Blind Overlook (Book 3 of the Jay Leicester Mysteries Series)

by JC Simmons

  Sandy reached over and turned on the overhead light. She was silent for a moment. Then: "You're right. I guess I wanted to flee from this place where Renato was killed. Yes, I want you to stay." She was silent again for a few seconds. "But I've got to go back to New Orleans. The Gallery needs to be opened. Plans must be made to finalize the purchase of the Moran collection with Guy Robbins. There are other deals in the works. I need to leave tomorrow."

  "Certainly,” I said, releasing the door handle, a little confused. She had mentioned nothing about shipping Nat's body back for burial. "I'll drive you over to Augusta in the morning for a flight out to Boston. When I get back to my room, I'll see what kind of connection we can make from Boston."

  "Great,” she said, sounding relieved. "You'll call me every day, keep me abreast of what you find?"

  "Agreed."

  We stood in silence some few moments.

  "What about the remains, Sandy?" I asked, gently. "You want them shipped back to New Orleans?"

  She turned her head slightly, wiped away a tear. The question needed asking.

  "Will you handle it for me, Jay? Please?" She leaned against the wall, her voice shaky.

  "I'll call you for the details as soon as the autopsy is finished. Everything will be taken care of, it's part of what I get paid to do."

  "Thank you,” Sandy said, sniffling. "You're a big help. I appreciate it."

  Leaving Sandy in her room, I took the two books on Rockwell Kent and prepared for a long night of reading.

  Sliding my glass doors open allowed a sea breeze to blow refreshing, cool, salt air into the room. A Delta Airlines agent confirmed that a regional airline left Augusta, Maine, at ten a.m., connecting with their flight to New Orleans. I booked Sandy a first class, one way ticket.

  Sitting back in my chair, I thought about Nat Rinaldi. Whatever he had stumbled into, or fell victim of, it wasn't getting him a first class ticket home. I intended to find out exactly why.

  * * *

  It was near dawn when I finally dosed off. Rockwell Kent led a fascinating life. He was the consummate artist. The man never did anything in his life which was not artistic.

  Politically, Kent believed in the rights of the individual, and used his art to that end. Subpoenaed to appear before the McCarthy committee in 1953 at age seventy-one, he was not intimidated by Joe McCarthy and took the Fifth Amendment on the question of belonging to the Communist Party. He had never been a member and considered it nobody's business whether he was or not.

  There was one exchange between Kent and McCarthy, which made me smile. He asked if he could give a statement for the record. McCarthy rejected the request: "I'm not going to listen to a lecture from you." Kent snapped back, "You're not going to get one. I get paid for my lectures."

  I fell asleep looking at the extensive collection of prints brilliantly put together by Dan Burne Jones in his book, THE PRINTS OF ROCKWELL KENT: A CATALOGUE RAISONNE. Those Kent did of the sea were my favorite. One titled, GODSPEED, is the best that I have ever seen.

  Henry, the front desk clerk, rang my room at seven thirty, as I had asked. Sleepily thanking him, I struggled to the shower.

  Later, while drying off, I called the police department. My road map showed Augusta only about forty miles from Rockland. Thinking I had better check to see how long the drive would take, my old friend, the Desk Sergeant, confirmed my guess.

  "Take highway seventeen, Mr. Leicester. It should take about thirty or forty minutes. Drive carefully, the roads are crooked. Yes, sir, I'll tell Detective Chamberlain you will call him this afternoon. Good-bye."

  If we left the motel by eight-thirty we should have plenty of time to get Sandy to the plane on time.

  Knocking on Sandy's door at eight-fifteen, she opened it naked, holding only a towel in front of her. Her blond hair was wet and hung in strings across her shoulders.

  "I just got out of the shower,” she said, not embarrassed at all. "Come on in, I'll only be a minute."

  She turned and padded barefoot toward the bathroom. Her naked spine made a delicious curve down to what used to be a tail, and now begins the upper insertion of the gluteus maximus, the ass. As she walked away, her spine traced imaginary curves in the small space of the motel room. How lucky, I thought, to see these firm young muscles, bathed in early morning light, dance together so perfectly in absolute synchronization. Walking out on the balcony, I gazed far out into the North Atlantic Ocean, and tried hard to get my mind off of raw sex.

  * * *

  Sandy appeared soon from the bathroom, dressed in black slacks and a sweater. Her damp hair was bound with a cockade-like band wrapped around the head. She looked like a palefaced Indian princess.

  "Ready,” she said, smiling, pulling the sleeves up on the sweater. "Did I run us late? God, I hope not."

  "We have plenty of time,” I said, taking her small ditty bag, wondering where she had acquired the bandanna.

  We drove north out of Rockland, picked up highway seventeen and headed for Augusta. We rounded high hills covered with majestic fir trees. Patches of obsidian rock, black and shiny in the crisp, clear, spring air, glistened down at us. An endless flight of blackbirds, early for this time of year, crossed the sky like visible wind, undulating and whipping.

  "Are we now an expert on Rockwell Kent?" Sandy asked with a sly grin.

  Laughing, I said, "My definition of an expert is any s.o.b. away from home with a briefcase."

  Sandy smiled and ran her fingers through the rapidly drying blond hair. "I wonder where the Kent collection is?" She said, more to herself than me. "With Renato and Bilotti dead, it could be sitting somewhere undetected. Maybe forever."

  Sandy was an enigma to me. One minute she did not seem to care who killed her brother, or where almost half a million in cash went. Now she was thinking about an art collection. It would be a logical question coming from Chamberlain, but Sandy? I probably would never understand this lady, or her mood swings.

  "It could have been a slick setup, Sandy,” I volunteered, slowing the car as we rounded a sharp curve in the two lane road. "The collection may not exist. Your brother may have been killed for the money. The Kent collection merely the tool used as part of the scam."

  "You will find out, won't you?" She squeezed the ends of her hair as if to wring water from it.

  "You can count on it,” I answered, accelerating back to the speed limit.

  Watching Sandy walk toward the sleek, new-generation turboprop, her black slacks stretched tight, reminded me of those same muscles I had admired earlier. Trying hard to think about what I knew about airplanes rather than those muscles did not work.

  * * *

  On my way back, I stopped by the Navigator Inn. Henry flagged me down.

  "I tried to catch you before you left this morning,” he said, handing me a note. "It came in just as I saw you driving away."

  "You can check Miss Rinaldi out of her room,” I said, handing him her key. "She's on her way back to New Orleans." I looked at the note with amazement. "You say this came in as we were leaving?"

  "Yes. He was a rude bastard, too." He slid Sandy's room key back into a small cubbyhole. "Does it have anything to do with the two murders?"

  News travels fast in small towns.

  "I don't know, Henry,” I said, folding the note and putting it into my shirt pocket. "Thanks for the message. You do good work."

  Walking into the restaurant, I ordered a cup of coffee from the same waitress who had witnessed Sandy's little outburst at breakfast the other morning. Pouring a spoonful of honey into the coffee, I took the note out and reread it: 'Miss Rinaldi, please call Gino Anastasio at, it listed the number, regarding sale of Kent collection to Renato Rinaldi. It is imperative we talk. Today.' The note was in Henry's handwriting, but I could sense the message, and the urgency. Interesting development, I thought. A good cover-up in progress. Or I had been dead wrong about the rip-off.

  The waitress came over with a refill.

  "How's the l
ittle wife this morning?" She asked, pouring the coffee.

  Putting the note in my shirt pocket, I looked up at her. She had graying brown hair, a nice face, and appeared to be around forty years old. A good-looking woman who had kept her figure, probably from working hard all her life.

  "The wife?" I stirred more honey into the coffee. "No, I work for the lady. She's gone back south."

  "You going to be in town for awhile?" She asked, throwing a hip out to one side and resting a hand on it, flirting.

  "Few days,” I said, thinking about firm, hard, rippling muscles.

  "Maybe we could have a drink sometime?"

  "Maybe."

  As I started to leave, the waitress handed me a folded ticket.

  "Coffee's on the house. Name's Mabel, that's my number,” she said, pointing to the ticket. "Use it."

  "Thanks for the coffee, Mabel,” I said, saluting her with the folded ticket. "I may just do that."

  Leaving, I cursed firm muscles and well-kept bodies. I needed a cold shower. Or a long night of slow, passionate, uninhibited lovemaking.

  The drive to the police department helped me refocus.

  "Sergeant, is Detective Chamberlain in?" I asked, not wanting any bureaucratic runaround today. "It's urgent."

  "Yes, sir, Mr. Leicester. He's been waiting for your call."

  The Sergeant was getting better.

  "Jay,” Chamberlain said, looking up from a file he had been reading. "Enjoyed last night. It did Kathleen a world of good. She liked you. Maybe we can do it again real soon."

  "Hello, J.L.,” I said, sitting down in the hard, wooden chair. "Sandy's on her way back to New Orleans."

  Chamberlain looked quizzically at me.

  "Pressing business,” I said, answering the silent question. "I'm going to stay on, help you anyway I can."

  "Rather sudden, wasn't it?" He asked, leaning back in his chair. "Her departure, I mean."

  "She's a strange lady, J.L." I crossed one leg over the other. "I've never been able to figure out women, quit trying a long time ago."

  "That's because they are smarter than us." Chamberlain laughed, laced his fingers behind his head.

  "How's Kathleen feeling this morning?" I asked, ashamed it wasn't the first thing I had said to him when I walked in the office.

  "She woke feeling fine. It's uplifting to see her have a good day."

  "I'm glad,” I said, handing him the note. "Came this morning, shortly after we left for the airport in Augusta. Henry took it."

  Chamberlain read the note, a frown forming on his college professor face.

  "Interesting,” he said softly. He thought for a few minutes, rubbing his chin. Finally: "Let's call him. You talk, tell him you represent the Rinaldi's. We'll tape the conversation, perhaps know more where we stand after he's had his say."

  Nodding in agreement, I shifted position in the chair.

  Gino Anastasio did not need explaining between Chamberlain and me. He was as famous as Sam Giancana, Meyer Lansky, Paul Castellano, or John Gotti. He was the Chicago mob. It was now a fact that Nat Rinaldi had been dealing with Anastasio. The question was, why would such a powerful Mafia figure concern himself with something of this nature?

  Chamberlain set up the call to Gino Anastasio. He had some surprisingly sophisticated equipment for a small police department. Seeing me admiring some of the machines, a few, which I'd never seen before, he said, "Federal funding for municipalities."

  I shook my head.

  Sitting at a desk in a back room, I punched in the telephone number. Someone answered on the first ring.

  "Mr. Anastasio, please,” I said, in my most polite voice.

  "Yeah,” the voice said. "Who should I say is calling?"

  "Tell Mr. Anastasio my name is Jay Leicester. I represent Sandy Rinaldi." Sitting stiff in the chair, I felt the tension along my spine.

  The voice didn't say anything, but a moment later someone whom I assumed was Gino Anastasio said, "How do I know you represent Miss Rinaldi? You could be anybody."

  "Well,” I said firmly, the tension tightening my back muscles. "Try this on for size. You think up a scam to rip-off an art gallery, which you know does some shady deals, of half a million dollars by offering a Rockwell Kent art collection as bait. You insist on being paid in cash. Then you send a mole, who's stolen from you, or broken some stupid code of silence, down to collect the money. You whack the mole and the art dealer. Now you're rid of a rat, plus half a million richer. Only the art dealer's sister hires me when the brother fails to show up. And guess what? I'm not stupid. Nor is the local detective who's got two bodies with similar bullet holes in their heads. Does any of this help convince you I represent Miss Rinaldi?"

  The voice laughed. "You have quite an imagination, Mr. Leicester. All of this for half a million? Come on! I pay my chauffeur that much a year."

  "Maybe you paid the shooter the half million to kill both men, used the art scam to throw off the police?"

  I was grabbing at straws, but you never know.

  "My equipment shows your equipment is recording this conversation, Mr. Leicester. I will say only this, the offer was legit. My man is dead, the art collection is missing, and I have no half million. If you represent Miss Rinaldi, I suggest we talk. I'll land at the Rockland airport tomorrow morning at ten o'clock. You and Miss Rinaldi be there."

  He hung up before I could answer. It wasn't a request to meet the plane. I rubbed my back.

  Looking at Chamberlain, I said, "Can he do that?"

  "What? Oh, know if we're taping him?" He began to rewind the tape recorder. "Yes, he can."

  Laughing uneasily, I stretched my back and neck, and promised myself to get abreast of the latest in electronics. "What do you think?" I asked Chamberlain.

  "I don't know. It's hard to believe the man would make himself visible if it was merely for a rip-off. He could still be running the bluff, or maybe we've been wrong about this thing from the start."

  "Could be,” I answered, standing, putting my hands on my back and twisting from side to side. "I guess we'll know after the meeting tomorrow. In the meantime, why don't you get your people in Chicago to tell you all they know about 'Mr. Big,' besides the fact he controls Chicago and everybody calls him, Don Gino. Also, you get anything on the Waterbury couple who are staying at the Navigator?"

  "I'm expecting something today." He shut the tape recorder off, then he added, "All my people are passing out the photos of Nat Rinaldi and Tony Bilotti. Hopefully we can piece together their movements in the area. Any more ideas?"

  "Give me a couple of sets of the photographs. I'm going back to Tenant's Harbor and Port Clyde and poke around. I will show them around, ask some questions."

  I did not know if it would do any good, but at least it would give me some quiet time to think about what I was going to say to Gino Anastasio tomorrow morning.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Chamberlain gave me two sets of the photographs of Tony Bilotti and Nat Rinaldi. Retracing our drive back to Tenant's Harbor and Port Clyde, I again admired the Monticello clone sitting, majestic, high on the grass-covered hill. Thomas Jefferson would have smiled.

  The noon temperature was warm. The sky, a Gulf Stream blue. All of a sudden I felt hungry and thought of the thick, creamy chowder at the East Wind Inn. Entering the steep, winding drive down to the restaurant, through big, old, high-trunked trees and grass that was green and smooth and newly mowed, I marveled at some of the loveliest country in the world.

  At the bottom of the drive, far out into the bay, at the entrance to the ocean, an island sat like a sailing ship at anchor, its trees like tall masts. There were no cars in the parking lot. Early for lunch, I was the only customer. The chowder was even better than before.

  None of the restaurant personnel remembered seeing either of the two men. The cashier said I should check with the owner. The two men could have stayed at the Inn and not eaten in the restaurant. It was good idea.

  "I'd like to speak with the owner
,” I said to the silver-haired, elderly lady behind the registration desk.

  "What are you selling, sonny boy?" She asked, looking at me with sparkling green eyes and a wonderful, warm smile.

  "Nothing, looking for information,” I answered, reaching for the photos.

  "Library's in Rockland. They have lots of information there." Another mischievous grin.

  "I'm a private investigator,” I said, laying the two photos on the black marble countertop. "You remember seeing either of these two at the East Wind?"

  "Oh, that one's dead,” she said, pointing to Bilotti. "Is he the one killed down at Port Clyde?"

  I had forgotten the photo was taken in the morgue.

  "Yes, ma’am. I apologize for the picture, but it's the only one we have."

  "Don't worry about it. I'm a retired nurse." She pointed to a tiny pin on her blouse. I had no idea what it meant. "My son owns this place. I live here and help out with the front desk." She turned, held the photos up to the sunlight. "You working with J.L. on this?"

  Small towns, I thought. They are all alike.

  "Yes, we are working together on this investigation,” I said, pointing to Rinaldi's picture. "This one's sister hired me to find out what happened."

  "I know." She turned to face me with a fond, unsurprised gaze, eyes focused, piercing. "Your client's from down south, New Orleans. Her name's Sandy. An art dealer, I believe."

  Taken aback, I said, "How did you..."

  She laughed with a round-eyed, risible expression, and extended her hand. "I'm Betty Anders. Kathleen Chamberlain and I are cousins. We visit every morning. She's dying, you know?"

  "Yes, J.L. told me,” I said, still befuddled. "What about the photos?"

  "No, I've seen neither of these men." She spread the pictures on the countertop. "Let me get my son, he should look at them, too."

  Betty Anders disappeared into the back, returning shortly with a man about my age who could not deny his lineage. Gray-haired, short, same green, sparkling, mischievous eyes as his mother.