A Killer’s Kiss

43

By the time we got to Front Royal…

It sounds like a bad country-western song, doesn’t it, chock-full of star-crossed lovers and dead bodies and too many miles of open road?

By the time we got to Front Royal, it was nigh on noon. But it’s not so easy to slip out of Haddonfield, New Jersey, when there’s a dead body in the freezer. The cops seem to have all these annoying questions, like who, when, where, and what the hell is going on. My tendency as a defense lawyer is always to button my lip and get out of there saying as little as possible, but Hanratty was made of different, perhaps more reliable, cloth. So, with the police lights spinning outside and the television crews filing their live reports, we sat in the kitchen with the New Jersey detectives and tried to make sense of what had happened in that house.

“There was hidden money?” said the lead Haddonfield detective, young and blond, scratching the stubble on his jaw.

“I think so,” I said.

“How much?”

“Over a million in cash.”

“From where?”

“It was illegal money brought here to be laundered by an international crook named Gregor Trocek, but that was stolen from him instead in a complex swindle. The trustee in Philadelphia, a fellow named Nettles, has all the details.”

“And how did it get here?”

“Hidden here by a dead doctor in Philadelphia and a little weasel named Clarence Swift,” I said.

“Hidden where?”

“Same place as the body.”

It was the freezer that had sent me back to Haddonfield, this time with Detective Hanratty. The way Margaret bit her lip when first she mentioned it, as if a blunder had been made, and then got snippy when I brought it up again, was what got me to thinking. They had a sadly uneven relationship, did Margaret and Clarence Swift. She was in love with him, he was in love with her boss’s wife. Whatever romance he had once felt for Margaret, if any, had been bled pale by time. Her plain living room made it clear that he was not one to smother her in tender little gifts. And yet he had bought her a freezer. To hold the meat. For their romantic dinners.

It was a strange gift, unless you figured it wasn’t for storing the meat after all. And the timing seemed right, too. As soon as Gregor shows up with his briefcase full of cash for Youngblood Investments, LP, a freezer arrives at Margaret’s place. It wasn’t there to store the Omaha Steaks, it was there to stash cold cash. And the lock on the freezer seemed to prove the point, unless there’d been a rash of sirloin thefts in Haddonfield, New Jersey. But the lock was now broken and the money was now gone.

Someone had come for it. Margaret had objected. Her objection had been overruled with the plumber’s wrench. Smack dead, as simple as that. The lock was snapped, the steaks on top were scattered, the money absconded with, the dead body stuffed in the freezer to keep the smell at bay.

“So who did it?” said the detective. “This Gregor Trocek character?”

“Maybe,” I said, feeling the guilt that had been weighing me down as soon as I saw the bloody paw print now rise up to throttle me. I had cleverly sicced Gregor onto Clarence; if he had followed him here and then made his move, I was in large part responsible for the murder. I hadn’t much cared what happened to Clarence, but the vision of Margaret in that freezer choked my throat. Except something didn’t seem right.

“It was his money,” I continued, “and he’s looking hard for it. But he has a Cadizian henchman named Sandro who favors a knife over a wrench. The whole scene down there doesn’t seem like Sandro’s handiwork. And there were no trophies taken.”

“Trophies?”

“Sandro collects body parts,” I said. “Smokes them over mesquite.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I shit you not.”

“Then who else could have done it?” said the detective.

Who else indeed?

When the grilling was over, but before we were permitted to leave the crime scene, both Hanratty and I got on our phones. There were six voice mails and fifteen missed calls on my cell, all from the same number. He had been pining for me.

“Where you been, bo?” said Derek. “I been trying to call you for like hours. You’re killing me.”

“You wouldn’t be the first of the night.”

“What? You sound tired for some reason. Get yourself some Starbucks. What I been trying to tell you all this time is that your lady friend, she didn’t go to the Roundhouse.”

“I figured that out already. Did you stay with her?”

“You told me to, right. And at fifty dollars an hour, I been doing just what you said.”

“I thought it was forty.”

“This is above and beyond, bo. Overtime and on the road. Time and a half would be sixty, so I’m giving you a break.”

“And it feels like it, too.”

“And I got to charge you for the gas and the mileage I put on the car.”

“Mileage?”

“Sure.”

“But it’s my car.”

“Expenses, bo. I’m just following procedure.”

“Who’s killing whom now?”

“It’s all business, baby.”

“So what happened?”

“She didn’t go to the Roundhouse. Went instead to some big mansion in Chestnut Hill.”

“Her house.”

“That’s a smacking crib there. I see why you trying to hook up with her.”

“She still there.”

“Hell, no. She picked up a suitcase and a friend, an old withered lady with a hat.”

“That would be Gwen. I’m surprised she’s allowing herself to get mixed up in this, too.”

“Picked her up and headed guess where.”

“Kensington,” I said.

“There you go. Went inside, found that skinny addict with the bum foot, brought him and his bag into the car, and then was off again, into the night.”

“Where?”

“South.”

“Where?”

“You ever hear,” he said, “of a place called Front Royal?”

“Yeah, I heard of it. Virginia, right?”

“That’s it. They all ended up at a low little joint called the Mountain Drive Motel.”

“Did a weasel with a bow tie and a black Volvo show up, too?”

“Not that I saw. Maybe I missed him.”

“Keep your eyes open,” I said. “He’ll be coming. Okay, stay with it, but don’t get too close. Things are going to come to a head, and you don’t want to get caught in the cross fire. We’ll be down soon as we can.”

“On the main road, there’s a diner with a fox on the sign. It’s got a view of the motel. I’ll just be sitting there drinking coffee and peeing. Drinking coffee and peeing.”

“You going to charge me for that, too?”

“By the pee.”

“Not a surprise,” I said. “Give us a couple of hours.”

When I hung up, Hanratty was waiting on me.

“Sims check in?” I said.

“He called in sick,” said Hanratty. “Said he’d be out a few days.”

“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine. And I know just where we’ll find him.”

When finally the young detective released us from the crime scene, dawn was just breaking. Still, we had no choice but to walk hurriedly through the pack of photographers flashing their flashes at us and reporters shouting their questions.

“No comment,” said Hanratty tersely as he barreled his way past.

I stopped to chat with a television lady, lovely blond hair cemented in place. She had nice teeth, and she patted my forearm suggestively as she positioned me in front of the camera for the interview, but before I could even make sure she had my name spelled correctly, Hanratty grabbed hold of my arm and yanked me the hell out of there.

“Hey,” I said in a high-pitched whine as he dragged me to his car. “She was cute. And you know what they say about free publicity.”

Funny how Hanratty didn’t seem to care.

And just that fast we were on our way out of Haddonfield, over the Commodore Barry Bridge, onto I-95 south, and headed toward Front Royal, Virginia, gateway to the Skyline Drive, located in Julia Denniston and Terry Tipton’s own home state. I suppose they were like the noble salmon, who, at the end of their run, have the instinctual urge to swim back to the very stream of their birth.

Where they are promptly eaten by a fat brown bear.