Blood Foam: A Lewis Cole Mystery (Lewis Cole series)

by DuBois, Brendan

  Which made sort of ironic sense, I suppose. The gray man, the gray lawyer, living in a gray house. It had gray siding, black shingles, and black shutters on the windows. The yard was small but neatly kept, with only a few fall leaves making a stand on the perfectly groomed grass. There was an attached one-car garage to the right, and Carl Lessard’s vehicle, a salt-stained red Chrysler LeBaron, was parked in the driveway. There was another house to the right, and to the left—a rarity in Tyler—there was an undeveloped stretch of woods.

  Felix didn’t slow down as he drove past Carl’s house, and Paula said, “Hey, that’s the place! You’re driving right by it!”

  “I certainly am,” Felix said. “Hold on for a sec, young lady.”

  He went on for about twenty yards or so, and there was a wide dirt-and-gravel space off the road to the right. Felix pulled in, dimmed the lights, kept the engine running.

  “No need to advertise to the world that we’re here for a visit,” he said. “So Lewis and I, we’ll step out, trot up to the house for a friendly visit, a friendly chit-chat, and then we’ll come back here.”

  Paula said “No, I want to come along.”

  “Ah, but as you pointed out earlier, that’s a non-starter. Lewis and I will do what needs to be done.”

  She turned in my direction, face red. “Lewis?”

  I didn’t hesitate. “Felix is right. Three people are one too many. And Felix and I . . . we may get insistent. It’s best for you if you stay behind, so if there’s any . . . complications, you won’t get caught up in it.”

  “I can handle myself!”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “But suppose . . . and I know this is a wild shot in the dark . . . but suppose everything gets cleared up in a day or two. We find out the Stonecold Falcons have made a mistake, I pay for two tires, give apologies, and we find Mark safe and happy. What kind of reception will he get back at work if you were there when we talked to someone from his firm?”

  She seemed primed for a fight, and then she sat back in her seat. “Damn you. That does make sense.”

  “Good!” Felix said. “I’ll leave the keys here so you can listen to the radio. Climb over here and take the steering wheel. We shouldn’t be gone long. But if something unusual happens, anything at all, drive away. Lewis and I will be able to fend for ourselves.”

  “What do you mean ‘unusual’?”

  Felix opened the door. “You’ll know it when you see it.”

  I stepped out with Felix, carrying the leather shoulder holster that held my Beretta, and we walked a bit; and when we were out of view of Paula, I shrugged off my jacket, slipped on the holster, and put my jacket back on.

  “Glad to see you’re carrying,” Felix murmured.

  “Wish I wasn’t.”

  “Me too,” he said, as we approached the front of Carl Lessard’s house.

  We went up the flagstone walkway and I peered into a bay window in front, where I could see that a television was on, and not much else. Felix rang the doorbell by using the blunt end of a fountain pen. I could hear the chimes ring out, and waited, running through scenarios, points of conversation, ways of convincing Carl that he had to tell us where Mark was hiding out.

  Felix pushed the doorbell again. I peered through the window. It looked like the five P.M. news program from the main television station over in Manchester. Even from here I could hear the volume.

  Felix went to push the doorbell once more, hesitated. I nodded. “He’s not coming to the door.”

  “Nope.”

  “Still . . . I think we need to check out what we can.”

  No answer from Felix; but through some alchemy he’s able to do, his own 9mm pistol was in his right hand. In his left was a handkerchief, and he slowly opened the storm door. I had my own pistol in hand, pulled back the hammer. Putting the handkerchief on the doorknob, Felix slowly rotated it.

  It was unlocked.

  He pushed the door open and I followed him in. The living room was sparse, neat, the furniture looking like it had come in from Sears about thirty years earlier. Adjacent to the living room was a wide kitchen, and there was a hallway to the left, down which Felix disappeared. I went to the kitchen, gave it a quick glance; and then Felix came back from the hallway, his face calm and looking like it had just been carved from stone.

  “They got to him,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  I moved past Felix and started down the narrow carpeted hallway, and the dull smell of copper reached me. Felix said “You don’t have to look.”

  “Sure I do,” I said.

  There was a closed door to the right, an open one to the left. I was preparing myself as much as I could, and even then my mind refused to process it at first. My eyes saw what they saw, and part of my mind that wanted everything to be safe and secure said hey, what you’re looking at is no big deal, it must be an overdue Halloween gag or gift. There was a clothed shape sprawled out on a double bed, ankles and wrists bound by wire. Blood had stained the yellow plaster walls. There was a set of bureaus, another low bureau with a row of books. On the bureau were a few photographs, most of them black and white. I stared at the photos, just wanting to get things together.

  The photos were family portraits. I saw a man and woman at a wedding, and a couple of schoolboy shots that looked like a very young Carl Lessard. The wedding portrait was probably of his parents. A smear of rust-brown blood had dripped down the glass.

  I turned around. There was a pillow over the upper torso; on the floor, an empty two-liter soda bottle. Felix grabbed my arm.

  “Seen enough?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have listened to me.”

  “No,” I said. “I had to see this. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Outside I wanted to take a minute or five just to stand out in the cool air, take deep breaths, and feel good at being alive, but I kept on moving. Bad enough what had happened in that pleasant Seacoast ranch house, but it would be worse if some inquiring neighbors saw Felix and me enter and then leave the house and hang around the front lawn.

  Felix walked with me and said: “I know you feel like running, but no running. People walking around a neighborhood like this don’t draw attention. Runners do.”

  “Not if they’re wearing sweatpants and sneakers.”

  “Good point.”

  It was now past dusk, and streetlights were starting to come on. I said, “The TV was on loud to hide their work. They went at him and went at him, and when they were done, they used a pillow to mask the sound of the gunshot.”

  “You see the soda bottle on the floor?”

  “I did.”

  “Poor man’s silencer,” Felix explained. “Put the muzzle end through the mouth of the bottle, and aim close. Sloppy as hell; but at close range, it’ll work.”

  “Now Reeve and his crew know where Mark is hiding out. It’s going to be a rough night for him unless he’s very, very lucky.”

  Felix stopped walking. I saw what he was looking at.

  The place where he had parked the Tahoe was empty. Paula Quinn was gone.

  “Looks like it’s going to be a rough night all around,” he said. “You got your cell phone?”

  “I most certainly do. It’s in the Tahoe. You?”

  “In the Tahoe as well.” He sighed. “Well, maybe they’re in the back seat, copulating, and we’ll have a tablet when this is all done.”

  I looked around at the deserted street. I could make out the distant sound of waves coming in.

  “Felix.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Less than a day ago, I was talking with Carl Lessard. At this point, all he wanted in life was to work one more year, and then retire south to Florida, where he could have a life he’s always dreamed of. You saw what they did to him . . . in the bedroom of his own home. I don’t feel like joking right now. Let’s start walking.”

  I moved away and, silently, Felix kept beside me.

  Herbert Street soon regained its collectio
n of well-lit homes as it gently swerved to meet up with Atlantic Avenue. A few cars passed us by—none of them a Tahoe—and for a moment I wished I could take one more deep breath and keep on walking all night long, and forget the bloody horror that was splattered back in that quiet New Hampshire home.

  “You know,” I said, “if this was for Mark Spencer, and Mark only, I’d say to hell with it.”

  “I like the sound of that. So it’s for his fiancée, your former girlfriend. Why not say to hell with it? You’ve done a fair amount of work, you rescued the fair princess from certain torture and death, and you’ve just seen up front what they’re willing to do to get the information they’re looking for.”

  “Because it’s for Paula.”

  “A statement, not an answer. Why?”

  The answer came quick. “Remember what I was like when I first moved here?”

  “Sure. Bundle of nerves, spent most of your time hiding out, reading. Quick to laugh a lot, or get angry. First time we really met was over . . . well, you remember. I gave you what I thought was a fair and respectful warning to butt out. And you came over and blasted away four tires of the Benz I was driving that year.”

  “I was trying to send a message.”

  “No, you were sending something else,” Felix said, hands in his coat pockets. “That message I got loud and clear, which is why I invited you in for a beer after you de-tired my car. But what does that have to do with Paula?”

  My throat ached, thinking an old memory of an old love. “Once I came here, Paula was the first woman I was with. She helped me . . . brought me part way out of my shell, brought me back to the land of the living. I owe her that.”

  We were approaching the intersection of Herbert Street and Atlantic Avenue. The gray waters of the Atlantic were ahead of us.

  “Fair enough,” Felix said. “Latest message received, loud and clear.”

  At the intersection we trotted across the street, which led to a sidewalk that paralleled the seawall on this stretch of the road. The sidewalk was uneven, sprinkled with beach sand and small rocks that got tossed over the seawall by storm waves. Felix said “We can start walking left, get up to North Tyler and my house.”

  “That’s a long walk,” I said. “We turn right, we’ll go past the Samson Point Wildlife Preserve, and then we’ll get to my house. Quicker all around.”

  “Don’t want to rub it in,” Felix said, “but your house has seen better days. Hell, better centuries.”

  “But I have the Lafayette House across the street. With a phone. To call Paula, find out how she’s doing.” My footsteps sounded loud on the sidewalk. “She’s all right, don’t you think?”

  “She was sitting in the driver’s seat with the key in the ignition, ready to bolt at anything unusual. Chances are pretty high that’s exactly what happened. If Reeve and his buddies wanted Paula, they’d just take her out and leave the Tahoe behind.”

  “Unless they climbed in, put a gun to her head, and carjacked her.”

  “My, aren’t we the font of happy thoughts tonight.”

  “I left my happy thoughts back at Carl Lessard’s house.”

  The road curved again. Bicyclists with flashing lights fore and aft sped by us, along with the occasional car or truck, sometimes temporarily blinding us with their headlights as they hugged the curving road.

  “We should call Tyler dispatch when we get to the Lafayette House,” I said.

  “No, we shouldn’t.”

  “We owe it to Carl.”

  “To be brutal, Lewis, no, we don’t. We owe it to Paula and her man. Poor Carl . . . he’s dead, he’ll still be dead in an hour, will still be dead tomorrow. You call from the Lafayette House, dispatch will know within seconds where the call came from, and any surveillance video will instantly put you at the hotel at the time the call was made. You looking to be arrested tonight?”

  “No, I was looking to do the right thing. Like warning Carl’s partner and their secretary to get the hell out of town.”

  Felix let out a breath. “That we can do. Give me a few minutes to figure something out.”

  Up ahead were the welcoming lights of the Lafayette House. I had a thought about Hurricane Toni, gathering wind, speed, and destruction, aiming right for this stretch of coastline and what remained of my house.

  Felix said “Thanksgiving isn’t that far away.”

  “Thanks for the reminder. You getting your list of what you’re thankful for in place?”

  “I always keep that list updated,” he said. “What I’m saying is that I’m heading to Florida, away from this cold and that approaching storm, and I’m going to have Thanksgiving with my Aunt Teresa and her current boyfriend.”

  “Aunt Teresa . . . I thought she was north of ninety years old.”

  “Which is why I said current boyfriend. Look, come along, we’ll have some laughs, I’ll introduce you to some of her medical aides, and we’ll have a lot of fun.”

  “You think we’ll be done by then?”

  “By God, we better.”

  The lights grew brighter. “Let me get back to you. I’m still thinking of my house.”

  “Yeah, your poor house, but someone should think of poor Lewis. You shouldn’t be alone on that day. You should stuff yourself with turkey and then find some sweet Southern lass to work off your splurging, share some fun times with people.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t overthink it.”

  We got up to the Lafayette House main entrance, and as we walked up the paved driveway a vehicle quickly emerged from the rear of the hotel and then braked to a halt beside us.

  It was a light blue Chevy Tahoe. The driver’s-side window lowered.

  Paula leaned out. “Men. So damn predictable. Hurry up and get in.”

  I looked at Felix, and he looked at me, and I took the passenger’s seat and he climbed into the rear.

  Paula made a left onto Atlantic Avenue. “What happened that made you leave?” I asked.

  “Something unusual,” she said. “I was sitting there, minding my own business, contemplating my sins . . . when this scraggly-looking dude walked by, built like a fireplug, carrying a metal detector. He asked me to roll down the window, he asked me if this was the road to the beach. I said yes and he wanted to talk some more, so I started up the Tahoe, got the hell out of there.”

  Felix asked, “What was wrong?”

  “This time of the year, guys with metal detectors go out in the morning, not in the afternoon. Gets dark too quick. And any guy with a metal detector, he’s up on treasure hunting. He knows where the damn ocean is.”

  Paula slowed down as she came up behind an Audi taking its time. “What did you find out?” she asked.

  “Reeve and his friends got there first,” I said. “Carl Lessard is dead.”

  Paula flinched, like somebody had just struck her in the ribs. “Christ. How?”

  “Long and rough,” I said. “They were looking for information. I hope Mark is smart enough to keep moving.”

  She handled the Tahoe well, but I could see that she was shaken up, and she took a hand off the steering wheel to wipe at her eyes. “Shit,” she said; and, a while later, “Shit.”

  From the rear, Felix said, “Paula . . . my house is a mile or so up the road. Let’s head there, regroup, get something to eat, figure out our options.”

  Paula asked, “You call the cops?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Damn it, Carl was a good guy . . . okay, a bore, but—”

  Felix again. “We’ll let the Tyler cops know soon enough. But we have to do it right. We don’t have time to be interrogated, asked lots of questions.”

  Paula handled the big SUV with ease through some of the tight curves that made up Atlantic Avenue. Off to the east I could make out the lonely lights of the Isles of Shoals.

  I said “We also have to call Hannah Adams and their secretary, Kenneth Sheen. Warn them what happened.”

  “How are you
going to do that?” Paula demanded. “Say ‘hey, sorry to bother you, but your co-worker just got slaughtered over Mark’s whereabouts, so you should keep your doors and windows locked’?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  I think Paula was going to say something sharp when Felix beat her to it.

  “Up ahead, on the right,” he said. “Rosemount Lane.”

  She slowed down the Tahoe, switched on the turn signal, and we went onto Rosemount Lane. There are six homes on Rosemount Lane, and Felix lived in the remotest one, on a slight rise that had a great view of the ocean and a closely trimmed lawn. There are no trees or bushes on Felix’s property, the better to see anyone coming up to his house. It’s a one-story wide ranch, and Paula stopped the Tahoe in the driveway.

  “Come along,” Felix said. “Let’s get some things out of the way.”

  He led us up a stone path to the house, and he unlocked the front door and let us in. His house is clean and spare, with lots of Scandinavian-type furniture and not much in the way of home decoration, except for two large framed prints from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Paula and I got our coats off, and Felix said “Excuse me, just for a minute,” and he took a walk down a hallway off the living room. Paula looked oddly at me, and I took off my shoulder holster and Beretta and slid them under my coat.

  I took one couch and Paula took the other, opposite a low coffee table that bore copies of that day’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal, along with the latest copies of Smithsonian magazine. Both couches were light brown leather. She ran a hand through her hair and said “I don’t see it.”

  “See what?”

  “Besides all the rumors I’ve heard about what he’s done since he’s moved here, I’ve also gotten the impression that he’s quite the lady’s man, cutting a wide swath through the local lady folk.”

  “That’s a . . . fair statement,” I said.

  “Last summer, I heard a story about Dolores Palmer, she owns a hotel at the beach, a mini-mart, and was the money behind a new Italian restaurant that opened up on the Exonia Road.”

  “Yes, I know the place. Sofia’s, right?”