Leola was the first to comment. “So Cranston figures Tor found the device just as he was getting ready to get out of the car, reached under the dash, pulled it out and then it went off right at the moment he opened the door. Right?”
King nodded. “That’s his best guess. He has it all written up for you here.” He handed Leola a manila folder. “He figures the chances of it going off just because of Tor’s handling are pretty slim. He says it must have been a phone call. Now all you have to do is to find out who called him just then. Cranston says once you do that, you should have the killer. He also said he wished all his cases were as easy.”
Leola’s caustic comment was, “I’ll have to call him and thank him for passing such an easy case back to us.”
***
“Any luck in contacting the ex-con?” Leola asked. Both officers had been busy most of the morning with a more current homicide—a family dispute ending in a fatality.
“Frank Abel? I gave up on his home phone and contacted his parole officer. Abe’s in the hospital, and the advice was to see him soon.”
“AIDS?”
“Worse. AIDS they can treat, but he’s got some kind of new resistant strain of TB. Been going downhill fast since he left the pen. I’ve called the hospital, and one-thirty should be a good time to see him. Lunch will be over by then—though, from what his parole officer says, he’s sure not eating much.”
***
There was little doubt Frank Abel was not long for this world. Skeleton thin, the only part of him seemingly still alive were his eyes and, when he spoke, lips which seemed to barely move.
“Yeah. I seen it on TV. Old Luke bit the dust. I knew you’d be looking for me, but you’re going to have to keep looking. I’d a been happy to see him off, and it’s kind of nice to see him go ahead a me, but I had nothing to do with it. Dynamite?”
Both officers nodded.
“Dumb stuff. Never did like it. I’d a used C4.”
“Any idea who might have done it?” the lieutenant asked.
A fit of coughing, then finally, “Sure. Anyone who did business with him. He was the crookedest character I ever met. Is there enough left of him to screw into the ground?” The coughing resumed. A nurse terminated the interview.
***
“This time, I think we’ve narrowed down our suspects.” Bretna said on the way to the elevator.
“Infinity minus one,” Leola replied gloomily. “He wouldn’t have had the strength to punch the buttons on a phone, never mind wire one.”
“Have we got time to visit a subcontractor?” Bretna asked.
Leola checked her electronic notepad. “Leon Russo it is. Let’s try the building site first. It’s this side of town.”
***
Others may have taken the news of Tor’s death calmly. Leon Russo was not one of them.
The burly contractor with a broken nose and a cauliflower ear made it clear from the get-go the officers’ presence was the latest in a list of recent and painful encounters.
“The bomb squad, or whatever they were, tore the construction trailer apart. Shit! They took the box of dynamite and cooked up a dozen charges for violating storage regulations—all because someone used a couple of sticks to blow asshole Tor to kingdom come. That Crampton character, or whatever his name is, called and wants to see me again. Says the dynamite used on Tor is the same as they found in the shack. But, hell, you know all about the dynamite already.”
Leola didn’t, but assumed there was a fax waiting in her inbox detailing Cranston’s discovery.
“So who had access to the dynamite?”
A growl was part of the answer. “Hell, this isn’t Fort Knox. Someone could have pried a window open when no one was here. We can’t be sitting around all day in the office. Someone could have come in and lifted one or two sticks just about anytime during the day. Anyway, it wasn’t me. Tor was a pain in the ass, but Torwood’s the butter on my bread. And I can’t see Harewood’s going to be much of an improvement.”
***
“If you go by types, Russo doesn’t much fit the picture.” Leola had just retrieved Cranston’s note from her inbox.
“You mean as a dynamiter?” Bretna asked.
“Yeah.”
“I agree. He’s the kind who would have hauled off and clobbered Tor, and he looks as though he’s done plenty of clobbering in his lifetime.”
“Even so, we’ll have to check his phone record on the day Tor was killed. Cranston isn’t helping much either, since the dynamite tag is the same for several boxes sold in this area during the past year. And he says Russo’s a member of the old school. Leaves the stuff sitting around like sticks of chewing gum.”
“The case still our baby?”
“Even more so,” Leola responded glumly. “Cranston’s convinced no terrorist is going to bother raiding some two-bit contractor’s stash for dynamite. They make their own explosives these days.”
“Shall we try more sub-contractors?”
“They seem like pretty much of a dead end. Let’s save the subs as a last resort, since I’ve got visions of more Russo types. Instead, let’s see if we can run down Tor’s original girlfriend. What was her name? Connie something or other.”
The sergeant checked her hand-held. “Good memory. Constance Somers. I wonder if she looks anything like Madeleine Deneuve.”
***
She didn’t!
Connie Somers was a small, slender, auburn-haired woman, somewhere on the plain side of pretty. Returning a call left on her answering machine, she had agreed to meet the two officers at lunch.
Making no effort to gloss over her relationship with Lucas Tor, she filled in the details as she picked away at her salad. “I knew he was married, but he insisted he and his wife were no longer really living together, if you know what I mean.” The voice took on an anxious pitch.
“I didn’t push him, or keep insisting or anything. I’m not sure I would have married him even if he’d been single. And he didn’t ask me to, or promise to, or anything like that. We…we were just seeing each other for almost a year.”
“How was the relationship recently?” Leola asked the question after having sampled the tuna fish sandwich—the cafeteria’s dubious special. Bretna kept her notebook beside her plate and scribbled a few words as Connie answered.
The reply came slowly. “He was different recently. I hadn’t seen him for over a week. He usually at least called. But he didn’t this time. I’m not sure why. Something was happening.”
“Did you try to get in touch with him?”
“Not really. He didn’t like to have me call on his business phone. And I didn’t particularly want to call him at home. Didn’t much care for the thought of having his wife answer. So he got another phone, but I never did call him. He said not to call him except in case of an emergency. But I didn’t intend to call him, anyway.” Something akin to pride appeared in the tone of her voice. “I wasn’t about to chase after him, if you know what I mean.”
Lieutenant and sergeant cast unbelieving looks at each other. Leola asked, “You mean you didn’t try to reach him, even after a week?”
Connie’s eyes misted over. She pushed aside her half-eaten lunch. “I—I finally gave in. He had the phone for six months or so, but I never did call. But, finally, I just had to know if it was something I might have done that was keeping him away.”
“You called his business phone?”
“Oh, no! Like I said, he told me not to call on his business phone. It was the other cellphone. He gave me the number, but since I’d never used it I had to rummage around in my purse to find it. It was written on one of his business cards.”
“So you did call him, finally.”
“Yes, but I didn’t phone until the day he died. Then, it was too late.”
The officers sat forward. “What time was it when you called him?”
“Two. Right on the dot, as a matter of fact.”
“You’re sure of the time?”
“Oh, yes. I was supposed to report back to work at two, and I decided to call him right at the last minute. It was the afternoon of the bomb scare. We had evacuated the building and were told it would take most of the morning and early afternoon to make sure there wasn’t a bomb in the building.”
“The federal courthouse?!” Leola didn’t try to keep the excitement out of her voice.
“That’s right. I’m a court reporter there. I thought you knew I was. I’m the court reporter in the terrorist trial. It’s beginning again, tomorrow and…”
***
“Wow!” Bretna said, pulling away from the curb while Leola was busy phoning the Homeland Security office.
Hand over the mouthpiece, the lieutenant grinned. “Cranston will have to take it back now we have a connection to the courthouse.” Leaving a message, she went on, “But, we’re still going to have to keep hustling.”
“So you don’t think she had anything to do with deliberately killing Tor.”
“Nope. She pretty definitely pulled the trigger, and we’re going to have to check her every way we can, and Cranston will too, but she almost certainly had no idea about what she was really doing. Someone else knew his number and planned on calling at some other time. Now, what we have to do is to check to see when and where he rented that second phone.”
“My guess is it’s going to be another dead end. He probably used a different name. Maybe…You know, we’ve been toying with the idea that whoever called Tor would probably have used a clone to avoid having the call traced. But, now we know who made the call, maybe we should start thinking about the phone which blew up. It was the one he rented for private chats with Connie.”
“Only there were no chats. Just one call—first and last.”
“Could be. And maybe we’re going too much by Cranston’s guesswork. Tor undoubtedly left the phone, whether a legitimate one or not, in the glove compartment of his car. Anyone with access to the van could have put the explosive rig together in a couple of minutes and then taped it under the dashboard.”
“If you’re right, that would narrow it down. It would have to be someone who knew Tor reasonably well, knew he had an extra phone, knew the phone number, knew it was seldom or never used, and Paula Tor doesn’t really fit the picture if it was a special phone for him to keep in touch with Connie. It would have to have been someone who knew…”
The lieutenant interrupted, “Before we start spinning our wheels, we’d better call for a conference including Low, and Cranston if he’s available. It looks more and more like we should be moving in on Harewood. He had means and opportunity. Plenty of knowledge. Motive is what we have to look into. We’ll go over the partnership agreement again, check the Torwood financial situation, then…”
It was Bretna’s turn to interrupt. Breaking into a laugh, she said, “When we first started on this case, you said we had our work cut out for us. You weren’t kidding.”
***
The phone call waiting for the sergeant when they arrived back at the station made for a quick change of plans.
“Madeleine Deneuve,” she announced to the lieutenant who was looking gloomily at her crammed inbox. “She has a new suspect for us. I get the feeling she thought we were centering on her, so she’s giving us Nicholas Doyle—also known as Nick the Mick. He’s the one who brought Tor to the Hootenanny in the first place. He’s a construction worker who’s done odd jobs for Tor and—guess what—the last place he worked, so far as Madeleine knows, was at the Russo site where the dynamite probably came from.”
Leola looked skeptical.
“The best is yet to come. Though Madeleine didn’t say so in so many words, Nick either had his own eye on Madeleine or they already had a close relationship. She says the last night Tor was there—two nights prior to his death—Nick came in, got into an argument with Tor and left in a huff. No description of what the argument was about, but the blanks aren’t hard to fill in.”
A sigh and a shuffling of papers greeted the information. “O.K. O.K. Put him on the list. But I just have to move some of this stuff. Take the call from Cranston when he comes back and fill him in. Find out if he’s interested in pursuing the Harewood lead and maybe Nick the Mick. I know he’ll want a statement from Connie.”
***
After a quick rundown of suspects, and what she and Bretna had accomplished up to date, Leola exchanged glances with her sergeant. The look had been prompted when she caught the amused glint in Low’s eyes as he watched Cranston shaking his head.
The agent had just come from interviewing the courthouse reporter and kept repeating, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. How could it just be coincidence? The call blew up Lucas Tor came from a phone booth inside the courthouse where a bomber’s on trial and where there’d been a bomb scare? But there seems to be absolutely no connection.”
Low’s observation was the unhelpful, “Coincidences do happen. Any indication where the bomb warning came from?”
A nod. “From the Middle East. Probably Palestine. We’re still working on it.”
“And you checked Connie Somers out?”
“Absolutely. Backwards and forwards. You couldn’t find anyone more innocuous. Not even so much as a boyfriend before Tor. No contact with any Arabs or Muslims. Rural school in North Dakota where even New Yorkers would be rare. Same with business school. She’s clean as the driven snow in her home town. Have you been able to find anyone else who knew about the phone?”
“Not yet,” was Leola’s reply. “We’ll start searching, but I doubt anyone’s going to fess up to knowing about it.”
“So? The next step?” Low asked.
It was Bretna who answered. “Nick the Mick is next on our list. For my money, he’s the best bet.”
***
Nick the Mick measured up to his name. He would have readily admitted, himself, to being a “heavy-set” Irishman. Almost six-foot tall, he had to weigh in the neighborhood of two hundred solid pounds, with massive hands and feet far larger than went with his frame.
Leola’s first thought as she shook hands with him and glanced down at the sausage-sized fingers was whether they could do the necessary fine-wiring to a cellphone.
“So Madeleine sicced you onto me, huh?”
Leola didn’t answer, but launched immediately into questions of her own. Nick seemed amused as he gave an account of his activities on the day of Tor’s death. As a construction worker, there was no way to pin down his location on the fateful day any closer than the site where he was working. Beyond saying he’d seen Tor’s van at the Torwood parking lot sometime during the week, he denied having so much as ever having opened one of its doors.
A question about the reported quarrel at the Hootenanny produced a certain amount of wariness.
“Sure. We had a few words. But it had nothing to do with Madeleine. She’s a free agent, and we never had anything more than a roll in the hay once or twice.”
Further probing was fruitless. Nick refused to explain the nature of the quarrel.
***
“He’s lying,” were Bretna’s first words to her companion when they were leaving the construction site.
“About Madeleine?”
“Absolutely. And more and more I’m thinking she’s the center of all this. It isn’t a terrorist bombing, it isn’t greed, it’s just plain lust. She was driving Tor, and Nick, and most of the males who ever went to club, crazy as all hell.”
“Somebody worth killing for,” Leola mused under her breath.
Bretna looked over. “You’re on to something, aren’t you?”
“Just an inkling, and I’m really fishing. Let’s go see your car mechanic.”
***
Mel Haines was far calmer than he had been when Leola had last seen him. Even so, the memories of the explosion still lingered. “Jeez. If I’d shown up a minute sooner, I’d a been shredded.”
“Didn’t you get a call earlier in the day to come out and get the BMW started.”
/>
Haines shrugged. “Office manager told me about it, but said it could wait. When Mrs. Tor called again and chewed him out, he decided I’d better show up to keep her happy. You know what happened then. Ker-boom!”
“Did you ever get to check out her car?
“Sure. We had it towed in the next day—or was it the day after? Anyhow, she kept bugging me to patch it up. As though you could do a week’s worth of body work in a couple of days.”
“No damage to the motor?”
“Uh-uh! Window glass, fenders, door—about what you’d expect from the blast.”
“Did you find out why she couldn’t start it?”
“Never gave it much thought. It started right up for me.”
“What?” Two voices responded simultaneously.
“Sure. Lots of w—I mean lots of times we get calls from people who just don’t get the key all the way in or something dumb like that. There was nothing wrong with the car once I connected up the battery cable.”
The expression on the officers’ faces, prompted a quick explanation. “Yeah. I guess the explosion did do something to the innards after all. It must have knocked the battery cable loose.”
***
Bretna flipped on the siren as the car roared off to the Tor residence. “I’ll bet she’s sunning herself by the pool.”
She was, and she seemed unperturbed at the unexpected visit. “You want me to go over that morning again?”
Leola shook her head. “Not really. I’d just like to know how much your husband knew about your plans for the day.”
The puzzled answer was, “Not much. Oh, he did know I had a three-fifteen hairdresser appointment. He did ask me before he left what I was going to do the rest of the day. Wasn’t like him, come to think of it.” Then she laughed. “As though he didn’t know.” She waved her copy of Nora Roberts in the general direction of the pool. “Beats being a soccer mom all to hell.”
***
The lieutenant and her sergeant managed to interrupt what Low later referred to as a much less important conference.
“So you think you’ve solved it?” he asked.
Leola grinned. “Almost for sure.”
Expect the Unexpected Page 53
