He listened for a minute before adding, “Not at all. I’ll place my bids along with everyone else. I’m not asking to subvert the system, but since fate has placed me so nearby, I just had to ask for a closer examination, especially given how much I might be willing to pay.”
He waited a little more and finally said, “Excellent. Isn’t that spiffy? I’ll come by in a few hours.”
He hung up with a smile. “That ought to give us time for a warrant.”
Sammie shook her head and stared at him in wonder. “Spiffy?”
Willy raised an eyebrow. “Whatever.”
North of Putney village, Old Route 5 turns from a paved road to dirt and then vanishes altogether over a very short distance, a victim of Interstate 91, which was traced across the map in the 1960s with the subtlety of a broad-tipped magic marker, cutting off or obliterating dozens of ancient meandering country roads that had taken their cues from a host of preceding Indian trails, cow paths, and wagon tracks.
Old Route 5 also is just north of a settlement that future scientists will ponder at length, and about which-I dearly hope-they will reach some truly bizarre conclusions about Vermont’s overall placement on the national oddball scale.
Santa’s Land is a tiny petting zoo and theme park given over to a menagerie of approachable, photogenic beasts, corralled among a startling collection of Swiss huts, elves’ workshops, and cement igloos, some with paint jobs as garish as a punk rocker’s toenails.
Every time I drive by it, fantasizing about what those scholars will make of it, my pleasure is heightened because it also happens to be located in a village famous for its political correctness and artistic high breeding. Such jarring juxtapositions are one of the regular aspects of this state I find most appealing.
The residents of Old Route 5 occupy a standard sliding scale for rural Vermont, from houses plucked from a frugal and practical contractor’s imagination, to mobile homes that were rolled into place so many years ago that the trees now surrounding them make all notion of mobility inconceivable. That quixotic and contradictory sense of humanity’s imprint mingling with signs of its own impermanence is driven home by the steady rumble from the unseen interstate nearby: a siren call to progress and the restless.
Walter Skottick had staked out a middle ground between these extremes, living in a cobbled-together wooden house that had begun enthusiastically years ago, complete with siding and an asphalt roof, only to settle eventually for a series of plywood, barn wood, or plain tar paper extensions, all clearly designed for some specific purpose, and all stamped with the homeowner’s ever lessening standards.
Willy and I left my car and surrendered to the cold-nosed nuzzling of four friendly dogs, their combined nostrils producing a fog machine’s worth of condensed air.
The front door to the ramshackle house burst open, and a large, bearded, friendly man waved a meaty hand at us. “Hi, there. Sorry about the dogs-should’ve warned you. Boys… Guys… Here.”
The dogs totally ignored him and made our perilous trip from car to house even more challenging than it would have been otherwise. There are two ways of attacking a snow-clogged walkway in this country: The compulsive among us shovel diligently down to the frozen earth every time it’s called for, neatness and a sprinkling of salt counting for extra points. The more casual merely let their guests beat an ever thickening, increasingly slippery path to their doors. Mr. Skottick was one of the latter, making Willy and me, aided by the gamboling dogs, look like a couple of drunks.
Skottick stepped back as we drew nearer. “I really am sorry. Never got around to training them. Is one of you Mr. Morrison?”
Willy, having almost fallen three times, testily fished out his badge. “I lied. We’re cops.”
“Vermont Bureau of Investigation, Mr. Skottick,” I explained, irritated at having our cover blown prematurely. It would have been nice to at least see the watch before announcing ourselves. “We apologize for the subterfuge, but we need to talk to you about that watch.”
Of the various reactions available to him, Skottick took the one I was coming to dislike the most, exacerbating my mood. “The Vermont what?”
Willy shared my feelings. “Bureau of Investigation. It’s like the FBI, but with shit on their shoes. Where’s the watch?”
Skottick understandably took offense. “Just a minute. I don’t understand.”
I took the warrant from my pocket, giving Willy a hard look. “Mr. Skottick, we have reason to believe the watch you have for sale was recently stolen. We’re here to take possession of it and anything else that was stolen along with it, and we’d also like to hear your side of the story.”
His face above the beard went pale and then flushed red. “That son of bitch.”
“This oughta be good,” Willy muttered, ignoring me and entering the house uninvited.
“Who’re you talking about?” I asked as I followed suit, forcing Skottick to join us.
“Marty Gagnon. He’s the one who gave me the watch. I sold him a car, he didn’t have what he owed, so he gave me the watch. Told me it was a family heirloom.”
“And you swallowed that?” Willy asked from an interior room.
“Why would he need a car from you if he had a watch like that?”
“Better get it for us,” I said gently.
His shoulders slumped, Skottick eased past Willy into a cluttered workroom. “I didn’t know anything about this. I swear to God. Maybe I was stupid, but I knew I wouldn’t get the money out of him any other way.”
He rummaged around in a desk drawer and withdrew the watch, which glittered in the light through the window. “I thought it was fake, to be honest. I mean, it looks like a Christmas ornament. That’s why I put it on the Net instead of just selling it to a jeweler. I figured the diamonds were phony.”
“They’re not,” Willy said shortly, taking the watch and working it into an evidence envelope with one hand.
“What else did Marty Gagnon give you?” I asked.
“That was it. I promise. You can search the place, if you want.”
I turned to Willy. “You want to look around a little? I’ll talk to Mr. Skottick in the living room.”
Willy nodded and the two of us left him alone. Skottick sat heavily in an old armchair like a bear at the end of a long day, his paws dangling between his knees.
“Tell me about Gagnon,” I told him.
“Not much to tell. I advertised a car in the paper about a month ago. He came by right off, paid me half in cash and promised the rest later. Said he hadn’t gotten his paycheck yet. I trusted him. A couple of weeks later, I called him and he told me he got fired. He didn’t have the money but he’d get it soon. I was angry-threatened to put the cops on him-so he told me he’d take care of me some other way. It would just take a little more time. Finally, he called and said he had better than cash. He’d had a relative die and he’d inherited some stuff and had a watch that was worth a lot more than the balance he owed me. Maybe it was dumb, but I cut him some slack. I was getting sick of it. He came right over, gave me the watch, and that was that.”
“This all happened when?”
“He gave me the watch yesterday.”
“You moved pretty fast to put it on the Net.”
“I sell a lot of things that way. Been doing it for years.”
“You still have that phone number?” I asked.
He shifted his bulk to reach into his back pocket, pulled out a ratty wallet, and removed a small, soiled scrap of paper, which he handed over. “Am I under arrest?”
I looked at the number. It was a Brattleboro exchange. “No. Did he give you an address?”
He shook his head.
“How ’bout a bill of sale or the registration transfer info? That would have it.”
As if snapping out of a dream, he blinked once and dug into the wallet again, producing what I was after. “What’s going to happen to me?”