Death on the Diagonal (18 page)

“I suppose you’re aware that the consensus around the farm is that you started the fire—albeit by mistake?”

Polk diverted his eyes and gritted his white teeth, enough so that his jaw muscles popped out from his cheeks. “That’s right. Yeah,” he said.

Rosco suppressed a grin.
Orlando should take lying lessons from a pro like Dawn Davis,
he thought.
The guy’s rotten at it.
“Maybe you could walk me through the chain of events—what you believe might have happened to trigger the accident.”

“Well . . . it’s all . . . a little fuzzy in my head,” was the hesitant answer. Orlando was still unable to look Rosco in the eye, and he offered no further details.

Rosco tapped his pen on his knee. “Okay, I’m going to cut to the nitty-gritty, here. We’ve got a major blaze. And we’ve got a bunch of people who feel you started it. Now, it was either a true accident, or you did it on purpose—which constitutes arson and carries a hefty prison term. Insurance companies aren’t inclined to buy ‘accident’ when there’s a half-million-dollar settlement at stake. They’re looking for any reason that will let them balk on payment; which I personally don’t agree with, but that’s how it is. So I’d like you to lay out exactly how this problem transpired—whether it’s ‘fuzzy in your head’ or not.”

The barn manager remained quiet for a moment, then stood and walked into the kitchen area. “Do you mind if I light a cigarette?”

Rosco shook his head. “Go for it.”

He lit up and inhaled deeply. “It was simple. The phone rang in the tack room. I turned around real quick to answer it and knocked the space heater onto the floor, and the place caught on fire.” Orlando looked at Rosco and added an unconvincing, “It sure as hell wasn’t done on purpose.”

“And the liquor bottle in question? Did it hit the floor and break before or
after
the space heater?”

“Umm . . . before . . . no, after. The cord from the space heater dragged it onto the floor and it smashed.”

“I see. And then you tried to put out the fire, is that it?”

“No. No. It happened too fast. I was more concerned about getting the horses into a safe area, so I ran to open the place up.”

Rosco leaned forward on the couch. “Mr. Collins said that when he looked out from his house he could see someone swatting at the flames with a horse blanket. So, I gather that wasn’t you? Was there someone else in the tack room at the time?”

Orlando shook his head. “The training operation was shut down for the day. Barn managers are always the last to leave the place at the end of a work session, you know, kind of square the place away, make sure the equipment is stored properly, and all . . . come to think of it, I guess I did try to put the fire out first. That would have been a natural thing for me to do, contain it. When it started to spread I gave up and ran to release the horses.”

“Did you answer the phone?”

“What?”

“Did you answer the phone? You said the phone rang. That’s what caused you to knock over the heater. Did you get a chance to answer it?”

“Umm . . . no. I didn’t.”

Rosco stood, walked over to the door, and then back to the couch. He paced in that fashion for a few seconds, finally saying, “If you were known to be the only person in the tack room at that time of evening, whoever was calling wanted to talk to you. Do you have any idea who it might have been?”

“No. No. I don’t know. Maybe it was Kelly. She was in Kentucky visiting her family. Maybe she tried me here in the apartment, got no answer and then rang the tack room.”

Rosco continued to pace. “On the other hand, it’s my understanding that the phone in the tack room is on a line that’s connected to every building on the farm, so if someone were to call there it would ring elsewhere, even in Mr. Collins’s house. Would your wife, an employee, do that? For a personal call? Dial a number that would risk disturbing Mr. or Mrs. Collins or his children?”

Orlando crushed out his cigarette. “Okay, maybe it wasn’t Kelly. I told you I didn’t answer the thing. Maybe it wasn’t for me at all.”

“Here’s the problem I’m having with this telephone business: that phone rings all over King Wenstarin Farms, yet no one else—Jack Curry, Mr. Collins, Chip, Fiona, Heather, Michael Palamountain, none of them—has mentioned hearing it shortly before the fire broke out. How do you explain that?”

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t the phone, maybe it was the intercom. I told you my mind’s real blurry. I only remember little bits and pieces. And then not all the time.”

“The intercom is a speaker phone; there’s no receiver to reach for.”

“There’s a button you have to push in order to talk. You hear a voice, but you can’t answer without depressing the talk button. Maybe I was reaching for that . . . yeah, I’m sure I was. It wasn’t the phone at all.”

Rosco stopped by the apartment door and turned toward Orlando. “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. And whose voice was so important that you spun around—triggering the events that produced the fire?”

Polk seemed to freeze. He stood in that awkward posture for a long moment, then finally whispered, “I don’t . . . remember.”

Rosco reached for the doorknob and flung open the door. Standing there was Heather Collins, who all but tumbled into the room.

“Oh,” she said as she recovered her composure, “I was looking for Orlando. Ah . . . that . . . spare saddle of mine? The Crosby? Do you know where it is?”

Rosco smiled and held up his hands. “Don’t mind me. I was just leaving.”

21

As Rosco drove home, he left a message on Clint Mize’s voice mail indicating he had real suspicions that there were serious irregularities concerning the blaze and suggesting that the Dartmouth Group delay payment until he completed his investigation. As far as Rosco was concerned, Orlando Polk was protecting someone, but he couldn’t tell whom, or why, for that matter. He ended the call with, “Give me five more days, max; I’ll have some answers.”

He walked through his front door shortly before six that evening. Belle emerged from the kitchen and hurried toward him, faxes in hand, although she was no match for Kit and Gabby, who reached him in half the time, jumping and yipping, their short tails wagging out of control. Rosco walked to the center of the living room rug, flopped down on his back, and the two four-legged members of the household and its two-legged male resident began rolling around like tiger cubs freed into the wild.

Belle watched this lunacy for about a minute, then observed a sardonic, “I hate to interrupt your lovefest, but I think you might want to take a look at these crosswords.”

Rosco shook himself free of the dogs and stood. The “girls” continued to grapple with one another in his absence, so he walked toward Belle and made an attempt to give her a kiss. She stepped to the side.

“What? What’s wrong?” he said.

Belle reached up and brushed a few of Kit’s hairs from his eyebrows. “I think I can wait on the smooching for a bit. Is that a new cologne you’re wearing? Eau-de-road-apple?”

“Hey, I just came from a horse farm. What do you want?”

“Well, it certainly seems popular with the canine set. Perhaps you could patent it and market it to pet shops?”

He smiled, blew her a kiss, and gave her a rundown of his conversation with Orlando Polk, concluding with, “So, we’ve got ourselves a lying barn manager and a couple of suspicious crosswords? Do we know where they came from?”

“No. That’s the weird thing.” She handed him the two sheets of paper. “I thought return phone info was always printed at the top of a fax. It has been with every other one you or I have received.”

“That’s because they were transmitted by honest folk.” Rosco examined the paper and began walking toward Belle’s office. She followed him as he added, “The information that appears in the header of most faxes is programmed into the sending machine by the owner—just like we did with ours when we bought it. If you don’t enter that data, or if you delete it, nothing appears at the other end.” When he reached the machine he lifted the receiver. “Have you called out on this line since the message came in?”

“No.”

“And no other fax has arrived since?”

Belle shook her head. “No.”

“Good. Then as long as this crossword wasn’t sent from an unlisted telephone account, we should still be able to access the source number.”

Rosco tapped *69 into the keypad and waited. He then smiled, grabbed a pen from Belle’s desk, and jotted down a telephone number dictated by an automated voice. “Bingo,” he said as he showed it to Belle. “Recognize it?”

Belle thought for a moment. “No . . . do you?”

Rosco stared at the numbers. “Not that I can recall. We can go on-line and do a reverse lookup. But let’s think about this for a minute.” He dropped down into a black-and-white canvas deck chair and began scanning the puzzles. “Clearly, both were constructed by the same person; the graph paper is marked out in a similar manner, and the handwriting looks the same. Other than that, I don’t see what’s gotten you all hot under the collar.”

Belle stepped behind him and leaned over his shoulder. Again he tried for a kiss, but she put the kibosh on it. “No way, buddy, not until you hit the showers.” Then she pointed at the “Hitchcock” puzzle. “Obviously, the real Alfred Hitchcock went to the
Family Plot
years ago, so our constructor chose the name to get my attention—”

“Which worked.”

“Correcto. And it also inspired me to resurrect the first illegitimate crossword . . . which took a bit of searching, because I’d already relegated it to the recycling bin—”

“Proving you shouldn’t be too hasty when it comes to cleaning up the house,” he said facetiously.

“Hardy har har.”

“Hey, did I say I liked the squeaky-clean look? I’m the person covered in dog fur, remember?” Rosco studied the puzzles again. “Okay . . . what else can you tell me about these two word games?”

“Both employ a theme: song titles in the first, movies in the second—”

“Well, that’s hardly a big red arrow, saying, ‘Solve me! I know who dunnit!’ ”

“Come on, Rosco, BLAZING SADDLES? How obvious is that? Does someone need to hit you over the head?”

He raised an eyebrow. “As in Mr. Polk’s accident?”

“Hmmmm . . .” was Belle musing response while Rosco gave an indulgent chuckle.

“Okay, I’ll bite. But the title is ‘To Catch a Thief,’ not ‘To Catch an Arsonist.’ And here in the middle, at 38-Across, you’ve got DAWN OF THE DEAD—which could refer to the same DAWN who’s currently cozying up to Sara and has ripped Gudgeon off for a quarter mil. We also have a DEAD Ryan Collins . . . So, how do we know what crime these crosswords apply to—if they’re connected to anything other than each other?”

“Todd Collins’s wife was killed
after
the first crossword was transmitted, so my hunch is that the puzzles have nothing to do with her death. However, I do believe the constructor is trying to tell us that Chip started the barn fire.”

Rosco smiled. “I take it you’re drawing that rather far-fetched conclusion from BLAZING SADDLES and GOODBYE MR. CHIPS?”

Belle nodded energetically. “And there’s this,” she announced as she pointed to the first puzzle. “HORSE WITH NO NAME. When Bartholomew was here he mentioned a country pub called The Horse With No Name. It’s not far from King Wenstarin Farms. Supposedly, all the riding set hangs out there.”

“Including Chip Collins . . .” was Rosco’s slow and pensive response.

“What a smart guy.”

“And what about DAWN Davis?”

“I’m assuming the reference is a fluke. Just like MIA being the solution to 3-Down in the second puzzle, or ILSA appearing at 4-Down in the first. Besides, DAWN relates to death in this instance, rather than financial chicanery.”

Rosco nodded, but didn’t speak for a moment. “I know exactly where Bartholomew’s pub is. It might be a good time for me to have a little chat with the Chip off the old block.” He glanced up at Belle. “This is all hush-hush, but Al considers young Mr. Collins a prime suspect with regard to his stepmother’s murder. He asked me to ostensibly question Chip regarding the fire, but also do some probing of his relationship with Ryan. I think I’ll swing by The Horse With No Name tomorrow at lunchtime. If I can catch him with a few beers in his belly, it may loosen his tongue.”

“Well, I certainly don’t want to be accused of spreading rumors,” was Belle’s own facetious reply, “but Bartholomew suggested that Chip and Ryan had a little fling—which is pretty darn sleazy.”

“This is interesting,” Rosco said as he pointed to 23-Across in the Hitchcock puzzle. “One of the horses I saw when I went to interview Orlando today was named FLASHDANCE.”

This time, it was Belle who paused in thought. “Do you think the barn manager’s our mystery constructor?”

Rosco laughed. “Not unless this fax number turns out to be Newcastle Memorial Hospital, which is where he was when the first crossword appeared. He was also in a semicomatose state.”

“Hmmmm,” Belle said as she strolled over to her computer and turned it on. “I wonder who is creating these . . . and why he or she won’t come forward? Any guesses?”

“Not a one. Although, I did see both Heather and FLASHDANCE in the same barn this morning. And her behavior—the person, not the horse—seemed more than a little flighty.”

Belle was about to make a smart-aleck comment about disco queens and equestriennes when her computer screen lit up. “Do you want to do this reverse lookup thing? I’m not sure how it works.”

“Sure.” Rosco crossed over and sat behind her computer. “What’s this backgammon icon?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He clicked on the icon.

“Leave it alone, Rosco.”

“What? This is what you do all day? Play on-line backgammon?”

“I don’t play
all
day. I just gets my mind off crossword puzzles for a little while. This is why I don’t let you near my computer. You start snooping around.”