Sylvie's Cowboy (14 page)

When Walt returned with her coffee, Diane was
cradling her head in her hands. He set the coffee down. She grasped
it desperately and drank, then she rolled her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Headache?” asked Walt when she rubbed the
bridge of her nose.

Diane nodded. Walt placed his hands on her
shoulders and began the neck rub for which he was famous, according
to Clarice Putnam.

A police detective whose name tag said “Mank”
stepped close to Diane’s desk and consulted a small notebook. Walt
continued the massage, standing behind Diane’s chair.

“I’m looking for a Daniel Stern,” said
Detective Mank.

“Isn’t everybody,” said Walt.

The detective addressed Diane, “You know Mr.
Stern?”

Diane nodded. Walt kept massaging. Detective
Mank raised an eyebrow at Walt, looking for an answer to the same
question.

“Know him,” said Walt. “Ain’t warm for
him.”

“Do you know his whereabouts?” asked
Mank.

Diane shook her head. Walt shrugged and kept
massaging.

Mank jotted something in his notebook, turned
a page, and read further in his notes. “Do you know whether he was
with Ms. Larrimore yesterday evening?”

Diane answered, “I don’t know, but it’s
possible. Ms. Larrimore often met with Mr. Stern after hours. She
wouldn’t usually say anything about it.”

“Neither would I,” quipped Walt.

“They had personal business,” Diane
continued. “Mr. Stern is sometimes … overtextended. Ms. Larrimore
would lend him money. She and Mr. Pace used to argue about it all
the time.” Diane began to sob again. “First Mr. Pace, then poor Ms.
Larrimore.”

Mank jotted more notes in his pocket
notebook. “So, if Stern owed Ms. Larrimore money, there might have
been a confrontation?”

At this, Walt stopped massaging and stared at
the policeman.

Diane gasped in horror. “You can’t mean--!”
She raised one hand as if to cover her mouth. “I think I’m going to
be sick. Excuse me, please.”

Walt helped her up from her chair and she
hurried away. Walt asked Detective Mank, “You intend to arrest Dan
Stern for murder?”

“Probably won’t get the chance,” Mank
answered. “My guess is if he’s not out of the country already, he
will be soon.”

At that very moment, Dan and Sylvie were
sitting, all lovey dovey, in their seats on the chartered seaplane.
Biscayne Bay and the Miami skyline glittered through the windows as
twilight welcomed the lights of the Magic City.

Dan held Sylvie’s hand and leaned toward her.
“We’ll just zip over to the islands, do it, and zip back. I don’t
want to give you any time to change your mind.”

“I won’t change my mind,” she said.

“Tomorrow morning I’m cooking you breakfast
right back in your own penthouse in Miami. It’ll be the perfect
hideaway—everybody thinks it’s vacant. I’ll have you all to
myself.”

“I still can’t believe it,” gushed
Sylvie.

“Believe it. I love you. I’m going to take
care of you.” Dan leaned a little further and kissed her lips.

Sylvie melted against him.

The seaplane taxied down Biscayne Bay and
lifted off, headed for the Bahamas.

The seaplane flew over the condominium
building as Walt’s pink Mustang turned from the street onto the
entrance driveway of the parking garage. The Mustang cruised up and
down the rows of parked cars until its headlights passed over the
red and yellow pickup truck. Walt parked the Mustang nearby, got
out, and approached the truck.

He went first to the driver’s side door and
tried the handle. Locked. In the semi-dark of the garage, he almost
didn’t see anything inside the cab. Then Walt did a double
take.

“Harry? ... Harry!” Walt raced around to the
passenger side of the truck and pounded on the window with his
fist. “Harry! Oh, God, please let him be asleep! Harry!”

Walt palmed the pistol from his ankle holster
and used the butt of it to smash the truck window. He reached in
and opened the door. Harry’s Stetson rolled out the door and across
the garage floor, revealing the ice pick in Harry’s brain.

“Ah, no! No!” Walt cradled Harry’s head
against his chest. Tears streaked Walt’s cheeks, but he made no
other sound—until he had a gruesome afterthought. “Sylvie. Oh,
Jesus help me. Sylvie!”

Leaving Harry’s body, Walt slammed the truck
door and ran full tilt toward the elevator. He stopped, raced back
to the truck, opened the door again and searched Harry’s pockets.
“The keys, Harry. Where are the keys?”

He jerked a set of keys from Harry’s jeans
and ran again to the elevator.

The cell phone rested in its holster in the
truck, forgotten.

...

At midnight in the penthouse the only light
was the dim city glow coming through the endless glass wall of the
living room. Somewhere in the apartment, an expensive clock chimed
twelve times.

The front door rattled, the knob turned, and
the door was kicked gently open. A wedge of light spilled onto the
floor of the foyer. A briefcase slid across the foyer as if kicked
from the hallway. In the doorway, Dan lifted Sylvie to carry her
across the threshold. Sylvie was still wearing her white
beautician’s uniform and nurse shoes. She giggled, brandishing her
shiny new key.

“You made it!” crowed Dan. “You’re back!
Revel in it while you can, because tomorrow we leave for Rio!”

Inside the door he set her down and kissed
her. He slammed the door with his foot, shutting out the hallway
light and throwing the room again into darkness.

Out of the dark Walt’s voice called, “Y’all
come on in. Champagne’s getting warm.”

The startled couple jerked apart. Sylvie
handed her key to Dan, stepped further into the apartment, and
flicked the switch lighting the lamps at either end of the sofa.
She placed her purse on one end of the couch.

Walt was sitting deep in a living room chair,
invisible until she reached the center of the room and looked back
at him. He held an iced tea tumbler half full of orange juice. His
hunting knife protruded from half of an apple atop the large fruit
bowl on the end table.

Sylvie looked at him, amazed.

Dan took the time to lock the dead bolt on
the front door with Sylvie’s key. Then he pocketed the key,
retrieved his briefcase, and joined Sylvie in the living room.

A bottle of champagne leaned inside a silver
ice bucket that held water with only a few chunks of ice floating
in it.

“Found the O.J. with the eggs and bacon in
the ice box. Figured you planned to come back here for breakfast,
so I waited.” Walt remained seated. He lifted his tumbler of orange
juice as if in a toast, then took a drink.

“What are you doing here, and how did you get
in?” asked Sylvie.

“You’re supposed to be dead,” said Dan.

Sylvie’s gaze zipped from Walt to Dan.
“What?”

“
Harry
’s dead,” Walt told Dan.

“Thank you, Walter Cronkite,” Sylvie said.
“And what’s the latest on Elvis?”

Walt stiffened. “Dang it, Sylvie! I ain’t
joking around here now!”

Dan remained unperturbed. “What do you mean,
‘Harry’s dead’?”

Sylvie thought the two men were playing some
unfathomable, macabre joke. “Danny, be serious.”

Abandoning all pretense, Dan turned cold and
hard. “That wasn’t you in the red truck today?” The question was
rhetorical. Whoever had been in the red truck was a dead man now,
and Walt was obviously no corpse.

Walt rose from his chair and approached
Sylvie, who still stood in the center of the room. “Harry was
driving the truck today,” he said, making eye contact with her and
holding it. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Sylvie. Harry
faked the whole thing. I never wanted to lie to you, but I owed
him. So, when he insisted on doing it his way—”

“Harry? ... Today?” Sylvie was stunned.

“Stop blathering,” said Dan.

Sylvie peered into Walt’s eyes, looking for
answers. “You’re not kidding! Harry ... alive? But the money
...”

“Stolen,” said Walt. “There were no margin
calls or bad loans or creditors’ liens or whatever Leslye told you.
Harry never lost his money. It was stolen from him—legally stolen
by some very clever people. Harry had a scheme. He thought he could
get it back for you. And it nearly worked.”

Dan had no patience for explanations. “Yes,
yes, get on with it! Where’s the money now?”

Walt glared at Dan, barely restraining
himself from assaulting the man barehanded.

“No!” Sylvie said, barely audible.

Walt caught her when it seemed she would
collapse.

Dan was unaffected by anyone else’s distress.
“Did he make the transfers like I told him?!”

Sylvie swiveled to stare at Dan in horror.
“How can you-- ?”

“He never got your message,” said Walt.

Sylvie looked at Walt. “What mess—?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Dan. “I knew I
couldn’t trust him to do it, so I took care of it another way.
Sylvie and I were married this evening in Freeport.”

Sylvie seemed dazed. “I don’t understand any
of the—,” she murmured.

“That true, City Mouse?” Walt interrupted. He
grabbed her shoulders and made sure she was looking him full in the
face.

“He said he wanted to take care of me,” she
said.

“Dang, Sylvie!” He nearly shook her.
“
Maude
don’t even like him! Hell, if you just had to have
a rich husband, why couldn’t you play up to me a little longer? I’d
‘a’ come around!”

Sylvie’s eyes filled with tears and she
slapped his face. Using her hands to push against his chest, she
stepped away from his grasp.

Walt shook his head as if in disbelief.
“Well, I swear. If it wasn’t so tragic, it’d be comic. Did you
think he had money and you didn’t, is that what you thought? Did he
act like he was doing you some big favor?”

“He wanted to take care of me!” Sylvie was
more insistent this time, as if Walt didn’t get the message
before.

But Walt understood better than she knew.
“You can take care of yourself!” he replied with equal insistence.
“You’ve proved that. Don’t you see? You don’t need him. He needs
you.”

“That’s enough,” said Dan.

Walt pleaded with Sylvie. “Don’t you see?
Harry stole the money back. It was in your name only. And Harry
would never have transferred it back to the slime who stole it to
begin with.”

“I said, that’s enough!” Dan cried.

Walt continued, “So, Dan Stern got Harry’s
money the only way he could. He married it.”

“I said shut up!” roared Dan.

Walt and Sylvie maintained eye contact.
Slowly, she walked closer to him. She placed one hand in the center
of his chest, and she felt the steady beating of his heart. Without
looking away from Walt’s eyes, she spoke softly to the other man.
“Danny?”

Walt looked away from her and directly at
Dan. “It won’t work, Stern. I’ll have this thing annulled before
you can say ‘fraudulent inducement.’ And I’ll make sure your
marriage partner lives longer than your business partners did.”

Sylvie looked at Dan as if in shock.
“Partners?” She looked at Walt. “Not Leslye!”

Walt’s eyes softened with sympathy as he
shook his head indicating there was no more Leslye.

“Oh, Walt, no,” she moaned. She did not see
Dan kneel beside his briefcase, snap it open, and pull out a
pistol.

“I don’t think you’ll be getting anything
annulled, Dogpatch,” Dan said.

Walt thrust Sylvie behind him as Dan fired.
The impact of the bullet spun Walt, but he did not fall.

Sylvie screamed. Walt faltered, pawed his
belt, but his knife was not in it. He took a step toward Dan. Dan
fired again. Walt fell hard and didn’t move.

Sylvie dropped to the floor and crawled
swiftly to his side. Blood welled from his abdomen and upper chest.
She shrieked, “What have you done! Are you out of your mind, Danny?
Call an ambulance!”

Dan’s voice was eerily calm. “I can’t do
that, Sil. I seem to have left my cell in the car, and the landline
isn’t connected yet. It’ll be connected tomorrow, but of course,
that will be too late.” He moved to stand over Sylvie, preparing to
shoot her, too.

Sylvie, though teary eyed, kept trying to
stanch the blood of Walt’s wounds with the bandanna she had taken
from around his neck. She didn’t look at Dan.

“How sad to have one’s bride killed by a
jealous former lover,” Dan mused. “And on one’s wedding night. And
how fortunate to be able to dispatch the killer myself, in
self-defense.”

Sylvie swung Dan’s briefcase up from the
floor, smashing it into his crotch. He went down.

She ran to the front door, but Dan had locked
it. The deadbolt required a key, even from the inside, and Sylvie’s
key was in Dan Stern’s pocket.

Dan rolled in agony on the living room floor.
Sylvie pulled, twisted, and pounded on the locked door. It was no
use. She turned her back to the door. Dan was in the living room.
She made a decision and, avoiding the living room, hurried through
the galley kitchen.

Exiting the kitchen, Sylvie ran toward the
back door, between the laundry room and the butler’s pantry. A
sharp sliver of light speared down the hall from the living room
lamps. It was enough. She would feel her way if need be. There was
no time to stop and turn on lights as she went.

She reached the back door. It, too, was
locked. She wanted to scream in frustration. There was no key in
the lock. No key in the rack on the wall. No key under the mat on
the floor. She was trapped.

The shadows on the distant living room wall
indicated that Dan was recovering, standing up, moving about.

Sylvie started toward the kitchen again.
Perhaps something there—but wait! Dan’s shadow was moving toward
the hallway. He would be between her and the kitchen in a
second.