Strachey's folly

Chapter 9

Mexicans with guns? I locked the door behind me in my room at the Bit o'

Heaven and sat on the edge of the bed. I held my right hand out and checked it for steadiness. The tremor was minor but discernible. My Smith amp; Wesson was back in Albany-why would I have carried a firearm to a display of the AIDS quilt? — but suddenly up in Log Heaven what I was thinking hard about was protecting myself. Was I panicking, like Timmy? Was I reacting stupidly to an ethnic stereotype?

I made a credit-card call to Timmy's and my room at the Capitol Hill Hotel but got no answer. I guessed Timmy was off at GW with Maynard and his friends and, maybe by now, May-nard's brother and sister-in-law. I got hold of the hotel desk and left a message for Timmy, informing him that I would not be staying over in Log Heaven that night after all, but would be returning to Washington late.

I did not explain that I was afraid of being unarmed in a town where two Mexican sharpshooters with connections to Betty Krumfutz were on the loose; I kept it vague. Then I called GW and learned that Maynard was still "stable," a promising sign.

I showered, rumpled the sheets to make the bed look as if it had been slept in, repacked my bag, left the key on the desk, and went out into the cold, black Pennsylvania night. I threw my bag in the car and drove away from the Bit o'

Heaven Motel. The next day, Monday, was going to be Columbus Day, but I figured that even if Betty Krumfutz remained in Log Heaven for the holiday, she would probably not run into Karen, of Karen's Kozy Korner, until the following Sunday at target-shooting practice and possibly learn that a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter had been in Log Heaven intent on interviewing her-a reporter who had then mysteriously failed to show up at Mrs. Krumfutz's door.

I drove up the highway past K Mart, past E-Z Mart, past Pizza Hut, Valu-Video, and Hall's Beer Distributor to the Kozy Korner. It wasn't on a corner and with its cold-white-light and Formica interior it wasn't cozy. Two specials were scrawled on a blackboard propped next to the cash register. The fried haddock with FF amp; apple sauce was $3-85- The ham croquettes with mac and cheese was $3.15.

I asked the round, clear-skinned young woman who took my order-I couldn't resist the croquettes-if she was Karen. She smiled, showing me her braces, and said uh-uh, she was Stacy; Karen didn't come in on Sunday.

While I waited, I read the ads on my place mat for a tire store, a sealer of driveways, and, among others, Ron Diefender-fer, CPA, and Helen's Pitch-n-putt.

The other tables and booths at the Kozy Korner were occupied mainly by middle-aged and elderly married couples who had apparently run out of anything to say to each other some years back. They seemed to take their gratification from their haddock, which I figured they knew they had earned. At a table near the back, three voluble older women sat, loudly comparing doctors with Indian names. They liked Dr. Patel best because, one woman said, he didn't give you the bum's rush.

I could see over the counter and through a big window into the kitchen. I saw no Mexicans there, just a woman in a blue smock; her origins looked local. She seemed to be the cook, and a skinny teenaged boy in a baseball cap that was on frontward- was this a clue? — washed dishes.

I enjoyed the comfort food, which I followed with plain coffee-no sign was up announcing "brussels sprouts" or "Ro-bitussin" as the ground-roast flavor of the day-and I had a small saucer of rice pudding. The bill came to just over five dollars, including tip. Driving back into Log Heaven, I exercised my tongue as I attempted to pry loose the mac and cheese still stuck to the roof of my mouth. I got most of it.

Just after nine o'clock, I parked the car along Susquehanna Drive across from the address for Betty Krumfutz that the motel clerk had given me. I was up on a bluff on the western outskirts of Log Heaven. To my right was a sharp drop-off, with the river in the darkness below. Across the street to my left was a wide, split-level flagstone ranch house on a partially wooded hillside. A broad driveway, newly tarmacked, ran up to a two-car garage. A gray Chrysler LeBaron with Pennsylvania plates was parked on one side of the driveway, a Chevy pickup truck with plates I didn't recognize was on the other.

Lights were on behind the drawn drapes in the big picture window. Another room was lit-the kitchen? — between the living room and the garage. There were no floodlights or other illumination outside the house. Clouds had moved in, and I decided that I could get away with a quick bout of voyeurism under cover of the October darkness. I knew that if I was caught by the Log Heaven police, I would have no plausible explanation I could safely provide them for spying on former congress-woman Krumfutz. And if Mrs. Krumfutz and her two Mexican shootists got hold of me, I might long to be in the custody of local law officers. But a quick look around seemed minimally risky, so I got out of the car and shut the door quietly.

Susquehanna Drive was also the main road to Engineville, twenty-six miles upriver, where Nelson Krumfutz and his girlfriend, Tammy Pam Jameson, now consorted. Traffic to En-gineville on Sunday night was sparse, so I had no trouble ambling across the road apparently sight unseen. The nearest streetlight was a quarter of a mile east, and the houses on either side of the Krumfutz place were lit inside but with the shades drawn. I strode directly up the Krumfutz front lawn, passed under a good-sized maple-black trash bags apparently stuffed with fallen leaves had been piled up alongside the driveway- and on to the back of the property. I lingered there for a couple of minutes getting used to the darkness and listening for any pets Mrs. Krumfutz or her neighbors might have had on the loose. I'd once had, in a similar set of circumstances, an encounter with a warthog in a poodle suit that I did not want to repeat.

I went around to the darkened rear ell section of the house. I passed an air conditioner jutting out from a window-I could just make it out in the near-darkness-and I was careful not to whack into it. What if, when he hit the air conditioner, OJ. had been knocked unconscious? What if Kato had gone out with a flashlight and discovered O.J., knocked out, with a bag full of bloody clothes? Whom would Kato have phoned? Nine one one? William Morris? O.J.'s dry cleaner? How might it all have turned out differently? I wondered.

Staying close to the wall of the house, I moved across a stone terrace to the sliding glass doors that I estimated were opposite the picture window out front.

Heavy white drapes blocked my view in-and Mrs. Krumfutz's view out-so I continued on beyond the doors to a smaller, darkened window that looked in on what appeared to be a breakfast nook. The Venetian blinds were only half-shut, so by standing close to the window on the far side I found an angle that afforded a line of sight into the living room behind the drapes.

"Don't move!"

I turned, and a bright light hit my face.

"I want to see your hands!"

"You bet."

"Both of them!"

"Two is my limit."

A floodlight mounted on the side of the house came on, illuminating the entire terrace, and I saw that the man with the flashlight in one hand and a drawn revolver in the other was wearing a police uniform.

"Assume the position!" the cop barked.

That phraseology had always sounded like something out of my high school debating-club days, but I knew what this man meant.

"Spread 'em! Get 'em up!"

I pressed my palms against the wall of the house as the cop patted me down.

He had pocketed his flashlight, but he still held the police special. A door opened off to my right, and I heard a nasal female voice say, "What's going on?

Horse, what in the world are you doing?"

"Speck Spindler saw somebody in your yard, Mrs. Krumfutz, and called it in. It's this guy here!"

"Oh, for heaven sakes!"

As the cop yanked my wallet out of my jacket pocket, I turned far enough to catch sight of a bulky woman in a pale green sweat suit. With her small mouth open in a look of shocked surprise, she was identical to the woman I'd seen the day before at Jim Suter's quilt panel, minus the shades and the golf-cart-motif head scarf. Mrs. Krumfutz did have a bandanna tied around her head, but instead of golf carts it had pictures of cherry pies all over it. I knew they were cherry because each pie had a C carved in the crust.

"Are you all right, Mrs. Krumfutz?" the cop said as he flipped through my wallet with one hand.

"Yes, Horse, I'm just fine. Don't worry about me. Who is he?"

"Is there someone else here with you?"

"No, but this fella didn't get inside. Who is he?"

It was not true that Mrs. Krumfutz had been alone in her house. In the instant before the cop-Officer "Horse" seemed to be his name-came upon me and shouted, I had caught a fleeting image of two figures in the Krumfutz living room.

They had seemed to be kneeling on the floor side by side, but it all happened so quickly that I couldn't be sure of what I had seen.

"His name is Donald Strachey." To me the cop boomed, "Are you Donald Strachey?"

"Yes."

"What do you think you're doing on this property?"

"Conducting an investigation."

"An investigation? What do you mean, an investigation?"

"I'm a private investigator licensed in the state of New York.

My card is in the wallet." At this, Mrs. Krumfutz, I thought, flinched.

"If the laws of New York are anything like the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I don't think you're licensed to trespass," the cop said. "Now turn around slowly and look at me."

I turned and faced a big, ruddy-faced youth with clear blue eyes and a name tag that read "Patrolman Lewis Henderson Jr."

"What you and I are going to do now, Donald, is we're going to walk out to my patrol car-you walking ahead of me- and you're going to get into the backseat, and you're going to sit down there while I shut the door. Do you understand that, Donald?"

"Yep."

"Just a minute," Mrs. Krumfutz said, and walked closer to the cop and me without ever quite joining either of us. "Let's just have a look at that license of yours, Mr. Donald-the-Private-Investigator."

As the cop held open my wallet, Mrs. Krumfutz came closer to him and squinted at it briefly. She said to me, "Donald Stra-chey. Why, I think I know just who you are."

"Oh?"

"Who is he?" the cop said.

"Horse," she said, forcing a tight grin, "I think this might be all right."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Could I speak to Donald privately for just a second? This may be just a teeny-tiny bit personal. If you know what I mean," she added, and let loose with an outburst that was half cough and half cackle.

Officer Henderson didn't seem to like the way all this was heading. Clearly, the correct procedure here was to lock me in the cruiser while he ran my name through the computer. But, owing to her celebrity status-not just as a pro-life, pro-gun former congresswoman but as a pro-life, pro-gun former congresswoman who had been involved in a scandal that had gripped the Susquehanna valley at six and eleven for many weeks-Mrs. Krumfutz was a woman whose wishes could reasonably be viewed as something akin to authoritative and would thus supplant any normal routine.

Henderson said, "He's not armed. If you'd like to step inside, I'll stand by. Holler if you need help."

"Thanks, Horse." Mrs. Krumfutz gestured for me to follow her.

We went into the house and she shut the door behind us. Instead of remaining near the door, she led me across the kitchen, through another door, and into the garage. A dim overhead light went on automatically.

I said, "You don't want us to be within earshot of Officer Henderson. Is that right?"

"Yes," she hissed, and her black eyes bore into me. "All right, Mr. Peeping Tom, you can spit it out right now. Are you working for Nelson?"

"I am unable to identify my client, Mrs. Krumfutz. I'm sorry."

"Maybe you'll be able to identify your client," she said evenly, "if I go get my Walther PK-38 and threaten to blow your face off. Would that make a difference?"

She talked like an NRA fund-raising letter, and I'd run into gun people before and knew they could be dangerous. Also, I wasn't sure there weren't two Mexican hit men somewhere in the house. I looked at Mrs. Krumfutz and wondered if I should make a break for it out the front while she was still unarmed and before Luis and Hector appeared. The problem was, the cop knew my name and had my car ID-in fact, he was still holding my wallet.

Mrs. Krumfutz said, "Cat got your tongue, dog's breath?"

Recklessly I said, "I saw you."

She went white. Then suddenly her color returned with a rush, and she snapped, "I don't give a hoot! It doesn't make a bit of difference. I've got plenty on Nelson. I know it and he knows it!"

"What have you got?"

"I've still got my scrapbook, and Nelson knows I've got it. If that man messes with me, believe you me, I'll put him in the hoosegow for the rest of his life. Just don't tempt me, Donald. You tell him that. Just don't tempt Betty, tell him. And if anything happens to me-if they find my body dumped on the Log Heaven levee some fine morning-that's it. It all goes to the prosecutors, the whole kit and caboodle. Friends of mine have their definite instructions."

"You seem to have made thorough arrangements, Mrs. Krumfutz. I'm impressed. You're quite a force to be reckoned with. Tell me more."

"I'll tell you not one more blessed thing. Now get out of my house and out of Log Heaven, and take your filth with you!"

"My filth?"

"You tracked mud through my kitchen! I'd make you stay and mop it up, but I'm sick to death of you and everything you and my husband represent, and I want you out of here now. I'll fix it with Horse Henderson. I just want you out of my house!"

"I'll be happy to go, but I want you to understand one thing, Mrs. Krumfutz, and understand it clearly. If you unleash your Mexican paid killers, and if anything happens to Jim Suter- anything at all, now or in the distant future-I will expose you. You'll pay. You'll go down the rest of the way. All the rest of the way.

Do you understand me?"

She stood there looking baffled. "Hit men? My Lord, is that what Nelson thinks?

Don't be silly. And Jim Suter? You mean Jim Suter the writer?"

"Who else?"

"Donald, I don't know what in the Sam Hill you're even talking about. One of us must be crazy as a loon. What's Jim Suter got to do with it?"