Money To Burn (41 page)

At least, this was the part of the story that could be pieced together. Detectives Cole and Roberts visited Harry Ingram in the hospital and, as they told me later, being a lawyer, Ingram knew enough not to say a word. But by the time they wheeled him into the Central Prison infirmary for pretrial confinement—no bail was granted on a murder one charge—the evidence against Ingram was starting to mount.

Annie the accelerant dog was the first to weigh in with a forensic snootful, discovering traces of gasoline on the floorboard of Ingram’s car and in his closet where he had hung his arson outfit before packing it up to the cleaners.

Then the handgun used to kill Nash was found, neatly cleaned, lying beside a shotgun in the library of his mother’s house. Why don’t people ever get rid of the gun? Maybe they really are phallic symbols after all.

Circumstantial evidence also pointed toward Harry Ingram. He turned out to be the big city lawyer who had failed to carry through on his promises to the old tobacco farmer named Sanford Hale, whose son had been injured by a truck several years ago. Hale provided his side of the story: when Ingram had been unable to force a quick settlement out of the trucking company’s insurance firm, he had disappeared in search of easier cases.

Later, when Sanford Hale turned up on a list of farmers in Nash’s pilot growing program, Ingram grew afraid that his name might somehow come up. At the time, he was in the middle of representing Nash in the original harassment lawsuits against Randolph Talbot and T&T. He couldn’t afford for Nash to hear any negative opinions about his abilities as a lawyer. So he had manufactured toxic dumping charges against Hale to have him removed from the program, and had taken Hale’s n {akeeight=“ame off all official lists for good measure. But what seemed like a good idea at the time, like many good ideas at the time, later came back to haunt Ingram. His actions were another piece in the circumstantial puzzle that backed the meager hard evidence against him.

The gun and traces of accelerant weren’t a whole lot to go on for murder one, but the DA believed me when I told him that Nash’s murder had been premeditated. I explained how Tom’s death had occurred on the one night when Ingram knew Lydia would be out of town, visiting her mother’s grave. He had lied to me when he pretended not to know that Lydia and Nash were engaged. The date was planned on Ingram’s part, I felt sure, to guarantee that Lydia would not be around. His timing proved something else to me as well, though I kept it to myself for later investigation.

My little chat with the DA had an impact. Not being enamored of either legal extortion or of murder, the DA decided to seek the death penalty against Ingram. Unfortunately, someone beat the state to the punch.

Two weeks before his trial was to start, Harry Ingram was stabbed to death with a sharpened spoon in the infirmary of Central Prison by a person or persons unknown. If he’d been able to run for help, perhaps he would have survived, but Ingram had been confined to a wheelchair since that night in my apartment, paralyzed from the upper chest down. The real trouble was that Ingram’s mouth had not been paralyzed and that, I suspect, was why someone paid to have him killed. Randolph Talbot? Perhaps.

I visited Lydia soon after Harry Ingram’s death. She was packing up her cottage, moving out on her own, and we spoke surrounded by stacks of brown cardboard boxes and an air of lingering regret.

“At least no one in your family had anything to do with it,” I offered.

I was lying, of course.

I drove away from the Talbot mansion for the final time in my life, wondering just how much Jake Talbot—who was probably swilling champagne in Berlin—had to do with Tom Nash’s death. You see, like lines linking dots in a puzzle, I had tracked down the connections between Harry Ingram and Tom Nash’s life.

My friend Marcus Dupree came through with photocopies of handwritten incidence reports filed away and forgotten in the year before Jake Talbot’s last escapade. Twice, he had been brought into the station, once for drunk and disorderly, once for unlawful fondling and, in both cases, the charges were dropped soon after one Harry Ingram, Esq., arrived for a chat with the supervising sergeant. I believe, but will never be able to prove, that Jake was Harry Ingram’s inside man, the accomplice providing access to Randolph Talbot’s inner sanctum and details on Lydia’s schedule and life—all key components of the five-million- dollar plan.

I wanted to know if I was right. It isn’t often I hate someone on first s {ne betight and it was important for me to determine if my instincts about Jake Talbot had been on the mark. I reread my case notes and came up with two places where Ingram and Jake Talbot may have crossed paths.

First, I checked the lease on Jake Talbot’s cheap apartment, the one that now had a broken front door. It had been rented by a company that eventually traced back to Harry Ingram. A neat arrangement, very convenient for a rapist. And, I suspected, a nice little payback for inside services rendered.

But how had Ingram gotten Jake Talbot on the hook in the first place?

The answer was the Pony Express. I showed Harry Ingram’s photo to the bartender and he identified him immediately as a regular. My costly friend, Spencer, the drug dealer, added his two cents worth for a lot more out-of- pocket than that—Harry was the fat white man who had followed Jake Talbot and Franklin Cosgrove one night.

What I figure is this: Harry Ingram saw Jake buying drugs from Spencer and recognized him as Randolph Talbot’s son. Maybe he also thought the kid was gay, or maybe he just had the good sense to know that when a lot of money meets a lot of drugs, trouble is soon to follow. I think he gave the kid his card and told Jake to call if he was ever in trouble.

When Ingram got a call from Jake in the middle of the night a few months later—begging him to come to the police station and bail Jake out without his father ever knowing—that was when Harry Ingram probably got to thinking about how he could turn Randolph Talbot into his own personal cash cow. He waited until he got a little bit more on Jake—another near arrest, more drug use, maybe even Ingram followed him and witnessed a rape one night. However he got him on the hook, he had the kid trapped tight. Ingram could have blackmailed Jake, but he was after bigger fish. Jake Talbot had no choice but to help set his father up in return for silence about his own miserable recreational habits.

I probably don’t have all the details right, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Jake Talbot will never have to pay. He’s sowing his wild oats on a grand continental scale, summering in Nice, springtime in Paris, the fashion season in Milan. I hear he’s cutting quite a swath through the ranks of Euro-trash these days, and is rapidly spending down his inheritance. A guy who thinks it’s funny to poison the punchbowl is definitely going to have to start buying friends sooner rather than later.

Jake Talbot knows, and I know, that he will never set foot in the U.S. again. If he does, Detectives Joyner and Jones—and yours truly—will be waiting. 

Like Mariela—Lydia’s seamstress and maid—I hate loose ends. Which is why I paid a visit to the new offices of Franklin Cosgrove, now head of T&T’s Marketing Department, on one fabulously cool day in late October. It was almost exactly three months after Tom Nash’s death.

The last secretary must have outlived her usefulness, because a new secretary sat at the front desk, too busy shaking a bottle of hot pink polish and doing her nails to bother glancing at me when I came through the front door.

“I suggest you start reading the want ads,” I told her as I barged past, headed for Cosgrove’s office. “You’re going to need a new job soon.”

Her mouth was still open when she joined me in Cosgrove’s office.

“Get her out of here,” I told him.

He read the tone in my voice and obeyed.

When we were alone, he gave his very best smile and stuck out a hand. “Casey Jones,” he said. “Am I glad to see you. What a job you did. Caught the killer and brought justice to all.”

I looked at his outstretched hand.

“I’m not shaking your hand,” I told him. “And I’d prefer to make this quick.”

He blinked, but regained his charm quickly. “Please, have a seat. What is it? How can I help you?”

“I’m not sitting down, either,” I said. “I’m here to let you know that you have two weeks to resign your job and move elsewhere. I suggest the West Coast.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded, taking a seat behind his huge desk. He needed the courage of at least looking more powerful than me.

“I know you recommended Harry Ingram to Tom,” I said. “It’s the only way it could have happened. Why else would Tom have hired Ingram instead of someone else when the harassment started? I think you did it for money. Knowing what a scumbag you are, Harry Ingram approached you with his plan and offered to give you a cut of his settlement from the harassment suit if you introduced him to your partner. It was a way for you to shake down Randolph Talbot and earn big bucks while you waited for King Buffalo to pay off.”

“You can’t prove it,” he said. “I lost millions when Tom died.”

“Maybe I can’t. And I don’t think you were happy about his death. But it didn’t take you long to get over it and to start thinking about how you may as well profit from it. You said nothing when you knew who the killer was and I can prove you were involved as an accomplice after Nash’s death.” I pulled a series of small black-and-white 
photographs.

No way he’d be able to come up with the self-confidence to ignore the photo. He leaned over his huge desk and examined it.

“What the hell is it?” he asked.

“It’s your fingerprints in grease on the drive shaft of my Porsche, left there the day you tried to kill me.”

He started to speak and I interrupted him.

“I don’t really care if you were doing it because Harry Ingram told you to, or because Jake Talbot made you do it in exchange for more of his magic dust. And I don’t care. But if you don’t leave town, I’m going to the police with this evidence of attempted murder and these photos to boot.” I tossed a stack on the desktop. “You can keep those, I have copies.”

“What are these?” he asked, thumbing through them. “I’m drinking at a bar. Big deal.”

“You’re drinking at a bar with Jake Talbot the night he attacked and tried to rape a girl. And I bet your hair and fingerprints are all over his little love nest. Leave Durham, or I will go to the cops and tell them everything. How you and Jake were such nice drug buddies that you stalked the bars together.”

“I didn’t know he was the rapist” Cosgrove interrupted angrily.

“I don’t really care,” I assured him. “There’s a fine line between you and Jake Talbot, you scumbag, and I’m not sure I’m in the mood to make distinctions.”

“These don’t prove anything,” he said, sliding the photos back toward me.

“They don’t have to,” I explained. “And it doesn’t matter if the cops ever bring Jake Talbot to trial or not. I’m here to tell you that unless you leave town, your name will be leaked in connection with Nash’s death and Jake Talbot’s arrest. Everywhere you go, people will whisper and point out that you are somehow involved. You’ll never be able to get a date in this town again, much less land yourself another babe with big bucks.”

He frowned at me and his eyes glistened, almost as if his feelings were hurt. “Why are you doing this to me?” he said. “I didn’t want Tom Nash to be killed. I was furious when Ingram killed him. Tom was going to make me millions.”

He still only cared about the money. “I am doing this to you because you are the scum of the earth,” I said. “And I don’t want to breathe the same air that you exhale.”

I left him sitting at his desk and I guess he thought it over, because he quit his job the next day and moved to L.A. I heard he took a job in marketing at a major movie studio, but that he wants to get into producing and directing. Perfect. With his selfishness, coke habit and hatred of women, he ought to fit right in.

Besides, Cosgrove now has bigger problems than being on my bad side. The plain Jane secretary I’d felt so sorry for the day I first met him, turned out not to be so pliable after all. She turned Cosgrove in to the IRS and they came sniffing around big time, even calling Burly to ask if he knew anything about King Buffalo’s records. A lot went up in smoke during the fire, but King Buffalo’s accountants had thoughtfully kept backups of Cosgrove’s expense reports and check writing habits. He could well end up in a nice cushy cell at a federal detention center, practicing his moves on prison guards.

I hope Plain Jane takes her cut of the IRS proceeds and uses it to hire a maid, so she can retire from ironing shirts forever. 

The death of Tom Nash and the flight of Jake Talbot changed the lives of Durham’s richest family, of course. Lydia left the family compound and took her brother Haydon with her. They bought a house in the middle of nowhere, near a tiny North Carolina town called Silk Hope. It was appropriately named for her new life, I thought, if only she had the courage to start living it.

I went out to see Lydia and Haydon after the move. I wanted to make sure they were safe, that they felt protected against unknown enemies, against friends who only wanted their money and against memories of family betrayals.

Haydon had slimmed down. He was sunburned and happy, a rich boy turned farm boy, who loved the local school and the anonymity it gave him. He also loved the miniature wristwatch walkie-talkie set I brought for him.