by Brad Smith
“Let me run this my way,” Claire said. “You’re lucky I haven’t asked to see your green card yet.”
Claire meant the comment as a joke but apparently it hit close to home, because Henri was suddenly very accommodating.
“When was the last time you saw Miller Boddington?” she asked.
“For breakfast yesterday.”
“With his wife?”
“Yes. And the Spaniard, Rafael de Costa.”
Spaniard, my ass, Claire thought. She asked Henri a few more questions, but the chef didn’t have much more to add to the case. He seemed rather vague on the comings and goings of his employers in general, probably an occupational quirk. Protect the people who sign the checks. Claire finished with him by asking for a phone number in New York City where she might reach Suzanne Boddington.
Telling someone a family member was dead was never easy. There was an added level of intensity in telling someone that their spouse had been murdered, because in most instances the partner would be included on a short list of suspects. So their initial reaction was usually of great interest. For that reason, it was preferable to do it in person, but Claire didn’t have that luxury in this instance.
As it was, she didn’t get much of a read from Suzanne Boddington. There were no histrionics, to be certain. There was surprise, quite naturally. Whether it qualified as shock, Claire couldn’t determine. She couldn’t even say for certain that the surprise was genuine. Having the exchange over the telephone was not conducive to much evaluation. But there was something else in the woman’s voice, something Claire would describe as fatalism.
Coming to that conclusion at home that night, Claire wondered if such resignation was inherent to Suzanne Boddington’s nature, or if it was something she had acquired having been married to her husband for many years. Because it seemed to Claire only natural that at some point somebody would want to kill a sonofabitch like Miller Boddington.
The phone conversation ended with Suzanne Boddington saying she would be leaving for home within the hour. Claire hung up and then, after telling the now-groveling Henri she did not want him to scramble some eggs for her, she walked down the hill to the barn, where she found that Joe Brady had arrived on the scene.
Joe was standing off to the side of the corral, talking to the trooper Claire had dismissed from questioning the chef earlier. One of Boddington’s workers had turned the broodmares out to pasture while Claire was gone. Seeing them grazing made her think of Virgil Cain’s farm, of the rescued horses there.
Then she was required to think about Virgil Cain, something she had been avoiding since she’d received the call saying that Miller Boddington was dead. There was no connection between the two men. If Claire had decided that Virgil was innocent in the killings of Mickey Dupree and Alan Comstock, then why would she even think he might be involved in this?
She was quite sure she hadn’t mentioned to him that Boddington had just yesterday walked on his animal cruelty charges. But he could have heard it anywhere. On the radio. In a bar, although it was unlikely he was frequenting bars these days. Claire would have remembered telling him. But the time she had spent with him, the conversation itself, was something of a blur. When she had awoke that morning, a minute or so passed before she remembered that she had cut him loose. She was hit with a sudden and acute stab of remorse. It was like waking with a hangover and then slowly recalling regrettable deeds committed the night before. Even the story she’d told the patrolman in the cruiser had been lame. She had said that her car had broken down on her way to Cain’s farm to check on things and that she’d had the vehicle towed and continued on foot.
But Virgil Cain wouldn’t be concerned with Miller Boddington. He had made a pretty convincing case last night that he was just a simple man who wasn’t interested in exacting revenge on anyone. Not on Alan Comstock, and not on Mickey Dupree. So there was no logical reason for him to go after Miller Boddington. He had definitely persuaded Claire of that, or she would never have let him go. If he had been acting, he was very good at it.
But then she had to consider his friendship with Mary Nelson. The woman was extremely interested in Boddington, and Virgil was in her corner. Dirk Hopman had received abused horses from Boddington, and Virgil had taken it upon himself a few nights earlier to beat the hell out of Hopman. That was hardly minding his own business.
Shit.
Virgil Cain, you’d better not have been interested in Boddington, Claire thought as she approached Joe Brady and the trooper. I might have to shoot you after all.
She was hoping his name wouldn’t come up at all regarding Boddington’s demise. It was an unreasonable expectation and one that died a quick death.
“I can say one thing about this Cain,” the trooper was saying to Joe when Claire walked up. “He only kills people that nobody likes anyway.”
“This wasn’t Cain,” Joe said at once. “Trust me, I’m an expert on the man. Virgil Cain killed Comstock and Dupree because of what happened to his wife. Boddington doesn’t figure in that scenario. Besides, I happen to know that Cain is hiding out in Quebec. I have people on his trail night and day. He pops out of his hole for a pack of cigarettes and his ass is grass. I guarantee you he didn’t sneak back over the border in the middle of the night to strangle some dirtbag who forgot to feed his horses.”
“Then who do you figure for this?” the trooper asked.
“Some wacked animal lover who couldn’t handle the news that our judicial system gave Boddington a free pass,” Joe said.
“The timing is everything here. A blind man could see it.”
Claire kept walking. For once she was happy to let Joe talk, even if he didn’t know what he was talking about. Although this time, the gist of what he was saying just might be true.
At least Claire hoped it was.
She waited until they had loaded Boddington’s body into the van and taken it away before she did the rounds of the local neighbors. Nobody reported anything out of the ordinary. The Boddington house and barns sat well back from the road and for the most part were hidden from view. In addition, due to the nature of the horse business, there was apparently a fairly constant stream of traffic in and out of the farm. Nobody paid particular notice. A woman walking an Airedale along the shoulder of the road out front told Claire that she had seen Suzanne Boddington drive off in her SUV at around four the previous afternoon. A couple hundred yards down the same road, a man drinking coffee on his front porch claimed he had seen Suzanne arriving back at the farm at roughly the same time. But it could have been the day before yesterday, he admitted.
When Claire got back to the farm, the forensics unit was still at work. The groom, whose name was Tuttle, had identified the bridle as being from the stable, and so they were dusting the tack room for prints. Claire walked Tuttle around to the side of the barn to have a talk with him. The man was maybe fifty-five, paunchy, and stoop-shouldered, and wore a denim shirt and brown twill pants, cowboy boots and a tooled leather belt with a T etched into the buckle.
“I know you’ve been over this already,” she said by way of apology. “What time did you leave yesterday?”
“Four minutes past five,” he said. “We punch a clock.”
A time clock on a farm, Claire thought. Virgil Cain wouldn’t last a day here. “And Miller Boddington wasn’t here then?” she asked.
“He wasn’t down here. He coulda been at the house but I didn’t see his car. He never came down to the barn much.”
“No?”
“Not much. Especially lately.”
“Why lately?”
“He wasn’t too much interested in the horses anymore,” Tuttle said. Claire could hear traces of an accent now. Tennessee maybe. Or Kentucky. Thinking about it, Kentucky would make sense. Horse country.
“Because of the charges against him?” Claire asked.
“I wouldn’t say that was it. By the way, so you know, those animals were not on this farm. They were over at the other place, upsta
te. I never mistreated a horse in my life. My daddy would rise up from the grave if I did.”
“I believe you. What about Boddington?”
“Just your typical stuff. These rich guys always get into the game thinking they can buy a winner. Miller wanted a Derby winner. All he talked about at first. Well, it ain’t that easy. There’s guys over there in Dubai, or wherever they’re from, got more money than the Pope, and they can’t do it neither. Only God can pick out a Derby winner, and he only does it once a year. And it’s usually got nothing to do with money.”
“So he got bored with it?” Claire asked.
“I guess maybe. Or he got mad ’cuz he couldn’t have what he wanted. Guy like that is used to getting his way.”
“You don’t sound as if you’re going to miss him.”
Tuttle shrugged but didn’t answer. The truth might incriminate him. And he didn’t seem like the type who would bother to lie.
“Boddington and his wife get along okay?” Claire asked.
“I couldn’t say.”
“Well, did they spend a lot of time together?”
“Didn’t seem like it. He was gone, she was here. But she never come down to the barn too much neither. She used to. But that stopped, oh, a couple years ago.”
“Why did it stop?”
“Don’t know.”
Claire sensed something. “Yes, you do.”
Tuttle hesitated. “There were rumors. You looking for rumors?”
“Sometimes rumors turn out to be true.”
Tuttle took a moment. “Story was she was having a fling with Miller’s foreman at the time. Guy named Stevens. Miller fired him, right around the time you guys busted him for the horse abuse. Put the blame on Stevens and sent him on his way. Killing two birds with one stone, you know?”
“Yeah.” Claire said. She had heard the rumor about the foreman back when she’d been investigating Boddington the first time. She had dismissed it at the time as being irrelevant, whether it held any truth or not. “And then Suzanne stopped coming around?”
“Yup,” Tuttle said. “But I got the impression she didn’t want to leave, though,” he added.
“What do you mean?”
“The boss has been talking about moving full-time to California. Getting out of the thoroughbred game and into the wine business. I hear the missus didn’t want to go.” Tuttle hesitated, even longer this time, before continuing. “That little French guy up at the house was telling the cleaning lady that the missus wasn’t too happy that the boss skipped on the abuse charges. Like maybe she was hoping he’d go to jail.”
“Oh?” Claire asked. “And the cleaning lady told you?” Tuttle actually blushed. “Yeah, we’re friends.”
I have a feeling you’re more than friends, Claire thought. Women and cowboys. She turned and looked toward the house on the hill. She glanced at her watch. Suzanne Boddington wouldn’t be home for a couple of hours, at the earliest.
“Thanks for your time,” she said to Tuttle.
“No problem,” he said and walked away.
Claire watched him and then got into her car and headed back to Kingston. The bodies were piling up, and she didn’t have anyone who even slightly resembled a suspect.
Other than the guy she had let go the night before.
TWENTY-SIX
When Virgil left the farm, he drove west and got a room for the night at Kate’s Lazy Meadow Motel on Route 28. Tucked in an overgrown grove of trees, the place was barely visible from the highway. Driving there, he wondered what the hell had just happened back in the pump house.
There had been a moment, upstairs in the bathroom, when he had considered the possibility that Claire Marchand might actually shoot him. An hour later, she had let him go. He wondered what had happened in that time to make her change her mind. But it seemed to him, even when she was pointing the gun at him, that she wasn’t all that convinced he was guilty. Still, turning him loose was an awfully big leap of faith on her part. He wondered who had called her on her cell phone just minutes before and if that had anything to do with it. He didn’t have any answers by the time he reached the motel. He signed in under the name William Bonney.
In the morning he got up early and had breakfast at a truck stop a few hundred yards away. There was a fancier place next to the motel, but it looked as if it catered to the tourist trade. He was more at home with the truckers.
After he ate he went back to his room and had a shower before checking out. Coming out of the bathroom he turned on the TV to the sports channel and caught the baseball scores. Wanting to hear the weather too, he changed to the local news. He didn’t learn anything about the barometric pressure, but he did find out that Miller Boddington was dead. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock and the story had just broken. A camera crew at the Boddington horse farm was filming various police and emergency vehicles as they arrived on the scene.
Virgil sat on the edge of the bed and watched, thinking he might see Claire. At one point there was someone in the background that might be her, but he couldn’t be certain. When the news anchor mentioned that Boddington’s death came on the heels of the “vicious murders” of Mickey Dupree and Alan Comstock in recent days, Virgil got to his feet. When he heard his own name mentioned, he turned the set off. He didn’t need to hear the speculation. He didn’t need for Claire to hear it either, but there was nothing to be done about that.
He left the key on the dresser and got into the Dodge and went to find Buddy Townes.
He drove east into Kingston on 28, got off on Washington Avenue, and swung down by Rondout Creek, past the museum. From a block away he could see that Buddy’s Cadillac was not parked in front of the house. When he pulled up to the curb, he saw the reason why. The house looked deserted and there was a for rent sign in the window.
Virgil sat looking at the place for a time and then got out of the truck and started up the walkway. At once the front door of the adjacent house opened and a man walked out onto the stoop. He was short and thick, with a torso like a forty-five-gallon drum, and wore a wife beater with coffee stains down the front. He had a half-eaten fried-egg sandwich in his hand.
“You looking to rent?” he asked.
“I’m looking for Buddy Townes.”
“Buddy’s gone.”
Virgil walked across the lawn toward the man. “Gone where?”
“Florida. You not looking to rent?”
“No. You own the place?”
“I’m the one looks after it.” Behind the man a TV was blaring. Virgil could see it through the doorway. “Guy who owns it lives in Jersey,” the man said. “Indian. From India, not a casino Indian.”
Virgil looked at the sign in the window. “So Buddy’s not coming back?”
“Nope. All he took was a suitcase. Said he won the lottery and he was going fishing. You interested in any furniture? He gave me . . . er, I bought the contents of the house.”
“No,” Virgil said, and he thought. “You know, maybe I’ll have a look. I might see something I need.”
“I gotta get the key.”
The man went inside. Virgil took his Mud Hens cap off and pushed his hair back from his forehead. He wondered what Buddy meant, saying he won the lottery. Maybe he actually did win the lottery. But Virgil didn’t think so. Inside the house next door, someone was now flipping the TV from channel to channel, and then they stopped. Virgil heard a news announcer talking about Miller Boddington’s murder.
The man returned, carrying a ring of keys. He came down from the stoop and crossed the lawn, walking splay-legged, his chest puffed out under the dirty shirt. Virgil noticed movement in one of the windows behind him and saw a woman there, staring out from between the blinds. Virgil put the cap back on and pulled it down.
“I don’t own the place,” the man said again. “An Indian from India bought it a few years ago. People are buying up the whole goddamn country.”
Inside the house were what Virgil assumed to be the worldly possessions of Buddy Townes.
It seemed as if Buddy had left in a hurry. There were still clothes hanging in the closet, toiletries in the bathroom. The house had two bedrooms, one of which had evidently served as Buddy’s office. A computer sat on a scarred metal desk. There was a printer alongside and several books, most of them on legal procedures and case histories. Virgil hoped he might see a filing cabinet but there was none. The man in the dirty shirt stood in the doorway, watching Virgil.
“That’s a good computer. Brand name. You can have it for a hundred bucks.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
“Well, the wife’s nephew says it’s not all that new. Take the computer and the desk for a buck fifty.”
Virgil shook his head and walked out of the room. He went into the kitchen and looked around. “You say all he took was a suitcase?”
“Yeah.”
“He have any visitors before he left?” Virgil opened the fridge, thinking he could keep the man talking if it appeared he was in the market for something.
“Nope. He left here about five o’clock, came back maybe six or so and then he was out of here for good a half an hour later. That’s a good fridge.”
Virgil closed the door. “You figure he really won the lottery?”
“He won something,” the man said. “Said when he got to the Keys he was gonna drive his Cadillac into the ocean and buy himself a brand-new one. You know what a new Caddy’s worth?”
“I can guess,” Virgil said.
“So you want any of this stuff? Oh, don’t fall in love with that TV. It’s not for sale. I’m taking it. You wouldn’t want to carry it next door for me, would you? I got a bad back. Doc says I can’t lift anything heavier than my prick.”
Virgil thought about the woman watching him through the blinds. “My doctor told me the same thing,” he said. He started for the door and stopped. “I don’t suppose Buddy said anything about forwarding his mail . . . ?”
“I asked him,” the man said. “He told me to cash the checks and burn the bills. Said he was done with this town.”
Outside Virgil walked along the cracked sidewalk toward the Dodge. He stopped and turned back. The man was standing on the stoop of the former home of Buddy Townes.
