The Death at Yew Corner (14 page)

McLean returned to the lounge with a thin attaché case. He took out a sheaf of papers and quickly scanned them. Bea left the bartender and returned to the table. She sat across from the attorney and looked at him coolly.

“You have the papers for me to sign?”

“Just two items actually.” He passed the documents across the narrow table. “Sign the original and keep the second copy for your personal records.”

Bea glanced hastily at the papers and scrawled her signature. She looked up at Ramsey with her most professional smile. “I just received a call from home. My Satureja is sick.” She stood. “If you'll excuse me?”

“If it's a …”

“An emergency. Yes.” Bea left the lounge.

“Hey!” he called after her. “Isn't Satureja an herb?”

So it is, she thought as she left the inn and exited into a strong noon light that hurt her eyes.

It was over and now she wanted to go home.

9

She was asleep.

He covered her with a light blanket to protect her from the cool river wind blowing through the open window. He switched off the table lamp before he left the room and walked downstairs to the kitchen. He placed a small frozen steak in an iron skillet and ladled leftover salad into a wooden bowl.

Lyon watched the meat sizzle.

Bea had told him about her drinks with Ramsey and the interest Serena Truman had in the Wentworths. Her recounting of the day's events had been concise and dispassionate, and yet, in a certain sense, incomplete. They had often talked over such meetings, and usually he had received an accurate picture of the other person's personality. She had been strangely reticent to talk about Ramsey McLean.

He turned the steak and smiled.

Lyon knew his wife had been tested and had not failed him. He had not been obtuse when she had initially told him about her pending meeting with Ramsey. He was pleased for both of them that her present malaise had not compromised their marriage.

He sat in the breakfast nook and slowly ate the steak and salad.

Now that a possible grave had been discovered and the bloodstains on the rock were determined to be human, the police were convinced that Rustman had somehow survived and was extracting revenge. It was a theory worth considering.

He rinsed his plate and utensils and stuck them in the dishwasher. The muscles in his back tensed as he heard the kitchen-door lock click behind him.

Bea was still asleep upstairs. Only a few people they knew would enter the house unannounced, and he hadn't heard a car in the driveway.

Lyon clenched the skillet handle with both hands and turned with it raised over his head.

A large man in a black suit deftly caught both his wrists and twisted them violently. The skillet fell to the floor and Lyon was pushed back against the kitchen counter. Hands expertly patted his body in a weapon search.

“He's clean,” the gravelly voice of his attacker said.

Lyon tried to twist away, but a firm grip kept him pinned against the counter. “Who the hell are you?”

“Tinkerbell.”

“Search the house,” a woman's voice said.

Lyon's arms were released. The man in the dark suit padded softly up the back stairs. Lyon turned to face a woman holding a small-caliber automatic that was pointed at his midsection.

He judged her to be thirty. She wore a bright red pantsuit that matched her hair. It was nearly the reddest hair he had ever seen, made astonishingly more vivid by its contrast with the albino white of her skin. Slim, arched lines of false eyebrow jutted over deep blue eyes. Her mouth was a thin, narrow line with a touch of lipstick in the same shade as her hair.

She was a striking woman with a touch of the grotesque.

“May I ask the obvious?”

“Serena Truman. I assume you have tea?”

“What?”

“I do hope you have something interesting. I like my tea with a little body.”

“Tea? To drink?”

“Of course.”

Lyon turned and opened a cupboard. “I do have some Ann Page which has an amusing nuance.” He heard a resigned sigh as he turned the flame on under the kettle. He wondered if he should reach for a knife in the utility drawer or run for the phone and dial 911. As long as the lady held the automatic, he didn't seem to have much choice except to try to stay calm and see what developed.

Horace was back in the kitchen. “A dame's asleep in the upstairs bedroom, that's all.”

“Thank you, Horace. Wait in the living room so we can talk. Make sure you take the phone off the hook.”

“Got it.”

Lyon watched the rapid conversation between the unusual-looking woman who so professionally held the small gun and the large man who hovered over her so respectfully. Horace left the kitchen and Serena Truman slipped the safety latch on the automatic and put it back in her shoulder bag.

“I like lemon with my tea, thank you.”

“I wouldn't have it otherwise.”

When the teapot whistled, he gathered cups, saucers, and spoons while watching Serena Truman from the corner of his eye.

The teapot whistled impatiently and he poured the scalding water over tea bags and set the cups on the table in the breakfast nook. “I don't suppose you've just dropped in for a get-acquainted visit?”

“Do I look like the Welcome Wagon?”

“I'd hate to think what you might be giving away.”

“Your wife is having an affair with my husband, Ramsey McLean. In addition to that, someone is trying to kill me.”

“My wife is the lady asleep upstairs.”

“Who had drinks and games with my husband this afternoon at the Great Sound Inn.”

“Drinks, yes. Games, I don't think so.”

“You sound ridiculously sure of her faithfulness. What if I were to tell you that I have my husband under constant surveillance?”

“I think you'd be telling a fib.”

“I know he took her to the Inn. He has a room there reserved for such times.”

“Reservation and occupancy are different.”

“He usually gets what he wants.”

“He doesn't usually have lunch with Bea.”

Her eyes flickered briefly for the first time with a sense of uncertainty. “No matter. It's not even academic at this point. I have already made up my mind concerning my marriage.”

“Then that isn't the reason for your visit?”

“No. As I said, I am going to be killed.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Because of this.” She handed Lyon a news clipping from a Bridgeport paper.

He read it carefully:

PRODUCE MANAGER FOUND ASPHYXIATED

Robert Ryland, 41, of 32 Nesbitt Court, manager of the Arcadia Produce Company, was found early this morning by co-workers locked in a refrigerator unit. Company officials conjecture that Ryland inadvertently became trapped in the freezing unit over the weekend. No explanation was given as to how Mr. Ryland became trapped.…

Lyon finished the article and placed it carefully on the table between them. “What's your connection with Arcadia Produce?”

“I own it.”

“I see.” Her eyes and body language portrayed concern. This was a frightened woman who was fighting to retain possession of her faculties. “How does this concern me?”

“You discovered what may have been a grave.”

“Your sources of information are excellent.”

“You were responsible for saving Smelts.”

“I happened to be there.”

“Don't be coy, Wentworth. I'm aware of your background. Your involvement in murder cases is well-known to me.”

“I write children's books.”

“Practically an avocation, it would seem.”

“I have, from time to time, inadvertently been involved in certain murder cases.”

“And solved them.”

“Only when they were thrust upon me.”

“Which is why I am here.”

“I don't see how …”

“I need your help!” She bit the words off and again he detected the hidden traces of fright.

“You have a strange way of asking for it.”

She sipped her tea and grimaced at the taste. “I am convinced that someone is going to try to kill me.”

“Why don't you explain?”

“My father, who died several years ago, started his career with the Arcadia Produce Company. I suppose you could go beyond that and say he started with a stall at the farmers' market. He was a good businessman, Mr. Wentworth. By the time of his death he had myriad interests.”

“The nursing homes, the produce company. Linen supply also?”

“He believed in integrated development.”

“Which includes your own labor union.”

“Let me just say that we watch Mr. Smelts's union with great interest.”

“Everything is interrelated. The nursing homes buy from Arcadia, rent linen from …”

“Ajax Linen and Uniform Supply.”

“Surely you didn't forget wholesale groceries and meat, and what about hospital supplies?”

“Do you need the names?”

“Not unless they become important.”

“All of these deaths by asphyxiation are leading directly to me.”

“Do you know why?”

“I run the business, as my father did, with a firm hand. I have made certain enemies along the way.”

“Does this firm hand include the kidnapping of Marty Rustman?”

“I am certainly not going to answer that.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Find the killer.”

“The police are looking for Rustman.”

“And not succeeding. And who's positive that it is Rustman?”

“I have no official capacity.”

“That hasn't stopped you before.”

“I am not a licensed private investigator.”

“Don't play games with me.”

“Do what she says, Lyon.” Bea, dressed in an old, frayed terry cloth robe, stood in the doorway. “Whoever is killing these people is also directly or indirectly responsible for Fabian Bunting's death. Do what she wants.”

Lyon looked from Bea to Serena Truman. “I would say that our interest in these killings is more profound than I realized.”

Serena stood up. “Come to my house tomorrow at four. Several of my associates will be present later in the evening.”

“At four.”

She handed him a small business card with her address and left the house with Horace following.

Lyon let the card fall into the wastebasket. He knew where she lived.

10

They saw the house when the car topped the ridge and started down the incline into the valley. The turreted brownstone building seemed to squat between the hills. It dominated the surrounding fields and woods like a feudal castle, but without the warmth of an English manor. It was a bleak house, with high flat walls broken only by an occasional window or small ornamental balcony. A line of yew hedges bracketed the winding drive from the gate. The hedges had been clipped into grotesque gargoyle-like topiary figures.

“My God, look at those hedge figures,” Bea said.

“‘Slips of yew, slither'd in the moon's eclipse.'”

“What?”

“The witches' scene in Macbeth. They slipped the guy yew. Got him into all sorts of trouble.”

“Oh, the topiary. Well, Ramsey McLean said it was a fortress fit for haunting.”

“It must have taken some doing to get those hedges back into shape. The place was vacant for years,” Lyon said. “I believe there was some sort of estate dispute. Who's going to haunt it?”

“Serena's father.”

“Old Benny. I'm not surprised. He was a mean old curmudgeon.”

“You knew him?”

“I checked up on him this morning. They called him the Hartford Strong Man. He just about controlled the wholesale produce market in the entire state. He made a good deal of his money during Prohibition, and God only knows what else he was into.”

“Then you didn't buy her pushcart-to-entrepreneur story?”

“If he sold anything from a cart, it was a case of Prohibition Scotch.”

“Was he connected to organized crime?”

“He was his own organized crime. Strictly a one-man show. Pat tells a story that the organization from Providence sent over a couple of men to talk with Benny about cutting up percentages. On the following morning they were found dead in an alley with their tongues cut out.”

“Sounds like an unpleasant person.”

“Serena is his only living child. I wonder how many of his business methods she inherited?”

“Sometimes the second and third generation of dirty money becomes laundered. Do you realize how much of what is now considered old and venerable New England money came from the slave trade?”

“True, but I doubt that Serena has divested herself of the old man's tricks. After all, she is the one who established the phony union and organized its strong-arm tactics.”

“I'm still a little vague as to what miracle she expects you to perform, but the day is not a complete loss, since I've always wanted to see the inside of that house.”

“She's a very frightened woman. At this juncture, I believe she'd call on the powers of the occult if she thought they could help her. Looking at the way she's had that topiary trimmed, maybe she already has.”

A high wall topped with jagged glass shards surrounded the estate and enclosed ten acres of trees, well-tended lawn, and the oppressive yew topiary. A heavy wrought-iron gate was guarded by a large man in a dark business suit who held a shotgun.

“You Wentworth?”

“Yes, I have an appointment.”

“Who's she?”

“My wife,” Lyon answered.

“Uh huh.” The man in the business suit picked up a telephone attached to the wall and spoke in a low tone. He nodded and hung up. “Horace says you can come in. Leave the car outside.”

“Not very gracious,” Bea said as Lyon parked the Datsun along the edge of the wall. They walked back to the gate, which was now held open by the guard.