by Nero Blanc
“And his buddy?”
“Al. They were two senior citizens! People like that don’t burn down buildings.”
Lever sipped his coffee. “Lonnie Tucker told me folks were pretty upset about the new construction at the Quigley site—”
This time it was Rosco who interrupted. “So the fire marshal believes the arson was an amateur job?”
Lever nodded. “He’s still out at the location, but that was his initial read. Amateurs usually make fairly typical and easily recognizable mistakes. In this situation, apparently there was a clear burn pattern commencing at an electrical outlet …” Al turned to include Belle in his explanation. “That’s the direction in which a fire burns; it’s also called a V pattern … Your pro will try to make the job look as if it were an accident—faulty wiring, that kind of thing—that’s why they’ll start it all off at a fuse box or attic light. The nonpro might try to copy that approach, but they won’t get it right—”
“But the house wasn’t occupied,” Belle interrupted. “Wouldn’t the electricity have been shut off?”
“Not if the contractor thought he could sneak in some interior work while no one was looking,” Rosco answered.
“But the site was shut down,” Belle countered.
“What can I say? There are honest guys, and there are dishonest guys. The ISD boys—building inspectors, that is—can’t be expected to hang over these guys’ shoulders on a daily basis. Speaking of building inspectors, Al.…”
“Parker said he could stay away from Taneysville; give you a week to play Parker Number Two,” Lever said. “He’s only doing it as a favor to me. Don’t make me regret this, Poly—crates.”
Martha returned balancing three large platters in her hands. “Extra syrup for Belle … pickles for Mr. Diet-conscious … salty grease for the new hubby … I don’t know how you keep your waistline, cute stuff.” Martha beamed at Rosco, who remained one of her favorites, while Lever scowled.
“Age is all he has going for him, Martha.”
“And exercise, Al.” Rosco chuckled. “Don’t forget I run almost every morning.”
“Oh, please don’t remind me, Mr. Universe. Mr. Perfect.” Lever lifted his eyes to the ceiling and bowed to Rosco in mock reverence. “You know that stuff’s murder on your heart. I’d be careful if I were you.”
“What? Grilled cheese sandwiches and fries?”
“No. Exercise,” Al growled.
“Enough, you two.” Belle laughed, then turned to Lever; “I’m still a little confused by this fire. You’ve got a burn pattern starting at an electrical outlet—why couldn’t it have been simply a short?”
“For one thing, the fuse box had already been upgraded—replaced with an all-new circuit breaker board. So a circuit breaker would have been tripped if the situation was merely an internal malfunction. For another, you’ve got traces of combustible material at the fire’s point of origin. A can of lighter fluid is all it would take in an old structure like that.”
“At the risk of playing devil’s advocate,” Belle continued, “don’t a lot of construction sites have flammable material: gas for generators, paint thinner that could accidentally—”
“Sure, but in the case of an incendiary fire—which is how this one has been officially listed—the flame will burn a heck of a lot longer at the point of origin before spreading to the remainder of the building where those items were located; i.e., you douse part of a wall with gasoline, that area’s going to see more meltdown than any other area … At the Quigley site, we’re seeing extensive damage to the electric wiring in a new section, a small side mudroom. That’s where the fire began, not the old house. And there’s sleeving, which means the insulation has come loose, and a lot of beading up or melting of the actual metal. And the fire marshal is positive when tests are done on the ashes, he’s going to find traces of something.”
“I see …” Belle finally said. “And you think someone standing on the hill near me may have been the culprit.”
“I do.”
“That’s the profile, the one that usually pans out,” Rosco added. “Unless you’re dealing with a professional … which this situation doesn’t have the earmarks of.”
Belle shuddered slightly. “But all the voices I heard sounded so upset. Horrified, really. And why not? It was a scary and tragic sight.”
Lever crunched down on a pickle. “So, aside from the two old guys …?”
Belle went into a description of the bodies and faces surrounding her, describing, without realizing it, the vestry of Trinity Church; John Stark’s wife; May Hoffmeyer (whom Rosco recognized and named); the electrician Big Otto Gunston (whose name Rosco also supplied); Stu Farmer, Otto’s sometime assistant; the mason Gary Leach; Clarice the postmistress; Amanda Mott; and Frank Bazinne and his wife.
“Sounds like quite a party,” Lever observed.
Belle’s expression grew pensive. “Well, you’d have to expect the whole town to show up, but it wasn’t any party, Al. In fact, it was really, really sad. I got the feeling everyone was sick at what was happening.”
At that moment, Martha returned with checks, more coffee, and a mound of hot fries, which she set squarely in the center of the table. “I been watching you, Al. I seen you drooling over Rosco’s food … So have yourself a ball. No one’s looking.”
“Except you three and my cholesterol count.”
“And who are we gonna tell?”
“My wife? I don’t trust any of you farther than I can throw you.”
Martha winked at Belle, who looked at Rosco, who answered for them all. “Mum’s the word, Al.”
Lever drew the plate of fries closer. “Wipe that smug smile off your face, Poly—crates.”
“I will if you’ll do me a favor.”
Lever effected his stagiest groan. “What is this? Blackmail by committee?”
“No committee. Just me … You remember Sid Tanner up in Boston?”
“Why do I break bread with you, Poly—crates? If you can remind me, I’d be real grateful. Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve been bringing me nothing but trouble. I should learn to keep you at arm’s length.”
“It’s Tanner’s arm I’m thinking about, Al … It needs a little twisting.”
CHAPTER 24
“Sid Tanner … of course I remember … he’s the Boston cop who first contacted Al when my father died … I knew the name sounded familiar.” Belle and Rosco were walking Kit on the near-deserted premises of what had once been the lawns, gardens, and croquet court of the Dew Drop Inn, a seaside resort hotel built in the boom days of the early 1920s. The building itself was now boarded up, the turrets, dormer windows, cupolas, and porches slightly atilt and sagging, giving it a mournful stare as if it were pining over its lost youth: the “boys” of summer with their white flannel tennis whites, the “girls” in their party dresses of printed silk and linen. Despite the former inn’s sorry state, Belle loved walking its perimeter, loved the proximity to clifftop and sea, loved, in fact, its sense of bygone enchantments. And that same affection had been kindled in Rosco and Kit—although the dog probably didn’t dwell on the finer points of historical context. “I don’t remember Al being particularly happy about dealing with Tanner,” Belle added. “For that matter, I don’t recall you taking much of a shine to him, either.”
“Your memory has not let you down.” Rosco smiled as he tossed a stick for Kit, who bounded after it, a flying fur ball of puppy enthusiasm and energy. “Of course, I never met Tanner back then, not face-to-face, but he was certainly a guy who liked to get things cleaned up and off his desk quickly—and that character trait doesn’t seemed to have changed much. I don’t think he’s a particularly bad cop, just not as thorough as I like.”
“Do you really think it’s going to do any good to have Al contact Tanner?”
Kit raced back—with the stick, naturally; and Rosco had to pause, first to wrestle it from her mouth and then to throw it again. “I’m still not buying the fact that M
ike Petri took his own life. Al seems to have a relationship with Tanner. Maybe a nudge from Al will get him to look into Petri’s death a little closer.”
Belle thought and, as she did, dug her hands deeper into her jeans’ pockets, hunching her shoulders against the cooling Sunday afternoon air. “I know I may be stepping on your turf here … but wouldn’t it be better to concentrate on Taneysville first? Petri can wait until after the election, right? One step at a time …”
Rosco paused before answering. “Something tells me there’s a connection—”
“Between Petri’s death and Gordon’s skeleton?”
“It’s a wild hunch, I know.”
“I don’t really see it.”
“I don’t understand it myself, Belle … But Petri did leave that phone message for me just before he supposedly jumped.”
“He could have been trying to contact you regarding another situation.”
“You’re right. Sure. But either way, you don’t leave a message for someone saying you’ll call back, then take a wild leap from fifteen floors up. Unless …”
“Unless?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know. That’s why I need Al to prod Tanner. Expedite delivery of the case file if nothing else. Get me some hard facts: priors, possible criminal associates, absolutely anything at this point.” Rosco turned to Belle. “Petri was a sleazeball. No doubt about it. Dirty cop turned equally shady PI. Someone you’d never want to invite over for a meal—unless you locked up the valuables first … But he leaves a message … then jumps …? Come on! It stinks. Something tells me Petri was being muzzled. In a permanent fashion. I’d also like to see Tanner send a forensics team into Petri’s apartment. I want to know if he was alone Friday night.”
“Someone got to him before you did.” Belle nodded slowly. “… I follow that hypothesis, but I’m still in the dark about who your supposed murderer might be.”
“Tree Hoffmeyer hired me to solve the cold case in his hometown, right?”
“Right …”
“And he alluded to the fact that his opponent might use the issue of an unsolved down-home crime against him.”
Again, Belle nodded thoughtfully. “Right …” Then her head jerked upward, sending her fine blond hair jittering in the breeze. “Are you thinking … are you suggesting that the incumbent is somehow responsible for the skeletal remains being dumped on Gordon’s property? And Petri knew something?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking yet. But you know me and my feeling about coincidences—”
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“That about sums it up. Seems to bring it all full circle, too.”
“You mean, about the arson—?”
Rosco looked at Belle. “You tell me … Of course Petri died before the Quigley house burned.”
They walked on while Belle began murmuring almost to herself. “SMOKE SCREEN … SMOKE ’EM OUT …”
“Huh?”
She kept plodding forward as she spoke, her gaze fixed on the leaf-strewn grass. “Those were answers to an anonymous puzzle I received the other day.”
“Refresh my memory—did you tell me about this? Because if you did, I must have missed it.” Rosco’s tone had taken on a worried, protective air.
“Mmmm-hmmm,” was the nonanswer. “SMOKING—”
“Hey, Belle! Hello? Wake up.”
She lifted her eyes from the ground. “What?”
“You didn’t tell me you’d gotten an anonymous puzzle.”
“I told Sara.”
“Oh, great. Fine. She’s my secretary now? And what was her reaction?” But before Belle could answer, Rosco continued in an equally concerned tone: “Look, you know how weird and spooky things got the last time an anonymous puzzle-guy appeared on the scene—”
“That was Sara’s response, too,” was Belle’s airy reply.
“Belle!”
She turned to face him, her face suddenly flushing and her shoulders squaring off. “Rosco. I’m not a baby, and I don’t need my hand held—” Then she saw the change in his own expression: hurt mingling with something that fleetingly resembled humiliation. “I know I’m being blunt, but—”
“It’s time for me to back off.”
“I didn’t say that …”
“You didn’t need to.”
He smiled then—a little crookedly—while she smiled gently back, and after a second’s pause held out her hand. “I’m being cautious, Rosco. I am! I promise.”
“I don’t know about cautious,” he said as he squeezed her fingers.
“Okay … sensible—”
“Still not an adjective I’d use to describe you … Obstinate would be more like it—”
“That’s what Sara said, too.”
Rosco raised his eyebrows. “It takes one to know one.”
“And that’s precisely what I told her myself.”
Rosco shook his head and stifled a chuckle. “So, you received a mystery crossword, and decided to hide it—”
“I didn’t hide it! Don’t be so dramatic! It simply wasn’t relevant—”
“And now it is?”
Belle looked at her hand in her husband’s, their fingers so effortlessly entwined that she almost couldn’t feel where her skin began and Rosco’s ended. “A Burning Question … that was the puzzle’s title—the theme being answers containing the word smoke: SMOKE AND MIRRORS … SMOKE SIGNAL … and now we have a case of arson in Taneysville …”
Kit barked and dropped her stick on Rosco’s feet, but the puppy, for a moment, was ignored. “And you’re guessing that coincidence has nothing to do with it …”
Belle nodded. “To quote someone I’m quite fond of: ‘That about sums it up.’”
The couple resumed their walk while Kit, now bored with these decidedly dull, slow, two-footed creatures, raced on ahead, bounding after rabbits or even leaves that whisked squirrel-like across the rolling landscape.
Finally Rosco spoke again. “Maybe it comes back to the simple fact that Alex Gordon has an enemy … Maybe we need to be looking for possible motives out in Taneysville: a construction worker who wasn’t hired—”
“And that person would be angry enough to bury a skeleton on Gordon’s property and then set fire to the house …? I don’t know, Rosco. That’s behavior that not only indicates a high degree of rage, it’s premeditated—and pretty sophisticated … Besides, where did this frustrated local find the skeletal remains in the first place?”
“That’s it. That’s the ten-dollar question.”
“Sixty-four thousand.”
“Huh?”
“The expression you’re looking for is: ‘the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’”
“Eh, what’s a few bucks here and there?” Rosco put his arm around Belle and drew her close. “So, what’s your theory, Miss Mathematics?”
She nestled close, but her sigh remained one of frustration. “You got me … My research into Gordon’s former wife’s disappearance did nothing but point out what a swell guy he was … No charges pressed against the business partner who absconded with the dough, a lot of ‘no comments’ as to his wife’s motives. In print, he never lashed out at her, or her new fella—just took it on the chin … a good guy done a dirty deed … Reading the microfiche—brief as the articles were—made you admire his sense of decency and fair play. And, although the authorities alluded to an impending inquiry into the missing funds, it clearly didn’t become breaking news since Far Yukon isn’t a publicly held entity. Apparently, it was up to Gordon to pressure the Boston DA’s office if he expected an investigation of his fraudulent partner and wife.”
Rosco let out a frustrated groan. “That’s who we need to talk to, Gordon’s ex-wife. But she’s in California with his daughter. Sounds like she’s keeping her distance, too—hasn’t seen him in eight years.”
“Eight years? She ran off over fifteen years ago. That’s what the articles indicated. Meaning he’s had contact with her si
nce she left him … Darn, that scratches my other theory.”
“Is this a theory you’d like to share with me?”
“Well, his wife was a ‘trophy’ type. You know, a real babe—and very young; eighteen when they married, and barely twenty when she took off with the partner.”
“What are you getting at?”
“It’s nothing. The numbers don’t work.”
“Well, let me hear it.”
“Okay. It was kind of far-fetched, but I just thought if his wife was twenty when she disappeared—the body might have been hers. But it doesn’t work if Gordon saw her eight years ago. She would have been twenty-seven.”
Rosco pondered this information for a few minutes, then finally said, “Do you feel like doing some entertaining tonight?”
Belle shrugged. “I guess. Who were you thinking of asking over?”
“Abe Jones.”
CHAPTER 25
“No. No, really, Belle, it was really good. Great, in fact. Really great.” Abe Jones gave the statement more enthusiasm than was called for, then covered his rather disingenuous expression by lifting a mug of steaming coffee up to his lips.
It was all too much for Rosco. He exploded with a raucous laugh. “Nice try, Abe, but I’ve always been of the school that says if someone uses the word really three times in one sentence, it lacks a certain amount of sincerity. I thought you had more charm than that, or at least were a better actor.”
“You stay out of this, you jerk,” Abe shot back with a smile. “Besides, it was two sentences, not one.” He then returned to Belle. “No, really … it was great. It’s just that my mom’s tuna casseroles are … I don’t know … more tuna-ey, I guess. Hey, she’s always prone to overdo things. Maybe she puts more tuna fish in hers. Who knows? But I thought yours was great, too. Really, I mean that … The spinach was an interesting addition …”
“Thanks, Abe. It did taste a little bland to me, but I followed the recipe exactly. The chopped spinach included. Maybe I should have put more cayenne pepper in it.”
Rosco raised his hands. “Whoa, whoa … Let’s not go back to overdoing the cayenne again.”
