Showdown (24 page)

"There he is now," Daly's voice said before Prine had even crossed the threshold.

A city man in a homburg and a dark blue suit stood, holding a briefcase. He was a formal, stiff-looking man of forty years or so. If he'd ever laughed, you couldn't prove it by his narrow, severe face or hard blue judgmental eyes.

Bob Carlyle was grabbing his hat. Daly walked over and yanked his off the peg, too. "Prine, this is Mr. Silas Beaumont. Remember Al Woodward, who was here investigating the Pentacle fire? Well, he still hasn't turned up. So Mr. Beaumont here, who's a vice president of the insurance company Woodward hired out to, is here to find Woodward and carry on with the arson investigation. I told him that you'd talked to Aaron Duncan and that you'd be glad to help him. Meanwhile, Carlyle here and I thought we'd grab us a cup of coffee."

It was almost comical, the way Daly and Carlyle were rushing out the door. The Mr. Silas Beaumonts of the world were difficult to deal with. They just assumed, you being small-town, you were stupid and probably corrupt.

"See you soon, Mr. Beaumont," Daly said as he half-dove through the door, slamming it hard shut behind him.

"Coffee, Mr. Beaumont?"

"I'm not here for a chat, Mr. Prine. At this moment, I should be in Lincoln, Nebraska, where the stockholders of our company are holding their annual meeting. Instead, I'm in your little burg trying to find out what happened to one of our freelance investigators. There's a train out of here this evening, and I hope to be on it. So no—no coffee, no chat, nothing extraneous. If I can get on that train this evening, then I can be in Lincoln in a day and a half. Still time to pay my respects to our stockholders."

No coffee? How about a cob to shove up your ass?
Prine thought. He'd gone from a reasonably good mood—hoping Daly would understand and forgive him—to a dour one thanks to this pale, mannequin-like intruder who was as imperious as a well-connected politician.

Prine said, "Well, I'll have a cup for myself, if you don't mind."

As he was pouring his coffee, he said, "When's the last time you heard from Woodward?"

"Last week."

"He pretty reliable, is he?"

"We check our freelancers out thoroughly."

Prine, steaming coffee in hand, angled his bottom onto the edge of his desk. He kicked a chair with rollers on it over to Beaumont. Beaumont's bloodless lips pinched up in displeasure. He wasn't going to give this office a very good grade. Not that Prine gave a damn.

But Beaumont sat down, briefcase on lap.

"Do you know anything about Aaron Duncan, Mr. Prine?"

Prine shrugged. "That he used to be a successful businessman is about all I know."

"Used to be?"

"The last recession hit everybody out here pretty hard. Farm prices went to hell, and the railroad didn't make us a spur the way they'd originally promised. Most people were in a bad way."

"From what I'm able to gather, Aaron Duncan owns four businesses within a one-hundred-mile radius."

Prine sipped some coffee. "That, I didn't know. Then maybe the recession didn't hit him as hard as it did some others."

"Or maybe it did. This is the third business—the Pentacle Mattress Factory—to be destroyed by fire."

"I see," Prine said. And he did. "Did you pay off on the other two?"

"Yes."

"Nothing suspicious about them?"

"A lot suspicious about them. But nothing we could prove."

"But this time—"

"Three out of four businesses owned by one man go up in smoke? The probability is virtually zero."

"He sounds desperate."

"Desperate and sloppy. The last time we heard from Al Woodward was in a wire he sent. He said he was sure he could prove arson at Pentacle."

Prine remembered talking to Aaron Duncan a few days ago. How Duncan's wife had left the office angrily, following an argument of some kind. He also remembered the bartender saying that Woodward had been looking at a letter somebody sent him. Would Aaron Duncan's wife—if she was angry enough—cooperate with Woodward by sending him a note?

"Do you have any ideas, Deputy?"

"One. Maybe." He told Beaumont what he'd seen in Duncan's office, the wife so furious when she left.

"It could have been about anything—their argument, I mean."

"I agree. But I still think it'd be worth talking to Mrs. Duncan."

Beaumont didn't look happy. "Anything else?"

Beaumont's disappointment irritated Prine. Made him defensive. Maybe Mrs. Duncan wasn't such a great idea. But she was a better idea than Beaumont had.

Beaumont said, "You checked all the—"

"—hotels, saloons, boardinghouses. No trace of Woodward."

Beaumont stood up. "I have a meeting in twenty minutes with Aaron Duncan. Maybe I'll have a little more luck with him than you do. I'm a pretty good interrogator, if I do say so myself. In the big cities, knowing how to question a man and lead him into a verbal trap is a valued skill. We used to do what you do out here—just beat a man till he talks—but we've found a skilled interrogation to be much more useful."

"I don't beat the men I question," Prine said. "I usually set them on fire."

"My Lord," said Beaumont, "is that true?"

Prine smiled. "No. But you wouldn't have been surprised, would you, Mr. Beaumont? The way lawmen treat prisoners 'out here.'"

Beaumont looked both unhappy and uncomfortable as he made his way to the front door. As if Prine had suddenly revealed himself to be a mental defective of some kind. What sort of person made jokes about setting other people on fire?

Most disturbing, most disturbing, Beaumont was obviously thinking, as he put his hand on the doorknob and made a hasty departure.

T
here was a young woman Prine had briefly dated when he'd come to Claybank. She worked in the county records office. Prine had been more interested in her than she'd been in him. After a few evenings of stilted courting, she admitted that she was sorry but that she was just using his good looks as a way of making another young man jealous enough to ask her to marry him.

Which had apparently worked, because slender Sharon Sullivan was now portly and with child as she waddled up to him behind the counter of the records office. "Hi, Tom." She smiled. "I weigh a little more than the last time you saw me."

"Well, congratulations."

"Thanks." Even with a fleshy face, her smile radiated the pride of a good and decent woman. "And Art wants another one right after this."

"I'm glad it all worked out for you, Sharon."

Her sweet face tightened. "I'm just sorry I wasn't nicer to you."

"It was fine," he said. "And it turned out fine, too."

They talked a few more minutes about people they knew in common. This was the age—she was twenty-four to Prine's twenty-nine—that most still-unmarried folks, men and women alike, started looking around for a lifelong mate. There was plenty of gossip about all those various couplings and uncouplings.

Finally, he said, "You've got the records of local businesses, don't you?"

"Depends what you mean by 'records.'"

"You know. Who started them. Then who bought them. And then if there are any silent partners."

"Oh, sure. We'd have that on just about every business in the valley. Who're you looking for?"

"Pentacle Mattresses."

She laughed. "We've been so busy around here, I haven't even had time to put it away. It's sitting on my desk right now."

"Oh? Somebody else asked to see it?"

"Man named Woodward. Insurance investigator is what he said."

"When was this?"

"Let me think." She had a pert little freckled nose that was fun to gaze upon. And gaze he did. "Monday, I guess." She patted the belly beneath her blue gingham dress. "I wasn't feeling too good. You know how women get in the morning. He was telling me how his wife had gotten with their four kids. He seemed like a nice fella. He still around town?"

"That's what we're trying to find out." He told her about Beaumont and Woodward missing. "Can people just ask to see the file?"

"Afraid not, Tom. We can look up things for them, but we can't just hand the files over." Her smile made her small, exquisite face—so nicely framed with hair the color of mahogany—look like a drawing of a woman in a magazine. "But I forgot. You're a deputy. All you have to do is sign a form and I can turn the file over to you."

"Knew there was a reason I wore this badge," he said. "So I can throw my weight around in the records office."

"Be right back," she said.

He spent fifteen minutes with the file, sitting in a chair in a corner like a boy who'd misbehaved in class. People came in and out, looking at his seat outside the counter. They probably wondered what a deputy was doing looking through a file. They also probably thought that something pretty interesting was going on. This was, after all, the deputy who'd gone looking for Cassie Neville.

Everything in the files was routine. As the state required, there was about half a pound of various legal documents establishing Aaron Duncan and a company named River's Edge properties as co-owners of the mattress-manufacturing firm. There was no information at all on River's Edge except a post office box address in the state capital. The signatures for River's Edge had been entered by the attorney, whose address was also listed as being in the state capital. Did this mean the signature was a legal proxy or that the lawyer himself was River's Edge and therefore signing for the company?

He asked Sharon about this.

"I really can't say, Tom. I'm sure the owner's name has to be on file somewhere. Maybe it is this lawyer."

He wrote down the name River's Edge and the number of the post office box. He pushed the file back to her and said, "Good luck with the kid."

"It's good seeing you again, Tom. Hopefully next time, I'll be a little thinner."

"You look great."

She'd wanted reassurance that she was still an appealing woman—which she definitely was—and Prine was happy to give it to her.

Five minutes later, he was at the telegraph office, writing out the message he wanted sent to the River's Edge attorney in the state capital.

T
hat afternoon, Cassie Neville was buried.

The town had never seen such a crowd of important people. You knew they were important because of the way they strode about, the way they ordered lesser humans about, and the way they would tell you they were important if you failed to recognize their splendiferous humanity. Even the governor attended, taking time to do his usual politicking, of course. He probably had chapped lips from all the kissing he did. He made short order of the babies, but lingered longer bussing the mothers.

The interior of the church was so crowded with flowers that several people had allergic reactions. There was a lot of sneezing.

When Richard Neville, godlike once more, made his shining way up the center aisle of the church, everyone turned to look at him. Would he cry? Would he come apart? Or—wouldn't this be pretty remarkable—would he faint? Bereaved men had been known to faint at the funerals of their loved ones. Imagine someone as big and strong and handsome as Richard Neville, the richest man in this part of the state, crumpling in his pew, while someone rushed for smelling salts and a piece of cloth dipped in cool water?

He didn't do any of those things, of course.

He took his seat in the front pew with the other close relatives and sat there with his hands on his knees for the entire ceremony. He didn't look around, he didn't speak, he didn't sing when the others opened their hymnals.

He wasn't much different at graveside. He watched it all with stern mien but didn't seem to be participating in the communal mourning. He looked as if he had other business to attend to. But since Cassie's killers were dead, people couldn't imagine what that other business would be.

One of the horses pulling the hearse played wild for a few minutes, frightening some children. The minister reading the services developed a cough he couldn't seem to quell for long. And Mrs. Morgan, who had moved here with her brood only a month before and had in fact never laid eyes on Cassie except in the coffin, wept so extravagantly that some people began to smirk at her. My Lord, was she auditioning for some kind of play?

The temperature stayed at a sunny sixty-five. Autumn had never looked lovelier than it did right now.

Every once in a while, Prine had the impulse to step in front of the coffin and explain that she might still be alive if it hadn't been for his stupid plan to get rich. But he was too shy to do this. He would be a ridiculous figure, making a public confession that way. Living with guilt was bad enough; purposely making yourself a figure of foolishness was even harder to bear.

I
n town, Prine went directly to the telegraph office. The lawyer for River's Edge, a Mr. Kyle Abernathy, had already wired back.