely not as neat as Posey the perfect homemaker. That night you couldn’t take a chance on Chelsea’s hearing you open the kitchen drawer and coming to investigate. You took the knife from your set in
your
kitchen to stab her with. Then after she was dead, you took the knife from
our
kitchen and put it in the drawer in your house to replace yours.”

“For the sake of argument, let’s say I did that. They were identical. You’re not giving me some nonsense about fingerprints, surely, after all this time?”

“Not fingerprints. You didn’t know that Chelsea had used that knife to pry open a stuck window in the kitchen. She’d chipped a tiny piece out of the blade, and she’d gotten a couple of flakes of that special white paint lodged between the end of the blade and the hilt.”

Neil’s face was a picture. He’d aged a dozen years in five minutes. He no longer paid attention to the gun in Steve’s hand. “I don’t believe you,” he whispered.

“I never saw the pictures of the weapon until a few days ago. I knew then it wasn’t my knife. You had a tele
phone repairman yesterday, didn’t you? Did Posey bother to tell you?”

“What?”

“He’s a private detective hired by my lawyer and my sister. He found the knife in your kitchen. It’s not there now. It’s in a laboratory under a microscope. The microscopic bits are still there, so is the nick in the blade. The people who own my house now haven’t repainted and let us take a sample of paint from that window. Remember how we laughed when Chelsea spent so much time having the paint mixed? White is white. But it’s not, Neil. It’s one of a kind. And so is the paint on that knife. And only you had access to it.”

“That’s not enough. Any good lawyer could find a judge who’d rule that inadmissible because of the way you got it.”

“Vickers says he’ll have no trouble getting it admitted into evidence. Why didn’t you dump the jewelry you stole into the river, Neil? It was stupid to keep it all these years.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Neil had gone from confused to frightened. His hands no longer lay on the arms of his chair, but twisted in his lap convulsively.

“That detective is good. He knew what he was looking for and the way most people think when they hide something. The police never even tried to search this place, did they?”

“Why should they?”

“To find Chelsea’s jewelry—the things that were taken off her body that night. Granted they were beautiful pieces—that ring her mother left her, the pearls I gave her for our anniversary, the diamond bracelet. But to keep them—stupid, Neil. Truly stupid.”

He sounded stupefied. “They found them?”

“Did you think you’d picked such a great hiding place? Wrapped in a piece of oilskin in the back corner of the
swimming-pool pump filter? Come on, Neil, what if the pump had broken? The pool man would have been fifty thousand dollars richer.”

“I didn’t hide them.”

“Oilskin takes fingerprints, old friend. The prints are still readable even after all this time. I don’t doubt they’ll be your prints. Why keep denying what you did?”

“Because he didn’t do it.”

Steve whirled, gun raised. Posey stood in the doorway in an old chenille robe and bare feet. The gun in her hand was small, but no less deadly than Steve’s.

He didn’t think he’d have recognized her. She’d put on at least fifty pounds. Her face sagged. With no makeup, her skin was mottled, the cheeks flushed as though she had a fever.

“Posey, go back to bed,” Neil snapped. “I’ve got this under control.”

Posey giggled. “See, Steve, you had it backward. I drugged you and Neil, not the other way around. Neil always thinks he has everything under control. Neil, darling, you don’t have anything under control and never did. Put your gun down, Steve, before I shoot it out of your hand. I can do that, you know. I’m a very good shot. One of the few things I could do better than Chelsea. Although I’d really prefer to put a bullet through your damned heart.”

“Posey, don’t.” Neil slid in front of Steve. “Come on, sweetheart. Steve’s an old friend.”

“Friend? He came here to kill you, Neil. To our home! To destroy my family! Get out of the way. He’s an escaped killer, he broke in, he had a gun, I woke up, came downstairs and killed the man who killed my sister. Simple.”

“No more killing, Posey!” Neil’s cry was anguished.

Steve stood dumbfounded.

“We’ll say Steve came over here after he killed Chelsea, changed the knives and hid her jewelry in our pool filter to incriminate you.”

“And the fingerprints?” Steve asked.

Posey shrugged. “I’ll think of something. I should have noticed the knives were different. That was stupid. But keeping the jewelry wasn’t stupid. I certainly wasn’t going to throw away Mother’s heirloom diamond ring. It’s six carats.”