Bad Bones (Claire Morgan) (24 page)

“Let me make sure that I understand you, Mr. Petrov. Are you telling us that Blythe Parker is a member of the Fitch family?”

“Yes. You mean, you didn’t know that?”

They did, of course. But milking him for additional information was not above her pay grade. “Are you talking about the Fitch family who live out north of Lake of the Ozarks?”

“Yes, they’ve got a regular little town out there. All the family lives together in a fenced in and guarded property that’s been in the Fitch family for decades.”

Ivan Petrov had uttered all of that with a high degree of contempt, which was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, in Claire’s biased opinion. Guarded, fenced mob compound equaled guarded, fenced regular little town in her playbook. Poor frail Blythe just couldn’t win for losing. “What can you tell me about the Fitch family, Mr. Petrov? It’s important that we know what we’re dealing with here.”

He put his hands, palms up, in the air with an expansive gesture of how-the-hell-should-I know. “They’re all just crazy. And I really mean
crazy
. Inbred, if you ask me. Except for Blythe. She’s different. She’s incredible, beautiful, fragile, ethereal.” He paused, trying to think up more adjectives that meant the same thing. Yeah, he did like his synonyms. Claire might’ve thrown in Snow White, but she waited politely and didn’t interrupt. “Especially those crazy brothers and cousins of hers. They are completely obsessive about protecting her virtue. You’ll see what I mean when you meet them. It’s a real strange place up there.”

It seemed rather
X-Files
to Claire, too, as did this interview, but it also seemed that everybody was awfully obsessive about one highly beloved albino lady. Excessively so, in her studied opinion. Why they were, though, was the pertinent question. “You’ve been out there? On the Fitch property?”

“Once, but only once. That’s about all anybody can take. Poor little Blythe had to grow up there. She had to escape like some kind of trapped animal who had to bite off her foot to set herself free.”

Cute analogy,
Claire thought,
but also here came the old pot and kettle scenario again.
Petrov was kidding himself if he didn’t see that he had imprisoned her every bit as much as her folks had. And now was imprisoning his cousin, Anna, the very same way.

“And if they’d found her, they would’ve dragged her back, hogtied and under house arrest.” Petrov gave a bitter laugh. “She had lots of guts to thwart the old man.”

Claire wondered how he had met up with the Fitch clan. Probably some kind of crooked business deal that might bear looking into, too. It wouldn’t surprise her. The whole case was getting pretty messed up, but it looked like their visit to the Fitch farm, or ’Salem’s Lot, or whatever the hell it was, was certainly now in the cards. Tarot cards, probably.

“We’ll be going out there for a death notification. Right now, however, we need to ask you where you’ve been for the last forty-eight hours, or so. Just to rule you out, you understand.”

“I’ve been here in the compound. Any one of my men can alibi me. Or Anna. That’s my cousin, who also lives here with me. We’ve been spending a lot of time together the last few days. We usually take our meals together with my sons since Blythe walked out on me. Nicky sees her as his patient at times. He might’ve even mentioned that to you.”

“No, he did not,” Claire lied with blatant nonchalance. “Then we will need to talk with this Anna. You understand, don’t you, that we’ll have to see her alone.”

“Did she suffer? Blythe’s such a fragile little thing. Did you know her before you found her dead?”

“We interviewed her about the death of her husband, Paulie Parker. Were you aware that he was beaten to death a few days ago?”

“I heard that he was murdered.” Ivan didn’t seem nearly as upset about that death. Concern for Paulie ran off him pretty much like water off the proverbial duck’s back. “Have you found his killer?”

“Not yet. You have any ideas?”

They locked eyes, but he didn’t give anything else away. He had sobbed away his initial raw and heartfelt emotions and now it appeared that he had none left, meaning a heart, of course.

“Also, we’d like to speak with your two fighters. Ike and Mike Sharpe. Are they available?”

“No, I’m afraid not. They’re on vacation.”

“Where?”

“Europe.”

“For how long?”

“They’re tired. I wanted them to get away and recharge for the championships being held later this year in Houston.”

“What about a phone number where they can be reached?”

“They’re staying at a cabin high in the mountains. I haven’t been able to get hold of them for several days. No phone reception there.”

Somehow Claire thought he was being disingenuous. “What about Anna? I guess we’ll need to see her before we go.”

“Fetch Anna,” he called out to somebody standing guard nearby, somebody with two Canton County detectives in their gun sights, no doubt.

Claire turned around in time to see a big guy saunter off down an outer hallway. She wondered how many other Petrov lieutenants were hiding behind the draperies. “Do you know why anyone would want to hurt Blythe, Mr. Petrov?”

“I know that you probably think it was me. But I never wanted to hurt her. I just wanted her to come home to me and the boys, to get over whatever it was she saw in Parker and come to her senses. I loved that woman. I still love her. I could’ve protected her from her family. She still would’ve been alive behind these gates.”

Bud said, “So she had no enemies that you know of?”

“Are you serious, man? Blythe? She was an angel. She looked like an angel, and she was one. She made me a better man when she married me.”

If he was a better man now, Claire would have hated to see what he’d been before the nuptials, since he was presently a cold-blooded killer, drug dealer, and probably arms dealer, too. Not to mention all-around jerk of the universe and smart aleck. Maybe he meant that Blythe made him attend mass with her or go to confession now and then.

“Can I have her body?”

Okay, that just sounded just so damn creepy. Visions of Hitchcock’s
Psycho
cellar came to mind, swinging bare lightbulb, and all.

“I’ll have to check on that, sir. Usually, the body is released to next of kin.”

“If you let those damn albino Fitches have her, they’ll bury her inside that farm, if they even bury her at all. Being buried in that hellhole is the last thing she’d ever have wanted.”

“We’ll have to get back to you on that. Perhaps she left some instructions with her lawyers.”

Anna walked into the room behind them, and Ivan jumped up, Mr. Gentleman to the core, all of a sudden. She had a feeling this guy had as many personalities as that mentally tortured girl in
Sybil
.

“Anna, dear, this is Claire Morgan and Bud Davis. They’re detectives from over at Lake of the Ozarks. Our darling Blythe is gone. They found her body. She was murdered.”

Anna indeed looked horrified at that news, but she hid it quickly. She glanced at them and nodded, doing a pretty good acting job herself. Man, they ought to hand out Oscars at the Petrov compound. “How awful. I am so sorry, Ivan. Blythe was an exceptional woman.”

Ivan grabbed his cousin bodily and held her tightly, obviously needing somebody to cling to. Claire was just glad it didn’t have to be her. Anna was watching them over his shoulder, her fine blue eyes saying:
What the hell are you doing here? Didn’t you hear what Nicky said about us? Get out, flee while you still can, you silly goose!

A bit disconcerting? You bet.

Finally, Anna disentangled herself from her emotional and bloodthirsty killer cousin and turned to them. “How do you do, officers? I’m Anna Kafelnikov. I understand that you wish to speak to me. Is it about our poor Blythe?”

“Yes, we’ll need to talk to you in private, if that’s all right.”

Anna looked at Ivan, ostensibly for permission. He nodded, and then she said, “I was just getting ready to take a walk in the gardens. Perhaps you would like to accompany me.”

Since the temperature was in the teens outside, Claire was fairly certain that Anna was telling them that the entire house was bugged to the rafters, or there were hidden cameras or peepholes in the woodwork. “That would be fine, ma’am. Please lead the way.”

Outside, they moved into a garden of sorts, one now heavily coated with snow and ice, but the paths were cleared and safe enough for some very cold and unpleasant strolling about. As they walked along together, their breaths smoky in the crisp wintry air, the sun sparkled against all the snowdrifts and ice encasing the tree limbs in a blinding display of natural beauty that made Claire long for her sunglasses. Anna kept up the pretense a bit longer, probably unsure about Bud’s allegiances. So Claire did, too. Maybe Petrov wired Anna for interviews like this. Black would probably think so. Black also probably thought Petrov was Satan, by the description he had given her. So far, Petrov wasn’t any better or worse than any other godfather she’d met up with. But she’d only seen his polite side, so there you go.

“Was Ivan Petrov here in the compound the last three days, Ms. Kafelnikov?”

“Yes, he was. At least, I saw him every day. If poor Blythe was killed at the lake, I doubt very much that he had time to make the trip so far away and come back in time for dinner every night. We usually take every meal as a family, and dinner is at four. He didn’t miss any lunch or dinner for the last fortnight.”

That was an antiquated way of saying two weeks, Claire recalled. “And his men? Did you notice any of them being absent long enough to make a couple of folks turn up dead at Lake of the Ozarks?”

“They come and go at will. There’s no way that I can keep track of all of them, even if I wanted to.”

“Do you know anyone who might want both Paulie Parker and his wife dead?”

They stopped beside a frozen pond that nearly blinded them with its icy glare. “I do know that Blythe had a, well, I guess you’d say an unorthodox type of family. There was a lot of ill will among them. She never really explained it all to me, but I did understand that they were a rough bunch and that she was afraid of them. She endured a rough life, in general.”

“Was her family rougher on her, than others that you might know of?”

That was a veiled reference to Ivan and his cretins, albeit a clumsy one, and one which Anna picked up on right away. “Probably, yes.”

Hell, that was pretty damn rough, Claire would say. At least, according to Black’s opinion of their weepy host. “Is there anything else that you might be able to tell us, ma’am?”

More veiled references, not exquisitely done. Claire searched the other woman’s face.

Anna said, “Not at this time, but I’m going to give this a lot of thought and if I think of anything at all, I will try to get word to you.”

Good enough. She was probably wired, or Petrov had sensors out in the garden or listening devices on the roof. Jeez. No wonder Blythe and Anna wanted out of the compound. But for an afternoon spent in a mob crib, hobnobbing with dastardly criminals, they were still pretty much in the dark. Now everybody was pointing fingers at the Fitches, who, by all accounts, were a bunch of morons and idiots and inbred cousins, but probably morons and idiots and inbred cousins with lots of sharp knives and loaded guns and witch-burning pyres. Which was not all that different than most of their cases of late. She bid Anna good-bye and left the compound with Bud, not feeling good about anything, especially about the idea of telling Black she had visited the monster in his lair after she had promised him she wouldn’t. Oh, well, he’d just have to bite the bullet and get over it, just like he always had to do since meeting up with her.

Fortunately for Claire, Black didn’t call her until his plane had landed in Camdenton and he was in the chopper and almost home to Cedar Bend Lodge. She had been back from St. Louis for about an hour, and now sat in Black’s private indoor heated lap pool on the bottom floor of the hotel, the one with the huge plate-glass windows overlooking the lake and marina and heliport. She decided it wiser to tell him over the phone, considering how intense he got when discussing Ivan Petrov’s villainous attributes.

Black said, “Hey, I’m almost home. Ten minutes at the most. Be ready for me.”

Oh, she was ready for him, all right. Ready for an argument like no other in human history. “Good deal. How’re all things on Governor Nicholls Street?”

“All good. Nice weather. How’s your case coming along?”

“Okay.” Claire took a deep breath, and then another more bracing one. She could already hear the thump of rotors in the distance. Hell, she was more reluctant to tell Black this little bit o’ bad news than she had been about entering Petrov’s den of iniquity. She dove in and hoped for the best. “Well, just so you know. Bud and I had to go over to the Petrov compound earlier today and interview Ivan and Anna.”

Silence. Heavy, pissed-off, angry, irked, I’m-gonna-throttle-you-with-my-bare-hands silence. She’d heard that from him before. Once, maybe. Then Black said, “Did I not ask you not to go in there alone, Claire? Did you not promise me that you wouldn’t?”

“You did, but can’t say I remember promising you anything. Maybe intimating it slightly, but listen up, though. I wasn’t alone. I was with Bud, and Charlie told me that we had to go inside and sweat him. Charlie’s my boss. He trumps you on this one, Black. Sorry. That’s just the way it is.”

“Good God, Claire, what the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Let’s talk about it later, when you get here, okay? Call me then, after you get over it.”

Claire clicked off, and immediately headed off down the pool in another hard lap in the nice warm water. The heat coming off the pool and hot tub fogged up the windows pretty good, but it felt lovely to unwind and work out her muscles, even if Black was as mad as a swatted hornet. The snow drifts made it a little difficult for her habitual daily run but the swimming was sweet, and done inside, and as warm as summer sun. She came back to where the hot tub gushed over into the lap pool and sat on the bottom step, where she was mostly submerged in the water, and watched the heliport out on the point.

This little delay in their unhappy conversation would get Black used to being mad at her and ready to calm himself down like a good shrink should. The helo appeared from out over the lake in about two minutes and she watched it set down on the cleared landing pad. Then she watched Black jump out and head up the marina toward the hotel. Uh-oh, he was trudging. He always trudged when he was ticked off at her, and there was no loose-limbed and relaxed stride in sight, which was his usual way of getting from here to there.

Black headed straight for the door that led to his private penthouse elevator, and she waited, curious about how long it would take him to call and want to resume their oncoming huge fight. It didn’t take him long. Her phone rang, and she punched on. “Hi, sweetheart, I’m so glad you’re home. I just missed you so much,” she gushed sweetly.

“Where the hell are you?”

“Down in the lap pool. Come swim with me. Loosen up a little. You know, veg out, get it on with me in the hot tub ASAP.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

It was more like twenty minutes, but that was okay. More time for him to cool off. She got all sixty of her daily laps in before he showed up. He finally made his appearance, already in his swim trunks and long black terry-cloth robe. He trudged toward her, and he was still not happy. She just waited, calm thus far. Let him make the first move. He was the one who was uptight, not her. His first move was just to get in the pool and start his own series of laps. That went on for a great long while until she got tired of the silent treatment and got out and wrapped up in her matching terry-cloth robe and headed for the door. She stopped with her hand on the lever and reconsidered the wisdom of that move. Okay, maybe he had a right to be upset. She had promised, sort of. Not on her life, or anything, and she had left herself a caveat, which he probably just didn’t catch. So she returned to the pool and waded down the steps and waited for him to work off his miff. It took at least twenty more laps. Then he sat down across from her, panting a bit and still frowning in an openly annoyed fashion. He looked good, though, with his black hair all wet and slicked back and those intense blue eyes.

“Okay, I know you’re ticked off,” she started out, but didn’t get far with that line of meeting him halfway.

“Ticked off doesn’t even touch what I’m feeling right now. Don’t you ever listen to a word I say, Claire?”

“Look, I’ll give you some anger, okay, but don’t think I’m gonna sit here and let you jump me for doing my job.”

“Do I ever?”

“Yeah. You do. You’re doing it right now.”

“No, I’m not. But this is something I happen to know about. Did you just casually stroll in there and confront Ivan about Paulie Parker’s murder? Good God, Claire.”

“No, I did not. Actually, if you must know, I strolled right in and confronted him about Blythe Parker’s murder.”

That got him good. “Blythe is dead? When? How?”

“You see, you need to learn all the facts before you start getting all hot under the collar and jumping me.”

“When? How?”

“Yesterday. At her house. With a slit throat and lots of broken bones and a headfirst dive out her bedroom window.”

“Oh, my God. How’d he take it?”

“Not good. He loved her true, trust me on that. If he was pretending about his feelings, he can land a role in the next Tom Cruise picture.”

“He didn’t do it. Like I told you, he was obsessed with that woman. Totally obsessed with her. Pathologically obsessed.”

“I gathered that by his flood of wet-to-the-touch tears. And just so you’ll calm down, after a tacky comment or two, he was as polite as polite could be. A real gent. He must think the world of you.”

“He’d kill me as soon as look at me.”

“Didn’t get that vibe, but he was obviously trying for nice.”

“You did a very stupid and dangerous thing today.”

“That happens when you’re a homicide detective.”

“Tell me about it.”

“And I resent the word
stupid.
We were acting under direct orders.”

“The direct orders were stupid.”

Okay, and there lies the rub. And right where it always had been. Her job was a thorn stuck so deeply into his protective instincts that he couldn’t begin to pull it out. Trouble was, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to pull it out. Claire frowned. She didn’t even like her own damn analogy. Crap. She didn’t want there to be thorns in their relationship, but there were, and she couldn’t get them out, either.

“What?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Black. I’m just sorry that my job makes you crazy. That’s all. It’s usually the only thing we ever fight about.”

He sighed and let go of some of the anger. “It’s not your job, Claire. You love it. I know that. I only get crazy when you put yourself in unnecessary danger, like you did today.”

“It
is
my job. You know it is.”

“I’m not asking you to give up your job, damn it. I just wish you’d go private so you can pick your cases.”

Well, that was a relief, because she wasn’t going to give it up, not any time soon. “How would you like it if I insisted you give up your job and do something else?”

Big frown. “I wouldn’t like it, but my job isn’t dangerous.”

“Your little covert trips with your buddies never present any danger? That’s what you’re saying? Seriously?”

“Okay, I get your point.”

“Alrighty then. I rest my case.”

They stared at each other, and then he said, and yes, rather begrudgingly, “I missed you. It’s good to be home.”

“I missed you, too.”

Black reached out his hand toward her with his fingers spread apart. That was what he did when he wanted to make love to her. And any time he did that and she threaded her fingers through his, pleasure came a-calling, and plenty of it, and plenty fast.

“C’mere, Claire.”

“No problem.”

She entwined her fingers with his, and he squeezed them and pulled her toward him. They smiled at each other, and then she sat down on his lap, and that was that. At least it would be until tomorrow, when she told him that she and Bud were paying an official visit to a fenced-off farm containing a bunch of crazy hillbilly nut jobs by the name of Fitch.

 

 

Early the next morning, Claire and Bud headed out to hillbilly heaven, neither one particularly craving the opportunity to hobnob with aforementioned Fitches, about whom they’d heard nothing good in the slightest. Surprisingly, however, Black didn’t seem to mind her going out there, at least not with the same outrage he did when she visited Ivan Petrov. He just told her to be careful and wear her GPS tracking device so he could find her when she inevitably got herself into trouble. Not
if
she got into trouble, mind you, but
when
she got into trouble. Oh, he of little faith.

When they had finally circumnavigated the belly-tightening road curves long enough to reach the entrance to the Fitch property, they stopped out on the blacktop road and stared at the big sign over a substantial-looking locked iron gate.
FITCHVILLE
, it read. Oh, brother. Maybe she ought to name her cabin,
CLAIREVILLE
, and put up a big sign designating it as such. She laughed to herself at that visualization. Maybe even
BLACK AND CLAIREVILLE
.

Bud stared up at the sign and the smaller one underneath it which read:
NO ADMITTANCE POSTED PROPERTY.
He said, “I thought you were kidding about that being the name of this place.”

“I
was
kidding.”

“They’ve got a button there. Ready to go inside and meet the famous Fitches?”

“No, let’s drive up the road a ways and see how far their barbed wire fence goes. I’ve got a feeling they’ve got their own tiny kingdom inside that row fence. Maybe even a castle with a moat and knights and a dragon, or two.”

“I could go with the dragon possibility.”

Bud drove on, but Claire turned out to be right about the size of the farm/cult/commune. The fence along the thickly wooded property snaked along the tarmac for at least three miles. When the fence finally took a right-angled turn and snaked up a hill through some even heavier woods, they pulled over and climbed out. Claire picked up her binoculars off the backseat, and her Moss high-powered rifle with its super-duper nightscope.

“Okay, let’s take a little hike up this way. See if we can get a look-see at what we’re dealing with. And yes, I’m feeling a little insecure about walking blindly into this place. The heralded tales of woe concerning Fitch people are large and rampant and off-putting.”

“Tell me about it.”

The snow was deep and untouched, and they left a wide and wallowing trail behind them, Bud in the lead, Claire right behind him. But the crisp winter air was as refreshing and bracing and cold as Hudson Bay ice fishing. So was the wind, which was picking up. Back at her cabin, Claire had never seen the lake so frigid and clogged with ice. The mother of all winters had indeed paid them a call this year.

After ten minutes of slogging their way up a steep incline, Bud decided the trek was ridiculous and unnecessary. “Come on, Claire. This is pointless. Look up there, it goes on forever.”

“I wonder how the Fitch family got their mitts on all this land. Good grief, nobody owns farms this big anymore.”

“I’m freezing. I’m not dressed for fighting my way through deep snow drifts.”

“Here, let me forge the trail for a while. You’re from Atlanta.”

“Can you honestly say that you’re not cold? No, you cannot. Your face is red and your lips are chapped already. Let’s go back to the Bronco, warm up the heater, and then hold our interviews in some nice warm Fitch farmhouse.”

“Aha. Pay dirt. At last. Just when I was losing you to the call of luxurious heat and warmth.”

Scrabbling her way up to a sheer rock outcropping that jutted out at the top of the rise, she beheld her first panoramic view of the shallow snow-covered valley stretching out below them. It looked like Fitchville was indeed a tiny little self-proclaimed town. In fact, it looked like something old-timey settlers on their way to California might have built when they got tired of jouncing along the Oregon Trail in those springless covered wagons. She had the urge to look for those self-same covered wagons, but she nixed that when she saw some cars parked around. Mostly pickup trucks and four wheelers painted with brown and green camouflage. She sat down on the rocks and put the binoculars to her eyes. Close up, the place looked even more like a scene out of
Unforgiven
. There had to be a saloon down there with girls dressed like Madonna in her cone bra heyday.

“See any dadgummed Fitches?” Bud said, and then he laughed at his own joke.

Claire laughed, too. “This is so way freaky that I can barely believe it. Look at those log cabins. All of them have wood smoke coming out of the chimneys. What year is this again? 1850?”

“Yeah, and I bet they’re warm as toast down there. We could be, too, Claire. Wouldn’t that be better’n wadin’ through snow up to your waist?”

“Can it, already, Bud. I’m gonna buy you six pairs of thermal underwear, just to keep you quiet on days like today.”

“I’ve got some of that stuff on, damn it. Two layers. Not helping, I’d know.”

“You act like it never got cold in Georgia.”