Bone Key

by Les Standiford

  “Bordeaux,” Deal said. “First growth. Nineteen twenty-nine.”

  Boussier tried to nod, but it was difficult, given how he was held. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I assumed it was a counterfeit, some kind of fraud…” He broke off, wincing as Russell gave another yank on his hair.

  “Let him talk, Russell,” Deal said.

  Russell gave Deal a glowering look but relaxed his grip a fraction. Boussier ran his tongue over his pale lips. “I told Dequarius I’d have to be sure it was genuine before I paid him a cent. I expected him to walk out, but he told me to keep the bottle, ‘give it a taste,’ as he said. There was plenty more where it came from, he told me. If I liked it, he and I could work out an arrangement.”

  “So you conned him out of his wine,” Russell said, wrenching the knot of hair once again.

  “It was his idea to leave it with me,” Boussier protested, his face twisting in pain.

  “What happened next?” Deal said, signaling Russell to ease off.

  Boussier swallowed, speaking more quickly now. “Once I’d gotten Dequarius out of my office, I examined the label more carefully, then checked the ullage—”

  “Speak English,” Russell said, giving another twist.

  “It’s the space between the bottom of the cork and the level of the wine,” Boussier managed with a pleading glance at Deal. “Can’t you get him off me?”

  “Soon enough,” Deal said. “What’s so important about ullage?”

  “It’s one measure of a wine’s actual age,” Boussier explained. “Over time, the wine shrinks back toward its natural solid state. That’s what creates the sediment. As the wine settles, the ullage increases.”

  “I am getting an education,” Russell said, popping the fat part of his free hand off Boussier’s forehead. Deal thought he saw the ghost of a smile cross the blissed-out features of the kid at the railing above.

  “Wouldn’t the label be proof enough?” Deal said, the picture of that folded scrap of paper in Dequarius’ stiff fingers still clear in his mind.

  “Any garden-variety criminal could find a book, scan a copy of a label in a few minutes,” Boussier said. “An examination of the cork is a much truer test.”

  Deal shook his head. “To see if the wine’s turned?” he asked. “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s not why the cork is presented,” Boussier said. “You’re to read what’s stamped along the sides, to be sure of what you’re getting. The name of the château is printed there, along with the date.”

  Deal rolled it over in his mind for a moment. “Couldn’t you phony up a cork, too?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Boussier said. “But it would be far more difficult, a much more sophisticated operation to find the right diameter, the proper length…and then you’d have to simulate the effects of age, the printing style—”

  “Way beyond the capabilities of some loser like Dequarius,” Russell said, giving Boussier’s forehead another pop.

  “I didn’t say that,” Boussier moaned.

  “Get to the point,” Deal said. “What happened to the bottle Dequarius gave you?”

  “I thought about opening it then and there,” Boussier said, looking ever more forlorn, “but I had a special party that evening. I thought I’d wait, kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. If the bottle was what Dequarius claimed it to be—”

  “You’d sell it for a fortune,” Deal said.

  “And give Dequarius his cut,” Russell added. He pulled Boussier’s head back so the man’s frightened gaze met his own.

  “Who was in this ‘special party’?” Deal asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Boussier said.

  “You think you’re some kind of an attorney?” Deal said. “That’s your privileged information?” He nodded at Russell, who yo-yoed Boussier’s head savagely toward the floor.

  Deal gave Boussier a moment to stop howling, then asked, “It was Franklin Stone, wasn’t it?”

  Still Boussier hesitated, tears leaking out of his eyes.

  “Tell me,” Deal said, glancing at Russell once more.

  “Yes,” Boussier said as Russell’s grip tightened, his voice sounding broken now. “He was entertaining a group of important investors from New York. I thought he’d be open to the suggestion.”

  Deal nodded, his eyes on Russell’s. “So how was it?” Deal said, aware of a hollowness in his own tone. “How’d the wine go over?”

  “Mr. Stone was as enthusiastic about the prospect as I hoped he’d be,” Boussier said. “To a man like that, price is no object.”

  “Do tell,” Russell said, but kept his hands still.

  “The moment I pulled the cork, I knew,” Boussier continued, perhaps grateful to have escaped further injury. “Everything was right. The bouquet, the color…the very presence of the wine itself.” He made it sound like a living thing, Deal thought, as Boussier went on. Apparently wine could raise passions he had never imagined. “I filtered it into a decanter and tasted it myself before I brought it out. It was as good as wine gets.”

  “What did you charge him for it?” Deal asked.

  “We agreed on twelve thousand,” Boussier said, “but when I suggested there might be more of the vintage available—”

  “You made a different kind of arrangement,” Deal cut in, his anger rising, along with his distaste. “You told him where the bottle came from and that Dequarius Noyes had a case of it stashed away somewhere. You and Stone decided there were other ways to get ahold of the wine and conspired to kill him for it.”

  “I swear to you,” Boussier cried, trying to shake his head. But Russell’s grip had tightened once again, Boussier’s scalp going white at the hairline.

  “Stone took me aside to tell me that Dequarius worked for him, that he’d handle the matter. I had no idea…” He stared up in terror, tears flowing freely from his eyes now. “You might as well kill me now,” he choked out. “I’ve told you everything I know. If Stone killed Dequarius Noyes, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  Deal pondered what he’d just been told. He glanced up at the kid, who had his chin propped in his hand, looking a little bored by now. Perhaps he’d been hoping for dismemberment, or at the very least, gunfire. Boussier might be a scumbag, he thought, but he doubted the man had the stomach for murder. Then again, that’s what someone had said about Franklin Stone as well.

  “What do you want to do with him?” Russell asked.

  Deal turned to see that a dark stain was growing at the front of François Boussier’s dressing gown. The man looked up at him with brimming, red-rimmed eyes, as if he expected to die.

  “Let him go before you catch something,” Deal said, and then he turned for the stairs.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “You think he’ll call the cops?” Russell asked, glancing in the rearview mirror as he piloted the tiny coupe down Simonton Street. The sun had yet to clear the rooftops and the Sunday morning streets were still deserted.

  Deal glanced over. “Would you?”

  Russell made a grunting sound that was somewhere between a laugh and outright dismissal. “I don’t know what that dude used on his hair,” he said after a moment. He sniffed his fingers again, then grimaced, holding his hand out his window as if he might be signaling a turn. “I’d call it French cathouse.”

  “Maybe you ought to wash your hands,” Deal said.

  “Maybe I will,” he said. “Maybe Franklin Stone’ll let me use his bathroom.”

  Deal nodded, watching idly as Russell made a left on Southard and took them across Duval Street, looking as lonely as a Christmas morning hooker at this hour. There was a Monroe County sheriff’s cruiser parked down the block, across from Sloppy Joe’s Bar, but it stayed just where it was as they moved on through the intersection and out of sight. They turned again on Whitehead, and Deal stared all the way down the tunnel of overhanging li
mbs to where the street butted up at Stone’s mansion.

  ***

  What Boussier had told them should not have come as any surprise, he thought. On some level, he supposed he’d sensed it all along. Maybe part of his unwillingness to believe had been his natural contrariness: If most of the known world believed Franklin Stone to be a scoundrel, then Deal would find a certain duty in refusing to side automatically with the crowd.

  Another part of it might have had to do with Stone’s long-standing ties to his old man, he mused. Given the résumés of some of the bad actors his father had done business with, Stone was a veritable choirboy, or so it had seemed.

  And, he thought with a certain pang, there had been the matter of all that business the man had been poised to throw his way. Had that prospect blunted his suspicion in any way? he wondered.

  And as far as Annie Dodds’ connection to the man, he was not even prepared to go there at this moment. That was a matter that could wait for another day.

  “Pull over here,” Deal said as they approached the Hemingway house, which loomed beneath the trees on their left. Russell nodded, bringing the coupe to a halt well short of the stop sign.

  What would Papa have done? Deal thought idly as he got out, closing the door gently. Gone through Stone’s door, guns blazing? Or handed him his shotgun and a bottle of whiskey and left him to do the right thing?

  Russell Straight was at the other side of the coupe now, staring across its dew-streaked top. “There must be people we could call,” he said. “State cops or something.”

  Deal gave him what passed for a smile. “That’s not where we are,” he said.

  Russell nodded. “How we going to do this, then?”

  Deal shrugged. “I guess the way Vernon Driscoll would,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Go to the front door and knock.”

  ***

  Which is exactly what they did. Several times, in fact. Deal listened to the echoes of the heavy brass knocker fading away for what seemed the fourth or fifth time before turning to Russell.

  “Maybe they’re heavy sleepers,” Russell said.

  “Let’s check the garage,” Deal said. He glanced down the broad overhang of the porch toward the water, expecting to find boiling thunderheads poised there. But it was just a mass of grayness drifting in. No worthy portent of doom in sight.

  As they rounded the back of the house, he felt the first drops of rain on his face, then saw that the garage door was up. Stone’s limo was parked inside, the driver’s door ajar. Deal glanced at Russell, then broke into a run toward the car.

  As he neared, he caught a glimpse of a shoe, a pants leg jutting from the partially open door. He rushed to the front of the car and glanced inside. It was Balart, lying halfway across the driver’s seat, the back of his head blown away by a shotgun blast. His face was twisted sideways, one eye staring sightless at the glowing dome light.

  Deal turned, barging past Russell and out toward the back of the house. He cleared the steps leading to the broad rear deck in a bound, hearing the thud of Russell’s footsteps close behind. He was headed for the broad French doors that opened into Stone’s office, ready to take them out with a kick, when he saw it wouldn’t be necessary. The doors were already unlatched, the filmy curtains drifting inward at the press of the approaching storm.

  Deal slowed, then turned to caution Russell. He pointed silently at the doors, and they stood listening for a moment. There was no sound, nothing but the rustling of the palms overhead, the hiss of the fine rain that had begun to fall.

  Deal motioned Russell to the side, then stepped forward and nudged one of the door panels with his toe. It swung open, clearing the corner of Franklin Stone’s massive desk, thudding softly against the inner wall. Deal stepped through the opening in a crouch, ready to dive for cover, take on whoever might come after him.

  But there was nothing. Just the same ominous silence and a curiously familiar odor that filled the room. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, saw the shadowy shapes of the chairs where he and Russell had sat just nights before, then swung back to Stone’s desk, the sound of his own breath harsh and uneven in his ears.

  Someone was sitting in Stone’s chair, he saw with a start, but the occupant was swiveled away from him. He saw the elegant shock of hair, the pale outline of a hand clutching one armrest. Images were flickering on a notebook computer screen sitting atop the credenza behind the desk, Deal realized.

  “Stone?” Deal said, as he stood and started forward.

  There was no response from the man in the chair. Russell was coming through the doorway now, the pistol Denise had given him held high in one hand.

  “Stone,” Deal repeated, his hand going for the chair.

  He caught a corner of the high, padded back and tried to spin the chair around, but Stone’s feet tangled in the kneehole of the credenza and he fell sideways, his torso twisting as he went.

  Deal staggered back, then caught himself with a hand on the desk. He was staring into Stone’s upturned and vacant gaze. There was a wide gash across his throat, a second mouth frozen open in a scream. Blood bathed the front of the man’s shirt.

  “Sonofabitch,” Deal heard Russell’s soft curse at his side. The same series of images Stone had treated them to in the presentation of the Villas of Cayo Hueso were flickering across the screen. He saw Annie’s form poised to dive once again into that glittering, virtual pool, then he spun back to Russell, snatching the pistol from his hand.

  “Upstairs,” he said simply to Russell, then turned and hurried from the room.

  He moved quickly but silently down the long hallway toward the staircase that descended to the foyer, stepping across the marble entryway as gently as a ghost. He paused at the foot of the stairs, scanning the stairway, the rail above, his ears keen for the slightest sound.

  Russell was at his shoulder now, and Deal turned to whisper. “Keep some space between us,” he said, nodding up the stairwell. “I’m not sure which room up there.”

  Russell nodded, waiting until Deal was almost at the top of the stairway before he followed.

  As Deal’s head came up even with the long hallway, he paused again, the tiny pistol in his hand only the vaguest reassurance. An awful dread consumed him now, fearful images of Annie that he refused his mind to blank. Worst of all was the silence, he realized. He would have almost preferred screams, the sounds of an ongoing struggle.

  At the end of the hallway on his right, he saw an open sitting room that overlooked the Atlantic. Palms tossed in the gathering storm and distant whitecaps flecked the water. No sign of anyone there to appreciate the view.

  He moved up onto the landing, his back turned to one wall to present a smaller target, then quickly edged down the opposite hallway. He passed what he presumed was a linen closet, then the open doorway to what must have been a guest bathroom. The lights were doused inside, the cool tiles and marble tops glowing dimly in gray light reflected from outside. No sign of anyone inside. No sign the neatly arranged room had ever been used, for that matter.

  There was a bedroom door looming at his shoulder, ajar, offering him a view of the foot of a primly made bed and a gleaming dresser with nothing on its top. The bedroom for the ghost that used the bathroom opposite, he thought, moving on quickly.

  The master was at the end of the hallway, he reasoned, glancing toward another open doorway a few feet ahead. But there was some kind of entryway partition that kept him from a clear view inside. He’d have to make his way all the way down there to find out.

  One more doorway lay in between, this one on the opposite wall, and firmly closed. He hesitated opposite it, wondering if he should check the master first.

  He glanced back at the stairwell landing, where Russell was creeping up in the gloom like a cautious bear. He gave a signal to his partner, then moved quickly across the hallway and grasped the cool porcelain globe of the doorknob.

  The knob
gave at his touch, and he moved inside quickly, ducking low as he went, the pistol braced to fire. Shoot without hesitation, he was thinking. Otherwise you’ll die.

  Her scent struck him first, a hint of tropical fruit, extract of citrus, the barest fragrance of rose. Her room, he understood, his gaze swiveling about in the dim light for any trace of her form.

  A bed there, the sheets and covers rumpled…but no one in it. A dresser on an adjoining wall, drawers pulled out as if someone had been looking for something. A closet door flung open, a couple of dresses dangling on hangers. But no one in the room. No one asleep, no one waiting to attack.

  He straightened slowly, glancing again at the tousled bedclothes, then moved quickly toward a door that opened into what he presumed was a darkened bathroom. He felt inside, flicked on the light switch, keeping his back to the intervening wall for cover. After a moment, he swung inside, pistol at the ready.

  He caught an image of a dark towel crumpled on the white-tiled floor, a plastic razor tossed in an empty tub, a row of toiletries strewn about a granite vanity top. As well as the sight of a sun-bleached, broad-shouldered man before him, a crazed look on his bruised and swollen features, a nickel-plated pistol cocked in his hand.

  An ordinary person turned assassin and looking for a target, Deal thought fleetingly, staring at himself in the steam-streaked mirror. It was the image of someone who might need locking up for his own good, he realized, a man who might do anything if the wrong set of circumstances arose.

  He heard something behind him then and spun, the pistol leveled, and saw that he was ready to blow away Russell Straight.

  “What you doing with that?” Russell said, staring at Deal with mild disdain.

  “Sorry,” Deal said, lowering the pistol. He started to shoulder past Russell, but the big man put a hand up to stop him.

  “Take it easy,” Russell said. “I already checked the master.”

  Deal stopped, staring to be sure.

  Russell was shaking his head. “She ain’t in there. This house is empty, man.”