Rainy City Page 21

  “Listen,” he said. “I made a serious mistake letting Penworthy Investigations run on such a long leash. That Holder fellow got out of control. I’ll admit that. I don’t know what he might have done. But I’d like to make that up to you. Somebody killed my sister and I want to find out who. The cops claim Burton has an alibi. Much as I’d love to see it pinned on him, I’ll have to believe them. This Percy joker with the Bellingham police is incompetent. I want you to find out who did do it. It could mean a thousand bucks a day to you.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, wondering why he would offer so much. He had to realize the going rates were nowhere near that.

  “What? Why? Fifteen hundred? Listen, you’re done with this case, aren’t you? Holder told me you’re itching to find out who murdered my sister. Why don’t we kill two birds with one stone?”

  “I’m a bird lover.”

  “If that business with Melissa is bothering you, you come back to Seattle with me. I’ll show you psychiatric reports that’ll curl your hair. In high school she had everyone convinced one of her teachers had seduced her. The man almost went to jail before we found out she was lying. Cost me forty thousand dollars to settle out of court.” Crowell cocked around and stared at me for a moment, then turned back. I got the feeling he had squatted on the overturned cart before, had spent a great deal of time in that position, gazing out over the treetops, contemplating.

  When he spoke again, he was facing away, looking down at his knees. “She’s been a sidewalk stewardess for a number of years. You know that, Black?”

  “The way I understand it, it was an on-and-off deal.”

  “And you still believe her?”

  “Prostitutes don’t lie any more than the rest of us.”

  “You’re a naive man, Black. But I’ll give you your due. Holder says you’re damn good at your sort of work. Look, from what I read, if the cops don’t find a killer in the first few hours after the event, the likelihood gets smaller and smaller that they ever will. I’m worried. Percy tells me they don’t have a clue who murdered Mary Dawn. I need somebody of your caliber to get in and dig, someone who can ferret out all the facts and report directly to me.”

  “Sorry,” I said Even as I turned down the offer, I began thinking what I might do with the pile of loot I could earn from the case. Much as I liked to think so, I wasn’t immune to the lures of filthy lucre. Maybe I could take in next year’s boat show with some lettuce in my pocket. I could shop for a video recorder. I could impress my neighbors and pay off the paper boy in cash. And of course, a guy hated to leave loose ends. It might be nice to tidy up the case and find out who the guilty party was. It might even be nicer to get paid a small fortune for doing it.

  “I could go as high as eighteen hundred a day, Black.”

  He remained facing away. I reached inside the mine entrance and lifted out the heavy galvanized bucket spilling over with rain water. Near-freezing liquid slopped over the edges and numbed my fingers.

  I hoisted the bucket of icy water, swung it back in both hands and tossed the frigid contents at Angus Crowell. Bombs away. The water tumbled through the air in a large misshapen silver bubble. With a thwack, it splashed across his shoulders, doused his back and seeped down into his trousers. A direct hit. Give the bombardier a cigar.

  He leaped up, twisted around, planted his heavy legs and stared at me.

  “Muthefucka!” I smiled a small, wry, sorry smile. “I was afraid you might say that.”

  ?

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “You BETTER HAVE A DAMN GOOD EXPLANATION FOR THAT stunt,” Crowell bellowed. “Letting some bonehead toss a bucket of ice water on me in this mountain air is not my idea of fun and games.”

  I flung the bucket aside. Neither of us watched as it clanked down the hillside.

  “No,” I said. “Your idea of fun and games runs a bit deeper than a mere prank.”

  He looked at me carefully. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I know who you are. I know what you’ve been up to.”

  “You’re worse than Melissa. What is this? Some sort of code talk?”

  “Five days ago, last Sunday night, somebody broke into my house.”

  His eyes altered and he gave me a narrow look. “So what? That has nothing to do with me. That has nothing…”

  “He broke in and he started trashing the place, but Kathy Birchfield, my downstairs renter, interrupted him. You remember Kathy. She talked to you a week ago about your daughter. The guy was big and athletic. He had brown eyes. That was all she could see under the ski mask.

  “And he was tall. So tall, in fact, that he bashed his head on one of the low doorways in her apartment. Guess what he said when he bashed his head?”

  “I don’t know that I care.”

  Crowell grumbled, but he was growing more and more interested in the point of my story. If he had flubbed up somewhere, he wanted to know where. A successful man made a habit of looking over his shoulder, pinpointing his mistakes, and correcting them.

  “He said ‘muthefucka.’”

  “So?”

  “He said it just exactly the way you said it a moment ago.”

  “A lot of people curse.”

  “Yes, and most of them have their own little pet phrases.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Don’t be dense, Crowell. You know what I’m getting at. You broke into my house. You went after Kathy, you bastard.”

  The tiny impish grin on Crowell’s craggy face eroded until it was a full-fledged grimace. His shirt was soaked and sticking to his torso. His trousers were soggy in the’ seat. It was only when he tugged out his shirttail that I realized what he was grinning about. I saw it before he hauled it out into the light, saw it through the outline of his wet shirt.

  It was a forty-five caliber Smith and Wesson revolver and I was kicking myself for not spotting it sooner.

  Angus Crowell lined up the tiny black hole in the end - of the pistol with my sternum and said, “I’d say you’re between a rock and a hard place, eh, sonny?”

  “You don’t shoot a man for tossing a bucket of water on you.”

  “No, no, no,” growled the old man. “Nobody’s going to get shot. Not if they behave themselves.”

  “You broke into my house, didn’t you?”

  He grinned and I saw gaps in his teeth. “No harm in telling you. It will be your word against mine. Nobody’s going to believe you. Sure I did. It’s an old business trick. You have to deal with somebody, get them off balance. Do something to their life that takes their concentration away from your dealings. You’d be amazed at how effective it is.”

  “You wanted me to stop looking for your daughter?”

  “That was what I wanted.”

  “But you had a reward out for her. You had your own detectives looking for her.”

  “That’s right. My own detectives. Not some busybody gumshoe doing a favor for a friend. I wanted to talk to Missy first. I didn’t need her filling your head with all that hogwash.”

  “Too late now,” I said. “Yes, isn’t it.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” I asked.

  He gestured with the gun. “Not a damn thing. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about me, either. If you believe Missy, fine. But what can you do? Not a damn thing.”

  “What were you planning for Kathy?”

  “Kathy?”

  “The woman in my house. The one you tied up and slapped around.”

  “Oh, her. Cute little twitch. Actually, I had some rather elaborate plans for her. You would have enjoyed them. I find a genuine entertainment factor in crime. Too bad you got home and interrupted me.”

  “You must have killed my dog Saturday night.”

  “I was scouting your place. Your little twitch, Kathy, visited me and told me you two were going to find Melissa. I believed her. I knew I was going to be wanting to slow you down somehow. I always do my own advance research on a project. So, I was
out scouting. Your dog, the little bastard, tore a chunk out of my trousers. He got what he deserved. Seattle’s got a leash law, jerk.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “What about her?” His look was not one of superior knowledge. He knew little more than I. And then it hit me. It hit me like the name of an old-time movie star I’d been trying to dredge up all Sunday afternoon for the crossword puzzle. It had been visible all along, but I had been too busy to see it.

  As if on cue, she hiked around the bend and trudged up the hillside. Keeping the pistol trained on me, Crowell watched her labor up the rocky trail, a curious kook on his craggy face. He was beginning to shiver badly from the breeze on his wet clothes.

  She wasn’t breathing nearly as hard as one would have suspected. She was in better shape than anybody had realized. She looked at me, revealing a mixture of contempt and relief, flavored with fear. Using the sleeve of her coat, she mopped some of the sudden perspiration off her pale brow.

  “Long time no see,” I said, being deliberately ironic.

  Walking over beside Angus, she said, “How’d you get all wet?”

  “This know-it-all gumshoe,” said Angus.

  “I’m so glad you caught him,” she said. “Now you can kill him.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I was cooked anyway. I might as well jump in with both feet. “She’s been protecting you, Angus. She murdered your sister.”

  Disbelief dappling his hard eyes, Angus stared at her and said, “Muriel? What are you doing up here?”

  “Don’t you believe me?” I said. “Ask her. She beaned your sister with that ketchup bottle. Didn’t you, Muriel?”

  “We can’t let him live,” said Muriel, looking at me as if I were a halibut she needed to chop up for dinner.

  “Muriel! What the hell are you talking about? Is he telling the truth? Muriel!”

  “Somebody had to do it.”

  “You stupid, meddling woman!”

  She blanched under his onslaught, then plugged on. She had little choice. “I knew about Harry. I’ve known all these years. You thought I didn’t, but I did. I knew you killed him.”

  “Muriel, keep your goddamned mouth shut!”

  She looked at me, then back at her husband. “No. I will not. I’ve been going way out on a litnb to protect you, Angus, and I’m not going to sit still and let you ruin it for the both of us.”

  “You killed Mary? Why, for godsakes?” Muriel gulped, jammed her arthritic-looking dishpan hands deep into the pockets of her cloth coat, and shuffled her feet which were caked in mud. She must have lost the trail on the way up. “I knew Melissa was bent on talking to you about what happened when she was three. Oh, don’t look at me that way. She told me about it when it happened. She went straight to her mother. Where did you think she would go? I heard you speaking to that detective, Holder, who does work for Taltro. I knew you were worried. When Mary called Monday and said she had to speak to you, I went up instead. Melissa was going to tell Mary what she saw. It’s a miracle she didn’t do it years ago. And you remember what sort of fixation Mary had on it. She would have had you prosecuted, Angus. You would have gone to jail.” “The butter brickle ice cream was for you, wasn’t it?” I said. “Not for Melissa, or for Angus. It was your favorite, too, wasn’t it?” “I hit her,” said Muriel Crowell. “I hit her with the first available object. it happened to be that damned bottle from the refrigerator.” “Muriel. You are nuts,” said Angus, incredulously. “I don’t believe you did that.” “I was protecting you.” “Me? Nobody is ever going to get me.” “Oh, honey. I don’t want you in prison.” “Muriel. Nobody would find Harry in a million years.”

  One of my biggest problems has always been my mouth. I said the most stupid thing I had said all day. They were probably planning to do me in anyway, but if they weren’t, I sealed my fate. “Sure they’ll find him. He’s probably right inside this mine. In a pit, I’d say.”

  Angus stared at me, then at his wife, trying to divine our thoughts. “You ease on back into that mine,” Crowell said, waving the pistol at me.

  “I’m afraid of the dark.”

  “Just do it, jerk.”

  Suddenly, the open air looked awfully good. “You can’t very well leave a witness,” I said. “What do you plan to do with Melissa? You already discovered you can’t erase her memory.”

  He gestured with the pistol. “You just back into the mine.”

  I didn’t have any choice. On the way up the trail I’d observed several dozen rusted cans in the creek bed, cans stippled with bullet holes. I had to assume he knew how to use the weapon. And I had to assume he meant business. My hope was that the sopping shirt would cool him off enough to dampen his reaction time and give me a chance to make a move. He was already shivering severely in spurts. The air temperature had to be below thirty-five. The chill factor on a damp body was close to zero.

  Inside the mine entrance, I waited in the dark while Crowell put a match to the wick in a glass lantern. I sensed the wary machinations behind his bitter brown eyes.

  The lantern dangling from one hand and the pistol from the other, he directed me to walk into the cavern. Muriel followed along without being told, like an obedient cocker spaniel, grasping his arm as if she might get lost without it. We were both tall men and we had to stoop. After about twenty-five feet, the shaft opened up into a wider, higher work area. Two separate tunnels ventured off from the work area, the first branching to the right, the second wending around in a hard left. Crowell ordered me into the second tunnel.

  I crouched down and duck-walked through the murk, watching my own lamp-thrown shadow bobble and lunge at me.

  Had I known the path the tunnel was taking, I might have outdistanced Crowell. I might have grabbed a rock and laid in ambush for him, but I didn’t know beans about mines. I didn’t know when the tunnel might open up into a pit or onto a dead end. It was only dumb luck that I retained the presence of mind to count my footsteps. Approximately a hundred yards inside the cool mountain, Crowell ordered me to a halt.

  “Right here,” Crowell said. “Get in there.” To my right, the tunnel doglegged, while the main shaft continued in what I assumed was a northerly direction. Cobwebs spiraled around my hand when I reached out into the dogleg. The air inside felt colder and damper than the rest of the shaft.

  I moved into the dogleg, fending in front of myself, knocking cobwebs out of my face. It wasn’t until Crowell reached the mouth of the dogleg carrying the lamp that I mild see. Old rotted timbers and one-by- eights were laid out across the floor of the dogleg.

  “Keep moving,” ordered Crowell. His voice sounded gruffer and more bear like in the narrow tunnel.

  Ancient timbers and one-by-eights took my weight, but not easily, jouncing slightly when I walked. I couldn’t discern what was beneath them, but from the cold draft blowing up my pant legs, I had to guess it was a hole of some sort, a vertical shaft, possibly a deep one. Long ago, someone had covered the shaft over using makeshift joists.

  The timbers under my feet ended. I found myself walking on solid rock again in an open cavern about twenty feet high and thirty feet in diameter.

  Stepping onto the rock floor from the boards, I turned around suddenly and faced the Crowel/s. He didn’t want to gat too close, so I was forcing them to stop in the middle of the sagging boards. Angus didn’t seem to notice. I could tell from the manner in which he moved that he knew these tunnels like he knew his own heart. He had been across the perilous passage so many times, he no longer thought of it as a hazard. He was like somebody in an apartment on the thirtieth floor leaning over his balcony. The height ceased to seem like a peril after one had lived around it for a spell. And Crowell had lived around it for a spell. Muriel clutched his arm tighter.

  Together, the couple weighed at least four hundred pounds, and it showed in the way the one-by-eights bowed under their feet. Crowell set the lantern down in front of himself. Its upward light shaped a monst
er out of his face, and out of his wife’s as well. Two griffins in a cave.

  “I’m sorry, Angus,” said Muriel. “But I heard you speaking with Melissa on the phone and you were scared.”

  “Angus Crowell’s never been scared a day in his life. I was cautious. Sure, she called me. I tried to talk her out of this big confrontation she kept insisting on. But it was no dice. This bitch of a psychologist she’s been seeing’s got her all messed up.”

  Crowell swatted himself, flapping his free arm, trying to keep warm, then squatted and held his hand out over the squiggles of heat rising from the lantern. His sopping clothes were having an effect.

  “I took care of the psychologist for you,” Muriel added. “What?” His voice lowered to an almost inaudible whisper, as if he were tAlking to his confessor.

  “I listened on the extension when that man, Holder, gave his report to you. He said Black was talking to her. I knew if she was treating Melissa she might know something. Something she had no right to know. I drove over and waited at her apartment. I was planning to wait all day and all night if need be, but she came home for lunch. She refused to answer any of my questions. She refused to talk about it at all. That’s when I knew she was hiding something. So I kept her from talking.”

  Angus Crowell stared incredulously at his wife. They had been married decades and he was just getting to know her.

  “Nice job,” I said. “Everyone thought a man had done it. Women don’t often strangle other women. A nice touch, too, partially disrobing her. But you didn’t quite finish the job, did you? So you bashed her over the head, too.”

  “Muriel,” said Angus, angrily. “You idiot. None of that was necessary. Don’t you know anything? I’ve got a load of dynamite in Gurty. Harry’s right here underneath us. I’m going to blow this place to hell. They wouldn’t find him in a million years. Not even if they knew where to look.”

  “This must be where it happened,” I said. “Twenty some odd years ago, you and your daughter and Harry were standing right about where we are now. Only Harry never left. When Melissa wanted to talk about it, you tried to make people think she was mentally disturbed. You were so good at it, you convinced everyone. Even Melissa.”