Fatal (32 page)

And for God’s sake, no more Merlot.

With love,

Rudy

Ellen washed her face with cold water and brushed her hair and teeth.

A fine-looking woman for your age.
That’s what Howard had said. Rudy Peterson hadn’t even mentioned her age—or his, for that matter. He loved her thirty-nine years ago; he loved her today. She had, in many ways, been frozen since the day Howard left—her feelings tightly bound. Maybe it was time to open up. How much better could a woman ever do than her oldest, dearest friend?

A final check in the mirror and she went out to meet him. Rudy was seated at his dining room table, his unlit pipe resting loosely between his teeth, pages of data spread out before him, along with a large atlas of the world. Ellen slipped into the seat across from him, then slowly reached her hands over the table and took his.

“Thanks for the rose and the note,” she said.

“Thanks for taking the pressure off.”

“I can’t really say anything in response right now.”

“I didn’t expect you to.”

“But I’m going to be looking hard at my feelings and I’ll certainly keep you posted.”

“What more could a guy ask?”

“You’re really a very wonderful man, Rudy.”

“I know,” he said. “Just cursed by being really, really choosy.”

Ellen felt herself blush.

“So,” she said, clearing her throat, “what do you have there?”

“Well, I have an old friend, a lawyer, who works at the IRS. He wouldn’t give me any more information except to say that Vinyl Sutcher exists, filed a tax return last year, and lives right where his passport says.”

“West Virginia.”

“Tullis, to be exact. It’s right here, not too far from the Virginia border.”

“I know the police chief in my town pretty well. I’m sure he’ll run this man Vinyl through his computer for me. Maybe he could even check with the police in Tullis to see if they know anything about him. If I have to, I’ll just take a drive over there and meet with the police myself. Let me just call Beth and make sure she’s still okay with getting Lucy to school.”

Ellen caught her daughter just as she was leaving the house.

“Hi, Mom. I only have a minute. Lucy’s got a dentist appointment. We can’t be late because they clear the office out when they have to work on her.”

“I know,” Ellen said understandingly.

“It takes the whole damn staff to keep her still and she screams like a banshee. It makes sense they should clear the place out. I mean, who would ever want their kid to hear that in a dentist’s office? Everything else she doesn’t react enough to, but this—”

“I know,” Ellen cut in quickly. “Honey, just hang in there. That’s all you can do. You’re doing a great job.”

“Last night Dick started talking again about adopting. Mom, I just can’t, I . . .”

Ellen could tell Beth was coming unglued. There was a time when she was strong, competent, and centered. Not anymore.

“Beth, I was calling to see how things were going, and also to see if you’re still able to handle the school run for a couple of days.”

“Sure. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine. Just some commission stuff I need to take care of. I’ll call you.”

“Okay.”

“And Beth?”

“Yes?”

“I meant what I said. You’re a terrific mom.” She set the receiver down. “Dentist day is even tougher on Beth than on Lucy.”

“You’re right, she is doing a great job.”

Ellen shrugged off a sudden wave of melancholy.

“So, if need be,” she said, “I’m all set for a trip to West Virginia. If I can get this Sutcher arrested, then I’ll feel much safer about Lucy if we decide to take any action.”

“I like that approach so long as you’re very careful. Meanwhile, I’ll do a little more research on these men—starting with a trip into the passport office in D.C. to see if I can get a look at their pictures.”

“Terrific.”

“Tullis doesn’t look like much on this map,” Rudy added. “Just a speck, really. The nearest town of any size is right here. Belinda. Belinda, West Virginia.”

“Pretty name,” Ellen said.

 
CHAPTER
29

ELLEN WAS HUMMING ALONG WITH A SINATRA CD 
as she crossed the Shenandoah River. She was in northern Virginia, heading southwest toward the West Virginia state line. The late morning sun was therapeutically warm, the highway was newly paved and virtually empty, and soon, very soon, she might be helping to cage the beast who had threatened her family and single-handedly infected a large number of people with a hideous, deadly disease. It wasn’t at all a sure thing yet that Vinyl Sutcher was the man she wanted, but getting a look at him was the only way she would ever know for sure.

Her first stop of the day had been at the police station in her hometown of Glenside. Chief Ed Curran was a member of the club where Howard had played golf and she had played tennis, quite often with Curran’s wife, Lorraine. She arrived at the station only to discover that the Currans were away in Italy for another week, celebrating their thirtieth anniversary. Ed’s stand-in, a much younger man named Wes Streeter, was a homegrown product—a former high school football hero—totally lacking Curran’s warmth and, Ellen quickly discerned, much of his intelligence as well.

“So this man with the scar, he broke into your house, waited for you to come home, and then threatened to kill your granddaughter. Why?”

“I don’t want any publicity about the reasons why. Can you promise me that?”

“Mrs. Kroft, I can’t promise you anything until you tell me what’s going on.”

“Never mind. I’ll take care of matters myself.”

“You should file formal charges against this man right here,” Streeter said. “This is where the crime occurred.”

“I don’t even know for certain if the name I have is the man who broke into my house. I just want to get a look at him. One look. A photo or in person, I don’t care which. The moment I see him I’ll know if he’s the one or not. Isn’t there some sort of police computer site where you can punch in his name and address and see if he’s been in trouble before?”

Streeter, clearly feeling that there might be more to the matter with the woman seated across from him than with the alleged criminal, ran the name Vinyl Sutcher of Tullis, West Virginia, through his computer, but came up empty. Eventually, with some hardly subtle prompting from Ellen, he determined that Tullis, West Virginia, had no police department of its own, but was serviced by the adjacent town of Belinda. By this time, the policeman was bewildered by Ellen and her story, and most anxious to move on to other business. He presented her with the number of the Belinda police, the name of the chief, William Grimes, and a quiet room where she could make a call. She had an image of Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, and Mayberry in mind as she dialed, so after she told the officer who answered why she was calling, she wasn’t that surprised to be told that Chief Grimes would be right with her.

“Chief Grimes.”

Ellen’s mental image was of a man older than Wes Streeter and younger than Ed Curran. Andy Griffith.

“Chief Grimes, my name is Ellen Kroft. I’m calling from the police station in Glenside, Maryland, where I live, at the urging of the acting police chief here. A few days ago a man broke into my house and threatened me and my family if I didn’t do something he wanted. I have reason to believe the man might be from Tullis, next to your town. His name is Sutcher, Vinyl Sutcher. Do you have a few minutes?”

“We always try to make time for our neighbors in Maryland,” Chief Grimes replied.

The truncated story she told to Chief Bill Grimes included her suspicions regarding the Lassa fever outbreaks and the way she had ultimately derived Sutcher’s name from the passenger manifest.

The Vinny Sutcher the chief recalled didn’t fit the description Ellen gave him all that well. From what Grimes remembered—and he admitted he wasn’t at all sure he was thinking of the right man—Sutcher was stocky, but not that tall, and had no scar like the one Ellen described above his lip. He was a woodsman and occasional bodyguard of some sort who did live in the next town. Grimes recalled seeing him briefly a year or so ago after he allegedly shoved a man who rear-ended him at a traffic light. The police chief couldn’t remember how that incident had been resolved, but he didn’t think formal charges were ever filed.

If she wanted to drive down to Belinda, he would be pleased to meet with her, take a statement, and share what information he could obtain on the man, including a photo if, in fact, Sutcher had actually been arrested. And if the evidence she presented was compelling enough, he would certainly contact the FBI and assist them in putting together an arrest warrant, he said.

“I’ll give you my cell phone number in case there are any problems,” he said.

“And I’ll give you mine.”

It was just after two when Ellen rounded a sweeping curve on a mountain road and got her first glimpse of Belinda, West Virginia, a postcard-perfect town, nestled in a broad valley just to the east of a range of rolling foothills. Beyond the hills, the craggy Allegheny Mountains probed upward into the azure afternoon sky. It had been more than three hours since she left home, but the uninterrupted drive, with CDs by Carly Simon and Natalie Cole alternating with Lyle Lovett and Sinatra, seemed much shorter.

Throughout the trip, Rudy was very much on her mind. Not surprisingly, he had said and done all the right things to make her feel less humiliated at having opened the letter from his drawer. Now it was just a matter of sorting through her feelings for him, searching beneath the enduring warmth of their friendship for the spark of passion that, even at sixty-three, she wanted to have. Rudy loved her truly, of that she had no doubt. And he was certainly a man she could grow old with. The question she was mulling over as she swung onto Main Street was whether or not he was a man she could grow young with.

Her meeting with Police Chief Grimes wasn’t scheduled for almost three hours, and except for a doughnut and the coffee she had brought in a thermos, she hadn’t had a thing to eat since leaving Glenside. Her hangover was essentially gone, but the pledge she made about drinking wine in the morning would, she hoped, live on forever. She thought about driving through Belinda and into Tullis, just to check out what the place might look like, but the Belinda Diner, a classic, railroad-car eatery on the edge of town, was just too inviting to pass up. The place was nearly empty. A competent-looking, middle-aged waitress in jeans and a T was serving two elderly women in one booth and two grizzled men in another.

“Anyplace you like,” she called out cheerily.

Ellen took a copy of the
Montgomery County Weekly Bugle
from a rack and brought it to a booth in the corner, well away from the other patrons. She ordered the meat loaf special and turned to the police report, as she inevitably did when reading any small-town newspaper, including her own. Barking dog . . . Stranger lurking . . . Fight . . . Deer hit by truck . . . Disturbance . . . Drink dispenser vandalized . . . Patient kidnapped. Tucked in among two dozen or so police calls was a two-sentence report of the kidnapping of a hospital patient from an ambulance. Ellen found the article dealing with the crime on page 1 and read the skimpy account until the waitress came with her meal.

“What’s this kidnapping thing all about?” Ellen asked.

The waitress shrugged. “No one knows,” she said with a pleasant twang. “Rumor I heard is that her doctor did it. Doc Rutledge. The patient was a doctor herself. Now she’s gone an’ he’s vanished, too. Maybe he jes got obsessed with her—you know, couldn’t live without her. So he hired a couple of thugs to snatch her, then acts like he’s as surprised as the next fella.”

“And I thought I was coming into a sleepy little town. Doctor kidnaps patient. Sounds like a TV miniseries.”

“Poor Doc Rutledge. Ain’t been the same since his wife died a few years back. He’s a darn good doctor, though, from what I’ve heard. If I ever went to a doctor I jes might ’uv gone to him. So, what brings you here?”

“I . . . have a business appointment. This sure is a beautiful town.”

“Thank you. We think so. Your appointment here in Belinda?”

“Actually, no,” Ellen replied after pausing while deciding if any harm could come from trying to determine where Vinny Sutcher lived. “It’s in a town called Tullis.”

“Well, heck, that’s jes the next town over. Parta Belinda more or less.”

Ellen consulted a pad she took from her handbag.

“Deep Woods Road,” she said, reading back the address they had gotten from the passenger manifests.

“Never heard of it,” the waitress said.

“I have,” called out one of the old men, who was sitting four or five booths away. “Take Main Street all the way inta Tullis. Then go rot through Tullis, left onta Oak, then ’bout two mile up inta the hills. You’ll be lookin’ fer a gravel road on the rot. I don’t b’leive it’s got no sign, but some a the mailboxes at the corner say Deep Woods on ’em.”

“Thank you,” Ellen called over.

“Belinda Road is jes the continuation of Main Street into Tullis,” the waitress said. “Go right out the parkin’ lot an’ jes keep on goin’. You’ll see a little sign for Tullis.”

“Place don’t deserve nothin’ no bigger,” the eavesdropper hollered.

His tablemate and the two ladies in the booth near them hooted and whooped at his humor.

Not surprisingly, given Ellen’s experience with such diners, the meat loaf was commendable and the mashed potatoes and gravy appropriately decadent. She left a decent tip and walked out into the late afternoon sun. There were still almost two hours to go before she was to meet with Grimes. From the moment the old eavesdropper gave her directions to Deep Woods Road, she was obsessed—driven by her own anger and curiosity to want even a glimpse of Vinyl Sutcher. If he was as Grimes described, it was back to the drawing board and the other passenger names for her and Rudy. If Grimes’s memory was off, if she could determine that Sutcher’s cinder-block head featured a flat face and distinctive scar, she was on the verge of sweet, succulent revenge. She just needed to be careful and stay in the car. All she wanted now was one look at the man or at least the place where he lived.

With the same tiny voice that had lost the battle over Rudy’s letter begging her to wait until her meeting with the police chief, Ellen eased the Taurus out of the parking lot and headed for Tullis and Deep Woods Road. The directions were fairly accurate, but the mileage was off on the low side. The far end of Tullis was nearly six miles away, and Oak Street snaked upward for three miles more before she spotted the cluster of ten or eleven mailboxes, several of which had “Deep Woods Road” painted on one side. One of the boxes had the number 100 in neat stick-ons, and beneath it the name
SUTCHER
. Maybe Grimes was right after all, she thought. This was hardly the place one would expect to find a world traveler, who had made at least four trips to an obscure country in West Africa over the past three years. But then, if she and Rudy were right, the trips, along with a dozen others, were strictly business.

Deep Woods Road, graded dirt and pebbles, coursed gently upward through a continuous arch of dense foliage. It was one car wide, with shallow drainage ditches on either side, and periodic spots to pull over so that an oncoming vehicle could pass. Ellen inched ahead, feeling a strange, almost perverse pleasure at operating on the edge of a situation she knew might be dangerous. Despite the mailboxes, there were no houses visible. Instead, there were dirt drives wending off into the forest on either side, most with a board nailed to a tree announcing the house number.

62 . . . 70 . . . 83 . . .

Ellen slowed even more. Several dirt drives had no number. Was one of them to Sutcher’s place?

90 . . .

Her heart pounding, Ellen stopped and, using one of the unmarked drives, turned her car around. Then she carefully opened her door.

This is stupid,
the tiny voice was saying.
This is absolutely dumb.

She dropped the keys into the pocket of her slacks, shut the door softly, and cautiously made her way up the narrow road. Ahead the natural light was considerably brighter.

100.

The number, painted in black on a plain piece of pine board, was nailed head high on the trunk of a small birch. Just past the birch, the forest fell away, yielding to a clearing, beyond which was a spectacular vista—a broad valley streaked with rivers, stretching out to lush foothills and gray-blue mountains. In the center of the clearing was a new house, or an old one that had recently been extensively renovated—one story, modern, with large picture windows and mahogany-stained cedar siding. There were remnants of the construction still lying about. The lawn had not yet been laid, although the piping for an underground sprinkler system was piled up and ready to be installed. There was no garage, but to one side of the lawn-to-be was a gravel parking space large enough for two cars.

Despite her certainty that the property was empty, if not unoccupied, Ellen stayed in the relative safety of the forest for more than five minutes, watching. There was no movement.

Desperate now to glimpse the inside, she stepped from the shadows and moved toward the house, her pulse still hammering. The construction-in-progress notwithstanding, the place was clearly someone’s home. Through the windows she could see that it was fully furnished in a manner that was quite masculine—thick leather couches and easy chairs, heavy unadorned end tables. Encouraged, Ellen pressed her face to the glass and peered more intently inside. There was a huge bull-elk head mounted above the mantel, and several shotguns hooked on the wall. She scanned the interior, looking for photographs. There were none. A window at a time, she worked her way around to the side of the house.