Something else struck me, too, something I'd overlooked before and shouldn't have. GTE's computer records show when a call was made from a pay phone. I checked again. The call to Ashkenazi hadn't been. She had to have called from her nephew's office, so he might very well know what she was up to. And I'd said something to him about "poisoner and poisonee." He'd almost certainly called and warned Veronica.
I laid it all out for Carlos, and his eyes lit up. He'd take it up with Vector Biology right away, and if he couldn't get a contract on it from the state, the firm would cover the cost. And use the case for publicity
Assuming it worked out.
* * *
Carlos didn't ask me what I was going to do next, and I didn't volunteer. I spent most of the day catching up on odds and ends, and working on my Spanish. Then with my pocket recorder and my gun inside my jacket, I headed for Westwood to confront Veronica Pipolli. I'd start dumping my evidence on her now—it might even be enough for a prosecutor to take her to court with—and maybe she'd start saying things.
If she was home.
She was, and unfriendly. When the nurse-housekeeper announced me, Veronica came into the living room like a drill sergeant. Eldon came swinging in too, on his fingers and stumps, looking somehow more formidable than most guys with legs. I started by telling her that Harvey O'Connell botched his contract, and the LAPD had him locked up. Sarcastically she said that was nice, and who was Harvey O'Connor?
I matched her tone. Sarcasm can get people to say things they otherwise wouldn't. "O'Connell," I said, "not O'Connor. I thought you knew him. Or do you give bundles of hundred-dollar bills to people you don't know? Or maybe there's something new in the world: two people with the same fingerprints. O'Connell had three shots at me, incidentally, and all I got was a fragment in the cheek."
I touched my face as I said it, my eyes on hers. She showed no fear. What I was looking at was supressed rage.
"The fingerprints weren't your only mistake," I went on. "That was stupid, using your nephew's phone to set up the date with Arthur. Aldon, that is. Why didn't you use the pay phone?"
With that her face went white, but she didn't look faint at all. The muscles in her jaw lumped like walnuts. "Was that when you hired O'Connell to kill me?" I asked. "After I talked with Frank? The timing's about right. It would have taken O'Connell awhile to learn where I lived. And maybe follow me around until he saw a good opportunity."
She still wasn't saying anything, so I tried another shot. "They've decided Aldon was dead before he was shot," I lied. "I'd never have figured out how you killed him, if I hadn't heard about the killer bee research. Do you keep some of your tricked up meningitis virus around the house? Maybe you plan to use it on your husband next. He's Aldon's twin, after all."
That broke it. "Get out!" she shouted suddenly. "Get out of this house! Now!"
I shook my head. "Not without the rest of the virus."
"All right!" she shouted, "I'll give it to you!"
And stomped out of the room. For the first time that day I turned my attention to Eldon. He was in a state of shock. In ten seconds Veronica was back. But what she had in her hand was not a flask or vial or petri plate, it was a snub-nosed .32, looking bigger because it was pointed at me. All that saved me getting shot was, she was too damned mad to simply kill me. She was going to blast me with venom first, with words.
Before she got any of them out though, Eldon was between us, facing her. I wished he was taller. "You . . . killed . . . Aldon," he said. "And . . . you . . . lied . . . about . . . him . . . to . . . father. How . . . could . . . you . . . do . . . that? You . . . said . . . you . . . loved . . . me!"
The steel and the fire went out of Veronica Ashley as if they'd never been. "I do love you, Eldon," she said, and watching her, I knew she meant it. "I love you very much. I've always loved you."
"No," he said, and moved toward her on splayed and calloused fingers. "You . . . can't . . . love . . . me. You . . . killed . . . Aldon!" Then he launched himself at her, I'm not sure just how, tackling her, scrambling all over her. I ducked out of the room and drew my own gun. She screamed, and hers went off, once, and after a couple of seconds a second time. Crouched and ready, I looked back in.
Veronica sat on the floor against a heavy chair, weeping quietly, her hands on her belly. Her face was already gray. Eldon lay sprawled on the floor, his head a ruin, far worse than Aldon's had been. One way or another she'd been gut-shot, then he'd put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Her eyes moved to me when I stepped back into the room, the hatred gone from them, replaced by shock and something else. Grief.
"Jesus," I said to her. "Jesus, Veronica, I'm sorry. I'm really really sorry." And I meant it.
19
It was all recorded, of course. At the hospital next day, Veronica Ashley told everything, and naturally the papers picked it up. And played hell out of it. They gave Prudential a lot of good publicity and made me sound like Sherlock Holmes. So of course I got promoted. I don't wear junior in front of investigator anymore.
As a matter of policy, I'd phoned Carlos from the Ashleys' right after I'd called the police. When I told him what happened, he said come to the office as soon as I possibly could. He knew what was coming. When I got there, he was waiting with Joe. In my profession it's best not to have your face on the six o'clock news. So Joe gave me a paid vacation as a bonus, and sent me to his place to hide till I could leave town. I phoned Tuuli from there, and she surprised me: She agreed to go with me!
I left Joe's at 4:30 the next morning, picked her up, and we flew to Hemlock Harbor, back in Ojibwa County, Michigan. Where she met my sister Elvi, and my half brother Sulo. Sulo's more than old enough to be my father. Both of them loved Tuuli right away. Now she and I are roughing it in dad's old fishing shack, his hytti, back in the bush on Balsam Lake, where I'm taping this. Elvi said I owe it to my nieces and nephews, and whatever children Tuuli and I might have.
Yep, Tuuli and I got the license the second day there, and got married in Hemlock Harbor's Trinity Lutheran parsonage. She says I'll have to improve my Finnish now, speak it as well as Elvi, or better yet, Sulo. Next week we'll go back to L.A. and find a security building in a good location. One where she can rent an efficiency apartment in the same building we live in, for her consulting office.
And that's all there is to the story, so I'll go split some wood for the stove. I'm not missing L.A. too much yet.
THE PUPPET MASTER
a novel
PART ONE:
Church of the New Gnosis
PROLOG
Actually it was a bedroom in a private home, but it looked like a large, private hospital room in baby blue, with vases of varied, freshly cut flowers adding indigo and white, violet and butter yellow against the delicate green of ferns. The bed was a hospital bed, and a private nurse sat beside it in a chair. Next to her stood a cart, an instrumented, stainless-steel life-support system on wheels, with LEDs displaying the patient's critical biofunctions. A telescoping rod extended upward from it, topped by a pivoting arm that dangled wires and a tube to disappear beneath the bed cover.
The nurse was reading a paperback novel—one of the New Age novels that were popular then. Just enough daylight filtered through the thick drapes to show it was morning.