“Then whatever you’re selling, I ain’t buying.”
“I’m not selling anything.” Jesus, her and George. “I’m looking for your husband.”
She smirked. “What for?”
“It’s a police matter.”
She snorted through her pug nose. “You’re just a little too late, mister.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s dead.”
“What?”
“That’s right.” She smiled at my obvious confusion.
“Since when?”
“A year ago last January.”
“A year…”
“Look, mister, I got things need tending,” she said, and shut the door in my face.
I put away the Magnum, held up a card, and knocked on the door. After a couple of pounding footsteps, it was yanked open.
“Now look here, I already told you—”
“Mrs. Stone, I’m a private investigator working on a murder case and—”
“Murder?” Her eyes got round.
“That’s right. I need to ask you a few questions.”
She blinked a few times, then glanced at my card and shook her head. “No. Jeremy had his faults, but he wasn’t no murderer.”
“I didn’t say he was. Perhaps we should talk inside.”
She hesitated, then let me into the stale-smelling living room. It was furnished in neo-American recession, with duct-tape patches on the carpet, pictures of Jesus and Elvis on the walls, and neglected plants on the end tables. Even the flowers on the wallpaper needed watering. Beside the sagging secondhand sofa was an ironing board and stacks of clothes—all arranged to face a color TV that had only two colors. A greenish John Wayne argued soundlessly with a purplish Maureen O’Hara. Mrs. Stone took the sofa. She left the TV on. I handed her the copy of Jeremy Leonard Stone’s license, then sat in a lumpy armchair.
“Is that your husband?”
She held the paper with two fingers, scrunched up her mouth, and nodded slightly. “That’s him, all right.” Then she looked up at me. “Say, where’d you get this?”
“Official sources,” I said, like a big shot. “Tell me, Mrs. Stone, where did your husband work?”
Her hand dropped to the sofa seat, the paper still pinched between thumb and forefinger. “Pittman Brothers. They’re roofers.”
“Is that what your husband did, reshingle roofs?”
She nodded. “When the son of a bitch worked. Mostly, he drank.”
“How much did they pay him?”
“What do you care?”
“Personally, I don’t. It’s just police business,” as if that meant something.
She shook her head and stared at the TV. I watched John sweep Maureen off her feet, carry her into the bedroom of their small Irish cottage, and dump her on the bed. The bed broke.
“He was lucky if he took home a thousand dollars a month.”
“I see.” According to Butler’s books, Jeremy Stone earned that much in a week. “Did he ever work for a company called Butler Manufacturing?”
“I don’t know, maybe before I met him.”
“When was that?”
“We was married for three years.”
“Mrs. Stone, I don’t mean to be impolite, but may I ask how your husband died?”
“Car wreck,” she said bitterly.
“What happened?”
“He was drunk, as usual, coming home from one of his bars. He drove off the street and ran smack into a tree. Broke his neck, the dumb son of a bitch. Left me with a stack of bills, and I can’t find no more than part-time work. I have to take in ironing just to make ends meet. Times is tough, I don’t give a damn what they say.”
“Mrs. Stone, did your husband ever mention a man named Samuel Butler?”
“Butler?” She shook her head. “Nope.”
“What about Kenneth Butler or Clare Butler?”
“I don’t know no Butlers.”
“How about Wes Hartman?”
“Him neither.”
I tried one more shot, the shooter William Royce.
“Never heard of him,” she said. “Now which one of them liars said Jeremy killed somebody?”
“None of them did.”
“Okay, then.” She waved her hand to show me the door.
I left.
She stayed on the couch, staring at Maureen, alone on the broken bed.
CHAPTER 26
I COULD THINK OF ONLY ONE REASON for Butler Manufacturing to have a dead man on their payroll. And since Clare Butler had been looking for that man, it was fairly clear why she’d been killed. And by whom.
But I wanted to clarify a few details before I took it to the police.
From a phone booth at a gas station I called Butler Manufacturing to see if they were open on Saturday. They were. I asked for Kenneth. The girl said Mr. Butler would be with me in a minute. I hung up and drove to Butler’s house.
It wasn’t Kenneth I wanted to question. It was Doreen. She might resist, but she’d be a hell of a lot more willing to talk than her husband.
I parked in the street before the wide white two-story house. The next-door neighbors were tending their yard. They looked with distaste and suspicion at my beat-up Toyota. Okay, so we’re not all middle class.
I went up the walk and rang the bell. The brass eagle over the door was still alert, talons at the ready.
Doreen Butler opened the door wearing a purple sweat suit and a surprised look. She held a rag and a bottle of lemon oil in her right hand and the doorknob in her left.
“If you’re looking for Kenneth, he’s at work.”
She wasn’t about to let me in.
“It’s you I want to talk with, Mrs. Butler.”
“I—I have nothing to say to you, not until my husband gets home. Good-bye.”
She started to close the door.
“If I leave here now, I go straight to the police.”
Doreen hesitated. She seemed to be hiding behind the door like a frightened child. I could see only half of her gaunt white face and one large green eye.
“The police?” Her voice was small.
“I just had a chat with Mrs. Jeremy Leonard Stone.”
Her green eye got a little wider, flitting from my face to the ground and back again.
“Her husband’s been dead for more than a year,” I said, not telling her anything she didn’t already know. “And he’s currently on the payroll of Butler Manufacturing.”
She hesitated, then pulled the door open and walked away. I went inside and closed it behind me.
I found her in the living room, fumbling with a pack of cigarettes. She’d set the rag and lemon oil on the cherry-wood coffee table. She managed to shake a butt loose from the pack, then fired it up with her silver lighter. Now she crossed her arms so tightly that she could barely raise her hand to suck in smoke. I’d seen tennis rackets strung with less tension.
“Perhaps you should sit down,” I suggested.
She dropped immediately to the couch, knees together, elbows in, still the frightened child. I wanted cooperation, but this was ridiculous.
“Where are your children?”
“What? No, I won’t allow them to hear this.”
“Of course not. That’s why I asked.”
“Oh. They’re…playing in the backyard.”
I nodded.
“You know—” she blurted.
I waited.
“You know we didn’t do anything wrong. Not really.”
“Kenneth stole from the company, and you knew about it. That makes him a thief and you an accessory.”
“But—”
“Not to mention forgery and filing phony tax information.”
She sucked on her cigarette. An inch of ash jutted precariously from the end. She looked nervously around for someplace to drop it. There was a sculpted ashtray on the floor where she’d set it before wiping down the table. I placed it in front of her.
“Tell me how it started,” I s
aid.
She reached toward the ashtray, but the ash fell too soon, imploding dryly on the shiny cherry wood. Doreen wiped it hastily with her hand, leaving a grayish white smudge.
“It’s all Samuel’s fault,” she said bitterly.
“How so?”
“He’s never been fair with Kenneth. He’s picked on him and criticized him his whole life. Never rewarded him. Never gave him what he’d earned, what he deserved.”
Her voice had become shrill. She winced, aware of it. She put out her cigarette in the ashtray with quick, vicious little jabs and immediately lit another.
“A salary of seventy-five thousand a year seems fairly rewarding to me,” I said.
“For running the entire company?” She blew smoke noisily. “Samuel does practically nothing, and he takes home a couple hundred thousand. At least he did when that whore was alive.”
“Clare?”
“Who else? He spent money on her like there was no tomorrow.”
“For her there wasn’t.”
The anger drained from her face, leaving it pale and gaunt. She looked away and sucked her cigarette.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you any of this,” she said quietly.
I waited for her to think of a reason.
Finally, she said, “You have to know how Samuel controlled things to understand.”
“By ‘things’ you mean money.”
She gave me a half grin that quickly died. “We’re all officers in the corporation of Butler Manufacturing—Kenneth, me, Karen, Nicole, I think even Wes—but it’s in name only. Samuel owns one hundred percent of the stock, and he distributes the profits as he sees fit. We each get a yearly ‘bonus.’ And listen to this: Karen and Nicole each get more than Kenneth and me put together. Now you tell me, is that fair?”
I said nothing.
“He always treated his daughters better than Kenneth,” she continued. “He spoiled Nicole rotten, gave her anything she wanted. His little baby. Even kept her room for her after he married Clare. And Karen, he practically bought that shop for her. His princess.” She snorted. “I doubt he even knows she’s a lesb—”
“She’s what?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She took a long drag, blew out a stream of smoke, and shook her head.
“You were telling me about the company profits.”
She sighed. “Samuel gave us all bonuses, but there’s still a lot left over. A lot. And you know what Samuel does with it? Socks it away, that’s what. Puts it in stocks, bonds, trust funds, money markets, and so on.”
“Trust funds for whom? Your children?”
“Hah! If only it were so. The beneficiaries are our grandchildren. Do you understand? The children of my children, who aren’t even born yet and—who knows?—may never exist. And for their children. He’s providing for the children of people who may never be born. It’s just insane.” She savagely jammed her cigarette into the ashtray, pretending it was Samuel Butler’s face. She picked up the pack, stared at it for a moment, then tossed it on the table as if she’d decided to break the habit. “And his will is the same way,” she said. “I’ve seen a copy of it. We, the living, will get very little. The unborn get the rest.”
She was silent for a moment, lost in her justifications.
“So you decided to correct that.”
Another half grin. “Correct. That’s exactly the right word. We got the idea from a newspaper story. Actually, I was the one who saw it,” she said with some pride, and now she shook a cigarette loose from her pack and lit it. “A bookkeeper for a company in Pennsylvania created a phantom employee and cashed the extra paycheck himself. The IRS eventually caught him because the phantom employee never paid his income tax. Kenneth solved that problem by using a real name and matching social security number and paying withholding tax.”
She blew smoke from her mouth and nostrils and continued, “At the library we looked through the obituaries in last year’s newspapers and picked half a dozen names in low income neighborhoods. Kenneth phoned the families and gave them some story about being with a finance company and offering an easy line of credit. All they had to do was mail him a copy of their latest income tax form. A few did. Mrs. Stone’s was a joint filing. She’d signed her husband’s name, but made no indication that he’d died or that this was his final tax form—which was what Kenneth was looking for. As far as the IRS was concerned, Jeremy Stone was still alive.
“Kenneth opened a bank account in Stone’s name with a post office box for his address. Next year he planned to file Stone’s income tax forms. And if the company were audited, all the figures would check. The feds would be happy.”
“Very thorough. But weren’t you afraid Samuel might notice a sudden increase in his payroll?”
“No. Kenneth had been doing the books for years. The payroll, too. After Samuel met Clare, he hardly looked at the books. Oh, he kept an eye on Kenneth’s salary. But the company was the farthest thing from his mind.”
“If he went to prison, it’d be even farther.”
“That was never our intention. It was—” She looked at me with a pleading expression. “It was an accident.”
“What was an ac—”
I was interrupted by the back door banging open followed by high-pitched yelling and footsteps running through the kitchen. A boy and a girl burst into the living room, shouting for their mother.
“He pushed me down!”
“Did not!”
“Did so!”
“Because she threw dirt on me!”
“Did not!”
They were around seven or eight years old. The girl had her mother’s pale red hair and green eyes and wore a sweater, plaid skirt, and knee socks. The boy had on blue jeans, a Colorado Rockies’ jacket, and the famous Butler scowl. They barely noticed me, another piece of furniture.
“She started it!”
“He did!”
“All right,” Doreen said tightly, “let’s all calm down.”
“But he pushed me!”
“Did not!”
“That’s enough!” Doreen shouted.
The two kids stared at her with eyes wide and mouths open. They weren’t accustomed to their mother raising her voice. Neither was she. Her hand shook. So did her voice.
“Now, please. Mother has company. Go outside and play.”
They stared at her a moment longer, their expressions sullen. Then they turned and walked out, shoulder to shoulder.
“…you started it…”
“…you did…”
Doreen crushed her cigarette and lit another. She took one drag, then smashed it out in disgust. She put her hands on her knees and stared at them.
“What was an ‘accident’?” I asked.
She started to speak, then closed her mouth. Her eyes never left the backs of her hands.
“Are you talking about Clare’s death?”
She held perfectly still, not looking up.
“Mrs. Butler, if—”
“They can’t make me testify, can they?” She wouldn’t look at me, but I could see that her face was filled with fear.
“Testify to what?”
“A wife doesn’t have to testify against her husband, does she?”
“No.”
She kept staring at her hands. “I’m—I’m afraid to say this, but…and I love him, no matter what, but…”
I waited, knowing what was coming.
“Kenneth killed Clare,” she said softly.
CHAPTER 27
WE SAT IN SILENCE for a moment. Her head hung as if she were in church and I were her confessor.
“Did Kenneth tell you he’d killed her?”
She shook her head, then looked up at me. “No. But I know he did it. I think I’ve always known. I just wouldn’t let myself think about it. Perhaps because I could see no reason for Kenneth to— Until Thursday, when you came here and said Clare had hired a private detective to find Jeremy Stone. Then it made sense. I mean, the things that
happened right before Clare was murdered.”
“What happened?”
She heaved a sigh, and for the first time since I’d arrived, she seemed to relax, as if she’d finally accepted things as they were.
“Kenneth received a phone call the night before the murder. I was unloading the dishwasher, and he stretched the kitchen phone cord so he was standing just outside the doorway. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could tell he was angry. Arguing. He was upset for the rest of the night. I asked him about it, and he said it was ‘a problem at work.’”
Samuel Butler had overheard Clare arguing with a man on the phone that night. Not with her lover, though. With Kenneth.
Doreen said, “The next day, Kenneth had a similar call. Again, I couldn’t hear what he was saying, only that he was very angry. He left the house right afterward. ‘To solve a problem at work,’ he said.”
“What time was this?”
“Around eleven or so.”
After Samuel Butler had left for Golden.
“Why was Kenneth home so late in the morning? I thought he worked on Saturdays.”
“He does occasionally. Today, for instance, because there’s a large order they’re getting out.”
“What time did he come home that day?”
“Late afternoon. Around four, I think.” She bit her lip. “His face was pale, and he was very upset. Of course, I thought it had something to do with the company. I asked him, but he wouldn’t talk about it. He told me if anyone asked, I was to say he’d been home all day. At the time, it didn’t make sense. When I tried to question him, he just got angry. He made me swear to tell no one that he’d left the house. And that night, I heard about Clare.”
“How did you hear?”
“Samuel came here and told us. I was shocked. Right then I should’ve connected Kenneth’s behavior with Clare’s death. But I didn’t. I guess I wouldn’t let myself. Now, though…” She gave me a pleading look. “I’m sure it was an accident. Kenneth would never intentionally harm anyone. But his temper…Sometimes he gets mad and does things, breaks things, and then he’s immediately sorry. I—I suppose that’s what happened. He didn’t mean to kill her.”
Explain that to Clare. “Call your husband now and tell him to come home. Then I’ll phone Oliver Westfall. He should be here to counsel Kenneth before he turns himself in.”
Blood Relative (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 4) Page 15
