FrostLine

by Justin Scott

  I said, “You know how after swimming you dry off and don’t want to get wet again? Okay?” Tim hadn’t asked me anything I didn’t occasionally ask myself. But I didn’t feel like wearing my doubts on my sleeve.

  “Or are you scared to go back?”

  “Dinosaurs don’t get scared, Tim. They migrate. I’m damned lucky I had a place to migrate to. Now, could we get back to Mr. Butler and ask why would Establishment ‘old boys’ get mixed up in a piece of local silliness that just happened to turn fatal?”

  Before Tim could answer, the answer occurred to me. “Wait a minute. Does Henry King still work for the government?”

  Chapter 13

  I should have guessed sooner.

  Diplomats have always been spies. They live in the enemy’s tent, accommodated for the sake of communication. Lovely Fiona and husband, domiciled in Washington D.C. to communicate British intentions, also observe and report. Whoever doubts this might read letters home by M. Paleologue, French Ambassador to the Czar’s court during the Russian Revolution. (My Trident Scholar thesis—to make up near-fatal shortcomings in physics—which propelled me into the clutches of the Admiral, then Captain, at ONI.)

  Henry King, whose oh-so-public downfall and banishment from government office had supposedly reduced him to freelance diplomat, private consultant to corporate titans and high ministers, would make a hideously insidious spy.

  What if all the while he was trusted by his clients as their personal diplomat he reported to the National Security Council or the CIA or some new outfit no one ever heard of? It would explain the immediate response of helicopters, the federal agents, the Admiral’s personal emissary, and Julia Devlin’s advance word on their investigations. And why they feared someone had tried to blow him up. Henry King was really nudging the envelope. With a spear. The word “betrayed” might even spring from irritated lips.

  “Ira wondered,” Tim said. “Do you agree?”

  “…Wait, wait, wait. If that’s so—if they just wanted to make sure their ‘spy’ was not under fire from a hostile nation—or a pissed-off client—then why stir everything up again by arresting poor Mr. Butler? They were home free. Dicky’s dead. Case closed.”

  Tim and I stared out the window at tree tops for a while. “We’re forgetting something, here. We live in a democracy.”

  “You’re losing me.”

  “A federally governed democracy. We have Federal government, and state government.”

  “And state police.”

  “What if the FBI blew it? What if they forgot to get the Connecticut State Police aboard? So your pal the ravishing detective-sergeant did what good cops do. She went looking for more suspects.”

  “So let’s convince the Feds to persuade the troopers to drop their investigation?”

  Ira and I had already batted that around and decided, no.

  “Problem is, by now, the troopers are too far into the case. It’s one thing to shake hands behind a bush on the weekend. Much riskier to lean on an outfit as independent as the state police two weeks after the event. That would be a conspiracy. The kind that makes headlines. No, the only way we can get the troopers to drop it is to beat their case.”

  “Wait. Let’s ask Henry King to pay for Mr. Butler’s defense.”

  “Pay for the defense of the man charged with destroying his lake?”

  “If your spy theory works, then King has everything to lose if Butler goes to trial.”

  Tim thought about that, didn’t like it. “No, it’s too complicated.”

  “Want me to ask him?” I could pitch it to Julia Devlin and let her talk sense to King.

  “I’ll bounce that off Ira. Meantime, you get busy. Find a witness who saw Mr. Butler after he ran the cows into King’s pasture and before you saw him watching from the ridge.”

  ***

  I ran down the owner of the red balloon King had hired to show off his landscaping, but the guy had had his hands full operating the hot air burner and keeping drunks from falling out of the basket and hadn’t noticed any calf stuck in Mr. Butler’s fence.

  He did recall that he was airborne at the moment of the explosion. But not being from Newbury, he didn’t know the names of his passengers. I pressed him for a description. But the best he could do was two guys in ties and two women in pearls.

  At the General Store I found a hardworking high school kid named Todd Gierasch busing cups off the tables on the front porch. I poured myself a coffee and said, “When you get a moment, I’d like to ask you something.”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Abbott. Be there one sec.”

  Todd was a beef farmer’s son, one of those kids saving for college with four after-school jobs and full-time work all summer. I knew him from my high school career day real estate workshop. Like a lot of the students, he hoped that my Wall Street years proved that the fast lanes promised on television were out there waiting for his diplomas.

  “What’s up, Mr. Abbott?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask you. Rather, who’s up. You were parking cars at Mr. King’s party.”

  His face fell. “Did they dent your Fiat?”

  “No, no, no. Fiat’s fine.”

  “Oh, wow. You scared me.”

  “Where were you when the dam exploded?”

  “They gave us cokes after everybody got there. We were sitting under a tree. You could feel it in the ground. Like a kick. It was like, Oh wow, what’s that? Then all the grownups started yelling.”

  “Where was the balloon?”

  “Up in the air.”

  “You sure? It wasn’t on the ground?”

  “I’m sure. I was lying on the grass, looking up, kind of watching it.”

  “I thought you were under a tree.”

  “On the edge. I moved out so I could see the balloon.”

  “Could you see who was in it?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “They were in the basket, hanging out the other side. I couldn’t see ’em. Why, Mr. Abbott?”

  “I wanted to ask them what it looked like when the dam exploded.”

  “I think it was Mr. and Mrs. MacKay.”

  “I thought you couldn’t see ’em.”

  “I saw them get in the basket. Before they went up.”

  Ask a leading question and you’ll get the answer you deserve. The same goes for assumptions. I had assumed Scooter MacKay had shot the fine photograph on the front page of last week’s Clarion by going up in the balloon after the explosion.

  Well, perfect. My next-door neighbors might have seen Mr. Butler freeing a calf from a fence. But Scooter and Eleanor had just left on a second honeymoon aboard the QE2. So I ran up the outside wooden stairs to Tim’s office.

  “Can I use your phone?”

  “Make it snappy. I gotta meet Vicky.”

  I dialled “O” and gave Tim a reassuring nod as I requested, “High Seas Operator.”

  “High Seas Operator?” echoed Tim.

  “I got to talk to Scooter.”

  “But he’s on the QE2.”

  “Which is why I need the High Seas Operator—Person to Person to Mr. Scooter MacKay on the Queen Elizabeth 2…Yes, he’s a passenger.”

  “How much does that cost?”

  “Beats me.”

  “It’s not your phone.”

  No kidding.

  “Scooter!…No, no problem. House didn’t burn down. Newspaper’s fine. Rupert Murdoch came by. We sold it to him. Listen, Tim and I got a question for you about the bomb….What?…I’ll tell Tim—We caught them in their Jacuzzi—Scooter. Listen, the balloon? When you took the picture? At King’s?…” I covered the phone. “He wants us to know they’re drinking champagne and eating caviar. Drunk as skunks.”

  “I gotta take Vicky on something like that,” said Tim.

  “Scooter. Listen up. Before the blast. Before the dam blew up? Did you see Mr. Butler on his farm?…Down on his farm,
from the balloon…You didn’t?…Right, right, right. The red Farmall…Oh…Okay, good talking to you. Kiss Eleanor.”

  I hung up. “They saw the tractor along a fence line. But they didn’t see Butler.”

  “Darn.”

  “Well, it tells us he was up there, at least.”

  “No. It only tells us his tractor was up there.”

  “It strongly suggests he climbed off the tractor to free the calf, like he told us. There’s trees along the fence. Scooter and Eleanor might have been looking right at him under a tree.”

  “If my grandmother had wheels she’d be a Cadillac. They’re not witnesses.”

  “Guess who else called Scooter today.”

  “On the ship?”

  “Detective-Sergeant Marian Boyce. Connecticut State Police.”

  “Why?

  “Breaking down Butler’s alibi.”

  ***

  I drove up to Fox Trot.

  At the gate, a tight-lipped, very professional uniformed guard said that as far as he knew Albert and Dennis Chevalley had gone home for the day.

  “I’m Ben Abbott. Would you call up to the house, please, and tell Julia Devlin I’m here.” While Tim and Ira debated, I’d hit King for Mr. Butler’s legal bills.

  “She’s away.”

  “How about Mr. King?”

  “He’s with her.”

  I drove back down the mountain, and cut around Newbury to Frenchtown. On the outskirts was a hillside speckled with house trailers. Some were so old they were covered with vines. Some were newer and quite large. I knocked on a doublewide that belonged to Laura Chevalley, Dennis and Albert’s mom.

  “The boys,” as Laura called them in weary tones, had told her they wouldn’t be home for supper because they were working late. Sounded like I’d find them at the White Birch. Laura, round, red-faced, and patient, insisted on making me a cup of instant coffee. She wanted to know when I’d last seen my mother. I told her I’d been out to the farm the weekend before last and that Mom was happier than ever that she had left Main Street. Which was exactly what cousin Laura wanted to hear, because no Chevalley, man or woman, thought a person could be happy living on Main Street.

  Laura’s living room was decorated with velvet furniture, ceramic lamps that her mother had acquired with Raleigh cigarette coupons, and one trillion knick-knacks. “Couldn’t have been weekend before last,” she called from the kitchen. “I visited after Mass and she said she hadn’t seen you in ages.”

  “It was a couple of weekends ago.”

  “She must be lonely at the farm.”

  “She says she’s happy alone.” In fact, my mother’s holing up on the farm since my father died made me wonder if I’d inherited a lone wolf tendency that would leave me muttering to myself like Mr. Butler’s visiting vet.

  “The boys keep threatening to move out and get their own place. I don’t know what I’d do if they did.”

  I snuck a look at her end tables, which were fashioned of cloth draped over wooden boxes, and found bright red lettering, “Dupont Explosives, Special Gelatin, 60% Strength.”

  “Your mom’s not getting any younger,” she called.

  True. But as she got older she discovered more and more links between my imprisonment and my father’s death. I had been stunned when she first had edged around the subject in her characteristically tentative way. We had talked about it. Repeatedly. But no amount of talking pushed it from her mind for very long.

  Laura stepped into the living room with instant and Oreos. “You ought to get out there more, Ben.”

  “Laura, she blames me for my dad dying.”

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  “That my going to prison killed him.”

  “But she blames herself for you going to prison.”

  “Herself?”

  “For giving you her Chevalley blood.” Laura laughed, a sound more wise than bitter. “As if one of you upstanding Main Street Abbotts could never commit a crime.”

  I left, with a promise to go out to the farm, soon.

  Outside the White Birch, parked proudly among the chopped Harleys, was the slick black Chevy diesel with “Fox Trot” on the doors. Inside, Dennis and Albert were reveling in the joys of steady money. They had stacked their pay on the bar and were buying rounds for anyone they could remotely call an acquaintance.

  “Hey, Ben,” Albert bellowed, considerably louder than Butch Hancock on the jukebox. “Have a drink.”

  “You remember my name.”

  “Aw, come on. We’re not working now. We know who you are. Right, Dennis?” He was half drunk.

  “What’s he drinking?” yelled Dennis. He was drunker. And his face was a mess, all scabbed and sporting bruises of fading yellow.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing. What are you drinking?”

  I said, “Beer.” Wide Greg smacked down a Bud, sans glass.

  “Good news about Dicky Butler,” Albert announced with an aggressive smirk.

  I let that go. I hadn’t gotten trounced last March.

  Dennis chuckled, a sound reminiscent of DaNang in the night. “Heard the fire department found his head in Fairfield County.”

  They looked at me for a reaction.

  “Guys,” I said.

  They faced me, grinning in unison. “What?”

  Wide Greg moved toward the bracketed length of PVC pipe where he sheathed his baseball bat. He ran a tight ship at the White Birch—wise when you cater to bikers and your New England town fathers are itching to shut you down—and had a wonderful instinct for spotting trouble before it started.

  “Guys,” I said. “I want to ask you something.”

  What fun was this? Egging the upscale cousin into a two-on-one fist fight, and instead he asks questions.

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Something about your pal Dicky Butler.”

  “We heard he went to pieces,” Dennis snickered.

  Enough. Their clowning sounded more vengeful than crude and not at all funny. “I’m talking about the Dicky Butler who kicked your asses two by two.”

  The brothers ducked, hoping none of the patrons hanging nearby for another free drink had overheard. Dennis got an ugly look on his face, more angry than embarrassed. “Watch yourself, Ben.”

  “Watch what, Dennis?”

  “People don’t have to know everything, you know what we’re talking?”

  “The man’s dead. I’m not laughing.”

  “Man’s lucky he’s dead. Dennis and me had a couple of ax handles with his name on ’em.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “When?”

  “When the dam blew up?”

  “You mean flying by?”

  Albert roared laughter.

  Dennis shook with giggles. But he was watching me closely with his small, dark eyes. Prodding. Testing. Or something deeper. I wasn’t sure, but maybe Dennis wasn’t as drunk as he seemed.

  “How about his dad?”

  “Huh?” The brothers sobered quickly.

  “Did you see his dad?”

  “When?”

  “When the dam blew.”

  “Hey, Ben, we’re not supposed to talk about what happens.”

  “What do you mean, what happens?”

  “You know. Up at Fox Trot.”

  “We got our jobs, Ben.”

  “I didn’t see you when I was up at Mr. King’s party. He give you the day off?”

  “No way, man. We was working.”

  “Oh, you were doing security?”

  “You bet,” said Dennis.

  “Undercover?”

  “Yup. That’s right. Undercover.”

  “That’s what I figured when I didn’t see you.”

  Albert beamed like Hubert Humphrey in the Vietnam part of King’s A&E bio: Pleased as punch!

  Dennis looked wary.

  “Where?” I asked.

 
“Whadya mean?”

  “What cover were you under?”

  They exchanged looks. Dennis grew dark. Albert blustered. “Can’t tell you, Ben. So stop asking.”

  “Why not?”

  Another exchange. Anxious? What the hell were they covering? Dennis answered, “We signed a thing.”

  A sidebar in the Economist article had explored King Incorporated’s obsession with forcing employees to sign confidentiality agreements. But a paucity of imagination had prevented the reporter from interviewing King’s tree stump dynamiters.

  “You signed a ‘thing’?”

  “Yeah. A paper.”

  “What did the paper you signed say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Dennis?”

  “It said we weren’t supposed to talk.”

  “About work?”

  “We ain’t supposed to talk about nothin’ at Fox Trot.”

  “What happens if they catch you talking?”

  “Get our asses fired,” said Dennis.

  “Who made you sign it?”

  “Miz Devlin. She’s the boss.”

  “Isn’t Josh Wiggens chief of security?”

  “Yeah, but she’s the boss, boss.”

  “Ball buster,” said Dennis.

  “Mr. Wiggens’s a ball buster, too,” Albert added, “except when she comes out, he rolls over like an old dog.”

  Sounded like the gloves came off at home.

  “I’ll bet Mr. King’s mad as hell you let Dicky get to that dam.”

  “Not at us. He was yelling at Mr. Wiggens. And Ms. Devlin.”

  “But he was yelling at them even before,” said Albert.

  “At the party?”

  “Before people got there. He was yelling and screaming.”

  “About what?”

  “Busted air conditioning.”

  “Air conditioning? It wasn’t a hot day. The doors were open.”

  Dennis shrugged. And Albert added mournfully, “They yelled at us.”

  Chain of command. “When you perform security undercover, do you patrol that perimeter road in the four-by?”

  “Can’t tell you, Ben.”

  “I’m talking about that new perimeter road that circles the property just inside the fences. Except where the woods are really thick between King’s and Butler’s.”