Death Under the Lilacs (5 page)

Rocco left the couch and walked over to the French door leading to the patio. “How many acres do you have here?”

Lyon waved his hand impatiently. “I don't know.”

“Sure you do. You had a survey made.”

“I'm not interested in small talk.”

“I'll bet you have over fifty acres surrounding Nutmeg Hill.”

“Fifty-nine, actually.”

“There's your answer.”

“What?” Lyon shook his head. “I guess that's a rhetorical ‘what'. How much does an acre around here go for?”

“Your property overlooks the river.”

“Most of it does.”

“Ten thousand an acre, not including the house. The house alone, with access and a few acres, would go for over a quarter of a million dollars.”

“In other words, the total parcel of land would be worth over five hundred thousand. I could sell off the acreage and keep the house.” Lyon's amazed reaction was ingenuous. He had overlooked the appreciation of their property.

“Yes.”

“Do you know of anyone who might be interested?”

“I know a few developers in the area who are always looking for really desirable land—even with the tight money and high-interest situation.”

“I'd be appreciative if you would put them in touch—soon,” Lyon said.

“Will.”

The phone's ring jarred them, and they both stared at the instrument as if it were an unfriendly intruder. Lyon slowly reached for the receiver. “Yes?” He listened a moment and handed it to Rocco.

“Chief Herbert here.” Rocco listened for a few minutes, occasionally muttering an “uh-huh.” He hung up. “The latest. The Guards finished their sweep through the state forest, and it's negative.”

“We knew that from the cassette.”

“And a negative on a trace on the voice box and no usable prints on the brown envelope.”

“What you're telling me is that we're back to square one.”

Rocco walked to the door. “I got to go.” He turned abruptly. “What did Bea mean about the lilacs?”

“I don't know. She was trying to tell me something, but I can't figure out what.”

“It might come to you if you got some sleep. I'll be back in the morning with any developers I can dig up.”

“Thanks, Rocco.” The front door slammed and seconds later the police cruiser screeched down the drive at Rocco's usual frenzied pace.

Lyon stood by the bedroom window and wanted a drink, but knew he shouldn't. He wished that he smoked and knew that he couldn't. He was more a man of thought than action, and yet he wanted to drive the roads of Connecticut to look into a thousand faces for his wife. He knew he wouldn't find her. She was invisible. She was stuck away, imprisoned and held in a place he could not see.

“Where are you, Bea?” he said aloud.

She answered him. “Damn it all, Wentworth! Quit kidding around and come get me.”

He fell asleep on the couch. It was a restless, troubled sleep. She was somewhere ahead of him and he swung a hedge clipper against the clinging stalks that surrounded him. The smell of ripe flowers was overpowering. He was surrounded by lilacs, and he swung the tool in wide frantic blows to cut his way through the profuse flowers that hid her.

Lyon drank coffee in the breakfast nook and watched Rocco's cruiser careen down the drive. It was followed by a battered and dusty pickup truck of some ancient vintage. Rocco parked, swung from the seat, and leaned in the pickup's window to talk to the driver.

The pickup's occupant stepped out onto the drive and stamped heavily broganed feet on the asphalt as if to restore circulation. He was a short, heavy man with a massive head of dirty blond hair. He wore a ripped poplin jacket and work pants stuffed into muddy boots. As he followed Rocco to the front door, he looked from side to side appraisingly.

Rocco smiled when Lyon opened the door. “Lyon, I'd like you to meet Burt Winthrop. Burt's a developer from Middleburg and might have some interest in your property.”

“Come on in and have some coffee,” Lyon said and led them back to the kitchen. He noticed that Winthrop's trousers were flecked with grease, and he wondered what this man could develop other than an addition to a garage.

“You got a survey map, Wentworth?” the builder asked brusquely.

“Yes. I dug it out this morning.” Lyon spread the map over the breakfast-nook table. The two men looked down at it as Lyon served mugs of coffee.

Burt Winthrop handed Lyon his half-emptied mug. He sat down at the table in front of the survey and whipped out a slender pocket calculator from his pocket. His pudgy fingers flew lightly across the keys as he made rapid calculations from his study of the survey.

“If you're interested, I'd have to close tomorrow. I need the money,” Lyon announced.

Rocco rolled his eyes and pulled Lyon by the sleeve back into the kitchen. He whispered, “Christ, Lyon. Don't make it sound so desperate. This guy will rape you.”

“I am desperate, Rocco.”

“Close tomorrow?” Winthrop asked when they returned to the nook. “I don't know about that. You got to understand, Wentworth, that I'm just an old country boy, a builder who happened to make a few bucks. I leave the closing thing up to my lawyers.”

“That's the way it would have to be,” Lyon said.

“Well, I suppose we might do away with a title search and piggyback on the last conveyance. That is if you'll give me full warranties on your deed?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, let me give it a few more figures.” Again the fingers flew over the calculator. “I could go into my CDs and Treasuries, but I sure hate to touch that money and lose the interest. You got a nice piece of property here, lots of shoreline, but there's plenty of rocks and we'd have to do a lot of blasting. I'd have to squeeze to get enough units in here to make it worth my while.”

“Units?”

“Condos.”

“Condominiums.”

“That's right. I specialize in that. I build mostly for retired folks … folks that made a bundle from the sale of their last house and can afford a nice and expensive condo overlooking the water. You understand that a fast close will affect the price. Raising money on short notice is difficult.”

“I thought it might affect the price,” Lyon said.

“Well, folks,” Winthrop said as he stuffed the calculator back in his pocket. “Let's walk around a bit outside.”

“I'd like to hold on to the house and a few acres,” Lyon said.

“No deal,” Winthrop said quickly. “Where you got your house and a couple of surrounding acres plus access would cost me a dozen units.”

“I'll give you fifty acres at ten thousand per,” Lyon countered. “I keep the house and the remaining land.”

The pudgy man shook his head. “No deal. In the first place, your house is on the most desirable site; in the second place, if you keep the house I got to give you an easement to the highway—that cuts the remaining land in half.”

“Damn it all, Burt,” Rocco said. “This land is worth ten thousand an acre.”

“Not if he wants to close tomorrow it isn't.” He started to walk to his pickup. “Get another boy. Get someone who'll want an option for sixty days and close in ninety. Four-fifty for everything is tops from me.”

“What about the house?” Lyon asked again.

“Including the house. That white elephant is the first thing that goes, Wentworth.”

“You'll tear it down?”

“Have to. Four-fifty, close tomorrow. Take it or leave it.”

“I'll take it,” Lyon said. Lyon looked back at the house. Nutmeg Hill contained so many memories of their marriage, it seemed to radiate a vitality of its own. He knew it had to go; there was no other alternative.

“Four-fifty in certified check, and you'll have it tomorrow at noon in my lawyer's office. This is a real fire sale, isn't it?”

“You might call it that,” Lyon answered. He turned away, unable to continue looking at the little man who was going to tear down their house in order to build as many condominium units as he could legally squeeze onto the property. He felt rage. They, whoever they were, were taking everything without reason. His wife, their home, all they possessed. He wanted to fight, to take physical action of any sort that would relieve some of the pain and frustration.

He had left and taken the lantern with him. The darkness, with its attendant fears, was worse than his menacing presence. Bea stretched the chain that held her fast to the wall to its fullest extent, and felt her way along the dank walls. She could feel along three walls of the crypt, but the fourth, which contained the entrance, was out of reach.

She moved her hand lightly across the sarcophagus that held the food and water supplies. Her hand closed over a water container, and she raised it to her lips and drank greedily until water spilled out the side of her mouth and ran in a thin rivulet across her chin and down her neck.

She worked her way back through the darkness to her pallet and sat down. The chain clanked on the floor by her side. Her limbs felt leaden, her shoulders slumped forward, and she wanted to cry.

She realized with a start that she wanted her captor to return. She actually yearned for contact, stimuli, any conversation, no matter how dire. Anything that would give relief from the darkness that surrounded her.

She wasn't sure if it was an hour or a day later when she heard sounds at the door.

He slipped the padlock in his back pocket and forced back the heavy hasp on the grillework. As always, the heavy grille before the crypt door was hard to move on its ancient hinges. He applied both hands and pushed it back against the stonework and slowly opened the arched interior door.

As the door cracked open, it cast a swatch of light across the stone floor. He heard the chain rustle. There was a sigh from his prisoner. He gave a tight smile and turned for a final look at the graveyard.

The plot was empty as always. Only once during his many visits to the place had he discovered a visitor, an old lady busily making grave rubbings from some of the older stones. She had soon left and had not returned.

The church that had once served this place of the dead had burned down thirty years ago, and the rural inhabitants, sparse in number with the demise of farming in Connecticut, had not seen fit to rebuild their house of worship. The cemetery was now unused and forlorn, a very suitable place for his purposes.

He slipped inside the crypt. The Coleman lantern was immediately inside the door and available to him as he stepped inside, but out of her reach. He gave the lantern a few pumps and lit the wick.

If he was going to rape her, this would be his last opportunity. He would savor the moment.

She was sitting on the floor with her knees drawn to her chin. The bright glow was too strong, and she shielded her eyes.

Thoughts of sexual attack fled. She looked god-awful. Her face was already gaunt. Her eyes were sunken surrounded by dark rims of fatigue. She reminded him of a raccoon he had once seen caged in front of a gas station along a highway in South Carolina.

“Please let me go,” she said.

“Your husband has the instructions. If he comes across as told, you'll be out of here in a week.”

“A week!” She pulled her knees closer to her chin and seemed to shrink in size. “I can't live in here a week.”

“That's up to you, lady.” He turned and went back outside for the containers of water he had piled along the wall. He placed them alongside the remaining food.

“I'll see that you get money and I won't help the police come after you.”

“Yah, you got to be kidding.”

“I am very serious.”

“Well, so am I. Your husband gets the letters with your location when I get my stamps.”

“We don't have that kind of money.”

“He's got lots of friends. You're not the spunky lady I saw prancing around the statehouse, are you?”

“No.”

“I'm glad you're humble. It's good for the character.”

“You're a sadistic son of a bitch,” she said in a low voice.

“Now, Senator Wentworth, don't get me angry or I'll cut your water supply in half.”

“You're sweet.”

“Now listen to me, little lady. And you had better listen good. I have researched this thing very thoroughly. The human body can sustain itself for up to three months without food, and less than three days without water. You have a week's water here if you ration yourself to a pint a day. You have food for nearly that time. If you don't make a pig of yourself. Do you understand?”

“Will you leave me the lantern?”

He hadn't planned to. He mentally calculated what possible ways she could use it, except for its intended purpose. “Why not? There's only a few hours of fuel left, so you had best conserve it.” He tossed down a package of book matches next to the lantern. “Remember, you have a week.” He knew it should be only five days, but he wasn't going to tell her that and make it easy for her. “Take it easy now,” he said and left.

He closed the double doors to the tomb and relocked the padlock. He stripped off the rubber gloves he had been wearing and stuffed them into his back pocket. He walked down the hill to the van parked on the country road by the gates to the cemetery.

He slid into the seat of the van and flipped open the glove compartment. The letter, written a week before the kidnapping, was addressed and stamped. He lifted it gingerly from its resting place by grasping the edges. It was addressed to Lyon Wentworth, RFD, Murphysville, Connecticut, and did not contain a return address. The typed instructions inside located the cemetery and vault. He had dropped the portable typewriter into the depths of Bantam Lake. The letter would be mailed tomorrow in Atlanta, just before he caught indirect flights to London.

He estimated that the letter would arrive in Connecticut two or three days after mailing. By the time Wentworth got it, either he would have already mailed the stamps to London or he wasn't going to. No matter, it was a risk he had taken into consideration. He felt that the odds were heavily favorable that Wentworth would come up with the necessary money one way or the other.