Leo got to his feet and started pacing. “That miserable prick. It wasn’t enough that he had her vacuuming and doing his laundry, he had to-” He stopped pacing and looked at me with eyes full of pain. “I wish he was alive, so I could kill him.”
“I was so blind right after she disappeared. I thought I’d caused it all. It wasn’t until I did the arithmetic, worked it backward, that I dared to believe it couldn’t have been me, not from that one time in late May.”
He came back and slumped in his chair. “What’s the point now, Dek? Even if you had figured it out, right away, and told the cops, they would have heard the words ‘motive’ and ‘weapon’ the way you heard the word ‘pregnant.’ They would have launched a manhunt for her that would have ended with her in jail, maybe for life.”
“Perhaps.”
“They might have even implicated you, at least until they found out you weren’t the one who got her pregnant.” He shook his head. “No sir, you left them with no motive, and no weapon. You protected Maris. You left her free to run.”
He started to reach for a mummified almond, thought better of it, and sat back to appraise me from his chair. “It’s not over, is it? There’s still the matter of the missing money. More important, there’s still the matter of who killed Maris.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
I pulled out my cell phone, punched the buttons for message replay, and handed it to him.
The corners of his eyes tightened as he listened.
Dina had left the message toward the end of my thrashing through the fog.
“Dek? A police officer stopped by the Scupper the day before yesterday, showing around a couple of photographs. He didn’t say what it was about. None of us recognized either of the two men, and I didn’t think much more about it. But today, a very rough-looking man came by, asking if anyone knew where Carolina Dare had moved. He said she’d inherited something, and he’d been hired to make sure she received it. He wasn’t that kind of man, Dek. He was one of the men in the photographs.”
“The surviving Kovacs brother, at last.” Leo handed back my phone.
“Somehow he learned enough to track Severs to Florida.”
“Does that mean he doesn’t know Maris was killed in Rambling?”
“No. He could have killed Maris, then Severs, and then begun backtracking her movements to find the money.”
“He just doesn’t know about you, and that key.”
“Not yet.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Dina told Kovacs she’d look for a forwarding address, and to come back today.”
“No cops? Why would she do that?”
“I’ve had an inspiration,” I said.
Thirty-six
Aggert returned my call at ten the next morning, just as I was leaving the turret to meet Leo. Down the side street, the one-eyed orange Maverick sputtered and wheezed to life.
“You got your body now, Elstrom; two of them, in fact.” He cracked a mint. “I just got a visit from Lieutenant Dillard at the Sheriff’s Department. He told me they just found Louise’s-excuse me, Carolina’s-body, and wanted to know how I was told of her death.”
Dillard hadn’t even told him Carolina’s real name. “That must have been a fast conversation,” I said, high-stepping through the snow across the spit of land.
Fifty yards to my left, the orange in my peripheral vision that was Benny Fittle’s Maverick was sputtering. He would need time to catch up. I stopped when I got to Thompson Avenue and acted like I was admiring the view of the tonks.
“Fast conversation; you got that right,” Aggert said. “I told him the house and car keys had been slipped through my mail slot and a message left on my machine.”
The Maverick’s engine was smoothing, and a break in traffic big enough for both of us was coming. “Things are heating up,” I said as I crossed Thompson Avenue.
Aggert sighed. “Our concern is only with the estate. Did you call with news of the key?”
Benny Fittle, subtle surveillance man, had pulled to a stop across the street and was staring at me through the side window of the Maverick. I stopped on the sidewalk. I didn’t want him to know where I was going.
“Forget the key. I called to warn you that you might get a visitor. Someone’s backtracking Carolina’s trail, and that might lead to you.”
“Why me?” he said quickly.
“You were her lawyer. People who don’t know much think lawyers know everything.”
The mint clattered against his teeth, unoffended. “I only held her will and notified her executor.”
“I just called to warn you.”
“That damned key, Elstrom. It comes down to that damned key.”
“You can call Dillard, ask him to protect you. Or you can go away for a couple of weeks. I’ll call you when things cool down.”
“You’ve got to find that lockbox, Elstrom. I’ve called every damned bank in the state, as Louise Thomas’s lawyer. They’ll only talk to her executor. You find that lockbox. I’ll escrow the money for the Feds. Then your killer will have nothing to go after.”
“I’m going to give the key to Dillard.”
“Are you crazy? No one will believe you just gave it up. That key keeps us safe.”
“Carolina bet on that, too. It got her dead.”
“It’s our only bargaining chip.”
“Whoever is hunting the money doesn’t bargain; he kills. The key goes to Dillard.”
His voice sagged. “When are you going to see Dillard? Today?”
“I’ve got stuff to do first. Next couple of days.”
“You’re screwing with our lives.”
“I called to warn you. Get out of town for a while, Mr. Aggert.” I thumbed him off of my cell phone. There was no time.
I was tempted to wave at Benny, but he was eating something round-a doughnut, maybe, or a bagel-and I worried that when he saw his cover was blown, his embarrassment might cause him to spit up all over what was surely the last Maverick running. So I gave him no hint he’d been spotted as I went into the liquor store. Inside, I hurried past the display of two-dollar pints and went out the back door. The owner kept it unlocked during business hours, as a service to those customers who lived in the alley. I ran to a building three doors down and climbed the exposed wood stairs to the second floor.
“What’s Benny eating?” Leo asked when I opened the door. He was at the double window facing Thompson Avenue, washing years of grime off the glass in the tiny kitchenette apartment.
“A doughnut or a bagel. It ought to keep him occupied until I come back out.”
Leo had moved fast. First thing that morning, he called a banker who knew a landlord who’d been happy to take a fast three hundred for a few days’ use of the place above the shuttered hardware store. Leo had the keys by ten o’clock.
The room had been painted pale blue, then layered with cooking grease, cigarette smoke, and despair. The decor didn’t matter; we were after the view. The double windows looked across Thompson Avenue and the little spit of vacant land to the timbered door of the turret.
“It’s going to be a while before I can pay you the whole rent on this.” I’d brought one hundred and eighty dollars, all that remained of Maris’s seven hundred.
“I’m doing this for Maris, not you.”
I moved closer to the window.
“Not too close, Dek. This won’t work if you’re spotted here.”
I stepped back.
The paper towel squeaked on the glass. “You sure we’ve got forty-eight hours?” he asked.
I couldn’t see his face, but there was no mistaking the nervousness in his voice.
“Dina called me right before I came over here. She said the Kovacs brother just left the Scupper with my card. He was driving an old heap with Indiana plates. That means no rental car, no flying.” I checked my watch. It was ten thirty. “Assuming no breakdowns, he’ll arrive sometime tomorrow. My guess is he’ll wait until dark, tomorrow night, to come at me.”