The young woman came back on. “I’m sorry, sir. She was here earlier, but she left.”
“Did she say where she was going?”
“No—hang on.” Someone was talking to her. “Okay, thanks. Sir? Someone heard her talking about going to the Bread Basket. That’s—”
“I know what it is. Thanks.” He broke the connection.
If that’s where she was dining, she wasn’t alone. It was one of the more expensive restaurants in Myrtle, and Pamela was extravagant only when someone else was paying. He was pretty sure who it would be, and it made him hesitate. But any company was preferable to his own that night. He scooped up the keys to the rental. He might catch them in time for dessert.
Macklin was actually relieved when Grinnell joined them in their booth.
Conversation with Pamela was a chore. When in a nod toward politeness she stopped chattering with Laurie about the autograph party and asked him if everything had gone well in Bowling Green, he’d fantasized telling her he’d had some trouble buying a gun and had been forced to strangle the seller to death, just to avoid that skeptical expression she wore even when he was telling her an innocuous truth. But he was pretty sure she’d have responded with the same look.
He forgave Laurie all her faults in the presence of her mother. Her childhood must have been as trying as his life with Donna. So far as he believed in forces outside the physical—he’d made so many corpses and hadn’t seen a soul lifting away from any of them—he accepted Pamela as some kind of cosmic payback for his past behavior, but Laurie was an innocent victim.
Grinnell explained that his meetings had run shorter than expected, cleared up the mystery of how he’d found their party, and helped Pamela finish her enormous slice of carrot cake. Macklin ordered a second cup of coffee and Laurie calmed her nerves with a cordial. He’d felt her stiffen at his side when Grinnell appeared, had squeezed her hand beneath the table, providing support and warning at the same time. She’d responded by keeping her silence. Between Pamela’s commentary on the elaborate preparations for Francis Spain’s visit and Grinnell’s holding forth about the inefficacy of business meetings in general, neither seemed to notice that Laurie wasn’t contributing to the conversation.
It was an awkward situation, but probably no more so than some others taking place in the restaurant. Macklin, almost unconsciously maintaining his habit of paying attention to everything around him, could tell that the young couple gesticulating at a table for two in the corner was breaking up, and that the hilarity of the birthday celebration around the big round table in the center of the room was lost on the elderly guest of honor, a woman in a brocaded jacket faded on one sleeve from hanging unused in a room with unshaded windows; a young woman who might have been her granddaughter cut up her meat and fed it to her, taking part in the general chatter the whole time. Macklin felt a little less alien.
At length he paid the bill, over an argument from Grinnell, and the women adjourned to the rest room while the men waited in front of the restaurant for their cars. The sun had been down for hours.
“Beige SUV,” Grinnell told the attendant, handing him his ticket.
Macklin asked him what had happened to his Lexus.
“It broke down in Cincinnati; computer problem, probably. I had it towed. I barely had time to rent this one and make the first meeting.”
“I used to travel quite a bit. It’s hard on the family life.”
“Pamela’s understanding. You were married before, weren’t you?”
Macklin remembered the subject coming up in conversation with his mother-in-law. “Yes. I’ve got a son Laurie hasn’t met yet.”
“That complicates things.”
“I think it’s supposed to.”
The tall square vehicle came around the corner of the building and squished to a stop in front of the door.
Macklin said, “You’re Canadian, aren’t you?”
Grinnell gave the attendant a dollar and turned to face Macklin. “I wasn’t aware it showed.”
“A little, the way you talk. I used to live close to Detroit. A lot of people come over from Windsor every day to work. You wouldn’t know they were Canadian except for the way they pronounce some words.”
“‘Oot and aboot’?” Grinnell exaggerated slightly.
“Those are two,” Macklin said. “Your real name’s John Benjamin, isn’t it?”
Grinnell’s expression didn’t change. He nodded slightly, as if answering a question he’d asked himself. “I rearranged it a bit. You have that opportunity when you become a citizen. Pamela asked me to find out some things about you, too,” he said.
“How’s that working out?”
“Here come the ladies.” Grinnell smiled past Macklin’s shoulder. His voice dropped. “We should meet for a drink, you and I.”
“When?”
“Later tonight. Not here. Everyone in Myrtle eavesdrops on everyone else. Do you know the Alehouse? It’s on Route Sixty-five, on the river.”
“I’ll find it. Eleven o’clock.”
“What’s at eleven o’clock?” Pamela wound an arm around Grinnell’s back. She’d had a split of chablis with her dinner and was a little tipsy.
“Boys’ night out, dear,” Grinnell said. “Peter and I are going to get to know each other better. You can spare me, can’t you? I don’t have to be back at work till Monday.”
Laurie had taken Macklin’s hand. She squeezed hard. He squeezed back. “I’ll see he doesn’t stay out too late,” he told Pamela.
“Well, if I’m going to be without male companionship this evening, I’m commandeering your wife. You haven’t checked into a hotel, have you?” She smiled at Laurie. Macklin squeezed her hand again.
“No, our bags are in the car. Are you sure you’re up to having us? You’ve been all day cleaning.”
“That’s an argument in favor. A clean house is just wasted on Benjamin and me. If our men will promise not to wake up the neighborhood when they stagger in, they’re welcome too.”
Grinnell said, “I’ll drive on ahead and get us a table. Toledo’s a madhouse Saturday night.”
“Toledo?” Pamela squinted up at him. “There are bars here in town.”
“They close at midnight, darling. We’d just be warming up.”
“You won’t drink too much? The troopers are out for blood on weekends.”
“We’ll pace ourselves,” Macklin said.
NINETEEN
Edgar Prine approved of morgues in general.
They appealed to his sense of order, with their isolated, well-lit autopsy rooms, their separate offices for the coroner, his deputies, and medical examiners, their viewing rooms with comfortable seating for visitors and closed-circuit monitors to spare those identifying friends and relatives the stench of formaldehyde and stale meat, and the rows of oversize file drawers containing their tagged and sheeted inventory. They kept the corpses alphabetical and off the streets.
He waited patiently, enjoying the climate-controlled atmosphere, while the attendant in the cold-room, a tidy Pakistani in a white lab coat that looked pressed, fiddled with the video camera until he had it in focus and pointed at the proper angle. Along the way Prine got glimpses of the attendant’s face in extreme close-up and most of the corners of the room.
Prine shared the viewing room with a Bowling Green police officer named Rosetta Alfiero, a stout young Hispanic with a pretty face and her black hair pinned up under her visored cap. As the first officer on the crime scene she had been assigned to escort the State Police captain. She was nervous, because of either Prine’s rank and reputation or the surroundings or her temperament in general, and had chosen to stand rather than squirm in the seat next to his. She stood at his elbow, making impatient faces at the swinging images on-screen.
Finally they were looking at the bloated gray-blue face of a powerfully built male Caucasian in his mid to late thirties. His hair, damp from a recent body-scrubbing, was long, stringy, and colored an improbable shade of y
ellow. Purple bruises fingered out from an angry line around his neck where something thin had sliced through flesh and muscle. His eyes bulged and his tongue stuck out.
“Victim’s name is Carroll Oster.” Alfiero read from a spiral pad. “Carroll, that’s with two r’s and two l’s.”
“Like Carroll O’Connor.”
The officer paused. Prine suspected she was too young to remember All in the Family.
“It came in as a citizen complaint,” she went on. “Band student had a French horn on layaway, went to the shop to make the last payment and claim it. Oster promised it’d be there for practice this evening. When the kid found the place shut up, he figured Oster’d jumped to South America with his hundred and sixty-nine fifty. Nothing much was doing when he came in to the precinct house, so I went back there with him.”
“What made you decide to go in?”
She looked at her notebook, as if the answer would be recorded there. She really was nervous. “Some of the local merchants leave their home numbers with us, in case there’s a break-in and they have to come in and report what’s missing, board up a window. I called his home number, got his sister. She said Carroll never closed up during business hours, brought in his lunch so he wouldn’t miss making a sale. She worried about his health. He worked out too hard for a man coming up on middle age, didn’t watch his diet. Prime stroke candidate. She authorized me to break down the door. I found him in the back room. Looked like he put up a fight; place was all torn up.
“Oster had a cache of handguns,” she continued. “We didn’t find any papers. That’s why we called Columbus. This didn’t look like armed robbery, but if he was dealing weapons we figured the ARTF would want to know. You’re more than we expected, Captain. We thought you’d send a trooper.”
“Columbus radioed me on my way out of Toledo. I was there to talk to someone. When I hear murder and unregistered handguns in the same sentence, I follow up. Did Oster have a record?”
“Not for weapons. We busted a gambling ring five years ago. Some students were betting on college wrestling. He carried the slips. He rolled over on a local athletic booster and got nineteen hundred hours of community service. The booster went to Belize.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Prine said. “He’d just be taking the fall for Toledo. Tommy Vulpo’s got a piece of every office and campus pool this side of Kentucky. That makes this a professional killing.”
“I disagree, Captain.”
He swiveled to look up at her. She flushed.
“Not about Vulpo, Captain,” she said. “What I mean, the killer used violin string he found on the premises. The end of it was still attached to what was left of a bass viol. Professionals usually bring their own weapons.”
“You get many Mafia killings in Bowling Green?”
“This would be our first.”
Prine smiled. “Thanks for your input, Officer. Is your chief in?”
“He came back to work after I called in. There’s a WTOL crew at the station and I don’t know who else. That’s why he asked you to meet me here.” Her face was flat.
“Good man. Any press at the scene?”
“Just one, a kid from the Blast. That’s an underground newspaper on campus. She must’ve had a scanner. I caught her trying to break in the back.”
HUE CREW SCREWS BLUES, Prine remembered. “I’ve heard of the Blast. Girl, was it? Did you arrest her?”
“I shooed her away. She’s okay, just eager. Anyway I couldn’t secure her and the scene at the same time. Someone might’ve broken in the front while I was reading her rights.”
“I hope you’re right. Not about what you did, about her being okay. I just signed an authorization to give that paper police credentials.”
Alfiero’s smile was as pretty as her face. “There’ll be no stopping her now.”
He frowned. “Not the answer I was hoping for. Your chief’s name is Higgins, isn’t it?”
“Harrison, sir.”
“That’s right, Harrison played Higgins.” He didn’t wait to be reminded she didn’t know Rex Harrison from Carroll O’Connor. “I’d like to talk to him.”
“Sir.” She unclipped a cellular telephone from among the paraphernalia on her belt, dialed the number and the extension, and handed him the instrument.
When a low-pitched voice answered, “Harrison,” Prine said, “Edgar Prine here, Chief. Have you issued a statement?”
“Oh, hello, Captain. I thought it’d be best to wait until I spoke to you.”
“Good. When you do, you can tell them you’ve asked the State Police to help with the investigation.”
Brief pause. “I called you out of courtesy. I haven’t gotten so far as requesting help.”
“That’s your decision, of course. It swings on whether you think a mob murder in your jurisdiction is good for the city.”
A longer silence followed. “Nothing in the preliminary report suggests the mob was involved.”
“Everything I’ve heard suggests it was.”
Harrison’s tone underwent a sea change.
“It would be different if this homicide is connected with a state investigation,” he said. “Naturally, the Bowling Green Police Department stands willing to offer its services to the Armed Robbery Task Force.” It sounded like a statement to the press.
“Just for now, say that we’re assisting you, and let’s not mention the ARTF yet. It’s not unusual for a small city force to ask for help from Columbus in a homicide. I’ll send a team out to the scene immediately.” He hit End and returned the telephone to Rosetta Alfiero. “Thanks, Officer.”
She returned it to her belt. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Captain? Is the ARTF recruiting anyone from outside the department?”
He studied her from head to foot, nodded. “Ask Columbus for an application form. Send it to the attention of Lieutenant Farrell McCormick at the capitol. They’ll forward it.” He spelled the name.
“Thanks, Captain.” She finished writing, took a deep breath, and let it out, and with it her case of nerves. This was what she’d been working up to.
“Good luck,” Prine said. “Now tell me more about the crime scene.”
McCormick was listening to an interview on NPR when Prine slid into the passenger’s seat. The lieutenant switched off the radio. “Anything for us?”
“I shouldn’t tell you. If you’d gone in with me, that’d be one less time I’d have to repeat it. A strong stomach’s supposed to go with the job.”
“I scraped my share of high-school kids off telephone poles when I was with Pickaway. That doesn’t mean I got used to it. Anyway, Admiral Nelson got seasick every time he shoved off. That didn’t stop him from clobbering the French fleet.”
“Why can’t you listen to sports like other cops?” Prine told him what he’d learned inside, including what Officer Alfiero had said about professional killers.
“She’s right,” McCormick said. “This guy didn’t go there to pop anyone. Maybe he broke in to steal guns and Oster caught him.”
“Not trombones?”
“Guns were out in the open, you said. If Oster was in the habit of leaving ’em that way, we’d have busted him before this.”
“No sign of B and E; place was locked up tight when the lady cop got there. And burglars surprised in the act don’t normally use garrotes. The guns weren’t loaded, but he could have grabbed one and cracked Oster’s skull. Or a tool from the bench. A good strangling is skilled labor. Contract killers don’t burgle. Only another contract killer would have guts enough to suggest it.”
“So he went there to buy a gun and something went wrong.”
“That’s how I read it. Whatever he carried away with him, he sweated for it. Oster wrestled in college—that’s probably where he made his gambling contacts—and went pro for six months until some gorilla from Argentina pile-drived him into a compressed vertebra. The girl said the room looked like a tornado hit it. This guy’s going to need plenty of BenGay tomorro
w.”
“What makes it Oster was selling guns to the Color Guard?”
Prine wrinkled his nose at the newspaper tag. “Not a thing, except you can spit here from Toledo, and the job stinks mob hit. Maybe Oster got his cold feet from what went down in Hilliard.”
“What’s a hitter doing robbing video stores?”
“Economy’s gone to pieces. Everybody’s scraping to get by. It’s still heavyweight work, not the same as punching in windows and groping around in the dark.”
“It’s a stretch.”
“That’s why the task force isn’t officially involved. Bowling Green can take the fall if it doesn’t pan out. Press is all over this one. The city boys love it when Mayberry joins the statistics.”
“‘Terror comes to Main Street,’” McCormick said.
“‘”What’s become of things,” say the locals who gather in the barbershop,’” Prine said.
“‘Folks hereabouts hardly ever lock their doors.’”
“I forgot that one,” Prine said. “It’s got to be their favorite.”
“You think any place was ever like that?”
“Not since cars.” The captain smiled. “The lady cop caught a kid from the Blast trying to break into the music store.”
“Think he’s the one wrote that headline?”
“He’s a she.” A full-size van cruised past the morgue with WTOL-TV painted on the side. “Let’s go home before they catch the scent.”
McCormick turned on the ignition. “You want me to greenlight Alfiero’s application?”
“Trash it. Female police officers run against the natural order.”
TWENTY
“What if it’s a trap?” Laurie asked.
“It could be a trap,” Peter said.
“That wasn’t the question.”
Little Black Dress (Peter Macklin Novels) Page 13
