“Harry Witherspoon,” Ullman said.
“Witherspoon?” Caroline looked from Ullman to me. “But why would he cooperate with this clown?”
“Why do you think?” I said. “Remember when we came out of the mine after hauling up the remains of Archuleta?”
She shuddered. “How could I forget?”
“There was someone above us on the hillside. Witherspoon. He knew then that we’d found the right mine.”
“What the hell are you two talking about?” Ullman wanted to know.
“Witherspoon’s got the jewels, you stupid son of a bitch,” Caroline said, venting her outrage on the hapless investigator. She flipped the key, and the engine roared to life.
“He’s probably left the country by now,” I said.
“Not necessarily,” Caroline said emphatically. “There are, I mean, there would be a dozen details to take care of—finding a safe place to run to; getting there without leaving a trail for the cops or anyone to follow; and probably changing identity, which means a fake passport and other ID. And fencing a bagful of stolen jewels isn’t easy. I don’t think Witherspoon just ran off, not if he’s got any brains.” Caroline sounded as if she’d given this a lot of thought.
“You may be right,” I said. “Unless Witherspoon’s been planning this for twenty years.”
They both looked at me.
“Don’t forget, someone organized the Lochemont robbery, and it wasn’t Teague or Archuleta.”
“But Witherspoon?”
“He’s been around since then,” I said. “And he sure didn’t hesitate to blow away Villanueva.”
“Jesus, Jake, if you’re right, then he’s the one responsible for my grandfather going to prison.”
“If he’s got the jewels,” Ullman said, “they belong to National Insurance.”
Caroline ignored him. “The paper or his house?”
“Try the paper first.”
A few minutes later we screeched to a stop near the front door of the Gazette. The late Willy Two Hawks’ beat-up green Chevy was parked across the street. Caroline and I exchanged glances.
“Maybe you’d better wait out here.”
“Bullshit,” she informed me.
There was a “Closed” sign in the window, which seemed out of place on a Saturday afternoon, even for a newspaper this small. The door was ajar. We went in. The counter was empty and the desks were deserted.
“Witherspoon?” I called out.
Suddenly big Tom Two Hawks rose up from behind the counter, looking like a Sioux warrior confronting Custer’s last troopers. His braids were undone and his thick black hair fell behind him like a mane. He pointed his .30-30 lever-action Winchester at my chest and gave me some bad news.
“You whites killed my father,” he said, “and now I’m gonna kill you.”
35
“DROP THE GUN,” BIG Tom told me, and I did.
Ullman pushed past Caroline and tried to get out the door. Tom fired into the wall above his head, blasting out a big hunk of plaster and wood, knocking a hole through the first layer of bricks and mortar, and setting everybody’s ears ringing. Nobody moved.
Mathew Two Hawks came running out from the back room. He stopped short when he saw us.
“More scalps,” Tom said and roared like a bear.
“Holy shit,” Ullman said.
“Take it easy,” I told Ullman. “Nobody’s going to do anything.”
I stepped to the counter, bold as hell. Tom levered another round into the chamber and casually aimed at my sternum.
“You’re gonna die.”
“Relax, Chief,” I said, trying to relax. “Obviously, you and your brother don’t have all the facts. You want vengeance for Willy’s murder, and vengeance has already been, ah, wreaked.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Mathew said. He picked up his father’s pistol from the floor.
“Haven’t you talked to the cops? Villanueva shot your father, and Witherspoon shot Villanueva.”
“That’s what the cops told us, all right.” Tom’s voice was a growl. “Only we don’t think it was that simple. We think you and Witherspoon teamed up to murder Pop.”
“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “Your father stumbled onto Villanueva while he was torturing Soames. That’s why Villanueva killed him. It’s over. Except for the jewels. And the man who planned the heist twenty years ago.”
Tom shook his head, his ears closed to further discussion.
“We looked for you this morning,” he said. “When we couldn’t find you, we came up here for Witherspoon. But it looks like things worked out after all.”
“What about the jewels?” Mathew asked me.
“Before I kill you,” Tom said to me, “I’m gonna take off your kneecaps. Just the way Pop wanted to a week ago.”
“Wait a minute, Tom. Let him tell us about the jewels.”
“Fuck the jewels. Back away from the counter, Lomax. Do it now or I’ll kill you where you stand.”
Some choice. I backed up. Tom raised the rifle to his cheek and took careful aim at my right leg.
“No!” Caroline yelled.
“Wait a minute, Tom, goddammit. Let him talk first.”
“You’d best listen to your brother,” I said. “Unless you want to be poor all your life. What’s left of your life, that is, before they shut you in the gas chamber.”
“Let him talk,” Mathew said. “I mean it, Tom.”
Tom’s aim wavered. He lowered the rifle.
And I talked, telling them absolutely everything that had happened since Lloyd Fontaine walked into my office three weeks ago. It took me the better part of an hour, but when I was through, Mathew was more or less on our side—ready to shake Witherspoon until a confession came out, along with a bag of jewels, which we’d turn in for a share of the reward. Tom was still ready to shoot somebody, anybody.
“Let’s go find Witherspoon,” he said.
“What about the others?” Mathew asked.
I looked at Mathew. “What others?”
“Witherspoon’s employees. We’ve got them tied up in back.”
“And that’s where they stay,” Tom said. “Nobody’s going to call the cops or warn Witherspoon.”
So the five of us squeezed into Caroline’s Toyota, drove to Witherspoon’s house, and piled out on the sidewalk. I took Caroline’s arm, led the war party up to the front porch, and knocked on the door. Witherspoon parted the curtains. He smiled at me and Caroline and started to open the door. Then he saw Ullman standing behind us and the Two Hawks brothers behind Ullman, and his jaw dropped about a foot. He disappeared.
“Now what?” Caroline asked.
“Let’s bust it in,” Tom said.
He shoved me and Caroline out of his way. Then we heard an engine cough to life. I jumped off the porch onto the driveway—right in line with Witherspoon’s big blue Dodge truck roaring from behind the house toward the street. Witherspoon swerved to miss me, lost control, and crashed into the side of the house. I yanked open the truck’s door, forgetting about his shotgun. But the only thing he had was a briefcase.
“Almost made it,” he said, smiling sheepishly.
Tom and Mathew crowded around, waving their firearms.
“Put down the guns,” I said, taking the briefcase. Its contents felt heavy and loose. “Let’s go inside.”
We trooped through the empty house to Witherspoon’s den. Ullman gave a start when the saw the dead grizzly standing at the end of the room. I set the briefcase on the desk, and Witherspoon gave me the key. The others circled around, like members of an occult religion preparing for worship. When I clicked open the locks of the case, everyone stared, transfixed. Everyone, of course, but Witherspoon. He already knew what was inside. The Lochemont jewels.
They dazzled, even in this artificial light—five million sparkles reflecting in everyone’s eyes.
There were heavy handfuls of diamond rings, tangles of diamond necklaces, piles of diamond bracelets. And emeral
ds, like rare spring clovers, pushing up through the miniature drifts of snowy diamonds. And here and there, rubies and sapphires buried in heaps of loose diamonds.
We gazed on the fortune and dreamed our own dreams, perhaps the dream—a lifetime of freedom and ease.
Caroline reached in for a solitaire diamond ring. The flawless stone must have weighed five carats. She stared into it the way a bird stares into the eye of a snake, then she returned it, carefully, reluctantly, to the heap of jewels in the briefcase.
“And this,” Ullman said, lifting out a necklace and laying it on the green desk blotter.
The choker was made up of scores of half-carat flawless white diamonds, the lot of them shamed by the central ruby, as large as a small hen’s egg, its color as deep and rich and red as new blood. Baby Doe Tabor’s blood stone shone with an intense inner light that held us all like flamestruck moths.
Ullman broke the spell and put the necklace back in the briefcase. I turned to Witherspoon.
“When did you get the jewels?” I asked him.
“Thursday night, after you and Caroline left the mine.”
“But we came here after we left the mine,” Caroline said.
“Not right away,” I said. “We spent time at the Buffalo Bar, remember?”
“I’d been watching you from the hillside,” Witherspoon continued. “My truck was already loaded with climbing gear and everything else I could think of that I might need.” He rubbed his chin and glanced down at the briefcase. “But it was pretty hairy, let me tell you. I hadn’t done any climbing for a few years. Never anything like that, never in the dark. I went down and up as fast as I could, scared every foot of the way. I wasn’t back home more than ten minutes before you and Caroline showed up.”
“No wonder you looked shocked to see us.”
“Hell, I hadn’t even taken the jewels out of the old black satchel. It was right under this desk, Lomax, not ten feet from where you slept that night.”
“Terrific.”
Witherspoon shrugged.
“Why didn’t you run after you got the gems?” Ullman asked.
“There was no hurry,” Witherspoon said. “No one would suspect I’d found the satchel.” He looked from me to Caroline. “At least I didn’t think they would. So I started getting my affairs in order, the newspaper and so on.”
“And your wife?” Caroline asked.
“Enough of this crap,” Tom Two Hawks said. “I want to know about you and Villanueva.”
Witherspoon ignored him and spoke to Caroline. “My wife can get along very well without me. As it is, she spends half her time in Boston with her blue-blooded friends. She’s there now.”
Tom reached over and poked Witherspoon in the chest with the muzzle of the rifle.
“Tell me how you and Villanueva killed my pop.”
“Take it easy,” I told Tom, pushing the gun aside, gently, so it wouldn’t accidentally blow Witherspoon in half. “What about it, Harry? What was the connection between you and Villanueva?”
“What?”
“Was he working for you?”
“What?” Witherspoon was smiling now, as if he couldn’t believe we were all so stupid, and I was beginning to wonder about it myself. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Your involvement with the Lochemont robbery,” I said, and the idea suddenly seemed ludicrous to me.
“Jesus H. Jones,” he said, a pained look on his face. “What do you think I am, Lomax, an archcriminal? You’re giving me too much credit. I was a kid back then, living in a small town, and I barely knew my ass from my elbow. And I sure as hell have never been more than what I am at this moment—just a goddamn newspaperman.”
He was right and I knew it. Unfortunately, the braves weren’t convinced.
“You’re a liar,” Tom said.
Witherspoon just smiled at me and shook his head.
“You’d better talk now,” Mathew said, raising his father’s pistol, not exactly aiming, just waving it for emphasis. “Tell us about you and Villanueva.”
“Read my lips. There is no ‘me and Villanueva.’ And since Ullman is here,” he said dejectedly, “there’s no ‘me and the jewels.’ You might as well take them and leave. I’m going to see about my truck.”
He started toward the door, but Tom hustled around the desk and blocked his way, leveling the rifle at Witherspoon’s midsection.
“I oughta shoot you right now for what you did to Pop.”
“I didn’t do anything to him, you dumb fucking Indian.”
Big Tom hit Witherspoon in the chin with the butt of the gun, knocking him bleeding and groaning to the floor. Then Tom raised the gun and I jumped on his back and down we went. He rolled and twisted and tried to shake me loose, then arched up on all fours and tried to buck me off, like kids playing “horsy,” so I did my bronc rider imitation and hung on for dear life. Tom rose to his knees and then to his feet and I put a stranglehold on him and he tried to swing back and hit me in the ribs with the butt of the rifle, inadvertently pulling the trigger and blasting a big furry chunk out of the leg of the stuffed grizzly while Mathew was yelling and pointing his father’s gun at us and Ullman came up behind him with a heavy oak-and-bronze plaque he’d taken from the wall—“Twenty Years of Community Service to the City of Idaho Springs Presented to H. R. Witherspoon”—and smacked Mathew across the back of the head, knocking him cold, just as I hooked my leg around Tom and tripped him and we crashed into the grizzly. One of its claws caught him in the face, making him yelp in pain and drop the rifle. I untangled myself from the Indian and the bear, picked up the rifle by the barrel, and swung it like a baseball bat, nailing a home run right up the middle of big Tom’s forehead, ending the game: Sleuths 2, Braves 0.
36
CAROLINE, QUIET THROUGH IT all, came from behind the desk and helped Witherspoon into a chair. She took a wad of Kleenex from her big purse and pressed it against his chin.
“Maybe you need a doctor,” she said.
“I can take care of it myself. There’s some stuff in the bathroom.” Witherspoon left the room.
The Two Hawks brothers began to come to. Ullman and I kept them under our guns, but his hand was shaking so badly I took Willy’s pistol from him.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Get your boss on the phone.”
“But it’s Sunday.”
“Then call him at home,” I said. “Tell him we’re bringing in the jewels. Have him arrange security and maybe an accountant or a notary or whatever it takes to verify what we’ve got and how much the reward will be.”
“You’re not cutting us out,” Mathew said. He was sitting up on the floor and rubbing the back of his head.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get a fair share,” I said. Although I could foresee a major hassle trying to figure out who’d get what.
Witherspoon returned with a gauze pad taped to his chin. Tom struggled to his feet, glowering at me, ignoring the blood running down his own forehead and dripping off the end of his nose. I thought he might try to attack, but instead he helped his brother to his feet.
“What’s to keep you from running with the jewels?” Mathew wanted to know.
“It’s simple,” Caroline said, locking the hefty briefcase, bringing it around the desk, and handing it to big Tom. “He carries the case, Ullman carries the key, and we all drive back to Denver together.”
Ullman didn’t like the idea of letting big Tom handle the briefcase. Neither did I, but we worked out a compromise. Then Ullman called his boss at home and explained what was going on.
“Mr. Carr will be waiting for us at his office,” he said after he’d hung up. “Everything’s being arranged, but it may take a couple of hours.”
Before we left, I got a rural route number near Vail from Caroline and tried calling Detective Healey. There were some very important questions I had to ask him concerning a Mr. Parmody. But the cop I talked to said Healey was off duty until tomorrow morning, and he refuse
d to give me his home phone.
Caroline shouldered her purse and led us out the door to her Land Cruiser. We all squeezed in and drove to the Gazette, where we freed Mrs. Hicks and young Lois and Jimmy. Witherspoon calmed them down and explained what was going on, while Mathew took Ullman up West Chicago Creek to get his car. When they returned, we headed into Denver—me and Caroline and big Tom in the Toyota with the briefcase full of gems, Ullman following in his Ford with the key, and Mathew and Witherspoon in Willy’s beat-up Chevy bringing up the rear.
There was an armed guard waiting to let us in the Republic Plaza. Caroline stopped me at the door.
“This could take hours,” she said. “All I want is to go home and be with my grandfather. We both trust you enough to see that we get our share of the reward.”
She kissed me on the cheek, climbed in her Toyota, and drove off. The rest of us followed the guard up the elevator to the ninth floor and the offices of National Insurance.
It was an hour and a half before all the proper parties arrived—a gemologist; an accountant with a camera; a couple more armed guards; and Mr. Carr’s boss, a fat man, I swear, named Tubb. Tom Two Hawks handed Tubb the briefcase, and Ullman gave him the key.
When Tubb opened the case, we all stared in silence at the contents.
There were two paperweights, a stapler, a brass pencil cup, pens and pencils, and a bone-handled letter opener, all from Witherspoon’s desk—plus a jar of hand lotion, a roll of Certs, ChapStick, a pocket minor, a hairbrush, a Swiss Army knife, a checkbook, a handful of loose change, and other assorted junk, all from Caroline’s purse.
“Holy shit,” Ullman said.
Witherspoon thought it was funny as hell.
“She pulled a switch on us,” he said with a laugh. “While we were all knocking heads in my den, she was dumping a fortune into that big purse of hers.”
Carr picked up the phone. “I’m calling the police.”
“We’re leaving now,” Ullman said, heading for the door. “By the time you explain it to them and they get to her house, she and the old man will be long gone.”
Blood Stone (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 2) Page 21
