The Witchfinder

by Loren D. Estleman

  Lily Talbot’s house was modest by local standards, a single-story brickfront with a shallow roof peak and two cozy wings covered with stained cedar siding. Its one showy feature, an entryway made entirely of leaded glass, formed an arch from foundation to eaves with a red oak front door set into it like a ruby in a diamond horseshoe pin. You couldn’t admire it in direct sunlight without sacrificing both retinas.

  The second time I rang the bell, the gallery owner’s voice drifted my way from somewhere behind the house.

  “I’m on the deck.”

  A flagstone path trod deep into the lawn led around back. I passed a bed of blue and red flowers growing in crushed limestone, descended a staircase made of railroad ties studded into a steep grassy slope, and stood at last on a plank platform twenty feet long by fifteen wide, with a twelve-foot fence erected around it for privacy. The construction was new and still smelled of sawn wood and the dope they treat it with to repel weather. Sunlight lay on the planks like a slice of gold warmed by hand.

  “Did you bring the sketches?”

  She was stretched on her back on a flowered chaise longue in a pale blue bikini bottom and nothing else. She had an athletic build but not masculine, not at all; the long muscles in her arms and legs were sheathed in smooth flesh not too deeply tanned, but not mottled like a redhead’s either. It was the first indication I’d had that her short hair had been colored. She had nice breasts: not large, but not so small she’d ever be mistaken for a boy. Her eyes were invisible behind white plastic goggles.

  “I hope you won’t mind working out here,” she said. “It is Sunday, and I haven’t seen the sun in a week.”

  “It’s the same color it’s always been.”

  She jumped, snatched off the goggles, saw me, and hooked up a towel to cover her upper half. Her face flushed deeply under the tan.

  “I thought you were an artist.”

  “A friendly artist,” I said.

  “They spend most of their time looking at nudes. They’re like doctors.”

  “I knew I was in the wrong business.”

  “Would you mind turning your back while I put something on?”

  I turned. “Nice deck. Any planes ever land here looking for City Airport?”

  “What did you expect, a garret?” Fabric rustled.

  “I heard someone say recently the arts are in eclipse.”

  “You’d be surprised what you can afford when you have no interests apart from work and home. Or rather what debts you’re willing to assume. You can turn around now.”

  She had on a blue silk kimono tied with a sash and cork-soled sandals on her slim bare feet. The outfit didn’t make her any more repulsive. My opinion of Furlong’s taste kept going up.

  “Jean told you where to find me, didn’t she?”

  “Don’t be too hard on her. Whatever you told her before took. She stonewalled me at the gallery.”

  “We didn’t discuss you at all.”

  “Now I’m hurt.”

  She glanced at her wrist, but she wasn’t wearing a watch. “I’m expecting a sculptor any minute. I’m commissioning a statue for the gallery’s tenth anniversary next year. He’s Croatian. Strangers make him suspicious.”

  “We have that emotion in common.” I put my hands in my pockets.

  “What do you want?”

  “A vacation. A comfortable old age. Cable. Answers to some questions. Not necessarily in that order. I guess you heard about Arsenault.”

  “Did you kill him? Is that how you got that?” She pointed at my bandaged head.

  “I fell off my deck.” I tapped a Winston out of the pack and put it between my lips, but I didn’t light it. “Yeah, I killed him. I didn’t like his taste in paintings.”

  “Neither did I. I’m sick to death of Lautrec and Turner and Monet and Manet.”

  “I thought they were one guy,” I said. “The last two.”

  “So do the jokers who buy them and hang them in their offices downtown. There are other movements besides Impressionism, but try telling that to our young urban professional bootlickers. Do the police know you’re interfering in a homicide investigation?”

  “Am I?”

  “You didn’t come here to cop a peek at my tits.”

  The cigarette tasted like a tongue depressor. I poked it back into the pack. “I’m no Sherlock,” I said. “Neither was Holmes. Any reasonably honest police force can solve the murders that get solved, without help from the bleachers. But the system’s a crocodile, with a croc’s table manners. While it’s busy chewing up leads and alibis and witnesses and clues a lot of little details get stuck between its teeth. Think of me as one of those little birds that walk around inside the crocodile’s mouth and pick out the shreds.”

  “Attractive image.”

  “It keeps me off chimneys. Anyway, the shred I picked out this time is a question: Who put Arsenault up to his part in the frame?”

  “What makes you think his murder has anything to do with that?”

  “No reason, except he spent the eight years since it happened not murdered. Then I came along and wham.”

  “If I knew who was behind that picture, I’d be living an idle existence as the wife of a millionaire architect. Soon to be a rich widow.”

  “Looks like you’ve done okay without him.”

  “It was a long hard haul, and I made it without any help from anybody. You know something? I’m glad it happened. I’d rather be who I am and unknown than world-famous as Mrs. Jay Bell Furlong.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  She had a tall glass on the low table next to the chaise. She picked it up, sipped, made a face, and put it back down. Whatever was in it, the ice cubes had melted and diluted it. “I told you at the gallery everything I know. I’m happy with the way things turned out, but I’m not grateful. If you think I’m shielding the person responsible, you must have me confused with Mother Teresa.”

  “Not in that outfit. There are hundreds of art galleries listed in the Yellow Pages. When it came time to decorate his office, Arsenault chose yours. Why?”

  “The Talbot has a reputation for quality and integrity.”

  “So does General Motors. But only an idiot pays sticker prices.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Arsenault may have licked his way to the top of the boot, but he didn’t stay there by paying the full market amount for art that he could have saved a bundle on buying in bulk; and from someone with good reason to hate his guts, yet. What else did he get for his ten grand?”

  She slugged me.

  It took me by surprise. I’d braced myself for a good old-fashioned smack, but a full-scale punch to the button is a different movement altogether. I barely managed to turn my head in time to catch it on the ear. It was the side opposite the bandage or I’d have gone down. As it was, a black fishnet drew tight around my eyeballs and I had to rely on instinct over aim when I hooked a foot behind her ankle and pulled. She went down in a burst of blue silk and flashing legs. One sandal went flying. I spread my feet and waited for the worst.

  She laughed.

  Not a snicker. Not a pep-squad giggle. She rolled half over on her side, drew in her knees, and guffawed like a Teamster. I saw her fillings.

  It wasn’t hysteria. It was infectious as hell. I caught up with her, leaning on the chaise, and kept up until it looked like we were both going to hurt ourselves. Then I said, “All right, all right,” and stuck out a hand.

  She grasped it, got her feet under her, and sprang up. She moved so quickly I backpedaled in case she wanted to try for the other ear. But she took back her hand and fumbled for the tie to her kimono, breathing heavily. She looked around for her other sandal.

  “It shot over the fence,” I said. “Do the Lions know about you?”

  “You should’ve seen the look on your face. I bet you wet your pants.” She used a corner of the robe to wipe her eyes. “My father wanted a boy so badly he had the hockey equipment all bought. He showed m
e how to throw a left hook that kept me a virgin through high school.”

  “You must’ve been as popular as Latin.”

  She laughed again, a short gush, apropos nothing. “Oh, my side. I’ve been working eighty hours a week getting ready for an anniversary gala that’s eighteen months away. I’d hire more help, but the kids I can afford to employ part time all want to be Andy Warhol. They wouldn’t touch a broom if I tied a cheeseburger to it. It’s just me and Jean. Also I’m waiting for a bank decision on an expansion loan. It was either you or the branch manager. I need that loan.”

  “You could mug someone.”

  “Did I hurt your head?”

  “Woman’s prerogative.” I stopped fooling with the bandage and went for that cigarette. “How’s your right cross?”

  “Not as good as my uppercut, but I won’t throw that either. To answer your question, Arsenault wanted twenty prints: Five Lautrecs, three Gauguins, one Monet and one Manet, two Van Goghs—”

  “I thought it was Van Gock.”

  “Two Van Gos, four Turners, four Gruns. He didn’t ask for anything else and I didn’t offer it. I did offer him the standard break on volume. He didn’t want to hear about it.”

  “Which fist did you offer it to him in?”

  She took off the other sandal and tossed it after its mate. She was almost short in her bare feet. Standing next to Furlong she would have looked like a young girl. “I could have been more cordial. I wasn’t in a financial position to be nasty. And I suppose I had come to the conclusion by then that success on one’s own terms is worth more than a wedding spread in People. Anyway, my conscience was clear. It still is. Arsenault could have resold the prints the next day for a profit. By now their value has increased ten percent.”

  “You weren’t suspicious?”

  “I was curious, but not enough to ask questions that might blow a sale I needed. I’ve asked them of myself, and I’ve come up with an answer. I think he came to atone.”

  “For the picture?”

  “For everything. His conscience wasn’t clear.”

  “It came cheap,” I said. “He cost you millions.”

  “That was just a start. If you’d asked me straight out instead of going to Jean behind my back, I’d have told you he asked for estimates to commission high-quality prints to be displayed in all of Imminent Visions’ offices nationwide and in its show houses on the West Coast. We were discussing a half-million-dollar order.”

  “How far did it get?”

  “It was still going on when he—died. His secretary was supposed to call me last week with his choices from the catalogue I sent. Obviously she was distracted by her employer’s murder.”

  I flicked ashes on the redwood boards at my feet. “He never brought up your past association?”

  “Never. I wasn’t going to mention it if he didn’t. In retrospect, it was his whole attitude that makes me think he felt guilty. He stammered and seemed unsure of himself. Not at all what you’d expect in a high-powered young shark. I think”—she pulled her robe closer and tightened the sash—“well, now I’m projecting.”

  “Projecting what?”

  “What happened to him, his murder. Projecting it onto his behavior at the gallery. No, damn it, I’m not either. I thought the same thing at the time.”

  I waited while she took another hit from the watery stuff in her glass.

  “All the time he was in the gallery he reminded me of someone who was finally getting around to something he’d been putting off for a long time. It seemed to explain why he didn’t want to take time discussing a discount. Like he was cleaning out his desk.”

  “Getting his affairs in order?”

  The doorbell rang. The chimes drifted back toward us like something happening in someone else’s life. She tugged down the kimono.

  “That will be my sculptor. Will you leave quietly, or do I have to rough you up some more?”

  I held up my palms.

  “How is Jay?”

  I lowered them. “Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s still at the Marriott.”

  “I started to go see him,” she said. “I had my car keys in my hand. I didn’t use them. I couldn’t think of anything to say when I got there.”

  “That’s what hello is for.”

  “So then he says hello back. Then what?”

  “The heat. The Tigers. The flight from California. Who played Dobie Gillis’ father. What do I look like, the president of a singles club? Punt.”

  The doorbell rang again. It was part of her life now. She picked up her towel and folded it.

  “This bird thing,” she said. “What happens if the crocodile closes its mouth?”

  “I was a little slow getting my head out the last time.”

  Twenty-three

  BARRY STACKPOLE WAS WORKING the sabbath at the cable station on Southfield Road, editing videotape with the aid of two monitors in a small room packed with electronic gizmos and strange life forms mutating in the bottoms of polystyrene cups. I found him perched on a turning stool with both hands occupied and a ham-and-cheese sandwich clamped between his teeth.

  “Be wiv oo inamint,” he said through the ham and cheese.

  “A minute’s all I need.” I transferred a stack of scripts bound with colored construction paper from a plastic scoop chair to the floor and sat down. My back started sweating as soon as it touched the plastic. Most commercial buildings don’t run their air conditioners weekends.

  Barry had on pleated khaki slacks and an open-weave shirt that showed the lean musculature in his chest. His empty pants-leg dangled off the end of the stump. The prosthesis leaned in a corner, its harness hanging and a blue-and-white-striped Reebok laced on its fiberglass foot.

  With a triumphant grunt, he punched a button, snapped a dial, and took the sandwich from his mouth—all but one bite, which he swallowed and chased with whole milk from a tall glass.

  “I’m brilliant,” he said, leaning back against the console on the other side. “Useless to deny it. What do you think?”

  “What do I think of what?” I was looking at freeze-frames on the monitors. The one on the right showed a middle-aged man hemmed in by reporters and camera operators on the steps of the City-County Building. The one on the left showed a different middle-aged man flanked by two men half his age crossing a sidewalk.

  “You need to keep up on current local events. Don’t you know the guy on the right?”

  I looked again at the man on the steps. “Candidate for city gaming commissioner. I saw his picture in the paper this morning.”

  “Just a second.” He clattered some keys on the computer board in front of him. The other monitor zoomed in past the shoulder of the middle-aged man on the sidewalk and closed in on the face of one of the younger men with him. “Now what do you see?”

  I looked from one monitor to the other. The family resemblance was hard to miss. “Father and son.”

  “Uh-uh. The footage on the left is historical, thirty years old. It’s the same guy. Look at this.” He clattered some more keys. The young man moved out of the frame and I got a closer look at the older man on the sidewalk.

  “Sam Lucy. I’ll be damned. Hello, Sam. I thought you were dead.”

  “You know he is. I got this last week from the FBI under Freedom of Information. Sixteen seconds out of four hours shot outside the Flamingo in Vegas, where Lucy attended a summit conference with the heads of the five biggest mob families in America under Johnson. What do you suppose our would-be casino watchdog was doing hanging all over dear old Sammy the Hammer back when the world was young?”

  “Conducting his own independent investigation, no doubt.”

  “Oh, no doubt.” He hit two keys simultaneously. Both screens went dark. You wouldn’t have known from the way he manipulated his fingers that Barry was missing two. He was luckier than Hurricane Bob Lester, but more sensitive about the condition, and wore a white cotton glove on the injured hand in public. “I got a tip from an old snitch
I thought was long dead. He’s running a used car lot in Tecumseh and wants me to plug it on the air. What he doesn’t know is I’d buy out his stock for something half this good.”

  “When do you go to air?”

  “My producer would want me to wait for the August sweeps, but that’s like asking to get scooped. Worse, city council may reject his appointment on whatever grounds, in which case the story turns into a pumpkin. We go tomorrow. This could mean an Emmy and a Pulitzer.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I went into mourning when the old mayor stepped down. I thought it was the end of the gravy train for thug-spotters like me. Then the new gang rammed casino gambling through. The station signed me to a new five-year contract the day after the election.”

  He spun to face me. He had all his hair and it was still sandy. That color never changes until it turns white overnight. He was lucky enough to fit into his old uniform if I hadn’t helped him burn it in a stateside ritual. “What’s with the head?” he asked. “Trust me, the little light goes off when you slam the refrigerator door.”

  “This from a man with a metal plate under his scalp.” I leaned forward and placed a paper bag in his lap. Inside the bag were two smaller bags. Inside each of them was a pint bottle of Haig & Haig.

  He took a look, then swiveled and stood the package on top of one of the VCRs. “I do like a man who pays his debts. Was Randy Quarrels the photographer you were looking for?”

  “No, but he gave me the name of the one who was.”

  “Anything for me?”

  “Not yet.”

  He smiled his matinee idol’s smile. The dynamite charge that had blown him and his car to pieces had denied Hollywood a younger, taller Robert Redford. He was humming. It took me a couple of bars to identify the tune: “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?”