The Skeleton's knee

4

The cabin had no phone, so I retraced my steps through the garden, along the overgrown path, and back to my car, where I’d earlier tossed the department’s new cellular phone as an afterthought.

Tony Brandt had wanted me to investigate Fuller’s place alone to cut as low a profile as possible. It hadn’t been an unreasonable request, given the supposition that Fuller had brought his festering wound, and his bagful of money, from far beyond our jurisdiction. Chances were I would find a normal, empty house and nothing more. But I’d been nagged from the start by the thought that this case would not slip from our grasp quite as smoothly as we all seemed to be hoping.

Harriet Fritter answered the detective squad’s private line on the first ring.

“Hi, it’s Joe. You better send Tyler and the crime kit up here for a search. Who’s within easy reach to help him out?”

“Ron and Willy.”

I grimaced. As a team, Ron Klesczewski and Willy Kunkle made cats and dogs look mutually compatible.

She caught my hesitation. “Want someone else?”

“No. I don’t want to lose time.”

“All right. Consider them on the way.”

As I stood by the car, I felt rather than heard Fred Coyner behind me. He was standing out in the open, his back to the panoramic view, watching me, his hands empty, hanging loosely by his sides. I had the uncomfortable feeling he’d been there for quite a while.

I was well used to the famous Vermont reticence. My own father considered anything beyond a few sentences a day to be idle chitchat. But that was while he was working, when talking usually meant taking time off to lean on a shovel. During off-hours, with his family or friends, he opened up some and the dormant humor I often saw in his eyes crept out, if only a little.

I saw no such glint in Fred Coyner’s eyes. They were as cool and expressionless as water.

“Mind if I ask some questions?” I inquired.

“Wouldn’t make much difference if I did.” He turned his back to me to face the valleys and hills below us. I moved beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder.

“You know Abraham Fuller well?”

He shrugged. “Nope.”

“Was that his real name?” The question was purely spontaneous, which I thought was a better approach than some textbook psychological angle he’d spot a mile off.

There was a pause. His expression didn’t change, from what I could see of it, but I sensed he was surprised. “I suppose.”

“So you had no personal connection to him.”

He shook his head. “Not likely. He rented the place.”

“For how long?”

“Twenty years, about.”

I resisted doing a double take, but just barely. Instead, I kept my voice as flat as his. “That’s quite a while. Looks like he led an exotic life-hot tub, the greenhouse, the garden. Unusual guy. What was he like?”

“Wouldn’t know. He was a granola-head; kept to himself, which suited me fine.”

“He pay the rent in cash?”

Again, there was a pause, calculating this time. Coyner chewed his lower lip a while before answering. “Wasn’t that kind of rent. I didn’t use the place. It was being wasted, buried back there.”

I guessed at a possible explanation for this incongruous generosity. “If you’re worried about the IRS, don’t be. I just want to know why Fuller died.”

“Don’t give a damn about the IRS.”

“They might give a damn if you haven’t declared his rent as income.”

“He bartered-food for the house.”

“And the electricity.” I remembered the wire looped through the trees between the houses.

“That was my idea. I didn’t want him burning the place down with the old oil lamps that were there.”

“Did you give him the refrigerator?” I asked, trying to widen the view he’d allowed me of their relationship.

Coyner nodded. “I was getting rid of it.”

I couldn’t shake the impression that Coyner was not the renting type, unless there’d been some irresistible angle. “How often did you see him?”

“Barely saw him at all.”

“Monthly?”

“Not even. He never moved from the place.”

“Didn’t he ask you what you needed from his garden?”

“He knew, after a while; I’m a man of regular habits. If something special came up, we left notes. Said he wanted to be left alone-no ifs, ands, or buts. So that’s what I did. I wasn’t interested anyhow. If he wanted to be a hermit, it was fine with me.”

“But you called the ambulance,” I insisted.

“He was supposed to drop some stuff off. I got to wondering. He had regular habits, too.”

“Lucky for him.”

“Guess not.”

I smiled inwardly. Sentimental he was not, but I suspected that after twenty years, at least an element of predictability had been disrupted by Fuller’s death, which had resulted in the closest thing Fred Coyner would ever come to mourning.

“Mr. Coyner, I noticed Fuller had a lot of supplies and equipment to keep his garden going. How did he pay for it?”

“Guess he was a rich guy.”

I feigned surprise. “Really? He didn’t look it.”

“Well, he was.” Coyner’s face suddenly became stern. I could sense a concern that he’d said too much.

I kept pressing. “Did he pay for fixing the house up, too? A lot of that work doesn’t date back twenty years.”

“Yeah.”

“He did pay for it?”

Coyner’s lips were compressed to two thin white lines. He nodded wordlessly.

I shook my head and whistled softly. “I guess he was loaded. You said he never left the place. How did he buy the building materials, the gardening equipment, all the rest of it?”

Coyner was becoming restless; his hands found one another and began unconsciously fidgeting. “I got it. He’d leave a note.”

I moved to throw him further off balance. “And a hundred-dollar bill or two.”

His back stiffened and he chewed his lower lip for a moment. “I got work to do.” He began to walk off.

My voice lost its leisurely tone. “We’ll have to finish this sometime. Me or maybe the State’s Attorney or the state police.”

He stopped and glared back at me. “They’ll be trespassing.”

I shook my head. “No they won’t. But they’ll drag you into this further than you want to go. It’s your choice.”

He suddenly grimaced and clenched his fists. “So what if he paid in hundred-dollar bills? Wasn’t my business.”

“Didn’t say it was. What else did you buy for him?”

Coyner shrugged, his fists loosening somewhat. “Supplies-whole wheat, tofu, nuts and berries, and anything else he needed. I’d get most of it in Bratt.”

“How did you two first meet?”

His expression remained guarded, but he became a bit freer with what he knew. “He found me. Somebody must’ve told him about the house. Said he wanted to be left alone, that the world was a shitty place. He also said he’d make it worth my while, and he did, and that’s all there was to it. I let him alone and he did likewise.”

“There’s a lot more food growing around that house than two men can eat. Did he let you sell the surplus?” The fists closing again was confirmation enough. I moved on quickly. “He ever have visitors?”

“Early on, when he was adding onto the building.”

“You never saw who?”

“They came and left at night. I don’t know who, or how many, but I do know it stopped.”

“When?”

“Same time-’bout twenty years back.”

“And nobody since?”

“Nope.”

“What about the newer construction? Did he bring people in to help him? Or did you do it?”

“He did it himself-alone.”

“And you never saw him leave the place?”

“Only on that ambulance.”

“You ever hear a gunshot?”

“Nope.”

“And you never suspected he’d been hit by a bullet?”

“Nope.” He was shaking his head almost continuously now, as if trying to throw off where my questions were leading. I doubted at this point if the truth meant a whole lot to him. It was more important to pacify me, to get me off his back.

For the moment, I would play along, although we had more ground to cover. “Mr. Coyner, some of my men’ll be coming to join me soon, to look through that house more carefully. We’ll try to be as unobtrusive as possible.” I reached into my pocket and handed him the search warrant.

He glanced at it and handed it back without a word.

He turned to leave again. I let him go a few feet before I called out a final question. “What did Fuller mean when he accused you of a breach of faith for calling that ambulance?”

The old man looked back at me for a long, measured silence, his face as impenetrable as ever. “Don’t know; didn’t know what the hell he was talking about most of the time.”

I doubted that, just as I doubted his relationship with Fuller was as uncomplicated as he made it out to be. But I had time. We would talk again.

I returned to the cottage in the clearing, pausing this time to absorb fully the uniqueness of the garden. Every inch of its several acres had been manicured in some way, even if only to make it look untouched. Here and there, as if to give the emotions a rest, a patch or strip of ground had been left alone-pauses in a symphony of color and shape. But even those were cultured and contoured, free of weeds and distracting blemishes. In their emptiness, they were as complex and satisfying as the horticultural riot around them. I envisioned Fuller spending season after season out here, steeped in the pursuit of perfection, applying a near-fanatical concentration in his efforts.

I re-entered the house, still feeling like I was on the wrong side of a glass wall, retracing my steps of a half hour ago. The place was basically as I’d found it, as attractive and sterile as a monastery cell.

There was one difference, however, a change that hit me like a hammer, smashing the tidy myth of a crime long past.

As I stepped away from the ladder after climbing to the sleeping loft, my eyes went to the one item I felt instinctively had the most to offer.

But the chart over the bed had been removed.