“That’s got a nice ring to it,” Bea said as she shuffled into the kitchen.
“I didn’t know we were that decadent,” Lyon said as he poured coffee for Bea.
“We absolutely drink too much.”
“And I didn’t know we were rich.”
“I know for a fact that’s untrue,” Bea said.
“I never really think about money, there always seems to be enough.”
“That’s your problem, Went. People who aren’t rich should always think a lot about money.”
“You’ve got to do something for me,” Lyon said.
“Don’t ask much. I’m not up to it. Thank God the Senate’s not in session today.”
“I want you to keep the Medical Examiner here all day. I don’t want him to have any phone calls or contact with anyone.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Bea asked. “Seduction?”
“He has a liquor capacity of exactly one drink. It shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“Everything’s going to be difficult today,” Rocco said as he entered the kitchen and leaned against the wall.
“I’d like you to come with me,” Lyon said to Rocco. “I need you to follow Pan after I give her certain information.”
“What information?” Bea asked.
“That Doctor Mellin has discovered that the body wasn’t Dalton’s.”
“Come on, Lyon, that’s a lie, and you are one hell of a bad liar,” Bea said.
“Not when I really believe what I’m saying.”
Doctor Mellin, immaculately groomed and looking none the worse for wear, entered and smiled at them. “Thank you so much for a wonderful time. I really must run.”
Lyon went quickly to the refrigerator and poured a large glass half full of fresh orange juice. With his back to the others except Rocco, he laced the drink with a large dollop of vodka. “Please have some juice before you rush off,” he said to the doctor as he handed him the glass.
Doctor Mellin gratefully took the juice and drank almost all of it. “I feel so terrible that I’d kill myself except that Barton would do the autopsy, and he does such sloppy work. Do you know, I’m feeling better already.” He drank the remainder of the juice. “In fact, I think I’ll have another, if that’s all right?” Lyon prepared another spiked OJ as Mellin plunked a small radio device on the table. “I found this in the room and tried to tune in the news this morning. Dumb of me, it seems to be some sort of ham radio.”
“So much for my housekeeping,” Bea said as she picked up Pan’s receiving device. “I thought she had taken it with her.”
“Where’s the bug we found in the mattress?” Lyon asked.
“In the middle kitchen drawer,” Bea said.
Lyon searched the drawer until he found the transmitter and pocketed it along with the receiver.
“I could use one of those orange juices,” Rocco said.
“We have to go,” Lyon answered as he dragged Rocco from the room.
The Medical Examiner raised his glass in a toast to their departure.
14
The police cruiser swerved out of the driveway and rocked violently on its shocks when it hit the highway straightaway. Rocco flipped on the dome lights and siren as he increased speed to ninety.
“I think you’re teed off about something,” Lyon said as both hands frantically clutched the dashboard.
“I wanted some of that orange juice you were feeding the ME.” The cruiser fishtailed as they cornered and Rocco momentarily fought for control.
“If you don’t kill us in the next five minutes, we have a lot to do today.”
Rocco gave him a grumpy look but did switch off the siren as he reduced speed to a saner fifty. “You have it all wrong. Within the incorporated city limits of Murphysville, I am in charge of all police activity. You are a civilian, subject to my orders in all matters concerning crime, investigations, and keeping the peace. Is that understood?”
“Of course.”
“All right then, what are we going to do?”
“I am going to talk to Pan and plant the bug in her cottage. You will listen, and also keep her under surveillance from a spot on top of Malvern Hill.”
As Lyon walked through the entrance, he could see that the resort had been rejuvenated. Men were back at work, new deliveries of construction material had been made, and there was an aura of renewed vitality. He stopped before the door to Pan’s cottage and looked over his shoulder. On a small rise in the distance, he could barely see Rocco’s cruiser through the foliage. He knocked on the door.
“The door’s unlocked. Just leave the groceries on the table,” a muffled feminine voice said from the interior.
He stepped into the living room and was surprised at the amount of cartons piled four and five high throughout the small room. A shower, barely audible over the strains of rock music, could be heard in the bathroom located off the bedroom. He quickly flipped open the lids of several unsealed cartons. They seemed to contain a great many books, picture albums, and photography equipment, along with a mundane collection of ordinary household goods.
He slipped the tiny transmitter bug from his pocket and unscrewed the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver. He attached the bug inside and rescrewed the lid. The device would not only pick up phone conversation, but would transmit ordinary room conversation.
Pan walked into the room wearing a towel turban and nothing else. She gave a gasp when she saw him and retreated back into the bedroom. “My God, I thought the delivery boy had left.”
“Sorry,” Lyon shouted to her.
The door opened a crack and she peered at him through the aperture. “What do you want, Wentworth?”
“All these boxes really clutter up the place,” Lyon said.
“I was moving everything from the house Dalton sold to the boat, but never had a chance to finish.”
“That was convenient,” Lyon said.
She stepped back into the room. “Yeah, I’m a real lucky widow to have all my mementos.” She was still nude, and walked provocatively to an end table and picked up a package of cigarettes. She slowly lit one and exhaled. “Seen enough?”
He didn’t answer.
“You may as well make a move. You already got blamed for it anyway.” She pushed a box to the side and sat on it. “Well?”
He looked into her eyes, but they stared back at him without revelation. “Well, what?”
“Why in the hell are you here?”
“I will always be beholden to Dalton for saving my life. You are the only way I can communicate with him.”
“I never learned how to talk with the dead, sorry.”
“Dalton’s alive.”
She mashed her cigarette out on the floor in a violent gesture. “That’s not funny. It’s mean and sadistic.”
“Rocco Herbert is a good friend of mine, and he’s related to Captain Norbert of the State Police. They told me, in strictest confidence, that the Medical Examiner has come up with positive proof that the body we identified is not Dalton.”
“That’s impossible! I saw Dalton’s wedding ring. It was the one I gave him. You saw him on the boat. What kind of game is this? What are you trying to do to me?”
“It occurred to me that this might be very important information for Dalton. Call it interest on my debt.”
“I don’t believe you. This is some kind of get-Pan game.”
“They have the evidence even after cremation.”
“You’re ticked off because I told your wife we made it together. You snickering bastard, I have a death certificate. The insurance company has paid death benefits. You were the one who put everything together.”
“And now the Medical Examiner is taking it all apart.” Lyon ticked off points on his fingers. “One, the Medical Examiner attempted to match the severed finger to the hand on the cadaver. It did not fit, Pandora. It was not from the same body.”
She held both hands to her face as if obliterating his image would stop him from
continuing. “They released the body to me.”
“Two: a lab analysis of the body fluids exclude Dalton.”
“They told me it was Dalton.”
“In haste, and before completion of the other tests. The Medical Examiner takes full responsibility, but claims we pressured him for results before he completed the work on the body fluids and X-ray examinations.”
“This is crazy.”
“You have to come to terms with the fact that Dalton is alive.”
She unraveled the turban and threw the towel into a corner. She shook her head until blond hair cascaded over her shoulders. A lock fell over the side of her face and partially covered one eye. Veronica Lake, Lyon thought, and wondered why such movie trivia sprang to mind. She haphazardly ran her hand through her hair. It was a transparent subterfuge to gain time.
“The body might not be his, but he could still be dead somewhere else,” she said.
“That’s possible.”
“Or he could be a prisoner.”
“That too.”
“Or you could just like talking to naked ladies,” she said in one of her strange, abrupt emotional shifts.
“As a matter of fact, I find it disconcerting,” Lyon said. “I noticed that you have a good many photographs in some of those boxes. I know Dalton liked to have a picture record of his pranks … do you have any that show him hanging in a harness?”
“I don’t know that trick,” she said slowly. “It might have been one he did before we met.” She crossed to a cluttered chair where she put on a rumpled white blouse and buttoned the two middle buttons. After a sly look at Lyon, she ripped open the blouse. “I’m going to scream rape in about two seconds, duck butter. You had better get your ass out of here, because when I yell, I yell loud.”
“My message was for Dalton,” Lyon said as he left the small cottage and the naked woman who looked after him with such hate in her eyes.
“She phoned the Medical Examiner’s office as soon as you were out the door,” Rocco said as Lyon got into the car and leaned back against the seat cushions.
“Did she scream that I attacked her?”
“Not yet. I didn’t think you were in an attacking mood this morning.”
“I’m not, but that doesn’t discourage her. What did she say to the ME’s office?”
“She wanted to know where in the hell he was and why the report on Dalton was changed. Naturally, no one in the office knew what she was talking about. She ended up yelling mean words at them. That little Southern lady has really got a foul mouth on her.”
“Tell me about it.”
“What now?”
“Can you radio for a car to take me to my next stop?” Lyon asked.
“While I sit here and watch her?”
“Something like that,” Lyon said. “Do you mind?”
Rocco sighed. “Does it matter?”
Rocco Herbert wondered how many years of his life had been spent sitting in cars watching for other cars, or looking at store fronts, houses of all descriptions, woods, sewer culverts, school yards, or a bunch of other strange locales. He’d had enough foresight to ask the driver of the car who picked up Lyon to bring a container of coffee and a couple of large meatball grinders. The grinders were messy to eat but helped to pass the time.
Pan Turman made several more calls to the Medical Examiner’s office until the receptionist recognized her voice and hung up before the yelling began. Another call had been made to the State Police barracks, where she was informed that Norbert had taken a personal discretion day and was probably on the golf course. There were three calls to his own office, and luckily each time she was informed that he was still out in the field. Thank God for small favors, he thought. It was a wonder that his communications clerk hadn’t informed her that the chief was on a surveillance of the Turman cottage at the Pincus resort.
No one had entered the cottage. He yawned and belched a regret at the grinders. It was late afternoon when Pan opened the cottage door and stepped outside. She started up the walk, and then, as if subliminally warned, retreated back inside. She had been wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and Rocco wondered what had spooked her.
At dusk he would have to move the car. His sight lines would be obscured, and it would be necessary to actually drive onto the resort property and park in the shadows of a building nearer her cottage.
The sound of the start of a powerful engine startled him. He glanced around without seeing a moving vehicle, and then snapped binoculars to his eyes. “You little bitch!” he said aloud. She had outsmarted him.
The sleek cigarette boat, with 400 horse under its long inboard canopy, darted from the pier behind the cottage and turned in a long sweep that would carry it toward the open waters of Long Island Sound. Rocco’s binoculars gave him a quick glimpse of Pan, hunched intently over the controls, as she guided the powerful craft.
He should have had water backup, he thought. He pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “Damn!”
The uniformed male clerk looked at Lyon with opaque eyes. “You heard me, buddy. Three hundred thousand dollars. This ain’t no bazaar, we don’t bargain and haggle over price. So, take it or leave it.”
“In other words, if I kill several people and bail is set at a million dollars, and I happen to have a million, I can leave here without spending a day in jail?”
“If the judge sets bail, and you got the scratch, you walk.”
“If I hold up a convenience store,” Lyon said, “and I don’t have twenty thousand for bail, I could wait in jail for a year or two until my trial.” He was answered by a cold stare that signified that the clerk divided the world into two parts, those that were either in jail, going to jail, or leaving jail; and the other half of the population who were the designated keepers.
“That’s the deal, buddy. You want to make bail, or you want to talk judicial philosophy?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Not if you want your buddy out of the slammer, you don’t.”
It was another half an hour before Bobby Douglas was led into the Correction Center anteroom where Lyon waited. One half of his face was covered with a bluish-purple bruise, and a long cut ran down the other cheek. “What happened?” Lyon asked.
“I’ll tell you about being in jail, Mr. Wentworth—never play Ping-Pong with seven-foot guys who hate to lose.”
Bea looked puzzled, but she automatically smiled and shook hands with Bobby Douglas. “They must have dropped your case, Bobby?” she said.
“Not yet, but the public defender says that if I plead to manslaughter, she can get me off with a seven-to-life. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate Lyon putting up bail for me. I was going ape in that place.”
She looked at Lyon. “I put up my half of Nutmeg Hill,” he said in answer to her unspoken question.
“You did what?’
“I put up my half …”
“That was a rhetorical, you did what? Do you realize that if Bobby takes off, the State of Connecticut gets half the house? That means that I would share a dwelling with the Governor, who would then become my significant other.”
“Gee, Mrs. Wentworth, I’ll be back as soon as I play in the Dublin Doubles,” Bobby said with a smile.
“Can’t we slash his Achilles tendon?” Bea suggested.
“Put your things in the guest room at the top of the stairs,” Lyon said to Bobby.
Lyon mixed Bea a martini and poured a Dry Sack sherry for himself while Douglas took a leisurely shower and changed. “By the way,” he called to Bea on the patio, “Bobby is not allowed to leave the state, and what happened to Doctor Mellin?”
“He was retrieved by his wife about three this afternoon. She tells me that at home, she doesn’t even allow him to have rum cake or use shaving lotion.”
Lyon answered the phone with one hand while gently stirring martinis with the other. Rocco succinctly told him about Pan’s evasion of his surveillance, and described the speedboat in detail. Lyon t
hanked him and went out on the patio.
“Did you know that Dalton bought something called a cigarette boat for the resort?” Lyon asked Douglas when he came downstairs.
“Sure. He asked my advice on what sort of speedboat to get, and I suggested a couple of models. He wouldn’t have any part of my ideas. He had to have something that had power. I never could figure it, that thing was too fast to pull water-skiers, much less take old ladies sight-seeing. It was better suited for shooting torpedoes at aircraft carriers than as a launch for a resort.”
“Or maybe to run cargo from a mother ship,” Bea said.
“Yeah,” Bobby agreed. “You see a lot of them in Florida, and that’s exactly what they’re used for.”
“Speaking of boats, Bobby,” Lyon said. “What sort of dinghy did the houseboat have?”
“It was designed to pull a launch, but he hadn’t gotten one yet. There was a small runabout lashed on the roof.”
Lyon remembered the small boat stored behind the bridge. “Did it have a motor?”
“A small outboard.”
“Tell me its speed and range,” Lyon said.
“It had two hours’ time with a full tank, but you could always carry a spare five gallons and increase the range. The top speed was maybe seven or eight miles an hour.”
“Interesting,” Lyon said.
“Did it ever occur to you that you are still operating without any hard information?” Bea asked.
“Pan ran,” Lyon said. “She went to warn Dalton.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
“Is it?” Rocco said from the doorway. He took the small radio transmitter from his pocket and centered it on the patio table. “The message started a few minutes ago. Listen.”
They stared at the transmitter as Rocco turned the volume as high as it would go.
“I know you’re out there somewhere, Wentworth. Sooner or later you will hear this and know that Prankenstein has struck again. Guess who?”
The laughter was unmistakably Dalton Turman’s.
15
The message transmitted over the small receiver continued, “My only regret is that I don’t have a picture of the look on your face. It was thoughtful of you to plant the bug in such an obvious place. It made this message easy to transmit. But enough, let us meet at the resort ballroom at seven tonight. I have recorded this message and it will be repeated.” The message ended, and for a few moments all they could hear was static, until it started again. “I know you’re out there somewhere, Wentworth …” Rocco snapped it off.
Death on the Mississippi Page 15
