Death on the Mississippi (15 page)

“Where was Katrina killed?” Lyon asked.

Norbert shrugged as if to dispel his dreams of summer grandeur and his mental flagstoning of the island. “You mean the Loops decedent? The ME says odds are she was knocked off where we found her and not more than a couple of hours before. It fits our time frame for Douglas.”

“Was she prone when she was stabbed?” Lyon asked.

“What difference does it make?”

“The force required and the angle of penetration would differ according to her position,” Lyon said.

“The Medical Examiner said that the blade went in at a straight angle. The killer was either straddling her or kneeling next to her. The perp may or may not have used two hands to make the thrust.”

“It would only take one hand if the guy had power,” Rocco said.

“You ever see the arms on Douglas?” Norbert said.

“I found another piece,” a searching trooper yelled.

“It's mine, mine, mine,” MacIntire yelled out.

“Your men are sick, Norbie,” Lyon said.

“If you had to search for body parts for two days you'd indulge in a little black humor too,” Rocco said in the men's defense.

Bea had the household bills separated into neat piles on the breakfast-room table. She chewed on the tip of a ballpoint pen as she contemplated the open checkbook.

Lyon poured them each coffee as he thought about the force necessary to drive a slim-bladed knife through a person's sternum.

“Do you know what it costs to heat this barn?” Bea asked.

“I would have thought there would have been bruises on her chest,” Lyon mused.

“We are not on the same wave length, in fact, we aren't even in the same solar system. You inhabit a parallel universe, Wentworth. Do you know that?”

“An ordinary person would have made the thrust more to the right, rather than directly into the myocardial sac,” Lyon said.

“That proves it.” Bea snicked the phone from its wall bracket before the second ring. “Hello … Yes, Governor, Senator Dodd was very cooperative … the Commandant of the Coast Guard also.… They were not using a Coast Guard helicopter as a swimming platform. They were not drunk and I will not remove my day-care amendment from the bill.” She hung up.

“It almost makes you believe in anarchism,” Lyon said as the phone rang again. “I'll handle him. Hello.” He listened intently for a few moments and then slowly hung up.

“You really told him off, Went.”

“It was Rocco. The prints on the finger were Dalton's. They have traced the ring on the severed finger to Dalton. The lab reconstructed the writing on the paper wrapping on the finger box and found that it was to Pan's address at the resort. Dalton is dead. What I saw has been verified.”

Bea closed the checkbook. “Those bastards were going to send Dalton's severed finger with his wedding band to Pan?”

“Evidently. He was obviously their prisoner from the beginning. When they had the money and found out from him that Pan had the missing fifty thousand, they probably intended to extort it from her until I interrupted things.”

The front door slammed. “Is that you, Pan?” Bea called.

She was answered by feet running up the stairs and the resounding slam of the guest-room door. The thick walls of the old house were insufficient to muffle the sound of crashing drawers and slamming doors.

“She's broken up over Dalton,” Lyon said. “Why don't you go to her?”

“We aren't on the best of terms since my shakedown of her room. You had better offer the tea and sympathy.”

The clatter in the guest room continued as Lyon mounted the stairs and knocked on the door. He knocked a second time without response and finally called out, “Pan, it's Lyon.”

The door snapped open. Her tense face was framed angrily in the opening. “What the hell do you want? Make it snappy. I got to blow this place.”

“We're both sorry about Dalton. Is there anything we can do?”

“Are you kidding? Cut the crap! There's going to be dancing in the streets when the world learns that Dalton the prankster has really gone to that great joke-land-in-the-sky. He didn't have many friends, or did I say that before?”

“I owed him something, and I'll never forget that.”

“Well, you found him, and that makes it even. I gave him a shot at marriage and he blew it. So, I'm even. He left me a third of the partnership insurance, and now I'm in bed with those two dingbats, Sam and Randy. I'm going to help them finish the resort job, and then I'm taking my third of the profits and blowing the country.”

“You're a partner?”

“I always was on paper. Dalton said it was for tax reasons.”

“Why did he leave?”

She continued picking up heaps of clothing from the floor and stuffing them haphazardly into a suitcase. “The disappearing boat trick came in handy when the IRS got too close, and the man who phoned in the night started getting serious.”

“And you end up with fifty thousand in mad money and a third of the business?” Lyon said.

She tried to close the suitcase, but protruding items kept the locking clasps inches apart. She plunked down on it with her full weight and forced it closed. “Your sneaky wife has a big mouth.”

“We've tried to help you through a difficult period in your life.”

“I'm finished with my difficult period and now I'm going.” She hefted the bag and struggled toward the door.

“Let me help you with that,” Lyon said.

“Thanks, but no thanks.” She pulled the suitcase along the carpet and thumped it down the stairs.

Bea stood at the foot of the stairs and looked up with concern. “Are you all right, Pan?”

The suitcase slid off the last step and Pan dragged it toward the front door, but paused to look at them. “I'm just glad to get away from you nosy people.”

“What's going on with her?” Bea asked. “I apologized for going through her things.”

“Methinks she doth protest too much,” Lyon said as he brushed past Pan to stand before the front door and face her with a slightly bemused smile. “I have a few questions that concern Katrina, money, and the fact that you were the only person in the world who knew I was going out in the boat that day.”

“I'm not going to answer any of your dumb questions,” Pan said. “You people must get your kicks this way.”

“If you prefer, I'll let Rocco do the asking.”

Pan faced Bea in a manner that excluded Lyon. “I knew he'd try something when I tried to leave. He's been hitting on me since the night I arrived at this dump.”

“I don't believe that, Pan,” Bea said levelly.

“I finally let him. I just got tired of all the hassle, you know. I guess I also felt I owed him something, and so I let him do it a couple of times. Now he's pissed because I told him it's over.”

“I don't believe that either, Pan,” Bea said quietly.

“Oh, you don't? You probably think that you're the greatest lay in the world. Well, Miss Great Screw, he begged for someone younger who wasn't over the hill.”

Bea laughed. “Oh, honey child. I've been gone after by real experts. You can't reach me that way.”

“You still don't believe that I made it with your husband?”

“No, I don't. I'd stake my life on it.”

Pan bent closer to Bea as if to whisper conspiratorially, but the words were more than loud enough. “I can prove it. He's the only man I ever had, and I've had a lot, who yells ‘eureka' when he makes it.”

A stunned Bea took two involuntary steps backward. Her mouth gaped open.

“Gotcha,” Pan said as she dragged her bag through the door and across the drive to her car.

11

They stood at opposite ends of the large country kitchen as the car careened down the drive, noisily spewing gravel. Tears brimmed in her eyes. Her hands hung loosely at her sides, and she tilted slightly forward, her head lowered against her chest.

“I know I'm being dumb,” she said in a voice he could barely hear. “This sort of thing sometimes happens when you've been married a long time. I know it's not the end of the world, but why does it hurt so much?”

“It didn't happen.” He stepped toward her, but she scurried out of his way and kept the center chopping block between them. She folded her arms across her breasts as if to ward off his touch.

“Don't ever try to con a politician, Wentworth,” she said. “We're experts in that area.” Her voice had changed to a sharp cutting tone.

“I swear to you …”

“It's all over and she's gone. Just do me the favor of not seeing her again.”

“It's the word of an agitated young woman against mine.”

“It's not a question of her word, Went. It's
your
word that she repeated. I have never heard or read of anyone else in the world who said ‘eureka' when they made love.”

“I'm not that unique. Lots of people must say it.”

“If they did, the word would become generic. People would go around saying, gee, that was such a great play, book, steak, or what have you, that I nearly eureka-ed. It would become scatological, kids would write the ‘E' word in inappropriate places. You are unique and unusual, Lyon, and only you say ‘eureka.'”

“Pan didn't want to answer my questions and went on the offensive.”

“Where do you get the energy?” She left the room and walked out the French doors onto the patio as Lyon answered the phone.

She didn't turn to face him, but continued looking out over the river as he joined her on the patio. “That was Randy Dice on the phone. He's holding some sort of memorial service for Dalton at his house tonight.”

“You can't stay away from her, can you?”

“Pan won't be there.”

“What time is the service?”

“Nine.”

“That's a little late, isn't it?” She turned to face him. The tears were gone and her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “But it does give us time for you to tell me about the others.”

Lyon drove down the drive after an uncomfortable hour-and-a-half. Bea had followed him through the house insisting that he confess to all his past infidelities. He had finally capitulated and admitted his affairs.

“There have only been three,” he had said, “Elizabeth Taylor, Queen Elizabeth the Second, and Brooke Shields.”

“That's ridiculous!” Bea had snorted. “You're too old for Brooke Shields.”

He glanced at the dashboard clock. It was still two hours until the start of the memorial service. Since the atmosphere at Nutmeg Hill was less than hospitable, he had decided to use the time to speak with Sam Idelweise.

Sam lived in Wessex, a town midway between Murphysville and the resort project. The house was a brick ranch with a lawn bordered with flower beds that Bea would have appreciated. As Lyon parked in the drive, his first impression was that a lawn maintenance crew was busy at work. A second glance sorted out Sam edging a walk, a broad-hipped woman in jeans planting fledgling tomato plants with her daughter, and an adolescent boy cutting broad sweeps of grass on a sit-down mower.

Sam waved at Lyon. “Come meet the family before I pop us a beer.”

After introductions they talked moles and crabgrass for a few minutes. Evidently the family considered both events as nothing less than catastrophic. Lyon had always thought that moles were rather benign creatures who made interesting burrows. The Idelweise family considered the rodents as nothing less than a scourge of mankind who should be obliterated on discovery.

“Mole alert!” a cracking adolescent voice called from the mower. The complete family was immediately galvanized into action that was obviously part of a well-planned and practiced tactical assault. The mower boy produced a pitchfork and proceeded to jab it violently into the newfound burrow. Mother and daughter ran for the house and returned with a large canister whose hose nozzle proceeded to spray a noxious foam into the pitchfork apertures. Sam appeared from the rear porch with a .410 shotgun. He proceeded to stalk the ground as diligently as any combat soldier.

The shotgun boomed. “Got the sucker,” Sam said as he held the tattered remains of a small rodent aloft by the tail. He deposited his trophy in a rear garbage can and called to Lyon, “Let's have that beer.”

Lyon wondered if protecting the home from devious rodents fell into the same category as removing Dalton-like threats. He followed Sam into the kitchen whose glossy floor reflected their images.

Sam popped two ice-cold cans of Bud and handed one to Lyon. He sipped contentedly on his beer as he leaned against the refrigerator. “You see why I was so upset with Dalton.” He waved his hand expansively toward the remainder of the house. “I would have lost all of this. My family would have ended up living in some goddamn house trailer. I'd be carrying boards for some two-bit contractor.”

“You don't seem at all worried now. Has the partnership insurance kicked in?”

“We talked to the broker this afternoon. Thanks to you, they accepted identification of Dalton's body and cleared us for payment. Which means it's going to save the goddamn job, my house, and everything else that I own.”

“I understand that Pan is a part owner of the corporation,” Lyon said.

A slight scowl washed across Sam's face. “Well, you got to take the good with the bad. She's a fucking space cadet.”

“How do you and Randy Dice get along?”

“He's the uptight asshole financial guys usually are, but I think we each got our territory staked out. If he sticks to running the money end and leaves me alone with the construction, we'll make a good team. You know, Wentworth, I think it just might work. We're going to pull the job through and maybe even make a few bucks. And we're free from that crazy bastard Dalton.”

“As a matter of curiosity, where were you the night Dalton disappeared, and also the night of the fire on the island?”