Cozy (Stanley Hastings Mystery, #14)

by Parnell Hall

I was roused from my musing by a car driving out. I glanced in the rearview mirror. Sure enough, the train had reached the platform, and people were streaming off.

  So where was the man? I couldn’t see him. Had he already left the train?

  While I strained my eyes, three doors of the car opened simultaneously, and the women piled in.

  “There’s a blue Ford coming up from your left, be ready to pull out,” Alice said. “Just be sure you have room to go.”

  “I have room,” I said.

  “He’s gonna cut you off!” Jean/Joan screamed from the back—I couldn’t see which one.

  A Jeep wagon had just pulled in front of me from the right. Another car was inching along behind it.

  “They’re cutting you off,” Alice said. “Don’t let them cut you off.”

  “Coming up on the left,” Jean/Joan said. “It’s him, it’s his car. Coming up on the left.”

  “Don’t let ’em cut you off,” the other Jean/Joan said.

  “You’re getting boxed in,” Alice said. “Those cars are not gonna move.”

  “Pull out,” Jean/Joan said. “Here he comes.”

  “He’s passing us.”

  “He’s going by.”

  “He’s getting away.”

  The top of my head was coming off. I had the feeling if I attempted to drive in any direction, I was going to smash into the side of a car.

  I took a breath, gritted my teeth, spun the wheel. Cut off a mother with two young boys and a kid in a car seat. She hit the horn and the brakes and gave me the evil eye.

  I swerved into the outer lane, headed for the gate. Without the faintest idea of where our quarry was.

  “Where is he?” I said.

  For a second, no one knew.

  Then Alice pointed. “He’s behind you.”

  A glance in the rearview mirror told me Jean and Joan were pointing too.

  “Could we all not point at the man we’re trying to follow?” I said. I said it as nicely as possible, still I think the underlying irony shone through.

  “He’s two cars behind us,” Alice said.

  “Great,” I said.

  There was no easy way to get out of the lane of traffic. I drove out the gate, turned right, pulled up on the shoulder of the road. Popped the glove compartment, pulled out a map, and opened it up on the steering wheel.

  “Good move,” Alice said. “You look just like a man who’s lost.”

  “I feel like a man who’s lost,” I said. “Just let me know which way he goes.”

  “He’s turning left,” Alice said.

  “Figures,” I muttered.

  I passed the map to Alice, put the car in gear, and sized up my chances of a U-turn on this road. Actually, they weren’t bad. With my quarry turning left, the same sort of traffic break that would work for him would work for me too.

  Practically.

  He hung a left by cutting off a truck coming up from the right. There was no way to get between them. I was lucky to make the U-turn and come up behind the truck.

  “He’s getting away!” Jean/Joan cried. “Look! He’s getting away!”

  The man was indeed speeding away from the truck. With a stream of cars coming from the other direction, there was no room to pass.

  If I wasn’t clear on what to do, it was not for lack of advice.

  “Give ’em the horn!”

  “Flash your lights!”

  “Pass him on the right!”

  Suggestions rang out in rapid succession. It was all I could do to separate out those that would not get me killed.

  Luckily, as we rounded a turn, a passing zone appeared. There was a car bearing down on us, but from a fair distance. I pulled out, floored it, swept on by. The oncoming car was never really in danger, though the driver certainly had a good chance to test his brakes. I rocketed up the road after the blue Ford.

  Which was nowhere to be seen.

  “You lost him,” Alice said.

  Which seemed a pretty unfair assessment of the situation. I had lost him? This whole thing was my fault?

  Around the next curve a car appeared in the distance. It was too far to tell, but it might well have been our blue Ford.

  “There he is!”

  “That’s him!”

  “Step on it!”

  I already had the pedal to the floor. The ancient Toyota was giving its all. It seemed to me we were slowly gaining ground. As we whizzed around a particularly sharp curve, it occurred to me I was doing a fairly good impression of the pimply faced young man. It also dawned on me, after many years as a private detective, I was finally in a car chase.

  With three backseat drivers.

  “Look out!”

  “Be careful!”

  “Watch the road!”

  Sound advice, that never would have occurred to me. I considered thanking the various parties involved. But sorting out just who had said what would probably take too much time. Particularly if I wanted to make the next curve.

  I swung the car into a screeching left, wondering if there was any way the man we were following could possibly avoid spotting us. I mean, how often does a carload of sightseeing tourists cruise the road at ninety miles an hour?

  The driver of the blue Ford was no slouch himself, because we didn’t seem to be really gaining on him.

  Until he hit the truck. I don’t mean hit it. He didn’t hit it. I mean, got stuck behind it. He evidently came up on it where there was no place to pass. Because we came around a curve and there he was. Smack-dab behind a tanker truck, crawling along at twenty miles an hour.

  “There he is!”

  “Slow down!”

  “Don’t get too close!”

  Thanks to this advice, I was able to avoid driving straight up the back of the car in question. I slowed down, tagged along behind.

  “He’s gonna spot us,” Jean/Joan said.

  “I can’t help that. At least he doesn’t know who we are.”

  “But if he knows us from the inn ...”

  “Right,” I said. “If he knows us from the inn. And if he knows about the murder. And he must know about the murder. Particularly if he’s a suspect. Particularly if he did it.”

  “Then he’ll know why we’re here.”

  “No, he won’t,” Alice said. “All he’ll think is we’re stuck behind the truck just like him.”

  That assessment seemed to satisfy everyone, and led to a debate over whether we should try to get close enough to get the license number. Before we could, we hit a straightaway, and the blue Ford pulled out to pass.

  Jean/Joan split on what I should do next.

  “Follow him!”

  “No, stay put!”

  “He’s getting away!”

  “He’ll know we’re after him.”

  “No, he won’t,” Alice said. “Who’d want to stay behind the truck?”

  I sure didn’t. I pulled out, zoomed on by. The question now was, how fast did I want to drive to keep up?

  It turned out to be a moot point. Half a mile down the road, the blue Ford signaled a turn to the left.

  For once, there was no dispute. All three women said, “Look, he’s turning left.”

  I turned left, too, without putting it to a vote. If that alerted the guy, it was just too bad. If I’d kept going straight, I’d have lost him completely.

  If the man was on to us, he gave no sign. He drove more slowly down the narrow side road, and after a mile and a half, turned into a driveway of a two-story red frame house.

  I checked the mailbox as we went by. There was no name, just the number 154.

  “Okay, gang,” I said. “We did it. There’s no car in the driveway but his, so we can assume he lives there. Number one five four. All we gotta do is find a street sign and phone it in.”

  Of course, there wasn’t one. We drove three miles without finding any sign, at which point the road came to an end in front of a dilapidated farmhouse. I turned around, headed back to the highway, though I did not rec
all having seen a sign.

  I hadn’t. There was no sign whatsoever. Our quarry lived at a known address number on an unidentifiable street. To be truthful, I wasn’t sure of the town, either.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “The point is, we could find it again.”

  The we was charitable and conciliatory, including them in the investigation. Not that it had much effect. Jean/Joan the thinner was all for staking out the place, and seemed to resent the fact that I was not. An offer to let her out of the car if she really felt that way was not met with good grace.

  Aside from that, I was pleased. We’d actually accomplished something. Tracked down the man from Champney Falls. The man I’d been talking about from the beginning. Pinehurst would finally have to pay some attention to him. He couldn’t ignore his existence now.

  I stopped at the next gas station we came to, and called the police.

  And got no answer.

  I blinked.

  A busy signal was bad enough, but no answer?

  The police station does not answer.

  We all had a good laugh over that. I must say, it was nice to have the women laughing with me instead of at me for a change.

  We got in the car, drove back to the Blue Frog Ponds.

  You could tell at once something had happened. There were people in the yard, standing, talking among themselves. True, it was a small community, and everyone could be reasonably expected to know everybody. But these conversations were not casual. The first impression I got was of neighbors observing a fire.

  We headed for Louise, who was up near the porch. Unfortunately, the Mclnnernys cut us off.

  “Isn’t that something,” Johnny Mclnnerny said. “Imagine, there we are up the mountain, with no idea.”

  “No idea of what?” I said. “What happened?”

  “What do you mean, what happened? Didn’t you see?”

  “We just got here.”

  “Yeah, but didn’t you see the police driving off?”

  “Police?”

  “Of course they didn’t,” Mrs. Mclnnerny said. “Johnny Mclnnerny, when will you stop thinking of yourself? Just because you know something, doesn’t mean everybody does. If they just got here, then they don’t know.”

  “Know what?” Alice said.

  Mrs. Mclnnerny tried to look stern. But her eyes were gleaming. “The police have made an arrest.”

  My first thought was Randy. I didn’t want to voice it. Instead I said, “Was it the boyfriend? Was it Lars?”

  “Nope,” Johnny said.

  My heart sunk. Poor Louise.

  “So who was it?” I said.

  Mrs. Mclnnerny could not keep the note of triumph out of her voice. “It was her,” she said.

  “Her?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Mclnnerny nodded. “The woman with that awful dog.”

  23.

  THE POLICE STATION was in the middle of the road. I’m not exaggerating. The road ran right up to the front door. Then turned ninety degrees to the right, ninety degrees to the left, ninety degrees to the left again, and ninety degrees to the right, continuing on where the road would have gone if the building hadn’t been there.

  The result was disconcerting. Park Avenue makes a square around Grand Central Station, but that’s a big building. The police station was small. The road didn’t have to aim at it, it easily could have gone by. But, no, it was a dead-on hit.

  For my part, I was glad. I’d been given the usual kind of directions to the police station, that is, being told I couldn’t miss it. For once, however, it turned out to be true. I braked to a stop, got out, went in the front door.

  The sad-sack cop was sitting behind a desk. The one with the droopy mustache. The cop, not the desk.

  “Where’s Pinehurst?” I said.

  “He’s in the kitchen.”

  I blinked. “The kitchen.”

  “Yeah. He’s making coffee.”

  “He’s not with the prisoner, he’s making coffee?”

  Sad Sack tugged at his mustache. “You got a problem with that? We happen to be out of coffee.”

  “I need to see him.”

  “Sure thing.” He pointed. “Right through there.”

  I went through the door indicated, down a short hallway, into a kitchen alcove on the left.

  Pinehurst was pouring water into an electric drip percolator. He was bent over, squinting to make sure he filled it up to the line.

  “I hate these things,” Pinehurst said. “I don’t mind making the coffee, it’s washing the pot every time. And then, before you know it, you run out of filters, and what do you do then?”

  I was in no mood for a lecture on coffee making. “You arrested Florence,” I said.

  “Yes, I did, and I’m glad you’re here. She’s been asking for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. I was going to have to send Henry to get you, but he wouldn’t have wanted to go until he’d had his coffee. Now he won’t have to.”

  “Why does she want to talk to me?”

  “I have no idea. She wouldn’t say. She just asked for you.”

  “I don’t understand. Why is she under arrest?”

  “For the murder of Christine Cobb.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” I said, impatiently. “Why is she under arrest for the murder of Christine Cobb?”

  “Well, now,” Pinehurst said. “I would rather not prejudice you until you’ve talked to the woman. Go have a talk, get her side of the story, then we can compare notes.”

  “You mean with what she told you?”

  “I mean in general. But by all means, go have a talk with her.”

  “Fine, I’ll do that,” I said. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “Oh?”

  “I found the man I told you about. The hiker from Champney Falls. The one who was there that night.”

  “Well, that’s interesting,” Pinehurst said. “And I certainly want to hear about it. But since I have a suspect in custody, it’s slightly less urgent. So why don’t you hold that thought until you’ve talked to her. After that, it may not seem quite so important.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Yes, do let me set you up,” Pinehurst said. “Right this way.”

  He led me back down the hallway and through the police station proper, where Sad Sack gave us a sour look, probably because we did not come bearing coffee.

  We went through another door to a lockup in the back, which consisted of four small cells. Two were empty. One housed what appeared to be a sleeping drunk.

  In the fourth was Florence. She was sitting on the bed with her head in her hands. She looked up, saw us, got to her feet. Her eyes were red, her face was caked with tears. She looked at me, and her lip trembled.

  We stood there, looking at each other, not knowing what to say.

  “Well,” Pinehurst said, “I’ll leave you two together. I’m not going to pat you down. I’m going to assume you’re too intelligent to try to help her escape. When you’re done, just come back down the hall.”

  Pinehurst left.

  When the door closed behind him, I turned back and said, “Florence, what’s going on?”

  Her eyes were wide. “I have no idea.”

  “Why’d he arrest you?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I’m not allowed to talk about it. My lawyer’s on his way. He told me to be quiet.”

  “You called a lawyer?”

  “Well, wouldn’t you? They arrested me for murder. For murder, for goodness’ sakes!”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “I can’t talk about it. I called my lawyer in Boston. He’s driving up. He made me promise not to talk. You know how frustrating that is, not to be able to talk?”

  “Then why did you send for me?”

  “Oh. The dog. Can you take care of Prince? He’s got to be walked. He’s got to be fed. He’s in my room. They took me away and left him there. It’s so awful.
But he likes you, he’ll go with you. Could you walk him, please?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Thank you.” She sighed. “At least I don’t have to worry about that.”

  “But, Florence. What’s this all about?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t talk. I can’t. I’m sorry. I really am.”

  I went back to find Chief Pinehurst, who was sitting at a desk across from Sad Sack. The two of them were holding coffee mugs.

  “Want some coffee?” Pinehurst said.

  “No, thanks, I’m fine. You mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “You mean she didn’t tell you?”

  “Her lawyer advised her not to talk.”

  “That’s a fine state of affairs,” Pinehurst said. “You try to conduct a murder investigation, and the suspects decline to talk.”

  “You knew that when I went in there.”

  “So?”

  “You sent me in anyway, hoping she’d spill something to me she wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Did she?”

  “That’s hardly ethical.”

  “Ethical?” The coffee mug stopped on the way to Pinehurst’s lips. “The woman asked to talk to you. I let her. If she told you anything interesting, then it would be your ethics whether you wish to withhold it from the police. Am I to gather she didn’t?”

  “That would be a good gather,” I said. “The woman is sitting tight and waiting for her lawyer. She only wanted me to walk her dog.”

  “That’s disappointing,” Pinehurst said. “So, you want to tell me why you’re here? Some other suspect you’d like me to run down?”

  “I told you what other suspect. The man from Champney Falls. The one who’s not staying at the inn, but keeps showing up there.”

  “Uh-huh. What about him?”

  “I saw him today on the Cog Railway. I followed him to where he lives.”

  “And where is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t know the address. I can find it, though.”

  “You don’t know the address?”

  “It’s one five four something road. Only there’s no sign for the road.”

  “In what town?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “What about the license plate?”

  “I couldn’t get close enough to see.”

  “This is an excellent lead you’re bringing me.”