Evil Grows & Other Thrilling Tales

by Loren D. Estleman

  I winched myself out of my chair and took his hand. It was warm and a little sticky. “Hello, Seth. Have a seat.” I indicated the client’s chair on his side of the desk.

  He shook his head. “Can’t stay. Got me some glue drying on two sticks of wood and can’t let it set no longer’n ten minutes. I come to hire you, if you’re in the mood for it.” He fished a scrap of paper out of an apron pocket and handed it to me.

  It was a subpoena ordering him to appear in court in two weeks to answer charges of diminished capacity filed by his daughter. Her name was typed at the bottom of the sheet: Mrs. C. Burton Scott. I gave it back. “What brought this on?”

  “It’s her husband put her up to it,” he said. “When I refused to sell my shop to that developing firm of his, he got himself a lawyer and between them they cooked up this thing that says I’m crazy and should be committed. June always did do what Burton told her, so he got her to sign this here complaint. Once I’m out of the way, the shop’s hers, and they can do what they want with it.”

  He seemed more sad than angry, which was like him. People like Seth Borden live their lives never believing they’ll get hurt. They get hurt a lot. The scenario made sense. No one who lived in Roseacre could recall a time when Seth’s shop wasn’t there. Dwarfed though it was by skyscrapers the little brick structure occupied a substantial part of the business district and was worth hundreds of thousands to the developer fortunate enough to acquire it. Knowing what I did about C. Burton Scott, I wondered why I hadn’t seen this coming.

  Not that no one had tried before. Twenty years earlier, Bedelia Borden, Seth’s sister and partner by grace of their father’s will, had tried to bully Seth into selling her his half so that she could make a bundle from a man who wanted to buy up the block and build a department store. Her constant browbeating made her brother miserable and may have led to his wife Ruth’s fatal heart attack at age forty-two. Bedelia might have won, having thus broken her brother’s spirit, had not a severe recurrence of her childhood asthma forced her to abandon her interest and move to a dryer climate. No one had heard from her since and it was believed that she had died out west. Now the property was worth ten times what had been offered then.

  The worst part was that in our state, the mere question of a person’s sanity raised by his heirs was sufficient to go to court. Then it was a matter of which psychiatrist was more eloquent in expressing his opinions. Neither medicine nor the law is an exact science.

  “Any reason to doubt your sanity, Seth?” I asked.

  He shrugged, a gesture not calculated to win a lawyer’s confidence. “I forget things. Who don’t? But I pay my bills and I run my business and I don’t keep my socks in the icebox like my uncle started doing just before he died. You think I’m crazy?” His eyes were sharp behind the spectacles.

  “I’m not a psychiatrist. But I think I can help you. First I think we should discuss my fee.”

  Before I could continue, the old man reached into another pocket and came up with a fat handful of greasy, dog-eared bills, which he deposited atop my desk. I counted them. They came to twenty-three hundred dollars in twenties and fifties.

  “I was saving for a new delivery van,” he explained. “I’ll be in the shop when you want me.” He left, presumably to see to his two sticks of wood.

  Mr. and Mrs. C. Burton Scott lived north of the city along Route 22, in one of a string of neat little homes with neat little lawns and big car in every driveway. I swung my Japanese puddle-jumper in behind a blue Seville and climbed out, sweating as soon as I left the air-conditioned interior. It was late August and fat men were out of season.

  June Borden Scott answered the door on my second knock. She was a small woman of thirty, attractive enough, but there was too much of her Aunt Bedelia in her face to suit me. As a boy I had seen the old harridan once or twice and gone home feeling chilled. “Yes?” her voice was thin, almost nonexistent.

  I said, “I’m looking for Mr. Scott. Someone at his office said he was having lunch at home. I tried to call, but your number’s unlisted. Matt Lysander. I think your husband remembers me.”

  He remembered me. Three seconds after June withdrew, he came storming up with fists clenched and stuck his big chin in my face. The rest of him was big, too, but I had eighty pounds on him, not that I cared to use them; he was all muscle. The shiny blue suits he always wore gave him an armored look. I’d noticed that in court, the day I persuaded a judge to fine Scott Developments fifty thousand dollars for using substandard materials in its construction. His appeal was still pending.

  “What the hell do you want?” he demanded.

  “Relax; this visit won’t cost you a cent.” Twisting the knife is one of my specialties. “I’m representing Seth Borden. Let’s talk.”

  His expression changed from belligerent to uncertain. At length he stepped aside to admit me.

  The living room was sunken, professionally decorated, and, I suspected, soundproof. I sat down in a brown crushed-leather chair without waiting for an invitation and stood my briefcase –an expensive prop on the floor next to it. Scott took a seat beside his wife on the sofa opposite, but he didn’t relax. He sat on the edge as if crouched to spring. Mrs. Scott looked like a frightened hamster in his presence. She’d inherited nothing of her aunt’s overbearing manner.

  I began without preamble. “Mrs. Scott, what makes you think your father is senile?”

  Her husband started to answer for her. I held up a hand and he closed his mouth.

  “He’s –well, he has lapses,” she began haltingly. “I invite him to dinner and he doesn’t show up. When I call him to find out why, he says he never received an invitation.”

  “How many times has this happened?”

  “I don’t know. Three times, I guess. Perhaps four. All in the past couple of months.”

  “That hardly indicates failing faculties,” I commented.

  “I’ve forgotten my share of invitations, mainly because I was too polite to say I didn’t feel like going.”

  “Oh, but that’s not all! Just last week when I was shopping, Father walked right past me on the street without stopping to say hello. I had to call him twice before he turned around and recognized me. His own daughter!”

  “Perhaps he was preoccupied.”

  “What’s he got to be preoccupied about in his world?” said Scott, sneering.

  I ignored him. “Let me ask you this, Mrs. Scott. Were you concerned about your father’s mental condition before you related these incidents to your husband?”

  “Don’t answer that!” Scott stood. His beefy face was red. “You can leave here on your feet or head first, Lysander. Your choice. I don’t have to listen to this sort of thing in my own house.’

  “You will in court.” I rose, facing him. “Let’s be honest. All you’ve got is a couple of incidents of absentmindedness a first-year law student could tear apart, and even then it’s just your word against Borden’s. My psychiatrist will examine him, the state’s psychiatrist will examine him, they’ll both find exactly what they want to find, and they’ll cancel each other out in court. In the end all you’ll gain is a bill from your lawyer. Still want to go through with it?”

  The obstinate expression remained on Scott’s face, but his shoulders sank ever so slightly. “None of this would be necessary if the old fool would just sell.” He was still angry, but not at me. “Did he tell you what I offered him for that pile of bricks?”

  I said he hadn’t. Scott quoted an amount. My surprise must have showed, because he inflated before my eyes.

  “You see?” he roared. “Would you turn down a chance to retire and never have to worry about money for the rest of your life? Borden did, and without blinking. If that isn’t evidence of diminished capacity, you tell me what is!”

  I picked up my briefcase, composing myself. A lawyer’s first duty is to do what he can to keep his client out of court, and I’d given it my best shot. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you when the judge speaks
his piece.”

  Mrs. Scott accompanied me to the door. Her face showed strain.

  “It’s true what Burton said,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t have made an offer like that if it weren’t my father. I know what you think of me. I’m sure it’s what the whole town will be thinking when this gets out, but it isn’t true. I just want to do what’s best for Father, put him someplace where he won’t harm himself. He won’t move in here. I worry about him, all alone among those tools and things. You can see that, can’t you?”

  I went out without committing myself.

  Back at my office, I asked Sharon to get Fred Petrillo on the line. Fred was an assistant to an assistant at the State Bureau of Records and he owed me a favor.

  “Petrillo.” His businesslike tone was romanticized by a strong Puerto Rican accent.

  “Fred, this is Matt Lysander. Can you find out for me who C. Burton Scott’s partners are over at Scott Developments?”

  “I wasn’t aware he had partners.”

  “Nor was I until about half an hour ago. A man who balks at a fifty thousand dollar fine doesn’t make the kind of money offer that he just told me about without wincing. Someone’s backing his play.”

  “I’ll get right on it. Hour soon enough?”

  “Dandy.” I hung up and beat it down to Seth Borden’s shop.

  The proprietor was in back, refinishing an old desk that hardly seemed worth the bother. The floor around him was a litter of discarded tools under a mulch of wood shavings. A bare bulb swung from a cord above his head, slinging shadows over the cold walls. They weren’t as ancient as they appeared. A couple of decades earlier, Seth had turned bricklayer and had redone the whole shop from top to bottom. But like everything else about him, his remodeling carried a built-in patina of age that a forger of art masterpieces would have given his artistic eye to duplicate.

  After we had exchanged greetings, I asked Seth about his recent lapses. He scowled, sighting along the edge of a drawer he was sanding.

  “I said before I forget things. And I didn’t see June when I passed her. These here glasses are for close work. Sometimes I don’t get around to taking them off. I bet even the President does that now and then.”

  “One diminished capacity case at a time, please,” I said. “Why’d you turn down Scott’s offer?”

  “Didn’t want to sell. I said that.” He resumed sanding.

  “It’s a lot of money. You could use it to buy a chain of shops and still take a trip around the world.”

  “I like it here.”

  “That’s not good enough. This is a money-oriented society. It’s going to look bad at the hearing when they ask you why you said no and that’s the only answer you have.”

  He slid the drawer into place and straightened. “My father built this shop. I been working in it sixty years. There’s still some things you can’t buy.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s the truth.”

  I let it go for the time being. Everybody lies to his lawyer. “Will you submit to a psychiatric examination?”

  I asked. “The judge will insist on it. I’ve a friend, Dr. Casper Fyfe, with whom I’ve worked before. He’s good.”

  “Do what feels right.’ He traded his spectacles for a pair of goggles and plugged in an electric sander. The noise drove me out of there.

  “Brace yourself.” Fred Petrillo sounded smug over the telephone. “Two years ago, controlling interest in Scott Developments was snapped up by Global Enterprises.”

  I replaced the receiver. I don’t remember if I thanked him; I was in shock. Global Enterprises was a semi-legal subsidiary of that organization with a five-letter name beginning with M that we’re not supposed to talk about anymore. It represented the organization’s push to crack legitimate business, but from the number of vice-presidents who had shown up in automobile trunks at airports recently, it was clear that tactics hadn’t changed since Prohibition. I filed the knowledge away for possible use later. At the time I had no reason to believe I’d need it soon.

  Sharon showed Casper Fyfe in two days later. Grinning at her over the remains of my family-size pizza, I folded the cardboard, chucked it into the wastebasket, and grasped Casper’s hand. She glared back and closed the door harder than necessary on the way out. Sharon was a fitness freak.

  “You aren’t losing any weight.” Casper sat down.

  I said, “I grow fat in the saddle, like Napoleon. What you got?”

  “You won’t like it.” Lanky and balding, the psychiatrist wore the obligatory horn-rims and had a square jaw that must have offered a tempting target during his college boxing days. “In this doctor’s opinion, Seth Borden is something less than stable.”

  “We should both be so crazy.”

  “I’m serious, Matt. You know I don’t joke about my work.”

  My heart dropped a notch. “Give me the details.”

  “It isn’t senility. He suffered a trauma somewhere in his past that drove him permanently off center. If I had a couple of years I could probably find it, but that won’t help you.”

  “Just how screwy is he?”

  “Psychiatrists don’t recognize that term,” he chided. “There’s enough abnormality to provide Scott’s attorney with plenty of ammunition. His heart’s not too good either, judging by his color, but that’s beside the point. Any testimony I gave would do your case more harm than good.”

  I sat back, deflated. “Well, that leaves only one way to go.” I told him what I’d learned about Scott Developments.

  “You think it will affect the judge’s decision?”

  “I don’t know. It’s an informal hearing, and Morton’s presiding. He’s emotional. Maybe a plot by the mob to gain a foothold in Roseacre will sway him our way. It’s worth a shot.”

  “Good luck.” Casper recommended a psychiatrist to refute the generalities advanced by the state shrink, after which we parted company. When he was gone I dialed Fred Petrillo at the capital for documentation to back up my forthcoming disclosure. The newspapers were going to fall in love with me.

  The hearing went as I’d expected. Scott’s lawyer scored points with the psychiatric testimony based on three visits with Seth Borden, a few of which I was able to knock down despite the handicap of my own expert’s never having met the subject. I introduced Seth’s ledger and balance sheets by way of showing that he was capable of operating his business. Judge Morton seemed unimpressed. At that point I’d hoped to present character witnesses who could swear to the old man’s stability, but it turned out he had no close friends. Scott’s man rested his case. Then I brought out the big guns.

  News that organized crime had its eye on Roseacre played hell with decorum. Spectators babbled excitedly. Scott leaped to his feet, cursing me. A photographer burst a flashbulb in my face. Morton’s gavel handle cracked while he was pounding. I rested my case. The hearing was recessed until the afternoon.

  When it convened again, Seth was absent. Scrubbed and wearing an old suit frayed at the cuffs, he had left after the morning session muttering something about work to do. I sent Johnny, one of my favorite gofers, to the old man’s shop to see what was keeping him. After twenty minutes the boy returned, alone and white-faced. He whispered in my ear.

  I rose. Morton’s ice-blue eyes impaled me. “Your honor, I’ve just learned that my client, Seth Borden, is dead.”

  June Scott gasped. Then the tears came.

  Her husband put an arm around her awkwardly. The gallery buzzed.

  “He was found collapsed on the floor of his shop moments ago,” I continued. “A doctor is there now. It looks as if Mr. Borden suffered a heart attack–brought on, perhaps, by the strain of this morning’s proceedings.”

  Judge Morton adjourned the court.

  Public outcry was fierce when June Scott acquired the building from probate, but since an autopsy definitely established natural causes in the old man’s death and no criminal acts could be traced directly to Global Enterprises, the law with
drew. June lost no time in deeding the property over to Global Developments.

  The day the shop was set to come down, Sharon put through a call from C. Burton Scott. He sounded upset.

  “Meet me there, shyster.” The receiver clicked in my ear.

  The site was right around the corner from my office. I found Scott in hardhat and shiny blue suit standing outside a fence erected to keep out gawkers. His face was taut and pale. He seized my arm and steered me through the gate into the gutted shell of Seth’s shop.

  The wrecking crew had carted away everything worth salvaging, then gone to work with sledgehammers and crowbars. I was dragged stumbling over bricks and broken mortar, past hardhatted workers standing around idle, to a gaping hole in the south wall. Scott let go of me to snatch a flashlight out of an employee’s hand, switched it on. The hard white beam lanced the darkness inside the cavity.

  I can’t say I was surprised. The trauma in Seth’s past, the extensive remodeling, his unwillingness to sell when he knew it would mean the shop’s destruction, formed a pattern I worked with often. I hadn’t said anything because there was nothing to be gained by doing so. That cost me trouble with the police later.

  Dental records confirmed it after two days, but from the start there was no doubt that the broken skeleton lying crumpled in one corner of the ruined wall belonged to Bedelia Borden, Seth’s money-mad sister, dead these twenty years.

  CABANA

  Hale thanked me for the glass of water and used it to chase down a yellow pill the size of a cuff link.

  “I’m on medication,” he told me helpfully. “I will be for the rest of my life, I guess. That’s a tough admission to make at my age.”

  I figured that to be around twenty-five. He was a small, slender specimen with fragile wrists and features, and thick black hair cut short up front and long in the back, the way they’re wearing it now. He looked healthy enough. He had the sinews of a runner under his tennis shirt and shorts.