Strachey's folly

Chapter 17

Who was my client, anyway? I wondered about that as I walked the four blocks back to the hotel-Ray Craig not visible but surely in the vicinity, for I caught a whiff of his nicotine spoor as I left the Rayburn Building.

Was Maynard my client? Timmy? Jim Suter, even though he hadn't asked me to be? I guessed it was Timmy, since he was planning on paying my expenses. In fact, I figured that he and I could split the costs of the investigation. That would make me my own co-client, and not for the first time either.

Luckily, I was solvent that month, having received a good bonus on top of my standard fee for tracking down the daughter of a commissioner in the Pataki administration and talking her into avoiding prosecution by returning to its owners the state police aircraft often used by the governor for official jaunts around New York State. The young aviatrix, who had only recently begun to suffer from emotional problems, had somehow made off with the plane at Albany County Airport and intended to follow Amelia Earhart's fatal 1937 route. The disturbed young woman had gotten only as far as Northampton, Massachusetts- not on Ms. Earhart's itinerary-when I caught up with her.

Did Alan McChesney really want to know who my client was? Or did he already know all or much of what there was to know of the past four days' events, and his alternating expressions of curiosity and pique were smoke-machine distractions? I was inclined not to trust him, but my mind was open.

I did plan on checking out McChesney's remarks in passing-if that's what they were-on Betty Krumfutz's Mexican connection as a high school Spanish teacher who, prior to her years in the Pennsylvania legislature and the U.S.

Congress, could have taken part in illegalities-maybe Log Heaven schoolkids running drugs in their pencil boxes? — that Jim Suter later got wind of or was somehow involved in. But if Mrs. Krum-futz was knowingly connected to Jim Suter's danger-and May-nard's shooting and the ransacking of his house-she certainly had not betrayed any of that to me during our Log Heaven encounter. She had, on the contrary, seemed genuinely surprised that Jim might be in trouble. Or was that all an act put on by an experienced pathological liar?

I'd run into that before.

Soon, I hoped to meet the actual Jim Suter. Then I would know if Mrs. Krumfutz was up to her neck in "it," or Nelson Krumfutz was or Tammy Pam Jameson or Alan McChesney or Carmen LoBello or any of Suter's other angry ex-lovers or his mother or brother or Ray Craig, or any other person or persons I had yet to meet from Jim's personal or professional life who had a reason, they believed, to threaten and badly frighten Suter and to try to kill Maynard Sudbury.

The only thing I was sure of was, it was Jim Suter who held the answers to all my questions. And, of course, I also knew that Suter was the Gay Male Siren of the Decade, the great sex bomb who had lured Washington's strongest gay men onto his irresistible shoals, where all were wrecked and some sank. I'd always thought of myself as being immune to the obvious-it was subtlety that could dampen my palms-but I was certainly interested in seeing for myself what all the excitement was about.

Back at the hotel, Timmy had left a message for me at the desk, saying that Maynard was doing well and Timmy expected to speak with him over the lunch hour. Timmy said he'd be back at the hotel by late afternoon.

Another message had been left by Chondelle Dolan: "Ray and Filbert switched."

That was all. Officer Filbert Furlong, it seemed, was now following Timmy, and Ray Craig was trailing me around. I'd guessed that was the case-Craig's sour scent was often in the air around me. And the question remained, was I such a criminal, or potentially criminal, big cheese that the D.C. Police Department believed it needed to send a detective lieutenant out to keep watch on me? Or was Craig involved in some unofficial rogue operation-the grotesque conspiracy that had seized Timmy's imagination and made his skin crawl even when he had no idea at all as to what it might be about? Again, Jim Suter was the man with the answers.

Stevenson, Richard

Stevenson, Richard — [Donald Strachey Mystery 07] — Strachey's Fol ly