“Such a small thing,” Manny said with no expression, “yet so much pain. Now, please. Where’s Martin Blyleven?”
“I told you,” I said, my voice half strangled. “Crown Hill Cem—”
Manny slammed the toothpick with the palm of his hand. Fire seared through my arm and chest, and my brain seemed to be filled with a bright white light. The light slowly faded and the room came back into view: Manny on one side of the table, Wedge on the other. The toothpick was still under my nail, deeper than before. My hand and arm throbbed.
“It gets worse,” Manny said, “trust me. And just when you think you’ve reached your limit, I start on the next finger. Why put yourself through that? Just tell me where—”
A sharp rapping on the front door.
Manny, Wedge, and I all looked that way. I assume Jack did, too. He tightened his arm under my chin to keep me from yelling for help. Nobody made a sound. I was praying that Vaz, whose apartment was just below mine, had heard what was going on and called the cops. With any luck they were out there now, guns drawn.
Another sharp rap and then a squawking voice: “All right, Mr. Lomax, open up. I know you’re in there.”
Mrs. Finch to the rescue.
12
MANNY PUT HIS FACE close to mine and whispered, “Who is that?”
Jack eased his chokehold enough for me to croak, “My landlady.”
More rapping, short and sharp. “I have a few things to say to you, Mr. Lomax,” Mrs. Finch squawked. “And I don’t intend to do it through a closed door. Now, either you open up or I will.”
“She means it,” I told Manny. “She has a key.”
“All right, mister,” Finch said.
A key scratched in the lock.
Manny said, “Wedge.”
The big man let go of my arms and moved quickly and quietly around the counter that divided the kitchen area from the living room. He stood at the far side of the front door, meaty hands hanging loosely at his sides.
“Don’t hurt—”
Jack tightened his chokehold on me.
The locked clicked and the door swung open. Mrs. Finch entered talking: “Now I heard you in here before, Mr. Lomax, so don’t try to pretend that you’re—”
Wedge clamped a hand over her mouth and chin, holding her without effort. With his free hand he pulled the bunch of keys from the lock and closed the door. Mrs. Finch did not struggle, whether from shock or the certain knowledge of futility, I wasn’t certain. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses.
“This is no good,” Manny said.
“It’ll get worse.” My voice was a harsh whisper.
Manny waved a hand at Jack, who eased the pressure around my throat.
“Meaning what?”
“Her husband will come up here next. And before long the rest of the nosy tenants will be milling around out there. That’s a couple dozen witnesses to deal with.” Actually, Mrs. Finch had been a widow for twenty years and there were only six other people in the building, most of whom minded their own business. But it sounded worse my way. Manny thought so, too, I could tell by the look on his face.
“Now what?” Jack said.
“We could snuff this old bird and take him with us,” Wedge offered.
“Oh, that would be smart,” I said. “The three of you carrying a bound man out of the building and down the street in broad daylight. Where did you get these guys, Manny?”
“Shut up.”
“Now what?” Jack still wanted to know.
Manny pursed his lips, making up his mind. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“And do what with him?”
“Nothing.” Manny gave me a cold smile. “For now.”
He got the roll of duct tape from the kitchen counter, tore off a strip, and plastered it over my mouth. Jack pulled me backward and threw me to the floor. I tried not to hit my hand, because Manny’s customized toothpick was still stuck under my fingernail. But just the movement brought enough pain to make my eyes water. I blinked away the tears and watched Jack and Wedge bind Mrs. Finch’s hands and feet and tape her mouth. They left her on the couch. Wedge tossed the bunch of keys beside her, then followed Manny and Jack out the door. I heard them clumping down the stairs.
I pried the tape off my mouth, straining to keep my little finger and the toothpick away from my face. Then I pointed my hands toward me as if I were praying, carefully clamped my teeth on the toothpick, and yanked it out.
I lay there for a few minutes as the waves of pain subsided in my arm and hand. I pushed myself to my feet. The knife Manny had used was lying on the table. I picked it up, wondering if it might be easier to cut Mrs. Finch’s bonds than my own.
Then I heard heavy footfalls coming up the stairs.
Had Manny changed his mind?
Quickly, I squatted down and cut through the tape that bound my ankles. I hustled toward the door, trying to cut the tape from my wrists. Not enough time. I held the knife in both fists, keeping it at waist level, ready to thrust up and out at the first person who crashed through the door.
A knock.
“Jacob, are you in there?”
I relaxed. “Come on in, Vaz.”
Vassily Botvinnov opened the door. He’s a barrel-chested man in his sixties, with a ruddy face, eyebrows like gerbils, and spindly legs draped in baggy brown slacks. Despite the heat, he wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt. He took one step into the apartment, then froze, eyes bulging under heavy, hairy brows. Why not? Mrs. Finch lay bound and gagged on the couch and I was holding a knife.
“Jacob?”
“It’s a long story. You want to cut off this tape?”
After Vaz freed me, I went to Mrs. Finch and carefully lifted the tape from her mouth.
“I won’t have this rough-and-tumble behavior in my house,” she said at once. “Do you and your friends think this is some sort of gymnasium that they can come in and wrestle around? Here, here, I’ll do that.” She slapped away my hands and unwound the tape from her hose-supported ankles. I wasn’t sure whether she was in shock or simply loonier than I’d thought. She stood up and briskly smoothed her dress, glaring at me. “And another thing, I won’t have you fraternizing with my new tenant. You stay away from her, is that clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I handed her the loaded ring of keys.
She snatched them from me, stomped out, and slammed the door behind her.
Vaz looked more confused than ever. “Those three were friends of yours?”
“Hardly.”
“When I heard them on the stairs, I looked out and saw them hurrying by. They didn’t look very amiable. Who are they?”
“Let me call the cops first. And take some aspirin.” My head was booming.
While we waited for the police to arrive, I told Vaz about the three visitors, my present case, and Martin Blyleven. Then I suggested that there was no sense in his getting involved in this. He left, reluctantly.
I checked the safe. The door hung open. My two handguns were still there, and so was the envelope that had once held my cash. Just the envelope, no cash. Now, any cheap punk worth his swagger would have taken the guns, too. Jack and Wedge would have, if only to sell. The .357 magnum was worth a few hundred bucks easy.
But Manny had left them behind. He had all the guns he needed. A pro.
A pair of uniforms showed up forty minutes later.
The elder of the two, a tough-looking veteran, asked all the questions. She filled out her report with a ballpoint pen, while the radio on her belt chattered in muted tones. Her partner, a baby-faced Hispanic walked around the apartment looking at everything, touching nothing.
I told her what had happened, leaving out only a few nonessential details—like Blyleven and Vaz and Mrs. Finch (why bother the dear old bird any further?). However, I did volunteer to go through the police mug books. In fact, I insisted.
“A detective will contact you,” the female cop said. Then she squinted at me, her eyes narrowing on either side
of her slightly crooked nose. “Lomax. That name’s familiar. Didn’t you used to be a Denver cop?”
“Right.”
“When did you retire?”
Christ, did I look that old? “I didn’t retire, I quit. About five years ago.”
She pursed her lips and nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s not for everyone.”
After they left, I phoned Roger Armis at the bank where he worked. The receptionist put me on hold. I passed the time by examining my little finger. It still hurt like hell, clear up to the wrist. There was a thin, bloodred line under the nail from the end to the cuticle. That was it. Not even any blood. What had Manny said? Such a small thing, yet so much pain. I hoped I got the chance to further explore that theory with him.
Armis came on the line, and I told him we needed to talk.
“Have you learned something about Blyleven?”
“Not over the phone,” I said. “And I need to speak with your wife, too.”
“I… I haven’t yet told her about you.”
“Well, call her and tell her now. We need to meet today.”
He was silent for a moment. I could almost hear him chewing the inside of his cheek. Finally, he said, “All right. I usually go home at noon.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Please wait until one.”
“Fine.” Hey, why spoil their lunch?
13
ROGER AND VIVIAN ARMIS lived in a substantial two-story brick-and-frame house at the end of a cul-de-sac a few blocks off South Kipling Street in Lakewood. I saw a lot of kids in the neighborhood—riding bikes in the hot sun, playing kids’ games, staring at the ancient Oldsmobile cruising down their street. I wondered if one of them was little Chelsea Armis.
I parked in the wide concrete driveway. Armis must have seen me through the picture window, because he opened the door before I rang the bell.
He looked distressed—more so than he’d sounded on the phone. Something was up.
“Come in,” he said, avoiding my eyes.
The living room was cool and sterile. Like a lot of houses in suburbia, the “front room” was rarely used, and the furniture was pretty much for show. If the family members weren’t eating in the kitchen or sleeping upstairs in the bedrooms, they were probably in the rec room, recreating—that is, watching TV.
I sat on an expensive-looking chair with cherry-wood legs and hard cushions. Armis perched on the edge of the couch. It was upholstered in a tasteful floral pattern and looked brand new. Beside Armis was a small, round end table, unencumbered except for a photograph in a fancy frame. The Armis family. Little five-year-old Chelsea wore a frilly yellow dress and stood between her mother and her adoptive father, reaching up to hold their hands. Vivian and Roger were dressed conservatively, perhaps for church—she in a peach-colored outfit, and he in a blue suit and tie.
Armis put his hands on his knees and frowned at them. He cleared his throat. “I, ah, explained to Vivian that I had hired you, and, well, she became upset, and ah …”
“Where is your wife?”
“She’s upstairs. She, that is, we, we’ve decided that we no longer need your services.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. We’re going to pay the money to Martin.”
“And hope he simply goes away.”
“Well… yes.”
“You don’t even know for certain that it’s Blyleven.”
“Vivian is certain.”
“So you’ve said. But when I spoke to you on the phone less than two hours ago, you were anxious to hear what I’d found out about him. Now you don’t seem to care.”
“It doesn’t matter what you’ve found.”
“And why, all of a sudden?”
He wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Really, this no longer concerns you.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
He blinked at me. “Excuse me?”
“This morning I was bounced around my apartment by three ugly characters looking for Blyleven. Manny, Jack, and Wedge. Those names mean anything to you?”
He shook his head. “No, I… They were looking for Martin?”
“And it wasn’t to fill out a foursome for golf. Now look, so far I haven’t told the police about—”
“The police?” His face lost its color.
“I told them about the attack, but not about Blyleven or you. That could change, though, unless I get some answers. I think it’s time I spoke to your wife.”
“I… I don’t know if—”
“It’s all right, Roger.”
Vivian Armis entered the room. I hadn’t heard any movement preceding her appearance, so I figured she’d been standing just outside the doorway, listening.
She was a handsome woman, around thirty, with an oval face, wide-set brown eyes, and chestnut hair curled beneath her chin. She wore a straw-colored summer dress and little make-up. Roger Armis looked much older beside her, more like a father than a husband.
“Please sit down,” she told us both.
She took a seat beside her husband, who seemed more fretful than she. She gave his hand a squeeze, then folded her hands in her lap. Her nails were long and squared off, shiny with clear polish.
“What did these three men want with Martin?” she asked me without preamble. Obviously, she had been eavesdropping, and she wasn’t apologizing for it.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’d say they meant him harm. Who are they?”
“I have no idea, Mr. Lomax. And I’m sorry to have involved you in this. If I had told Roger everything in the beginning, he would have never hired you. He would have known that Martin is alive.”
“Maybe you should tell me everything.”
“You don’t have to say a word, Vivian,” Armis said quickly.
She nodded, her eyes on me. “Yes, I think I do.”
She began by explaining that seven years ago, when she was barely out of college, she’d met Martin Blyleven, and after a brief courtship they were married. Almost immediately, Vivian’s brother, Matthew Styles, got Martin a job as an accountant for Franklin Reed’s Church of the Nazarene. A year later, Vivian gave birth to Chelsea. And six months after that, Martin Blyleven learned that he had inoperable cancer.
“He said he’d been to several doctors,” Vivian said. “They’d all told him the same thing—he had only a few months to live.”
Blyleven couldn’t face spending his last months waiting in agony as the cancer ate him alive. He decided to take his own life. Vivian was horrified. She begged him to reconsider. But he was adamant. In fact, he was more concerned with Vivian and Chelsea’s welfare than with his own. If he committed suicide, his life insurance would be voided. They had few assets. In effect, he would be leaving his family destitute. Unless he could make his death look like an accident.
“I was completely against it,” Vivian said. She paused. “At first, anyway. But I had to face the fact that Chelsea and I would be left alone. And, I’m sorry to say, I began to see the logic of it.”
“Did you also see that it was criminal fraud?”
“Now just a minute,” Armis said, defending his wife.
She gave his hand a squeeze and nodded tightly at me. “Yes, of course I did. That’s why I told no one about this, not even Roger. Until today.”
Blyleven told Vivian that he had a foolproof plan and that he’d enlisted the aid of the church’s pilot, Lawrence Foster. One evening Foster came to the house. Martin introduced him to Vivian and said that he and Foster were going for a long drive, that they would be gone for a few days, and that Vivian was to phone the church the next day and say that Martin was sick with the flu. She was to tell no one that Foster had been there or that Martin and Foster had gone away together.
“Where did they go?”
“Martin wouldn’t tell me. He said the less I knew, the better.”
“You said they were going on a long drive. Are you sure they didn’t fly? Foster had his own plane.”
She shook her head. “No,
they drove. When Martin came back two nights later, he was… wrinkled, road-weary. And the car was splattered with bugs, as if it had been a long time on the highway. Martin even left early for work the next morning so he could take it to a car wash.”
“You said ‘Martin came back.’ Was Foster with him?”
“No.”
“Didn’t Foster leave his car here while they were gone?”
“No. They took both cars.”
“On a two-day road trip? Are you sure?”
She frowned, and bit her lower lip. “That’s how I remember it. I’m trying to think why I do.”
Armis and I waited.
Vivian’s head came up, her brown eyes wide. “Road food,” she said. “Martin had me pack two sacks. Some celery, a couple of apples, and a few candy bars in each. And two bottles of Evian from the fridge. They each took a sack and a bottle with them in their cars when they left.”
“And you have no idea where they went.”
“No.” She swallowed with difficulty and looked away. “Less than a week later the plane… blew up. Martin had killed himself. Or so I believed. But he’d also killed Foster. If I had known what he’d been planning, I …” She shook her head, blinking rapidly to keep away the tears. Maybe she was thinking about Foster’s widow and child. I was.
She said, “I tried to convince myself that Foster had blown up the plane. And, who knows? Maybe he did.”
I seriously doubted that. “Had you and Martin ever been to Mexico City?” I was thinking about his final conversation with Chris Esteves.
“What?” She sniffed once and sat up a little straighter, regaining her composure. “No.”
“Did either of you have friends or relatives there?”
“No. But why—”
“Did Martin ever mention Mexico City to you in any context?”
She frowned and shook her head. “No, not that I recall.”
“So you wouldn’t know why an earthquake down there would greatly upset him.”
“Well… no. An earthquake?”
If Blyleven had planned to hide out in Mexico, he hadn’t told Vivian. “Prior to the crash, did Martin do anything out of the ordinary? I mean, aside from his two-day road trip with Foster.”
Grave Doubt (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 5) Page 7
