So they mounted up and headed for Lakewood—Ullman, Witherspoon, Tom and Mathew Two Hawks, and all three armed guards. I went along to make sure the posse didn’t get out of control.
Caroline’s house was dark when we arrived. Ullman wanted to break in, and I was arguing against it when Tom overruled me by kicking down the door. We searched the house and found no trace of Caroline or Soames or the jewels. None of the dresser drawers was empty, and there were few empty hangers in the closets, so apparently the two fugitives had left with little more than the clothes on their backs. Of course, with five million in gems, they could buy necessities along the way.
Ullman reported to Carr on the phone and we all left, closing the splintered door behind us. Ullman gave me a ride home.
“They won’t get far,” he told me. “The police are in on it now and they’ll be watching the airport, the train station, and the bus depot. Also, there’s an APB out on Caroline’s Toyota. They won’t get far,” he repeated.
“Probably not.”
“Even if they get out of the state,” he said, “they’ve still got a problem with the jewels. They’ve got to fence them, which is not such an easy thing to do for the average guy—I mean, do it and not get ripped off or busted.”
“You’re probably right.”
Except Soames wasn’t an average guy—he knew about jewels and he’d been in criminal college in Canon City for twenty years. And with Caroline along to help him …
Maybe I was hoping, perhaps perversely, that they’d get away. Realistically, though, I didn’t give them much chance. In a way I felt sorry for them.
On Monday morning I tried three times before I reached Detective Healey. I asked him about the background check the police had run on Anthony Villanueva.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Abner Greenspan told me Villanueva beat a murder rap in California. A guy named Parmody.”
“Right. It was San Francisco, to be exact. Villanueva was Parmody’s chauffeur.”
“Was Parmody married at the time?”
“I’d have to look it up, but I think so, yeah. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said, keeping my voice amazingly calm. “Did the Parmodys own mountain property in Colorado?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“If I were you, I’d check on it,” I said. “I’d also find out Parmody’s wife’s maiden name.”
Healey was silent for a moment.
“Do you know something I don’t?” he said.
“I’m afraid I do.”
I hung up. On my way down the stairs, I ran into Vaz coming out of his apartment. He looked as upset as I felt.
“Jacob, where have you been for the past few days?”
“Later, Vaz, I … later.”
“But we need to talk about Lloyd Fontaine’s journal. There are things that—”
“Later, Vaz, please,” I said and pushed past him.
I rented a car and drove to Vail.
37
BY THE TIME I got to Vail, the day had turned cold and the sky promised snow.
I asked directions from eight or ten people—giving them the rural route number I’d gotten yesterday from Caroline—before I found the narrow dirt road leading to the house belonging to Helen Ester’s late husband. Or as the locals called it, the Parmody place. It was an A-frame tucked away on twenty acres of aspen and pine. Parked in front of the house was a new maroon Chrysler New Yorker. The last place I’d seen it had been the parking garage of the Westin Hotel.
I left my rental car blocking the road. Flakes of snow began to fall from the dead gray sky.
Helen Ester opened the front door before I could knock. She wore buff-colored chamois pants and a white cashmere turtleneck. Her reddish-brown hair fell loosely to her shoulders. She looked older than the last time I’d seen her. And not quite so attractive.
“Hello, Jacob. What a pleasant surprise.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
The house appeared larger than it had from the outside—the ceiling peaked two stories above us, and the second floor was a loft tucked to the rear. The furniture had deep cushions and wooden arms. A new made-to-look-old wood-burning stove stood in the corner flanked by insulated windows, which were becoming spotted now by melting flakes of snow.
“I would have been here sooner, I said, but I thought you were dead.”
“Dead? You must be joking.”
“When you didn’t show up in court last Thursday, I thought the worst.”
“I can explain about that, Jacob, I—”
“Right. I need a drink.”
“It’s a bit early for me. …” The concern in her voice was buried under a smile.
“Bourbon, if you’ve got it.”
I sat on the couch while she poured my drink.
“Soames and Caroline got away with the jewels.”
“They what?” She nearly dropped my glass.
“At least temporarily,” I said.
She sat near me on the couch, and I put away half the bourbon, trying to kill the pain in my gut. I told her how Witherspoon had retrieved the satchel and how Caroline had pulled a switch. Helen’s eyes were bright, and she barely suppressed her delight; I could see the wheels whirring in her head.
“You think Soames is going to send for you, don’t you?” I said. “Maybe mail you money from Rio and say, ‘Come on down.’ That’s why you’re still here waiting.”
She smiled smugly. “Charles Soames still loves me,” she said. “Of course he’ll send for me.”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Your coming up here may complicate things a bit, Jacob, but otherwise nothing has changed.”
“Try this for a complication. Prison.”
Her smile faded a shade or two. “Whatever are you talking about?”
“You and Anthony Villanueva,” I said. “You two have been together in this from the beginning.”
“Jacob, that’s nonsense. I don’t know—”
“You can stop lying,” I said, loud enough to make her flinch. I tossed back my drink and got up to get another. My hand shook a bit, but I didn’t spill a drop.
“I should have suspected you long ago, but it didn’t start to sink in until I learned that Villanueva had been charged with murdering his wealthy employer in California four years ago, which was the same time, according to you, that your husband died in San Francisco. Mrs. Parmody.”
“Villanueva must have followed me out here when—”
“You don’t quit, do you? Admit it, for chrissake. You and Villanueva bumped off your old man and lived the good life off the inheritance. I have a hunch the money was running low when you learned Soames was being released from prison. So you came back to Denver.”
“I don’t have to sit here and listen to this.”
“You sure as fuck do.”
“There’s no need to get vulgar, Jacob.”
She reached in her purse and brought out a cigarette and a lighter.
“You stayed close to Soames, waiting for him to dig up the jewels, while Villanueva watched from the background. When Meacham threatened Soames, you two killed him and tried to frame me for it.”
“That’s simply not—”
“When I went up to talk to Meacham that night, while you waited in the car, I heard a horn honk. At the time, I thought maybe you were trying to signal me. You were signaling, all right, but it was to Villanueva.”
Helen opened her mouth to protest, then decided not to waste the effort. She lit her cigarette and blew smoke toward the distant ceiling.
“And before Meacham,” I said, “there was Lloyd Fontaine. He was snooping around, getting in your way, so you killed him.”
“He was trying to blackmail me,” she said.
Her voice was as cold as a tomb. More chilling, though, was the realization that she was speaking the truth, finally and without remorse.
“Fontaine was a fool,” she went on. “I asked him to g
ive me the photos and his journal, but—”
“Asked. You mean you burned holes in his flesh until he told you and Villanueva that I had what you wanted. Then you put two bullets through his head.”
She said nothing.
“Fontaine had you figured out, didn’t he? He knew it was you who’d masterminded the Lochemont robbery twenty years ago.”
The cigarette stopped in midflight to her lips.
“It was no great deduction,” I said, “just a process of elimination. Soames sure as hell wasn’t the leader and neither was Archuleta. And it couldn’t have been Teague, because whoever was behind things wasted him. And Villanueva entered the picture later, so it wasn’t him. I even began to suspect Witherspoon, which shows how far I was reaching. There was only one player left: you.”
Helen Ester inhaled and let smoke drift like a veil before her face.
“Stop me if I get any of this wrong,” I said, “because a lot of it’s guesswork. Twenty years ago you worked out a plan to rob Lochemont Jewelers, with Ed Teague directing Rueben Archuleta, Robert Knox, and Buddy Meacham. You wanted to find out all you could about the store, so you seduced the manager, Charles Soames. No problem there. You must have been a real knockout back then, about Caroline’s present age, and Soames was a lonely widower. The only trouble was you found you needed Soames’s help, because only he could open the safe where most of the loose gems were kept, and only he could shut off the alarms.”
She tipped ashes from her cigarette, carefully, precisely.
“My, you are thorough, aren’t you.”
“So you got Teague to coerce Soames into helping. Soames, the poor sap, never suspected that you were behind it. You planned to kill him and everyone else after the robbery.”
“That was Ed’s idea,” she said, as if it were an important distinction.
“But Teague blew it, didn’t he? He let Soames and Archuleta escape with the satchel of jewels. So you killed him.”
She inhaled and tossed smoke my way. “Ed Teague was a fool,” she said, “and dangerous to me.”
“When it was over, you had nothing. You’d murdered your partner and lost the jewels. But it was no big deal, right? You just moved to a different state and started fresh. No sweat. You were smart and good-looking and you could always get by.”
“I can do better than ‘get by,’ Jacob.” She gave me a smile, the kind that makes little children run and hide behind their momma’s skirts. “If you team up with me now,” she said, “there’s no telling how far we could go.”
“Don’t make me laugh. You used me from the beginning.”
“Perhaps at first,” she said, her tone soft and sincere. “When you appeared on the scene, Anthony suggested we use you to help us find Meacham.”
She stubbed out her smoke and reached for my hand. Her fingertips had the chill of death.
“I know you won’t believe this, Jacob, but I truly fell in love with you. I still love you. I would never have let the police send you to prison for Meacham’s murder.”
“You signed statements against me.”
“I lied to the police to keep you out of the way, at least temporarily. You know as well as I do that those statements could never be used against you at a trial if I wasn’t there to back them up. But I had to do something, because you’d become too much of a threat. You were getting too close. And when you saw me and Anthony together in the parking garage, it was only his quick thinking that—”
“He tried to kill me,” I said.
She let go of my hand.
“Exactly what do you want from me, Jacob?”
“I’m taking you back to Denver and turning you over to Detective Healey. He knows, or soon will, about your connection with Villanueva. At the very least they’ll hang a conspiracy charge on you for Meacham’s murder. And maybe for Fontaine’s.”
“They can prove nothing,” she said grimly. “In any case, I’ve decided to leave the state. Now. I won’t be seeing you again, and I certainly won’t be talking to the police.”
She rose from the couch.
“I can’t let you go,” I said.
“You can’t stop me.”
She reached in her purse again, but not for a cigarette. She brought out her shiny, squat Derringer, the one I’d seen pressed to the neck of Mathew Two Hawks. Now it was pointed at my neck.
“I’ll use this, Jacob, if you force me to.”
“Is that what you shot Fontaine with? And Teague? It fires both barrels at once, doesn’t it? Some people thought Fontaine’s murder was a professional hit, two shots to the head. I guess it was done by a professional.”
She backed toward the door and kept her small, deadly gun pointed at me.
“You’d better put on a coat,” I said, moving toward her. “It’ll be a cold ride to Denver.”
“I mean it, Jacob, stay back.”
“You can’t shoot me. You love me, remember?”
Her finger tightened on the trigger and I started to raise my hand and the gun popped and the next thing I knew I was on the carpet staring up at the faraway ceiling. Pain throbbed high in my chest, and my shirt was becoming soggy. All I could think of was Sergeant Mobley’s theory of vectors.
Outside, Helen started her car.
I got to my knees and pulled myself up by the door frame. The feeling was gone from my left arm, and it hung uselessly at my side.
Snow was falling steadily now. It covered the ground like a thin white shroud. Helen tried to maneuver the Chrysler around my rental, but there wasn’t enough room, and when she backed up, she dropped the right rear wheel in the ditch. I staggered to my car. When she saw me, she panicked and gunned the motor, digging the wheel deeper into the ditch. I pulled open the passenger door of the rental and got Willy Two Hawks’ pistol from the glove box. Helen climbed out of her car and began hurrying away on foot.
“Stop,” I said.
She did. When she turned around, her purse was open and the Derringer was out. I waited for her to snap open the gun and eject the two spent shells and fumble in her purse for two shiny fresh cartridges and put them in the chambers and click shut the gun and raise it and point it at me. Then I shot her just below her left breast. She blinked, surprised, then crumpled to the wet ground.
I shuffled over, dropped to my knees, and touched her snow-white neck. It had already begun to cool.
38
DETECTIVE HEALEY SAVED MY life.
After I’d questioned him on the phone, he’d dug around until he learned that Helen Ester’s married name was Parmody, which tied her to Villanueva. Then he guessed my next move and phoned the Eagle County sheriff, who knew the location of the Parmody place. The sheriff showed up, found me unconscious, and radioed for an ambulance to take me into Vail. He left Helen Ester for the county coroner.
A doctor examined me in Vail, then called Flight For Life, and less than an hour later I was flying in a big orange helicopter toward Denver. The Eagle County sheriff came along for the ride. He was afraid I’d bleed to death before he could charge me with murder.
They operated on me at St. Anthony’s. One slug from Helen’s nasty little Derringer had passed between my ribs, punctured my left lung, and lodged itself deep in my back. The other bullet had nicked a rib, ricocheted up toward my shoulder, and stopped at my collarbone. The medics fed me blood, dug out the lead, and sewed me up.
The next morning, right after my tepid tea and tasteless, mushy breakfast, Abner Greenspan paid me a visit.
“Stupid question, but how do you feel?”
“Like I’ve been shot,” I said. “Like I’ve shot someone.”
“Self-defense, Jake. You had no choice.”
“There are always choices.”
“Whatever. The doctor told me you’d probably be out of here tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So cheer up, for chrissake.”
“Sure.” His sunny outlook was frying my nerves.
“Hey, Jake, come on. I got you o
ff the hook.”
“Meaning what?”
“Dalrymple and Healey and I explained to the Eagle County D.A. what’s been going on for the past few weeks. When he learned that Ester was a murder suspect, and that when you tried to make a citizen’s arrest, she shot you and you shot back in self-defense, well … he’s not going to file charges.”
“Swell.”
“Hey, don’t thank me,” he said.
“Why don’t you mind your own fucking business.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“The matter, Abner, is that I killed her.”
“So what do you want, to be punished? You did it to save yourself, remember? And this after she’d murdered Lloyd Fontaine.”
“Regardless. If I’d have played it differently, she’d still be alive.”
“‘Regardless,’ my ass. You know what the trouble is? You think she was somehow less guilty because she was a woman. Hell, maybe she even convinced you there was love in the vicinity, just waiting to happen between you two.”
I said nothing.
“It’s a common affliction, Jake, and you’re not immune. Your glands are clouding your judgment.”
“You’re full of shit, Abner.”
“I am, huh?” he said, raising his voice. “Then what’s your problem? Straighten up, for chrissake.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I knew he was right, and it pissed me off. I turned away from him.
He was silent for a moment before he yelled, “And quit feeling sorry for yourself!” and nearly knocked over a nurse on his way out the door.
Wednesday at noon they released me from the hospital. Lieutenant Dalrymple was waiting for me at the front desk.
“Lomax.”
“Lieutenant.”
“Need a ride?”
“I was going to jog home, but if you insist.”
Dalrymple drove slowly, ponderously, making every car pass us. He watched them, as if everyone out there were in a continuous police lineup. After a while, he spoke.
“You owe me an apology,” he said.
“For what?”
“You called me a liar.”
“You called me a murderer.”
“True.” A squeal started coming in on the car radio. Dalrymple turned down the volume. “She played you for a fool.”
Blood Stone (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 2) Page 22
