“A couple hundred feet from where my ex-wife still lives. Gas leak or something?”
He shook his head. “It was an explosive, most likely set deliberately. D.X.12.”
The world had penetrated Gateville. No wonder Stanley was sweating.
“I don’t know explosives, Stanley. I’m not that kind of investigator.”
“Nobody knows much about D.X.12 anymore,” he said. “The Maple Hills police said the Army used it for a time during Vietnam.”
“Who uses it now?”
Stanley shrugged. “That’s the thing: They think it’s long gone. They’re checking to see if it’s even being manufactured anymore.”
“I see,” I said, but I didn’t. At least not why he was coming to me.
Stanley’s eyes took another tour of the room. I waited. Finally he looked back at me. “Mr. Chernek thinks you may be able to assist in the investigation.”
Anton Chernek. The Bohemian. I wasn’t surprised that he was involved; Gateville was full of his clients, including the one I’d been married to for a time. Anything that would threaten their security would bring the Bohemian. What I didn’t get was why he’d send Stanley to me. There were plenty of better private choices, ex-F. B.I., ex-A.T.F., criminal specialists, and none of them the exhusband of one of his clients.
“Stanley, I’m not the man for this. Even when my business was running and I had a staff, we traced real estate transfers, found current addresses, photographed accident scenes. Document stuff, paper trails, research, for law firms and insurance companies. Explosives are off my turf.”
It was true enough, but there was another reason I didn’t want to get involved. I wasn’t just rebuilding a turret; I was rebuilding my life. And it was going slow. Getting involved with Gateville could knock things back down.
He picked up the tan envelope, reached inside, and pulled out a clear plastic freezer bag containing a white envelope and a sheet of buff-colored paper. “This came two weeks before the explosion.” He handed it to me.
I took the freezer bag by its edges. The white envelope inside was ordinary, business-sized, and typewriter- or computer-addressed to the Board of Homeowners of Crystal Waters. The sheet of paper was smaller than letter size, double-lined, and looked to be off the kind of tablet first graders use when learning to write. The words were perfectly hand-printed in block letters, as if drawn by someone using a ruler, and read like a telegram: AVOID PROBLEM. HAVE FIFTY THOUSAND USED TENS AND TWENTIES READY.
I read the note again through the plastic. “I’m surprised the police let you keep this.”
“No police. The Board told Mr. Chernek no police.”
I looked over at him. His face was impassive. He wasn’t joking. I handed back the freezer bag like it was full of anthrax. “Take this to the police immediately. It’s key evidence.”
He slipped the freezer bag back in the tan envelope and propped it against the leg of his chair. “No police.”
“Why the hell not?”
He fidgeted in the chair. “Where in the note does it say a house is going to be blown up? The Board gets crank letters-”
“Crank letter? It says you can avoid problems by paying fifty thousand dollars, and it arrived two weeks before the house was blown up. It’s an extortion letter.”
“Why blow up the house without first trying to collect?”
“Take it to the cops, Stanley. Let them figure it.”
“And look at the amount,” he went on. “A piddling fifty thousand. The cheapest house in Crystal Waters is worth three million. Fifty thousand is what the people there pay for a second Mercedes. No, it’s got to be from some harmless nut cake.”
“If it’s harmless, why not give it to the police?”
“The Board knows the police will do what you just did: try to link the note to the explosion at Sixteen Chanticleer. And if that becomes public, it will kill the prices of homes in Crystal Waters.Mr. Chernek said the houses would lose their borrowing value. The way the stock market’s been bouncing around, that could be a disaster for the Members.”
Members. I’d forgotten how the residents of Gateville referred to themselves. Members, like in a special club. It was true enough.
“If that note is real, and there’s another explosion, they won’t be able to give those homes away,” I said.
His expression didn’t change. And I understood.
“You don’t think there will be another note. You think that even if the note is from the bomber, it was targeted only at the-” I stopped. I didn’t know their names. For over six months, I’d lived around the curve from the people whose house had blown up, and I never had known their names. Crystal Waters was not a share-the-Tupperware kind of neighborhood.
“The Farradays.”
“The Farradays,” I said. “The Board believes that if there is a link, it’s between the bomber and the Farradays. They were the targets. That’s why you’re thinking there was never a follow-up letter, because your bomber wasn’t really looking for money. You’ve convinced yourselves the letter was just a ruse.”
Stanley shifted in the chair. “You’ve got to admit the theory makes sense.”
“So now that the house has been destroyed, the matter is over?”
“The Farradays aren’t going to rebuild,” he said. “The Board is purchasing the property. It’s already been bulldozed and landscaped with sod and mature pines. You wouldn’t know there was a house there last week.”
“The police let them obliterate the crime scene so soon?”
Stanley Novak smiled for the first time since he’d arrived. “Actually, the Maple Hills police weren’t informed beforehand.”
“The Board just went ahead and did it?”
“The village understands how upsetting the ruins were to theMembers. Crystal Waters is very generous in its support of the village.”
The speed of big money always astounds me. It defies physics. With big money, the greater the mass, the quicker it moves.
“The Board paid the Farradays to go away, just in case they were the problem?”
He shrugged, but it was a yes.
“Even though this note does not mention the Farradays?”
“Mr. Farraday works at his father’s securities trading firm, no other partners. Mrs. Farraday plays tennis and golf and is active in the usual charities. Their kids are popular enough at the Country Day School. The family seemed like typical Members, but you can never know for sure. There are twenty-six other families at Crystal Waters to worry about, and the Board felt that everybody-the Farradays as well as the other Members-would benefit if the matter was put to rest quickly.” Stanley spoke like he was reciting scripture, which to him I supposed it was. They were the words of the Board of Homeowners.
“If you think you’ve got everything under control, then why bring me in?”
“Mr. Chernek would like the note and the envelope analyzed, to be safe.”
“You mean to cover the Board’s liability for negligence in case another bomb goes off. If you hire me to check out the note, it shows you didn’t just sit on your hands.” Sometimes I think at the speed glaciers move, especially when I’m being handled, but this one was too obvious.
Stanley didn’t answer. He reached into his shirt pocket, came out with a check, and held it out so I could see. It was for three thousand dollars.
I like to think I hesitated. I had big doubts about keeping the note from the police. But as I paused to be righteous, my eyes fixedon the two orange cans of roof patch next to the table saw. It had been a wet spring, my roof dripped like a spaghetti strainer, and I hadn’t worked in weeks. Three thousand would buy a roof repair good enough to stem the floods that came for Noah.
“You would report to Mr. Chernek,” Stanley said, still holding out the check. “No need to actually go back to Crystal Waters.” He was remembering the night he drove me away.