Foursome (13 page)

I pulled into the driveway, and an old spotted pointer came out of nowhere to bay at me. His front paws reached my driver’s side window ledge, and the snout he stuck into my face seemed more intent on slobbering than biting. As I scratched him under the chin, the door to the red and silver part of the complex opened. A woman, in blue jeans and a shirt knotted at the navel, stepped out. Or vamped out.

Cinny, the “hand relief” woman from Gil Lacouture’s office.

I took a breath and got out of my car, the dog jumping up at me.

Cinny said, “Mourner, Mourner, you stop that, hear?”

The dog slumped down, cowed his head, and looked up at me for intercession.

I said, “That’s all right. He wasn’t bothering me.”

“Don’t matter. Wouldn’t want to see that fine suit all fuzzed up with dog hairs.” She swayed over to me. “You could maybe take it off, and I could … spruce things up for you?”

Cinny was about twice as close to me as she should have been for courtesy.

“No, thanks. I’d like to talk with Owen Briss, if he’s here.”

“Owen.” She showed disappointment. “I thought maybe you remembered me from Gil’s office and decided to come calling.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, Owen ain’t here, and probably won’t be back for a good bit. Pity for you to come all the way out here for … nothing.”

Cinny used an index finger to twirl some of her hair, like spaghetti around a fork. She gave off a subtle but deep odor that didn’t come from a perfume bottle.

I said, “Does Owen know what you do to earn spending money?”

She pouted. “Owen don’t own me. Truth is, he don’t even take care of me too well.” More hair twirling. “I mean, it ain’t like we’re married or nothing. I got no ropes tying me down, Mr. … ?”

“Cuddy, John Cuddy.”

“John. My daddy’s name was John. You might remind me of him if we was to … do some things together.”

I was thinking that a hand-relief specialist with a father fixation was not what I needed, when a big engine came revving up the dirt road. The engine belonged to a pickup truck with three gallons of primer on it and outlandishly big tires under it. The pickup belonged to a loutish guy with a few strands of blond hair combed across his scalp and sunburned forearms the diameter of normal people’s legs.

Cinny said, “Uh-oh, the man of the house.”

Briss stopped the pickup so as to hem my car in the driveway, the door to his cab showing a gouge mark running two feet horizontally. He opened the door and landed heavily on the ground. Without closing his door, which might explain the gouge mark, Briss started walking toward me. He was shorter than I’d guessed, only around six feet, but with enough torso under a flannel shirt to bow his legs. As Briss got closer I could see a faint beard and nostrils expanding like he was about to breathe fire through them.

Cinny said, “Owen. Owen! The man didn’t do nothing, I swear!”

Owen kept coming. No weapons or even tools that I could see.

Cinny said to me, “Best you make a run for it. I’ll try to slow him down some.”

She rushed up to him. His right arm lashed out in a backhand way, connecting with her right side and sending her to the ground.

I expected him to throw a punch, probably roundhouse. Instead he just grabbed me by the throat with both hands and started to squeeze.

I dipped slowly, as though he were driving me down, which wasn’t much of an act. When he started to lean into me, I joined my hands like a little kid learning to dive and drove up with forearms at a forty-five degree angle to his own, knocking them free. When my hands were at full height, I brought them down hard and fast, edges karate-style, into the muscles between his shoulders and neck. As Briss went to his knees, I drove my elbow into his jaw, rocking him back onto his ankles, then into the dust that should have been his front lawn.

Cinny, on knees and elbows herself, spoke in a hushed voice. “I swear.”

I rotated my head and regulated my breathing to avoid hyperventilating. It occurred to me a bit late that I probably should have been watching out for Mourner to join the fight, but when I finally spotted him, he was huddled under the bumper of my car, taking things in calmly from a prudent distance.

Walking toward the house, I picked up one of the lawn chairs and brought it to where Briss was coming around. I sat down about four feet away, enough space to give me time to rise if he wanted more. The way he looked up at me, he didn’t.

“My name’s John Cuddy, Mr. Briss.” I held up my Maine ID, so he could see it, then put it away. “I’m investigating the deaths on Marseilles Pond.”

Briss got himself into a sitting position and looked over at my Prelude. “Ain’t no cop’s car.”

“I’m private.”

Cinny said, “A private eye?”

I stayed on Briss. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t answering nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Man comes on my property, and on
to
my woman, he goddamn don’t—”

“Owen, I told you. The man didn’t try nothing!”

Briss ignored her. “He don’t get squat from me.”

I said, “I understand you worked for Steven Shea.”

“That sonofabitch! He stiffed me!”

Sometimes people say they won’t help, then can’t help themselves from doing it. “Why?”

“Claimed he told me he wanted spindles. Goddamn, estimate like I give him, no man in’s right mind would of thought he was getting spindles.”

“You do a lot of work for him on the house?”

“I did. Ain’t nobody better’n me on finish stuff. Nobody. He had a big outfit do the shell and some roughing in, but he’d heard the kind of work I do and wanted me.”

“Heard from who?”

Briss seemed to realize how much he was talking. “None of your goddamn business.”

“I can just ask Shea, or I can show you a couple more tricks. Your choice.”

Cinny said, “Was Ralph and Ramona.”

Briss said, “You goddamn slut, keep your mouth shut!”

“Owen, this man’s from the city, all right? He can take you with one hand, and I don’t need you all beat up just to not give him something he’s after.”

Briss started to look to Cinny, then didn’t. He muttered something I couldn’t hear.

“What?”

“I said Ralph and Ramona give me a recommendation to him. I done some work for them, lots of work, when they took over the inn and the country store.”

“And everything went fine with Shea until the spindle fight?”

“’Course it did. I do quality work. Ask anybody.”

“You know his wife?”

“Shea’s?”

“Yes.”

“Met her just the once. She was the kind could go from zero to bitch in six point five seconds, like somebody else I could mention.”

“Owen, now don’t you go starting on me.”

“Why not?” he said.

“Because you know I only got mad account of you was supposed to take me to see Anthrax and them down to SeaPAC.”

I said, “Anthrax and SeaPAC?”

Cinny twirled some more hair. “Heavy metal. Anthrax and Poison and a bunch of other bands were gonna be down to the Performing Arts Center.”

I went back to Briss. “Shea and his wife didn’t oversee your work?”

He shook his head. “They weren’t much around when I was over to their camp.”

“How come?”

“He made a goddamn big thing about it. That I wasn’t never to be there working when he was up with his ‘guests.’ ”

“The Vandemeers?”

“How am I supposed to know? The man paid the money, I did what he wanted. Even the garage—”

Briss stopped.

I said, “What about the garage?”

“Nothing.”

“You go into that garage much, Briss?”

He stopped, seemed to think about it. “No way. Always bring my own tools to a job. Wouldn’t touch none of his.”

“How about the crossbow?”

“What the goddamn you talking about?”

“The crossbow that was used to kill the three people that night. I’m told it was kept in the garage.”

“Then talk to the one that told you about it. I ain’t never seen no crossbow.”

“But you did know where the key to the garage was kept?”

Briss seemed to think again. “Had to.”

“Why?”

“Kept some lumber in there when I was working on the house in bad weather.”

“But you never saw the crossbow?”

“Never seen it. Never touched it. Don’t know nothing about it.”

Not likely. “I also understand you didn’t exactly get along with Tom Judson.”

Briss seemed genuinely thrown. “Judson?”

“Yes.”

“The hell does that old bastard have to do with anything?”

“I heard that you went up to his house to have it out about some money he owed you.”

“The rich bastards are all the same. You do your work for them, they stiff you.”

“And you found him dead.”

“Cold as stone.” Briss grinned for the first time, showing horsey teeth and not that many of them. “All his money didn’t do Judson no good. All it did was let him buy enough drink to bleed himself to death when he caught his leg in that trap. Same with your client, you know? All his money, just made him kill those people.”

“Why?”

“Can’t rightly say. I never had much money to learn from.”

I stood up, Briss flinching until he realized I was done with him.

I said, “I might be back with more questions.”

From the ground, Briss said, “Come back here again, you’d best have better’n a crossbow with you.”

I walked to the Prelude, got in, and started up. When I saw Mourner reach the rear of the trailer, I put the car into first and drove between Cinny and Briss over his dirt front yard and back onto the road toward Marseilles.

Gil Lacouture’s receptionist, Judy, was nowhere in sight. After about twenty seconds in the waiting area, I called out. “Hello?”

Lacouture’s head came around his doorjamb, waving me to come in. As I entered his office, he was just replacing the telephone receiver.

“John, good to see you again. Take a seat.”

I did, laying the Shea accordion file on his desk. “You want to hear a summary, or you want a written report?”

“Summary.”

I gave it to him, everybody I’d seen in the order I’d seen them. Lacouture smiled when I got to Owen Briss and Cinny.

“That girl does keep popping up.”

“You don’t see any conflict in representing both her and Steven Shea?”

“Conflict? How?”

“This isn’t like an accidental death the cops think Shea hoked up. This is cold-blooded triple murder, Gil, and if you can’t give the jury somebody other than Shea for it, they’ll hand Shea to the hangman.”

“Maine doesn’t have the death penalty, John. Abolished it in—”

“You know what I mean. You can’t go in there without some theory of the case, somebody to finger as the real killer when obviously somebody did it.”

“John, first of all, as a lawyer up here, you run into conflicts all the time. You resolve them without losing clients, or you go out of business.” Lacouture pursed his lips. “You think Cinny would be a good alternative suspect?”

“No. I don’t think even Briss would be. But at least he’s somebody who has a motive for getting even with Shea, and that’s more than I got from anybody else.”

“No, I don’t see Briss for this kind of thing. I met him once. Kind of an in-your-face brawler. Not the kind to play Robin of Sherwood Forest.”

“Gil?”

“Yes?”

“Robin Hood used a longbow, but if I were you, I’d lose the clever allusions before I got before the jury.”

Lacouture straightened just a little. “I’ve been before plenty of juries, John. You get to know what you can say to them and what you have to say offstage to keep your sanity. I’m looking at a murder scene that makes the Manson family seem like sitcom material, and I’m representing the accused, who has no motive and claims he didn’t kill anybody.”

“Yeah, well, you’re still going to have to give the jury a target if Shea didn’t do it.”

“If.” Lacouture leaned back in his old leather chair, swiveling it just a little from side to side. “Tell me, what did you think of my client?”

“Three things.”

“Which are?”

“One, I didn’t like him.”

Lacouture lips pursed again. “Kind of the air of snake oil around him, isn’t there?”

“Two, I don’t think he did it.”

Lacouture grinned and slammed his palm on his blotter. “God, I’m glad to hear somebody else say that, somebody who’s talked with him. I thought I was losing my touch when I first interviewed him, wallowing in all that idealism the defenders tour should have drilled out of me. He’s not the greatest or most sympathetic guy in the world, but—remember when you were in here before, I told you there’s something else about Steve that I didn’t want to tell you? Well, that was it. I don’t think he did it, either.”

Lacouture continued to grin, then when I didn’t say anything, his lips went back to pursed. “All right. That’s two things you noticed. What’s the—”

“Third, I don’t think Shea has a clue who might have done this to his wife and friends, and neither do I.”

I
T TOOK ME EXACTLY
one hundred sixty minutes to cruise the one hundred sixty miles from Augusta to Route 128 north of Boston. It took me exactly one hour to crawl the ten miles from 128 to downtown.

Stuck behind a diesel trailing fumes, I thought about the calls I’d make back in the city. Other people’s schedules might scramble the sequence, but it seemed simple enough.

Once in downtown, I turned onto Tremont Street, moving more slowly than the pedestrians passing the old buildings. The people were walking past because most of the buildings were closed, victims of an economy that sputtered before the urban renewal that revitalized the financial district could make its way uphill to the Common.

Five minutes and as many blocks later, I got the Prelude into its postage stamp parking space behind my office’s building. Stepping over the assorted trash that didn’t quite make the Dempster dumpster, I went around to the front entrance.

Up two flights, I opened the office door that reminded me of the sheriff’s door and shook my head as I went through the mail that the carrier had shoved through the slot below the pebbled glass. Mostly junk circulars that ranged from Kmart to Ed McMahon. Some business correspondence that I read and set to the side. Calling my answering service, I got two client messages that could wait an hour and one from Nancy Meagher that could but wouldn’t.