Death in the Pines (22 page)

“How long after his wife's death did he marry Eva?”

“Four months. His grieving was perfunctory, I would say.” More keyboarding. “And Eva had been married and divorced, too. Her husband, Anthony J. Goodwin, had been arrested for possession of a little more than a kilo of uncut heroin. That's a damn big drug bust for Vermont. Goodwin claimed it must have been planted, he had no involvement with drugs, didn't use them, but he copped a plea and drew a minimum seven-year sentence in a prison in upstate New York. He was busted near Fort Ticonderoga. Two months before Eva married Caleb. He was arrested a week after Benson's wife died. Eva got an uncontested divorce from him six weeks later. And then two weeks after that she marries Caleb. This was eight years ago.”

I had been idly sorting through the files that lay beside me on the bed. I sat up straight, holding one. “Sam, can you find me the phone number for Genotypes Consolidated?”

“California, Massachusetts, or Bonn?”

“Massachusetts.”

“No problemo.” He read me the number and I copied it down. I thanked him and got off the phone.

I dialed Genotypes Consolidated and, as expected, got the standard voicemail routine. I left a message asking Dr. Frank Lauser to call me at his earliest convenience.

Then I tried his Manhattan number. I heard his professorlike voice on an answering machine, telling me I knew what to do when I heard the beep.

After the beep, I said, “Frank, if you're there, pick up. We need to talk about seventy thousand volts in the forest.” Nobody picked up. I left my name and number.

I
was pondering my next move when yellow light flicked across the front window, light that shouldn't have been there. I rolled off the bed and grabbed my jacket. The gun was still in the pocket and, remembering, I pulled a box of bullets from the dresser under my washbasin and replaced the spent round that'd bravely taken out a headlight.

I doused the kerosene lantern and ducked out the door and headed down the trail to the road. Below on the old logging road, headlights jolted and jounced as someone took the route at no more than five miles per hour.

It was a shiny new Mercedes, dark gray in the moonlight. I half-crouched behind my Jeep. The driver killed the engine, and when the interior light came on, I recognized Eva Benson. I stood and said, “Hello again.”

She was startled. “You're Oakley Tyler,” she said. “You came to my house.”

“That's right, Mrs. Benson.”

“I need to talk with you.”

“So talk.”

“Can't we go inside?” I could see her only as a darker
silhouette against the gray background of moonlit snow. “I don't like it out here.”

“Come on, then. Watch your step.” She took my arm and I led her back up the hill. I asked, “Are you alone, or is someone else going to show up?”

“All alone. You, too?”

“No. There's a bear.”

“What?” Her grip tightened.

“He's not around at the moment.” We got to the cabin and I asked her to wait until I had a light on. Inside I tossed the top part of the blanket down to cover the file contents spread on my bed, then struck a match and lit the kerosene lantern. Eva stepped inside, looking around, surveying the cabin with a sort of interior decorator avidity. I picked up the half glass of wine I had left by the bed and said, “Care for a drink?”

“What are the choices?”

“Red wine, vodka, melted snow.”

“What's the red wine?”

I picked up the bottle and read the label. “A 1998 Coteaux-du-Languedoc, Château Véronique. Certified organic.”

“Wonderful.” She sat at the table, and her blonde hair swayed around her face. “I could use a drink after today.” I poured one for her and she sampled it, pronouncing it to be very good.

“Glad you approve.” I took the bentwood rocker. “Why do we need to talk, Mrs. Benson?”

“I want to know what's going on, why you came to the house. You've been asking people around town about us. Is Caleb in some kind of trouble?”

“I think you'd be the first to know.”

“It's warm in here.” She unzipped her coat and pulled it open. She was wearing a pale brown cashmere sweater, eloquent of money and sex appeal.

“Why do you think your husband may be in trouble?” I asked.

She sipped her wine. “He often is. It's not as bad lately, but he has a temper, and he's such a big hulk of a man.”

“Where is he now?”

“I haven't seen him for two days.” She gave me a kind of hurt look, as though I were responsible. “He had a meeting in town, and then he went off surveying some of his land. He's done this before, taken off and not let me know where he's going. His secretary can get in touch with him, but I can't.”

She said it with such bitterness that I asked, “Something going on between them?”

“One could assume that. She may be in line for my job.” She drank more wine. “Wife, I mean. Tell me what's going on. Caleb's been acting odd for nearly two years. What has he done?”

“I don't know.” I raised my glass and from behind it, watching her closely, I said, “It may have something to do with Jerry Smith.”

She snorted an unladylike burst of laughter. “Jerry Smith is a total nerd.”

“But he's involved somehow. And a man named Frank Lauser.”

“I don't know him,” she said too quickly.

“Yes, you do. Your company hired Lauser twice in the last year as a consultant.”

She sprang up from her chair. “How did you find that out?”

“It's publicly available information. What did your company hire Lauser to do?”

“I don't know.”

“Come on. You're an officer of the corporation.”

“You don't know much about how a business works. I have the title of VP, but absolutely zero responsibilities or powers.”

“You're also secretary-treasurer. You must have signed Lauser's paychecks.”

She shook her head. “I sign whatever our CPA hands me. Did your informant tell you I have no stock ownership? That means no input.”

“Yet you were paid a salary of two hundred and thirty thousand last year.”

“Why are you doing this?” She collected herself and sat down again. “Look, you're acting like we've broken the law. We haven't. Our company is trying to improve the environment. We're planting new trees where loggers once were clear-cutting. We're the good guys. What are you trying to do to us?”

“I'm just trying to find out who killed Jeremiah Smith.”

“That was a hit-and-run accident. I didn't have anything to do with it, and Caleb didn't either.”

“And Caleb doesn't have any problem with the Abenakis.”

“Look, that's completely different. If those people get tribal status, a lot of landowners are going to be burned, not just Caleb. Those people want us to hand Vermont over to them.”

“It used to be theirs.”

“Not anymore. Do you know your history? The Abenaki fought the American settlers in the French and Indian War. They lost, and we won. Isn't there something about victors and spoils?”

“Yet they were here first.”

“That's—”

A loud banging on the door cut her off. She went pale. I jumped up and peeked through the door.

Wanda stood there, wearing a frayed red wool coat over a sweater and blue jeans. She said, “Oakley, I have to tell you about Darryl—”

She broke off, seeing Eva inside. “That's her car, then,” she said. “What the hell is she doing here?”

“I was trying to find out.”

“I know you,” Eva said to Wanda. “The little girl from Northfield who shacked up with my husband when you were working at Santos' Bar in Montpelier.”

Wanda pushed past me. “Listen, you, that's a lie! I told him I wasn't for sale or for rent. Something you wouldn't have thought to tell him.”

Eva stared at her stone-faced. “He took you to a hotel.”

“Jesus Christ!” Wanda leaned on the table. “I was married and working my way through college. I delivered a two-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne to your husband's hotel room. I was there for maybe one full minute.”

Eva began, “That's bullshit—”

Something thudded heavily against the back wall of the cabin, making the whole place vibrate for a second, as though a bolt of lightning had hit nearby.

I blew out the kerosene lamp just as the side window gave a sharp crack and I heard the dull chunk of a slug embedding itself in one of the beams on the other side of the room. I grabbed my jacket, found the pistol, and ordered, “Down on the floor, and lie flat.”

I pulled my emergency flashlight from beside the bed. “Stay away from the door,” I said. “Wanda, did you see or hear anyone when you walked up here?”

“Deer on the edge of the forest.”

“How many cars?”

“Your Jeep, the Mercedes, mine.”

“Stay put.” I crawled to the door and pushed it slightly ajar. Nothing. I eased it open, hearing a hinge creak. It sounded as loud as a high trumpet note from Louis Armstrong. I wormed
out onto the narrow porch. A long way down the trail I saw a flicker of light, as if someone had turned on a flashlight to get his bearings.

I jumped up and ran, following the edge of the forest. I could hear someone blundering through the increasingly slushy snow downhill. I didn't know if there were two of them or only one. I heard a car door slam down at the bottom of the logging road, then the roar of the engine starting, but by the time I made it down, whoever it was had already gone.

I slogged back to the cabin. Wanda was sitting on the floor; Eva had rolled over to my mattress on the floor. I closed the door and said, “I think it's safe. He drove away.” As they got up, I lit the kerosene lantern again, but kept it low.

“Who was it?” Wanda asked, standing up.

“I don't know. Whoever it was must have come right behind you. You sure you weren't followed?”

“I don't know. I wasn't expecting anyone to follow me.”

Eva was visibly upset. “I'm leaving.” She pushed herself up from the bed.

“But Wanda will have to back her car out for you to get past.”

Wanda had a small flashlight in the pocket of her coat. The two women followed its feeble beam downhill while I took a look at the roof beam where the bullet was lodged, and tried to judge where the shooter might have been. Then I made my way around back. Snow had piled high at the left corner of the house. I saw tracks and bent down to study them.

Wanda came around the corner, nearly making me draw my pistol before I realized it was her. “What is it?”

I shone the light on the deep footprints.

She said, “Damn, that's a bear.” She pointed to a dark hank of hair caught in one of the rough-hewn boards. “There's
where he bumped the cabin. Must have been a poacher after him, took a wild shot.”

“No,” I said. “The guy parked at the bottom of the road. He came up the hill. He wouldn't have seen anything behind the cabin, not even something big as a bear.”

We went back inside, and hung blankets over the front and side windows. Wanda said she didn't feel safe sitting in a chair, so we sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the north and east corner walls. Her eyes glittered in the faint lamplight. “Relax,” I said. “Nobody could aim at us without coming in through the door.”

“You think it was Darryl, don't you?”

“It's possible.”

“No. He would have seen my car. I really don't think he would have shot, knowing I was inside. It had to be somebody after the bear, or you. Or that Benson bitch. Was she trying to bed you?”

“She didn't give me the come hither treatment. I think she wanted just what she told me—to find out why I'm asking about her husband.” I studied Wanda's face. “Did Caleb Benson try to put a move on you?”

“Oh, boy. Maybe three hundred times.”

“Did you see much of him?”

“Enough. He came into the bar once or twice a week when he was in town. I knew a girl who said yes to him once. She left town soon after.”

“So why did you come, Wanda? You said it was about Darryl.”

“Just to tell you to lay off. He's OK. He may be a lazy shit, but he's harmless. He tries to do the right thing.”

“But he used to beat you up.”

“No! What gave you that idea?”

“The night you went bowling, you said it was tough on a woman when a man slapped her around.”

She exhaled. “Oh, hell, I wasn't talking about Darryl. That was Marie's dad, a boy named Phil Newton. He was insecure and jealous because we were both in college at the same time and I had higher grades, believe it or not. He slapped me around once, and I warned him. The second time I took Marie and left.”

“So Darryl was an improvement.”

“He tried to treat me well. But Darryl couldn't hold a job. Smoked a lot of dope, that kind of thing. Not exactly a good father figure.”

“And not a good husband for you.”

“I don't know. I could have put up with him if was just the two of us, I guess. Maybe try to straighten him out. And he liked Marie. Used to carry her around on his shoulders. She liked him too, and she'd obey him when she wouldn't obey me.” She had picked up a leaf that one of us must have tracked in. It was wet but brittle, and she crumbled it. “I just don't want Darryl to go to jail, that's all. He's not a bad man.”

“He shot out the taillights on my Jeep.”

“And you shot his truck, I heard.”

“Do you know where he was last night?”

“No.”

“I think he might have been standing guard in the woods with a rifle while another man tortured Jerry Smith with a stun gun.”

“What?”

“And this morning I caught him and Bill Grinder on my land, both of them armed.”

“Darryl hunts,” she said.