Amid the scattered laughter, I suggested, “We could hold a press conference to make it look like I’m the right target.”
There was a telling hesitation in the room. “What do we do with you afterward?” Paul asked.
“Nothing,” I answered him. “We don’t know for a fact any of this is true. It’ll just be another iron in the fire. Besides, the governor and Bill Allard have been breathing down my neck-a press conference could be a good way to throw them a little meat and test our theory at the same time. Can’t hurt, right?”
No one bothered answering that.
I glanced at the notes before me. “Anyhow, the World War Two connection is the only soft spot we’ve found so far-I don’t see that we have a choice. Willy, what did you find out chasing down Federico Alvarez’s last will and testament?”
“It’s on file at the courthouse, and it reads like what the innkeeper told us. The good news-bad news is that the paper trail had too many legal firewalls for me to track it back to any source besides a lawyer who won’t talk.”
“What’s good about that?” Smith asked.
“Shows they got something to hide. Cuts down on the chance we’re just dealing with some crazy, compulsive bastard who liked old luggage.”
Smith looked unconvinced. I couldn’t argue with him. “That’s one possibility. I’ve known a lot of nuts who’ve hired attorneys. What would it take to crack the lawyer open?”
“Won’t need to,” Willy answered. “He figured we might waste his time, and he thinks it’s bullshit anyhow, so he told me off the record all he’s got is more documentation leading nowhere. He used some legal babble that didn’t mean squat to me, but the gist of it was that Alvarez was secretive enough-and the whole thing old enough-that we’re not going to find out what was behind it. All the major players are long dead.”
“All right,” I conceded. “We’ll have to drop it. Speaking of lawyers, did we ever find out what Gaston Picard was doing down here just before Jean Deschamps showed up on Mount Mansfield?”
“I checked that out, too,” Willy answered. “’Nother dead end. I talked to lawyers, bankers, Realtors-like you said. Also the town clerk, since we were already over there digging through files, and even a couple of travel agents. I tried the airport manager and crew, just for what-the-hell. I asked Gary here what ideas he had, and he put me onto a few more people. Total waste of time. Picard might as well’ve not even been here.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Drive all the way down and not meet with anybody? Where was his car parked when it was ticketed?”
Gary Smith spoke up. “Main Street, opposite Shaw’s.”
“Why the ticket?”
He hesitated. “Overdue meter, I think.”
“When?”
“Around noon, more or less. I could look it up.”
“That’s close enough,” I said. “High roller hits town, parks for a long time on the main drag at midday. Why’s he here?”
Willy sounded disgusted. “Meet someone for lunch. Shit.”
I tried easing the pain. “You thought of everything else.”
“’Cept the obvious.”
“What good restaurant’s near there?” I asked Gary.
“There’s more’n one.”
“We’ll need a list, starting with the most expensive. If Picard did the choosing, he probably went five star. We can divvy it up and get it done under an hour.” I glanced back at my notes. “Sammie, you and Tom were going to see what you could find out about Stowe in the late forties.”
“It was more upscale than Arvin Brown told us,” she said, fishing a sheet of paper from her pocket to consult. “A thousand-foot rope tow was put on the mountain in ’37. By 1940, a sixty-three-hundred-foot chairlift went in-first in Vermont-which had carried a million skiers to the top by ’53-”
“Sounds like ripe pickings,” I interrupted, “for a sharp-eyed investor.”
“Or a crook,” Willy added.
“Which goes to what we’re after,” I agreed. “We need less history and more about the people back then, especially anyone who might’ve been handy with an ice pick.”
Sammie gave me a hapless gesture. “If you mean old rap sheets, that part’s turned out to be almost impossible. What cops they had are gone and buried. We couldn’t find any police files anywhere. We got names of some of the old movers and shakers, just by talking to any geezer we could find, and some of them spilled a little gossip, but what do you do with that?”
I pulled the Special Service Force roster book we’d borrowed from Dick Kearley from under the papers before me and slid it across to her. “That’s a list of the people Antoine served with in the war. Inside is a printout of known surviving Canadian taxpayers from the RCMP. But it was an American/Canadian brigade, and the Mounties admitted their records might be iffy. Still, it’ll give you something to compare against anyone you might find in the town clerk’s archives. Later, we can try the Pentagon for what they have, too.”
I looked around the room and saw her disappointment reflected in most of the faces there. “I know this isn’t fun-geriatrics, ancient history, and dusty files-but somebody on the other side thinks we’re getting close, which means the ball’s back in motion. We’ve got to do the homework.”
I placed my hands on the table and rose. “Okay. While you and Tom are doing that, the rest of us will find out who Picard had lunch with-assuming that’s what happened. Maybe one will help the other. We’re looking for a missing link here, and we know it exists ’cause I wouldn’t’ve been shot at otherwise, right?”
It was mid afternoon by the time I entered the Deeryard Restaurant. A couple of people were sitting by the stained-glass windows drinking coffee over immaculate tablecloths, but otherwise the place was in the dark and peaceful chasm between lunch and dinner, its staff either prepping the bar for the evening onslaught, discreetly vacuuming the carpet far away from the clientele, or creating muted chaos from beyond the leather-padded kitchen doors.
I stood stock-still in the middle of the room, adjusting to the tasteful gloom, when an artificially cultured voice asked, “May I help you, sir?”
I discerned the emerging form of a man in a jacket and tie, looking much like a television anchorman in his perfection.
“I hope so.” I pulled out my badge. “I’m Joe Gunther, Vermont Bureau of Investigation.”
The man’s tone changed from fake cultured to instant nasty, which made me think he might be as unpleasant a colleague as he was obsequious a host. “We passed inspection two months ago with flying colors. What son of a bitch complained this time?”
I pocketed the badge with a sigh, wondering if I shouldn’t drop the whole VBI intro. “I’m not a restaurant inspector. I’m a cop working a homicide. What’s your name?”
The man at least paid me the compliment of looking astonished. “Oh. I’m sorry. I thought… Johnny Philbin.”
He seemed torn over whether a handshake was appropriate. I let him dangle his wrist in the air uncertainly.
“You work lunches or are you dinner only?” I asked him.
The hand dropped. “Both.”
I mentioned the date Gaston Picard had received his parking ticket. “How ’bout then?”
“Yeah, I think so… I mean, yeah, I was here.”
“You take reservations for lunch?”
“We take them. They aren’t necessary. Dinner only.”
I pulled a photograph of Picard from my pocket, provided earlier by the Sûreté, and repeated a question I’d tried unsuccessfully at two other places on the block. “This is important. Take your time. Tell me if you remember seeing this man that day.”
He barely glanced at it. I prepared myself to be disappointed. “Sure.”
“You saw him?”
“Yeah. He had lunch with Mike Sawyer,” he said without expression, as if sharing common knowledge.
“Who is…?” I asked nevertheless.
“He’s a famous guy around here. Ran the first really classy restaurant in the valley-Michael Sawyer’s it was called. Old guy, but nice, and knows his food business. Gives you hell if you mess up, overtips if you do it right.”