JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home

by Peter Spiegelman

  I was quiet again. Rich steepled his fingers and watched my face. “You said the estate went through probate quickly. Does that mean no one contested anything?” Rich nodded. “Not even Paul?”

  Rich looked at me for a while. “Paulie was taken care of in the will,” he told me finally. “He won’t ever have to worry about keeping body and soul together.”

  “Does that mean he didn’t contest anything?”

  He sighed. “Not in any … organized way. He had every opportunity— I made sure of that— but Paulie … He complained a little, and he had some … theories, but ultimately he didn’t contest it. And like I said, the will was clean, and he was well taken care of.”

  “What kind of theories did he have?”

  “Paul gets ideas about things sometimes. For a while he thought that Danes had done him out of the place in Lenox. But it was crazy, and there was nothing to it.”

  “Where’s Paul now?”

  “I don’t know. The apartment went to him, and so did the house on Sanibel, and I know he’s shown up both places from time to time, but he doesn’t stay at either one. Right now, if I had to guess, I’d say he’s living in his car.”

  “What’s the matter with him, Mr. Rich?”

  Rich shook his head and looked out the window. “He was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, a long time ago,” he said finally.

  “Is he on meds?”

  “Sometimes. And they work for him— when he takes them. He’s had some real good stretches, where he’s held a job and paid the rent and everything. And then he goes off and has some bad stretches.”

  “How bad?”

  “He gets fired; he gets evicted; he drops out of sight for months at a time and winds up in a shelter or on the street.” Talking about Paul seemed to make Rich tired. He twisted his hands together on the desk.

  “Does he need to be institutionalized?”

  Rich made a resigned shrug. “I don’t know. Joe and I talked about it. I think maybe it’s headed that way.” He sighed some more and shook his head. “What does any of this have to do with Danes?”

  “Does he ever get violent, Mr. Rich?” Rich looked down at his desk for a moment and then looked up at me. His eyes were worn and old and worried under his white brows. He nodded his head very slowly.

  31

  I was packing when Jane showed up at my door. She was still dressed for work in a navy suit, and her face was thin and tired-looking. She had an opened bag of barbecue potato chips in her hand. She tipped the bag toward me.

  “Want one?” she asked.

  “No, thanks,” I said. She followed me back to the bedroom and leaned against the wall. She put a potato chip in her mouth and looked at my overnight bag, open on the floor.

  “I got your message,” she said. “I appreciate your letting me know.” I nodded and put a pair of boxers in the bag. “Do you think they’re gone for good?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  I looked up at her. “Pretty sure is the best I can do,” I said. “I can’t guarantee anything for anyone.”

  She looked at me for a while and gave a tiny nod. “I appreciate your letting me know,” she said again. She ate a potato chip. “Did you call Ned too?”

  “Yep.”

  “He must’ve been relieved.”

  “I guess. I left a message, and I haven’t heard back.” I laughed a little, but it came out sounding choked. “Lauren said to give him time. I figure a year or so might do it.”

  I packed a polo shirt and jeans and tucked my shaving kit next to them. I took a black nylon waist pack from my closet and opened its two pockets. I put a flashlight, a small pry bar, a couple of screwdrivers, a Swiss army knife, a putty knife, and a couple of pairs of vinyl gloves in one. I took the Glock 30 from my bureau and slipped it in the other. I zipped the waist pack and put it in a side compartment of my overnight bag. Jane watched, and her face was very still.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Lenox. It’s in western Mass, in the Berkshires.”

  Jane crunched loudly on another chip and nodded. “I used to go there in the summers with my parents. It’s a little early for the music, but I guess you’re not going for that.”

  “It turns out Danes inherited a house up there, from his late friend and neighbor Joe Cortese. The final transfer took place two months ago, just before Danes split. There’s no phone in Danes’s name in that neck of the woods, and Cortese’s old number is out of service. I’m going to knock on the door.”

  Jane looked at the bag again. “And if there’s no answer?”

  “I’ll let myself in.”

  She glanced at the clock on my nightstand. It was six forty-five. “It’ll be late by the time you get there.”

  “I’ll wait until tomorrow to go calling.”

  She picked another chip from her bag. “Renting a car?” I nodded. “It’s— what?— a three-hour drive from here?”

  “Three and a half,” I said.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “A place called the Ravenwood Inn, right in town. The woman there said she’d keep a light on for me.”

  “Cancel your rental. I’ll give you a lift.”

  I zipped up my bag and looked at her. “Don’t you have to work?”

  A tiny smile crossed her face. She shook her head. “We’re all but done. We’ve got final versions of the agreements, and all we need now is board approval. Our board said yes today; the buyer’s board is meeting at the end of the week. Until then, I don’t have much to do. Besides, I’ve had my car for three months now, and I’ve used it maybe five times. It’s going to go stale or something if I don’t let it run.”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t know what I’m walking into up there, Jane.”

  “It’s not like I’m going with you on your house call. There’s a nice spa up there. I’ll go get myself wrapped in something, or maybe I’ll look at some real estate. Or maybe I’ll just lie in bed all day and eat bonbons.”

  I shook my head. “Really, it could be … complicated.”

  “I consider myself warned. You want me to sign a release or something?”

  “I’m serious.”

  She folded down the top of the potato chip bag and tossed it on the bed. She brushed her palms together and dusted off the crumbs. “So am I. I know what you do for a living, John; I’m a big girl.” She crossed her arms on her chest. “Those guys following us took me by surprise— they freaked me out. And those photos …” A shiver rippled through her, and she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry that that happened, Jane. I wish—”

  She held up a hand. “I know. I know you’re sorry. It was a passing thing, and now it’s past. But you can’t keep that stuff from me, okay? You have to let me know what’s going on.”

  We were quiet for a while and I looked into her dark, weary eyes. “Are we taking the chips?” I asked.

  It took Jane twenty minutes to shower, change into jeans and a T-shirt, and pack a bag. Twenty minutes after that we were in her gray Audi TT in a fast-moving stream of traffic, northbound on the Henry Hudson Parkway. Jane was behind the wheel; I manned the CD player and doled out the potato chips.

  The Hudson River was black below us and empty, but for a tug pushing south toward the harbor. Yellow light spilled from its bridge and vanished on the oily water. The Palisades rose like a stone wave across the river, beneath a mass of purple clouds.

  Jane squinted into the oncoming headlights and drove fast and well. And though she was tired, she was full of a nervous energy that could only dissipate itself in talk. It was lurching, lopsided conversation that lingered on no one topic but skittered among several without segue.

  “We deferred the issue of my ongoing participation,” she said. “We took it out of the deal agreements and the buyers are making a separate offer.”

  “They really think they can convince you?”

  “They really think so.”
>
  “And?”

  “And they’re really wrong,” she laughed. An SUV swerved into our lane without a signal. Jane punched the horn and the Audi made a sonorous bark. She downshifted, slid left, swore softly, and passed the SUV.

  “I don’t know what went on with you two,” she said, “but you should give Lauren a call.” I didn’t answer, and she glanced at me sideways. “Whatever it was, it left her pretty upset.” She glanced at me again. “She really worries about you, and she looks out for you. She spoke to Ned the other day, and he told her he’d hired that woman you liked for the security job— the ex-policeman, Alice something.”

  “Ned hired Alice Hoyt?”

  Jane nodded. “Lauren thought you’d like that.”

  “I do— she’ll do good work for Klein— but I didn’t expect Ned to see it that way. Especially after what happened.”

  “Lauren was funny when she told me; she does a great Ned imitation.” Jane puffed out her cheeks and lowered her voice. “I may not like what he’s doing with his life, but there’s no denying he knows his business.” Jane looked sideways again and smiled. “You should call her.”

  We took the Henry Hudson into the Bronx, to the Saw Mill River Parkway, and we took that into Westchester. Traffic was heavy all the way. I put on a Steely Dan disc, and when Fagen started singing “Janie Runaway,” Jane talked about vacation plans.

  “I was thinking about Europe— maybe Venice or the lake country— but then I thought that’s too much work, and maybe what we could use is some serious vegetable time. To me, that means ocean.” She glanced over. I nodded. “It’s late to find something on the Vineyard or Nantucket, but we could get something on the Maine coast or maybe farther north, like Nova Scotia. Or we could go out West— northern California maybe.” She glanced over and I nodded once more. “Bermuda’s nice too,” she added.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. I knew by the silence that followed that that wasn’t enough. Or maybe it was too much.

  Traffic thinned when we got on the Taconic Parkway, and it thinned some more as we drove in silence through Briarcliff and Ossining. As we crossed the Croton Reservoir, Jane spoke again, and the sound of her voice startled me.

  “I’m getting tired. You better drive.”

  We pulled off the Taconic in Jefferson Valley and switched places in the parking lot of a shopping center. Jane tilted her seat back. She kicked off her loafers and tucked her feet beneath her. I adjusted the driver’s seat and checked the mirrors. Jane looked at me and spoke very softly.

  “Do you want to go on this vacation with me?” she asked. “Just tell me, yes or no.”

  “Yes, I do … sure I do. We just need to see about the timing, that’s all. I’ve still got this case—”

  “But you want to go?”

  “We just need to work out the timing.”

  Something crossed Jane’s dark eyes, too quickly for me to read. She looked out at the parking lot and then at me, expressionless, for several moments. And then she yawned hugely and closed her eyes.

  Jane was asleep before we got back on the parkway. I fiddled with the CD changer until I found a Pharoah Sanders disc. “In a Sentimental Mood” came on, and Jane murmured. I turned the volume down. We crossed into Putnam County, and the Taconic grew darker and altogether empty. The Audi threw a cone of hard blue-white light on the road and on the heavy curtain of trees alongside. I thought about Joe Cortese and his nephew and Gregory Danes, and I tried not to think about what I might find at Calliope Farms.

  Jane sighed and shifted on the passenger seat. The scent of her filled the car. I looked over. She had one hand wrapped around a slender ankle, and the other beneath her head, like a pillow. Her face was pale in the instrument lighting, and very beautiful, and I was filled with an aching want.

  Light rippled across the western sky and a peal of thunder followed. Jane shifted on the seat again. Her brow furrowed for a moment and her lips moved silently, and then she drifted into a deeper layer of sleep. My throat was tight and I shook my head and drove on, through an ever-receding tunnel of light, through the pitch-black wood.

  The Lenox town center is just a few blocks square, and it’s a New England postcard of massive trees, handsome houses, and neat sober storefronts and churches. The houses are a mix of white clapboard and painted Victorian, and though many were long ago converted to inns, they are confident nonetheless on their well-groomed lots. The granite and red-brick storefronts were uniformly dark when we drove by at ten forty-five. The churches looked smugly on the empty streets.

  The Ravenwood Inn was a turreted Queen Anne, just south of the obelisk in the center of town. It was large and pink and laden with ornamentation, and there was a light on above the wide front porch. I put my hand on Jane’s knee and shook gently until she opened her eyes.

  A bleary-eyed girl, barely out of her teens, checked us in and led us to our room. It was in the turret, on the top floor, and it had a high beamed ceiling and a smell of musty lavender. The furniture was dark and elaborately carved, and the windows looked out on black clouds and thunder.

  The storm came at 2 a.m., in bursts of blue light that seared through my eyelids, and in rolling explosions of sound that shook my bones, and whose aftershocks rippled in the walls. The wind thrashed wildly through the trees and the sky was an ocean of madness. I stood at the window and watched the world come apart.

  “Jesus,” Jane said softly. She came up behind me, and her body was bare and smooth against mine. The air sizzled and the whole room was lit for an instant and then was black. The floor shook. Jane shuddered and gripped my arms. “I don’t like lightning.” I felt her lips and her breath and her nipples on my back. Her hands were very warm, and she slid them across my belly. “Come back to bed,” she whispered.

  32

  I bought coffee and doughnuts on Tuesday morning, from a place that made them fresh and that had managed to eke out a few batches in the intervals between power failures. The old-timers behind the pink Formica counter had a Pittsfield station on the radio, and the announcer told us that the storm had downed trees and power lines all over Berkshire County. We were advised to expect sporadic blackouts throughout the day and— based on the latest forecasts— more storms by evening. In the meanwhile, he said, road crews were out in force, making what progress they could with chain saws and cherry pickers.

  I’d passed some of those crews earlier that morning, when I’d driven north and east of town to case Calliope Farms. I’d found the place on an otherwise empty stretch of muddy washboard, off something called Roaring Brook Road. It was near the Housatonic River and at the base of a steep, densely wooded hillside that I knew from the map I’d bought in town was part of October Mountain State Forest.

  The house and barn sat on a rise, well back from the road, behind a ragged stone wall and beside an unmown meadow. There was a white wooden post with a white wooden sign at the head of the gravel drive. The blue script letters were faded but legible: Calliope Farms. The drive was rutted and empty but for puddles, and the house looked closed up. I’d driven by slowly and kept on going for a mile or so. Then I’d turned the car around and waited ten minutes and driven by again. Nothing had changed when I passed the second time except my stomach, which felt tighter and more uneasy.

  Jane was getting out of the shower when I returned with breakfast.

  “The lights keep going on and off,” she said, as she wrapped herself in one of the inn’s terry robes.

  “Reliable sources tell me they’ll be doing that all day.”

  “That’s what the spa people said when I called. And without power they can’t heat the seaweed or something, so it’s no wrap for me— and no real estate either. It looks like it’ll be a bonbon day after all.”

  “Sounds appealing.” I put the coffee and doughnuts on the bedside table and picked up my overnight bag. I unzipped the side compartment and took out the black waist pack. Jane blew on her coffee and watched me carefully. “I just need you to give me a lift,” I said
.

  It was after two when we turned off Roaring Brook Road and onto the washboard track. I killed the music and a few minutes later we rolled slowly by Calliope Farms. The driveway was still empty. Jane pulled over about a quarter mile past the white sign. Her face was tense.

  “Leave your cell phone on,” I said. “I’ll call when I’m done and I’ll meet you back here.”

  Jane flipped her phone open. “My signal’s spotty.”

  I opened mine. “I’m okay if I point in the right direction.” I reached behind my seat and grabbed the waist pack.

  “If you want me to, I could wait,” Jane said. “In case you knock and he happens to be there.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “If he’s there, I’m going to have a talk with him.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to talk?”

  “Then I’ll be calling you pretty soon.”

  Jane pursed her lips. “What if somebody else is at home?”

  I smiled a little harder. “I’ll call you when I’m done,” I said.

  Jane nodded but looked no less worried. “Well, be quick about it, okay? I don’t want to be sitting in that turret by myself if there are more of those storms coming.” I opened my door and Jane caught me by the sleeve and pulled me toward her. “Just be quick,” she whispered, and kissed me.

  I climbed out of the car and waited while Jane turned around and drove off. Then I headed up the road to Calliope Farms.

  The sky was a low restless mix of blue and white and stony gray, and the light shifted quickly from daytime to evening and back again. Wind seemed to blow from all points of the compass, by turns warm and cool, in light breezes and heavy gusts. Water fell from the leaves of the maples and lindens across the road and tumbled through the heavy undergrowth and ran in a stream along the roadside. Everything smelled of wet wood and grass and earth. The temperature was in the low sixties and I should have been warm enough in jeans and a sweatshirt, but somehow I wasn’t. I shook my arms out and flexed my fingers.