Dead Silver hd-2

by Neil Mcmahon

  Bill hesitated a beat, no doubt already seeing where this was going.

  "Yeah?"

  "They weren't exactly his to sell."

  "Now, ain't that a bitch." He took a pack of Crooks from his shirt pocket, shook one loose, lit it in his thick cupped hands with an inhalation like an elephant sucking water into its trunk, and blew out a cloud of smoke that visibly darkened the room.

  "Well, if I'd known it was you guys, I'd of kicked his ass and called you," he said. "But the way it is, I'm a businessman and I got an investment to protect. Plus handling, shelf space, all that."

  "What'd you give for them?" Madbird said.

  "Hunnert and forty," Bill said, with a touch of pride. I winced. Replacement value would be close to two grand, and he could sell them for at least half that.

  "How about we cash you out and call it even?" Madbird said. "That way, you ain't lost anything."

  "Yeah, but I ain't made anything, either."

  "Come on, Bill, those tools are our living," I said. "We can't afford new ones, or even to buy them back from you."

  He gazed thoughtfully out the window.

  "What the fuck," he finally said. "Call it seventy, we'll split it. Just remember, Bill LaTray gave you a break."

  We assured him we'd never forget, dug the seventy bucks out of our wallets, and schlepped the tools out to my truck. A chunk of cash and half a morning pissed away recovering our own property, but we felt like we'd won the lottery.

  As Madbird and I drove away, I confessed my disloyal intentions.

  "Let's get some lunch, but I might skip out on the job while Renee's here."

  "You know, I wouldn't mind a couple days away from Split Rock myself," he said. "I ain't exactly Mr. Popularity out there right now."

  26

  We celebrated the recovery of our goods and the riddance of Seth Fraker by getting cheeseburgers to go at an ancient drive-in called Al's, one of the few non-chain places left in town and the venue of choice now that the legendary Gertie's was gone. These were the great old-fashioned kind of burgers that came wrapped in greasy white paper, big as a saucer and half an inch thick, with an aroma that filled the cab of my truck. High roller that I was, I bought an extra one to take to Renee.

  When we got to her place, Madbird said, "I'll start picking up tools," and headed off to the carriage house to leave her and me alone. He was no stranger to the morning-after-the-night-before scenario.

  She and I hadn't talked about what might happen next, and I was on edge about it. But as I climbed the porch steps, she came out to meet me like she had the first time, and she made the awkward moment easy-gave me a quick kiss and embrace, looking genuinely glad to see me. There was no hint of regret or blame.

  When I offered her the cheeseburger, she pressed her hands to her heart and went wide-eyed.

  "For me?"

  "The sky's the limit, kid."

  "It looks wonderful. I'll get plates."

  I took hold of her wrist lightly. "We'll handle this however you want. I'd like to be with you, but if you're uncomfortable, I'm out of here."

  "I don't know what I want," she said, turning her face aside. "But there's something I need to tell you."

  That took a bite out of my brief gladness, but I tried to get her joking again.

  "Another skeleton in a closet?"

  She stayed serious. "Kind of. I don't want to just blurt it out."

  "Sure. Let's go ahead and eat," I said, and went outside to get Madbird.

  In fact, I suspected she intended to tell me that our little fling had already run its course. I wasn't naive enough to think I'd been anything more than a temporary comfort for her, at a time when she was frightened and in need. I didn't expect anything different, just as I hadn't expected it to happen in the first place, and I sure had no complaints. I'd never spent a sweeter night.

  The real problem was, it lit up a big neon arrow pointing at a void that had deepened in me over the past years. It didn't stem just from living alone, but from a composite of that and other absences that could start you wondering why you were living at all. Most of the time, I managed to ignore it.

  I stepped into the carriage house and informed Madbird that luncheon was served. He glared at me with wounded dignity.

  "You expect me to come inside and eat with you white people?" he said.

  "Renee does."

  "Well-since she don't know any better, plus she's pretty, I'll do it this once."

  "We have an invention called ketchup, that goes pretty good with the onion rings," I said.

  "Wahss. First you get us hooked on firewater, now this new shit. Any of them beers left?"

  Wahss-I didn't know the right way to spell it, or even if it could be spelled-was something I heard him say often. As near as I could tell, it meant bullshit, fuck you, c'est la vie, uff da, oy vey, and other such sentiments all rolled into one, along with an edge of its own.

  "Yeah, if I can keep you from pouring them down the sink," I said.

  27

  After lunch, Madbird and I went back to the carriage house to finish collecting our tools. I still wasn't sure what Renee had in mind or how long that would take, and he needed to get going, so we decided he'd drive my truck to the job and swap it for his van. She could give me a ride out there to get it.

  We gathered our gear quickly, with the unconscious precision of having done so countless times before. But this time I hit a minor snag. The five-sixteenths socket from my set, about the size of a cigarette filter, was missing. I was sure I'd left it on the workbench, and at first I thought it must have rolled off. It was bright chrome and should have been easy to spot, but I checked the area carefully with no luck.

  "You didn't see a socket lying around, did you?" I said, in case Madbird had put it someplace else.

  He shook his head. "You check your tool belt?"

  It was true that we often pocketed things like that without realizing it. I dug through the belt's worn leather pouches and spread their contents on the workbench-a couple of pounds of nails and screws of a dozen different kinds, chalk box, utility knife, much-nicked chisel, twenty-five-foot tape, nail sets, lumber crayon, pencils, a handful of sawdust and plaster chunks, and a bottle cap from a Mickey's Big Mouth beer. I couldn't figure out how the hell that had gotten in there-I hadn't drunk Mickey's Big Mouths since high school.

  But no socket. Not that this was a big deal; I had a couple of others somewhere, and I could buy a new one for a few bucks. There was just something peculiarly annoying about losing a tool. It would nag me for weeks, and I'd be looking for it subconsciously everywhere I went. I scanned the room in exasperation, trying to think of other spots where I might have stashed it.

  Then I heard Madbird's deep rumbling laughter. My annoyance level rose. I didn't see how this was all that funny.

  "What you want to bet that thing got drug off where the sun don't shine?" he said.

  When his meaning hit me, I had to laugh, too.

  Those motherfucking pack rats were still on the job.

  28

  I'd decided to install deadbolts on the doors of Renee's house, so I kept the tools I needed for that. We were loading the rest of the gear into my truck when she came hurrying out to us.

  "Sheriff Varna just called," she said. "He's on his way over."

  Madbird paused. He didn't cotton to authorities, especially of the law enforcement variety.

  "I'd like you to be here for this," I said. "But if you want to book, I understand."

  "Hell, I'll stick around. He ain't the kind of cop puts a hair acrost my ass."

  Gary pulled over to the curb in his sheriff's cruiser a couple of minutes later. Watching him climb out was always a little disconcerting. He just kept on rising.

  "Renee, I'm sorry we have to meet under these circumstances," he said, exending his cordial handshake to her.

  "Thanks so much for doing this," she murmured.

  "I wish I could promise it'll help. All right, let's see what you
found."

  "I've been keeping the things inside," she said, and went to get them. Madbird and I took Gary to the carriage house. He crouched over the crawl space with his forearms on his knees, studying the jewelry box and pile of gunpowder. I gave him a rundown, ending with Renee's suggestion that the killer had planted this damning evidence against Professor Callister and set up a seemingly accidental fire to expose it, but never followed through because the police hadn't gotten close enough to him to be a threat.

  Gary nodded noncommittally, letting me know he'd heard me, and that was all.

  Renee came in with the photo fragments of Astrid and the earring, which she'd transferred to a metal cash box. Gary stood up creakily, with the failing knees of a man in his fifties, and opened the box on the Professor's workbench. He scrutinized the items with that same intensity, not touching, just looking.

  "I can tell you right now these pix are high-quality-professional or good amateur," he said. "But that kind of print paper's common as dirt, besides trying to trace it back a dozen years."

  "But you'll start looking for suspects who were into photography?" she said.

  "That did cross my mind." His tone had a touch of irony, but also respect. She appeared to be making another conquest, and not an easy one.

  "Did the police know about these things-that Astrid had them and they went missing?" Renee asked. "Did my father ever say anything about them?"

  "Like I told Hugh, I wasn't in the loop much. I'll try to find out."

  Then Madbird said, "I think maybe I'm seeing something here."

  He was still standing beside the open crawl space. The rest of us walked over there to join him.

  "If a fire starts, the firemen want to find a reason for it, right?" he said. "It looks like it just come out of nowhere, they're going to get suspicious. So this guy didn't want to just light a match."

  I passed my hand over my hair, adding that to the long list of things that had never occurred to me.

  "Go on," Gary said, with sharpened interest.

  "Old place like this, the obvious thing's the wiring. But he's got to make it happen when he wants." Madbird swung around to me. "We got any Romex? Be easiest if I show you."

  "Some scrap in the truck," I said. "How much you need?"

  He held out his hands two feet apart. I went to my pickup to rummage in one of the side toolboxes that lined the bed, where I kept a melange of handy odds and ends, fasteners, shims, hardware, and the like. I found a partial roll of sheathed 12/2 cable-commonly called Romex by tradesmen even though that, like Sheetrock, was technically a brand name-clipped off a couple of feet, and took it to Madbird.

  First he used it as a pointer to tap a pair of old black knob-and-tube wires, about two inches apart and strung on porcelain insulators every few feet, that ran along the floor joist where the wood shavings were piled.

  Knob and tube was considered dangerous stuff these days. Electricians were required by code to cut out and replace any of it they found. Besides being ungrounded, it aged badly, with the insulation cracking, fraying, and leaving bare spots that could create fire hazards.

  Which was exactly what could have happened here. An insulator had broken; they were brittle, it could easily have been cracked during construction with no one noticing, and years of settling and vibration from people walking above eventually jarring a chunk loose. That had freed the top wire to sag so it almost touched the bottom one, and the sharp edges of the porcelain had nicked them so glints of bare copper showed through. Any contact between them would cause sparks. Those kinds of fires were common, sometimes smoldering for days or even weeks before they took off.

  But this one only would have taken seconds, because the sparks would have hit the gunpowder.

  "That takes care of the fire guys-they'll figure it was a accident," Madbird said. "But really, he's the one broke the insulator and nicked them wires. Now all he's got to do is make them touch."

  With his pocketknife, he separated and stripped the Romex so he had a few inches of the bare copper ground at one end, and bent that at a right angle. Then he pushed it at the knob and tube strands again, using the prong to connect their frayed spots.

  A sharp little pop brought a shower of sparks.

  "Only take him a few seconds to crawl in and do that, and a few more to get back out," Madbird said. "By the time anybody spots the fire, he's long gone. Had it all set up ahead of time so it was ready to go if he got spooked."

  Gary looked bemused. "Well, I ain't necessarily saying I buy it. But on the other hand, I'm tempted to offer you a job, Madbird."

  "Appreciate it, Sheriff. But I already done three years in uniform, and I got a feeling a new one would fit pretty tight."

  "Yeah, I admit I get that feeling myself sometimes."

  "I better tape them wires up. Okay with you?"

  "Give me a minute to get some photos first," Gary said. "I want to take the things you found, too, including that jewelry box. I've got an evidence camera and containers in my car-I could use a hand with them."

  As we started out to get them, he paused to look at Renee.

  "My dear, I hope like hell there's something to this. I'd love to see your father cleared, and if I can nail whoever's guilty, I'll die a happier man." But while Gary's words were kindly, his face was concerned. "Let's just keep in mind that if we are looking at somebody else, he's not just dangerous. He's really slick."

  29

  Before Gary left, he stepped firmly into sheriff mode and let us know what he expected of us, starting with Renee.

  "Did you spend much time with Astrid and your father?" he asked her.

  It took her a beat or two longer to answer than I would have thought.

  "Not a whole lot, but some," she said. "It took a while for things to simmer down after he divorced my mom. There was a lot of anger. But then I started visiting here sometimes on holidays."

  "Did you and Astrid get along?"

  There came another measured pause.

  "Yes. I mean, she wasn't really a warm person, and I was programmed to hate her at first. But she was nice to me, and fascinating because she seemed so glamorous. Expecially because I was such a mouse."

  "Okay, here's what I'm getting at-and understand, this is still just speculation, all riding on that big 'if,'" Gary said. "First off, let's throw out any notion that her murder was random, or a crime of opportunity. He planned it carefully, and that tells me he had a strong reason. Finding that reason just might find him.

  "So, Renee, I want you to remember everything you can about Astrid. Who she spent time with, quarrels or rough spots or if she seemed to be hiding something-every little detail you think of, even if it don't seem important. And, sorry to say this, but be careful to keep your father in mind. You might unconsciously tend toward leaving him out."

  She looked uncomfortable and I understood why. The task would be emotionally bruising.

  But she nodded and said, "I'll start making notes about it. And some things Hugh and I talked about last night, if you want."

  "I'm glad for anything you can come up with. Now I need a word with you two gents."

  He walked Madbird and me over to his car, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and eyed us with an authoritative stare.

  "Being as how you're in on this, whether anybody likes it or not," he said, with the none-too-vague suggestion that he himself didn't, "you might do some quiet nosing around. If you run into anything, you will not act on it yourselves. You'll call me immediately, twenty-four seven."

  He scribbled briefly on a notepad, then tore the sheet in halves and handed one to each of us-his office, cell, and home phone numbers.

  "I'm not crazy about amateur help, but a lot of people will open up more to somebody who's not a cop," he said. "And you guys have impressed me with your talent for-let's call it 'disinformation.'"

  That gave my pulse rate a boost. It wasn't anything that all three of us weren't well aware of, but I didn't like hearing him say it out loud.

>   But Madbird, unshaken, grinned. "'Disinformation.' I ain't heard that word since Nam."

  Gary's face also creased in a smile, wolfish in its own way.

  "It means pretty much the same thing now as it did then," he said.

  After Gary left and Madbird took my truck with our tools to Split Rock, I went to the house to find Renee. She met me at the door as usual, but this time with a brittle politeness that radiated pique.

  "So I'm open to the public, but you guys cozy up in private?" she said.

  That had been Gary's decision, not mine, but I was still chagrined for not realizing that she was upset.

  "We weren't talking behind your back, Renee. It didn't really have anything to do with you."

  "This all has something to do with me. Why couldn't I hear it?"

  That wasn't an easy question to field. Now wasn't the right moment to tell her about my criminal career, and I couldn't think of any partial explanations that didn't make me sound even worse than I'd been.

  "Gary was reminding us that we owe him," I finally said. "And he can call in the marker anytime."

  "Owe him for what?" she said, still skeptical, but with the edge fading.

  I stepped closer to her, just enough so our forearms brushed.

  "Maybe we could trade secrets later," I said. "When you're ready to tell me that one of yours."

  She leaned against me lightly and spoke into my shoulder. "I'm getting there. It's a raw nerve, and Gary jammed his finger right on it, asking me to think about Astrid. Kind of spooky."

  "Well, that's the issue right now. And let's face it, it's your issue."

  "I know. Sorry I snapped at you. I started feeling outnumbered by you guys."

  "I make a pretty good punching bag," I said. "I've got a lot of experience."

  "Can I ask you to take me for another drive?" Her face was still pressed against me, her voice muffled.