Death in the Pines (7 page)

“Mr. Tyler, I need to see your ID.” The kid kept his tone flatly neutral, and my appreciation of his ability ratcheted up by maybe one notch. If I knew of some rotten PIs, I knew of even more small-town cops that had no grasp of professional conduct.

I pulled out my Vermont driver's license and handed it to him. Snow blew past so cold that it burned my cheek when it hit.

Holding his flashlight up beside his left ear, the cop looked over the license, then turned the beam on me. “You carrying?

“I am.”

“Where's the weapon?”

“My right-hand jacket pocket.”

“Take it out slowly and give it to me, handle-first.”

So maybe he wasn't as professional as I'd thought. But I complied, meanwhile telling him, “Word I got was that I didn't need a concealed-carry permit in Vermont. I still have a valid one for Georgia.” I handed him the weapon.

He offered no comment on what I understood about gun laws in Vermont. In the glare of his flashlight he inspected the gun, then broke the cylinder and spun it. He sniffed the barrel, then let his arm drop, pointing the weapon at the ground. “Got any others?”

“No handguns on me or in the Jeep. That's it. I have a shotgun in my cabin.”

The state cop seemed to be antsy. He came around the cruiser holding his sidearm in both hands, barrel aimed just above my car. “What'cha got, Jess?”

“PI. Got a piece, but he's legal. I've heard about him.”

The trooper made a flicking gesture with the barrel of his gun. He was starting to make me nervous, to make me wonder if he'd learned firearm technique from a qualified instructor or from watching Arnold and Bruce and Nick on Netflix DVDs. “What you figure you need a weapon for?”

“Would you please not aim so close to my head?”

“Holster it,” Jess told his state trooper friend.

After a five-second pause, the ten-year-old's
I don't hafta if I don't wanna,
the state cop decided he wanted to and put his sidearm away. Relaxing a little, I gave him as much as he needed to know: “I had the piece with me because yesterday Jeremiah Smith came to see me at my place. While he was there somebody torched his truck, and when we went to look at the damage, someone took a shot at us.”

“Why did they do that?”

“I don't know. Either he didn't like Smith or he didn't like me. I can't imagine any scenario where the latter would be the case, so I'm guessing it was someone with a grudge against Smith.”

It was too far to push on a cold, snowy night. Jess had not handed my license back to me. He passed it to the trooper and said, “Larry, do me a favor and run him for us.” In the back glow from the flashlight I saw him smile. “Sorry for this, but you know if we pig-ignorant cops don't do it by the book, we get our asses chewed.”

Larry got my license plate number, walked back to his cruiser, and climbed in. Jess hefted my gun thoughtfully in his right hand. “Before he gets back, tell me what's your interest here.”

“Just what I told you. Somebody fired at us yesterday, actually grazed Smith's ear, and now he's dead.” I was starting to shiver. Jess didn't seem to be bothered by the wind.

“Who you working for?”

“Nobody's paying me,” I said truthfully.

“You didn't report the shooting. That's a crime in itself.”

“I didn't get hit. Smith was the injured party, and he decided it was a hunting accident.”

“Yeah. You know I could toss your ass in jail. I could have your PI license pulled.”

“You could, but I'm not working at it any longer. I retired when my partner died.”

“Jim Lincoln.”

“John. Heart attack.”

“OK,” the cop said, handing me my weapon back. I guessed that he'd known John's first name all along and that it had been a little test. What the hell, it didn't cost a thing. “You see the shooter? Able to tell us anything about him?”

“Didn't see him. From tracks I saw near the Dog River, he wears size eleven or twelve boots. Big guy, I'd say.”

Larry climbed out of the State Police cruiser and came back with my driver's license. He handed it to me and growled to Jess, “He's clean. And the car.”

“Know anything about what happened here, Mr. Tyler?” asked Jess, putting a little extra twist on the “Mister.”

“Heard from Grinder it was a hit-and-run.”

“That all?”

“That's it. I thought I'd stop and see if I could help.”

He slapped the door of my jeep. “Good to see a citizen with that kind of social conscience. Thank you for stopping, sir. Good evening.”

My nose was freezing, and the snow was coming down harder. “No charge for the offer of help. Call it professional courtesy. And by the way, did the woman who found Smith have out-of-state plates on her car?”

Larry bulled forward. “Damned odd question. What are you getting at?”

“Just curious.”

Jess elbowed in front of Larry. “Mr. Tyler, you realize we can't answer a civilian's questions on this matter.”

“All right.”

He hesitated, but then added, “If you hear anything we ought to know, or if you come across anything funny, you'll notify us.”

It wasn't a question.

“I'd like to see the whole thing resolved,” I said carefully.

Neither cop replied. Both of them walked back to their cars, over at least an inch of fresh snowfall. I slipped the gun back into my pocket, got in the Jeep, rolled the window up, and turned around. I drove back through near-blinding snow to Bill Grinder's house, thinking resentfully that when old Don Quixote shambled off on his bony nag to pursue the elusive windmill, at least he did so in sunny Spain.

B
ill Grinder grudgingly let me in. His living room looked as if it had been decorated by a taxidermist with delusions of grandeur. Deer heads, a moose head, a bobcat, and a baby bear stared at me with glass eyes. A flat high-definition TV screen not quite as large as a billboard occupied most of the wall beside the front door, and in its light spill I saw a sagging sofa and a cracked recliner, with small tables beside each of them cluttered with stuffed weasels, a family of rabbits, and a skunk. I imagined that I could smell it, but the sour air was really just full of the odors of dust, old wood, and moldy hides.

Grinder half-sat, half-lay in the recliner. Lucy, an obese woman of fifty—I assumed she was his wife, but Grinder had just introduced her with “This's Lucy”—was on the far end of the couch, wrapped in a flower-patterned house dress and munching stolidly on popcorn. They had been watching a show about a snotty young guy who faked being a psychic and showed up the ordinary cops. They didn't look away from the screen as I talked to them, but Grinder, at least, answered my questions.

“The woman that found him? Her name's Tammy, Tammy Ehrlman. Lives in Riverton. Her old man is—what is he, Lucy?”

“Town selectman,” Lucy said. “Tammy's a good girl.”

“Is she in the phone book?”

He flipped a hand toward an end table. A Princess phone, a real antique of the sort that shows up on eBay, sat atop a dogeared and oil-stained local telephone directory. I opened it and squinted in the light of the TV until I found a listing for Ehrlman. I took out my cell phone and dialed it. A man answered.

“Is Tammy there?” I asked.

“Who's calling?” His tone sounded more bored than protective.

“My name is Oakley Tyler. I was a friend of Jeremiah Smith's.”

A pause, then, “Tammy can't come to the phone, Mr. Tyler. She's sedated. Got all shook up finding him there, so she took a sleeping pill and went to bed. She needs to sleep it off.”

“Can you tell me if she was driving her own car when she found Mr. Smith?”

“She was.”

“Does it have Vermont plates?”

“What? Sure. And the tag's current.”

“Does anyone in the household have out-of-state plates?”

“What?” he asked again. “No. Why?”

“I'm trying to locate a possible witness,” I said.

“Well, I think you'd need more to go on than that,” he said. “Look, I don't know of anybody around here who drives a car with out-of-state plates, OK? If you want to talk to Tammy, she'll be at work in the morning.”

He hung up on me. Before I could put my phone back in my pocket, Lucy's moon face turned toward me, her eyes wide. “What about out-of-state license plates?”

“I had a lead that a car seen near the site of the accident had out-of-state plates.”

“Can't be anybody from here. You live here, you got to get Vermont plates.” She creased her forehead. “I don't get out much. Bill, you seen anybody driving around town with out-of-state plates?”

“Shit, no,” he said. The show broke for a commercial. Grinder frowned at Lucy and said, “You got to talk all the damn time? Whyn't you haul your ass back up the street and watch your own damn TV?”

She gave him an indignant look. “You invited me over! I made dinner for you and Jeremiah.”

“And we ate it, didn't we? You want a medal?”

“I want you to answer this man's question,” she said. “Stop stalling, Bill. Anybody around here driving with out-of-state plates?”

He glared at her, but he said, “I see 'em all the time. People coming up for the skiing, or the fall colors. Go hiking in the summer.” He turned to me. “Guess you ain't figured out that this is kind of a tourist town. Thought you was a big famous detective. How about you, Tyler? You got out-of-state plates on that Jeep of yours?”

“No. Bought the vehicle at the dealer in Barre, just outside Montpelier.”

He snorted. “We get flatlanders comin' in here, drivin' up property prices and taxes, and they all think they're smarter than us Vermonters.”

“And you think I'm one?”

“Shit.” The show was back on. He turned back toward the TV. “Jeremiah was my friend,” he said.

I didn't know where I stood with these two. I said, “I'll go in a minute. First, though, can you tell me anything about Jeremiah's grandson?”

Lucy said, “I know who he is, know him to see. He's a reporter. He lives in Montpelier.” She giggled and jerked her chins toward Bill. “He don't like him, 'cause the boy's a liberal!”

I raised my eyebrows.

“No, it's true,” she said. “He's always writing about how we ought to save the owls—”

“Shit,” Grinder commented.

“—and all that stuff. He wants to make people stop cutting trees on their own land.”

Bill turned a scowling face to me. “That boy wants the damn government in everybody's business! Let him have his way, half the damn state'd be unemployed.”

“Where does he work?”

Lucy knew: “Writes for
This Week,
little local paper, comes out every Friday.”

Bill grunted. “He spreads some of his crap around in magazines, too.
Vermont Life
. The
New Englander
. Liberal shit.”

“Did he live with Jeremiah?”

Lucy didn't know, but Bill did: “Hell no. That old coot couldn't stand the boy for more than an hour at a time. No, Jeremiah lives—lived—in a house trailer just north of North-field, but the boy has an apartment in Montpelier.” Bill's face showed a quiet struggle of emotion, and then he said, “Hell, I don't wanna give you the wrong impression. They bickered and all, but you know, they was family. The boy, Jerry, he lived with his mom and Jeremiah for about four, five years when she was sick, but after she died Jerry wanted to move out on his own.”

I stood to leave and hesitated. “Do either of you know a Native American woman named Sylvia?”

Grinder grunted. “Don't know any Injuns. Don't want to.”

I persisted: “This one's young, late twenties, early thirties. Straight black hair, long, down to the middle of her back. She wears buckskins and moccasins.”

“No, don't know her,” Grinder said tightly. Lucy shook her head.

“Let me borrow your phone book one more time,” I said. Montpelier had a good number of Smiths, including a fair number of J. Smiths. But Jerry had his own listing. I dialed his number on my cell phone and got an answering machine, but I didn't leave a message. I took out a small pocket notebook and wrote down his number and address.

On TV the smarmy young mock-psychic had just made a policeman look like a fool. Grinder and Lucy both laughed, he sounding as if he were drowning, she spraying a buckshot pattern of chewed popcorn. Neither of them seemed to mind my leaving.

It seemed to me I owed Jerry Smith at least a visit and a talk, so I set off north on Route 12, a two-lane highway with a 50 MPH speed limit. It had been the main link between Montpelier and points south before the superhighway came through. I rode the tunnel of my high beams through the night. The road ahead was empty for the eleven miles of forests and fields to the state capital. I pushed the Jeep to sixty, but didn't dare to go faster than that, not with snow drifting across the road, not with possible black ice in my path.