Triple Threat Page 9

  "That's my favorite, too." Eddie sat down, gesturing her into a seat across from the desk. She eased cautiously into it.

  "You said you found something."

  The PI nodded solemnly.

  Most of Eddie Caruso's work involved finding runaways, running pre-employment checks and outing personal injury lawsuit fakers, but he handled domestics, too. He'd had to deliver news about betrayal and learned there were generally three different reactions: explosive anger, wailing sorrow or weary acceptance, the last of which was usually accompanied by the eeriest smile of resignation on the face of the earth.

  He had no idea how Carmel would respond to what she was about to learn.

  But there was no point in speculating. It was time to let her know.

  "This is going to be troubling, Carmel. But--"

  She interrupted. "You told me there might be things you found that I might not like."

  He nodded and rose, walking to his other door. He opened it and gestured.

  She frowned as her husband walked into the room.

  The man gave her a sheepish grin and then looked back at the carpet as he sat next to her.

  "Daniel! Why are you here?"

  Caruso sat back in his office chair, which was starting to develop the mouse-squeak that seemed to return once a month no matter how much WD-40 was involved. He whispered, "Go ahead, Daniel. Tell her."

  He said nothing for a minute and Carmel asked pointedly, "Is this about Mrs. Sarah? Is this about what happened to her?"

  The round-faced man nodded. "Okay, honey, Carmel--"

  "Tell me," the housekeeper said briskly.

  "I haven't been honest with you." Eyes whipping toward her, then away. "You remember last year you told me the Westerfields wanted you to find Mrs. Sarah's papers?"

  "Yes. And when I said no they threatened, sort of threatened our daughter."

  "They did the same to me. They said they couldn't trust you, you were too good. They wanted me to help them."

  "You?" she whispered.

  "Yes, baby. Me! Only it wasn't just find the papers. They..."

  "What? What did they want?"

  "Miriam told me Sarah didn't have long to live anyway."

  " 'Anyway.' What do you mean 'anyway'?"

  "She said Sarah had cancer."

  "She wasn't sick! She was healthier than that bitch Miriam," Carmel spat out.

  "But they said she was. And she'd told them she'd cut us out of her will. We'd get nothing. They said, if I help them now, if she died now, they could make sure we had lots of money."

  "Helped them out." Carmel eyed her husband coolly. "You mean, helped them kill her."

  "They said she was greedy. Why should she have so much and people like them, and us, have nothing? It was unfair."

  "And you didn't tell me? You didn't tell anybody they were dangerous?"

  "I did tell somebody."

  "Who? Not the police, you didn't."

  Daniel looked at Eddie Caruso, who picked up the remote control and hit ON.

  The TV, on which a webcam sat, came to life with a Skype streaming image.

  On the screen an elderly woman's face gazed confidently and with some humor at the couple in the chairs and Eddie Caruso. "Hello, Carmel," Sarah Lieberman said. "It's been a long time."

  # # #

  What Eddie Caruso had found in the last paint can in the Rodriguez's garage was a letter from Sarah to Daniel with details of where she'd be spending the rest of her life--a small town near Middleburg, Virginia, with her widower nephew Frederick. Information about how to get in touch with her if need be, where she would be buried and the name of certain discreet jewelers whom he could contact to sell the bracelets Sarah had given him, along with suggestions about how to carefully invest the cash she'd provided, too.

  He'd confronted the handyman this morning and while the letter seemed plausible, Caruso had insisted they both contact Sarah Lieberman this morning. She'd told them what had happened and was now telling the same story to her housekeeper.

  The simple death he'd described to Carmel Rodriguez was anything but.

  "I'm so sorry, Carmel... I'm sorry I couldn't tell you. You remember that day in July, just a year ago? I was going to take the phone Freddy gave me and record them?"

  "Yes, Mrs. Sarah."

  "After you left, I started to go down there. But I met Daniel on the stairs." Her gaze shifted slightly, taking in the handyman. "He had me come back to my apartment and he told me what they'd just said--that the Beasts wanted him to help kill me. He said they had it all planned. There was nothing anybody could do to stop them."

  "Why not go to the police?" Carmel demanded.

  Sarah replied, "Because at worst they'd get a few years in jail for conspiracy. And then they'd be out again, after somebody else. I started thinking about what I told you. Remember the moth?"

  "The big moth you and your husband saw in Malaysia. With the wings that look like a snake."

  "That's right. But I decided: One way to protect yourself is to disguise yourself as a snake. The other way is to be the snake itself. I fight back. I couldn't kill them but I could make it look like they killed me. I didn't ask Daniel to help me but he wanted to."

  "I was so mad at them and worried about you and about Rosa! John hinted that he'd been watching her, watching our daughter!"

  Sarah said, "The Westerfields were very accommodating. John already had the Taser and the tape and the garbage bags." She gave a wry laugh. "Think of all the money I'll waste at Beacon Brothers funeral home here--that damn expensive casket. There are so many cheaper ways to go."

  Daniel said, "We pretended to forge a contract selling the building to them and then took all of the jewelry and cash Mrs. Sarah had in the apartment. She kept some and gave me a very generous amount."

  "And in my will I left Freddy here--" Sarah glanced to the side of the sun room she sat in, apparently where her other coconspirator, her nephew, sat. "--all my personal belongings. Probate took a little while but six months later everything was delivered here. Ah, but back to the scene of the crime, eh, Daniel?"

  He winced and looked at Carmel. "When the Westerfields were out and you were shopping, we both went downstairs. I put on gloves and took one of John's hammers and Mrs. Sarah cut herself. We got her blood on it and some hairs, too. And put some duct tape on her mouth for a minute and we added some of Miriam's hairs. I rubbed her toothbrush on it, for the DNA. Sarah stuck herself with the sharp points on that Taser. We hid those things in their apartment, then I tried to hack into Mrs. Sarah's banking accounts from Miriam's computer."

  "I used to watch CSI," Sarah said. "I know how these things work."

  "I left the city permits and maps in John's office." Daniel started to laugh then reined in when he saw his wife staring at him in dismay. "I was going to say it was funny because we thought the permits would be obvious. But the police missed those entirely; they thought she had been buried in New Jersey. But they missed it; it was Mr. Caruso who figured out about the foundations."

  Sarah said, "And I took the train down here. I've had to lead a pretty quiet life--they call it staying off the grid, right Freddy?"

  A man's voice, "That's right, Aunt Sarah."

  "But I love it in Virginia. It's so peaceful. I lived here a long time ago and I'd always thought I'd come back to spend my last years in horse country."

  Daniel now turned to Carmel. "I'm sorry, love. I couldn't tell you!" Daniel said. "This was a crime, what Mrs. Sarah and I did. Putting those people in jail. I wanted to, I wanted to tell you a hundred times. I couldn't let you get involved."

  Carmel was regarding her husband. "And the money... You said you were opening an account for the girl's school... And you always had those fifty-dollar bills. I always wondered."

  Sarah said, "He risked a lot to save me. I was very appreciative." Her voice faded. "And now I think it's time for my nap. I'd invite you to come down but it's probably not a good idea for either of you to visit a dead woman,
I'm afraid."

  "Oh, Mrs. Sarah."

  "Good-bye, Carmel."

  Both women held their hands up in waves of farewell and Eddie Caruso, a good judge of timing, clicked the TV off.

  Caruso said good-bye to the family, suspecting there would be more discussion of the events between husband and wife on the way home. He thought about lowering the bill yet more, but decided against it. After all, he'd done the job, and the case had had more or less a happy ending.

  Even if it was entirely unexpected.

  But that's another thing about Game, maybe what really defines a person or event as Game or not: You never know ahead of time how it's going to turn out.

  Speaking of which...

  Eddie Caruso propped up his iPad and typed on the keyboard. He was just in time to see Tottenham versus Everton. Fantastic.

  You could never lose with Premier League football.

  Well, soccer.

  Paradice

  On one side was rock, dark as old bone. On the other a drop of a hundred feet.

  And in front, a Ford pickup, one of those fancy models, a pleasant navy-blue shade. It cruised down the steep grade, moving slow. The driver and passenger enjoying the Colorado scenery.

  Those were his choices: Rock. Air. Pickup.

  Which really wasn't much of a choice at all as a means to die.

  John Pellam jammed his left boot on the emergency brake again. It dropped another notch toward the floor. The pads ground fiercely and slowed the big camper not at all. He was going close to sixty.

  He downshifted. Low gear screamed and the box threatened to tear apart. Don't lose the gears, he told himself. Popped the lever back up to D.

  Sixty mph... seventy...

  Air. Rock.

  Seventy-five.

  Pickup.

  Choose one, Pellam thought. His foot cramped as he instinctively shoved the useless brake pedal to the floor again. Five minutes ago he'd been easing the chugging camper over Clement Pass, near Walsenburg, three hours south of Denver, admiring the stern, impressive scenery this cool spring morning. There'd been a soft hiss, his foot had gone to the floor and the Winnebago had started its free fall.

  From the tinny boom box on the passenger seat Kathy Mattea sang "Who Turned Out the Light?"

  Pellam squinted as he bore down on the pickup, honking the horn, flashing his lights to warn the driver out of the way. He caught a glimpse of sunglasses in the Ford's rearview mirror. The driver, wearing a brown cowboy hat, spun around quickly to see how close the camper really was. Then turned back, hands clasped at ten to two on the wheel.

  Air, pick-up...

  Pellam picked mountain. He eased to the right, thinking maybe he could brush against the rock and brush and pine, slow down enough so that when he went head-on into a tree it wouldn't kill him. Maybe.

  But just as he swerved, the driver of the truck instinctively steered in the same direction--to the right, to escape onto the shoulder. Pellam sucked in an "Oh, hell" and spun the wheel to the left.

  So did the driver of the Ford. Like one of those little dances people do trying to get out of each other's way as they approached on the sidewalk. Both vehicles swung back to the right then to the left once more as the camper bore down on the blue pickup. Pellam chose to stay in the left lane, on the edge of the cliff. The pickup veered back to the right. But it was too late; the camper struck its rear end--red and clear plastic shrapnel scattered over the asphalt--and hooked onto the pickup's trailer hitch.

  The impact goosed the speed up to eighty.

  Pellam looked over the roof of the Ford. He had a fine view of where the road disappeared in a curve a half mile ahead. If they didn't slow by then the two vehicles were going to sail into space in the finest tradition of hackneyed car chase scenes.

  Oh, hell. That wasn't all: A new risk, a bicyclist. A woman, it seemed, on a mountain bike. She had one of those pistachio-shell-shaped helmets, in black, and a heavy backpack.

  She had no clue they were bearing down on her.

  For a moment the pickup wiggled out of control then straightened its course. The driver seemed to be looking back at Pellam more than ahead. He didn't see the bike.

  Seventy miles an hour. A quarter mile from the curve.

  And a hundred feet from the bicyclist.

  "Look out!" Pellam shouted. Pointlessly.

  The driver of the pickup began to brake. The Ford vibrated powerfully. They slowed a few miles per hour.

  Maybe the curve wasn't that sharp. He squinted at a yellow warning sign.

  The diagram showed a 180-degree switchback. A smaller sign commanded that thou shalt take the turn at ten miles an hour.

  But they'd be on the cyclist in seconds. Without a clue they were speeding toward her, she was coasting and weaving around in the right lane, avoiding rocks. And about to get crushed to death. Some riders had tiny rearview mirrors attached to their helmets. She didn't.

  "Look!" Pellam shouted again and gestured.

  Whether the driver saw the gesture or not Pellam couldn't say. But the passenger did and pointed.

  The pickup swerved to the left. Another squeal of brakes. The camper rode up higher on the hitch. It was like a fishhook. As they raced past the bicyclist, her mouth open in shock, she wove to the side, the far right, and managed to skid to a stop.

  That was one tragedy averted. But the other loomed.

  They were a thousand feet from the switchback

  Pellam felt the vibrations again, from the brakes. They slowed to sixty-five then sixty. Downshift.

  Five hundred feet.

  They'd slowed to fifty.

  Danger Sharp Curve.

  Down to forty-five leisurely miles an hour.

  The switchback loomed. Straight ahead, past the curve, Pellam could see nothing. No trees. No mountains. Just a huge empty space. The tourist marker at Clement Pass said the area boasted some of the most spectacular vertical drops in Colorado.

  Forty miles an hour. Thirty-nine.

  Maybe we'll just bring this one off.

  But then the grade dropped, an acute angle, and the wedded vehicles began accelerating. Fifty, fifty-five.

  Pellam took off his Ray Bans. Swept the pens and beer bottles off the dash. Knocked the boom box to the floor. Kathy continued to sing. The song "Grand Canyon" was coming up soon.

  A hundred feet from the switchback.

  With a huge scream the pickup's nose dropped. The driver had locked the brakes in a last desperate attempt to stop. Blue smoke swirled as the truck fishtailed and the rear of the camper swung to the left. But the driver was good. He turned into the skid far enough to control it but not so much that he lost control. They straightened out and kept slowing.

  They were fifty feet from the edge of the switchback. The speed had dropped to fifty.

  Forty-five...

  But it wasn't enough.

  Pellam threw his arms over his face, sank down into the seat.

  The pickup sliced through the pointless wooden guardrail and sailed over the edge of the road, the camper just behind.

  There was a loud thump as the undercarriage of the Ford uprooted a skinny tree and then a soft jolt. Pellam opened his eyes to find the vehicles rolling down a gentle ten-foot incline, smooth as a driveway, into the parking lot of the Overlook diner, sitting in the middle of a spacious area on an outcropping of rock high above the valley floor.

  With a resounding snap the camper's front bumper broke loose and fell beneath the front tires, slicing through and flattening them, a hard jolt that launched the boom box and possibly a beer bottle or two into Pellam's ear and temple.

  He winced at the pain. The truck rolled leisurely through the lot and steered out of the way of the Winnebago, which hobbled on, slowing, toward the rear of the diner.

  Pellam's laughter at the peaceful conclusion to the near-tragedy vanished as the camper's nose headed directly for a large propane tank.

  Shit...

  Hitting the useless brakes again, couldn'
t help himself, he squinted. But the dead tires slowed the camper significantly and the result of the collision was a quiet thonk, not the fireball that was the requisite conclusion of car chases in the sort of movies Pellam preferred not to work on.

  He lowered his head and inhaled deeply for a moment. Not praying. Just lowered his head. He climbed out and stretched. John Pellam was lean of face and frame and tall, with not-quite-trimmed dark hair. In his denim jacket, Noconas, well-traveled jeans, and a black wrinkled dress shirt converted to casual wear, he resembled a cowboy, or at least was mistaken for one in places like this, though not in the low-rent district of Beverly Hills--yes, they exist--that was his mailing address. The cowboy aura he tended to perpetuate not for image but for sentiment; the story went that he was actually related to a figure from the Old West, Wild Bill Hickok.

  Pellam walked stiffly toward the pickup, noting the damage wasn't terrible. Scraped paint and hitch, broken brake-and taillight.

  The driver, too, shut off the engine and eased the door open.

  Pellam approached. "Look, Mister, I'm really sorry. The brakes..."

  The Stetson came off swiftly, unleashing a cascade of long chestnut hair. The woman was in her midthirties, petite, about five two or so. With a heart-shaped face, red lips, brows thick and dark, which, for some reason, made them wildly sensual.

  The passenger-side door opened and a young man--well-built in a gangly sort of way, with an anemic goatee and short ruddy hair--climbed out. A cautious smile on his face. He looked as if he wanted to apologize for the accident, though passengers were probably not the first suspects traffic officers looked at.

  Pellam continued toward the driver.

  She took off her own Ray Bans.

  He was thinking that her eyes were the palest, most piercing gray he'd ever seen when she drew back and decked him with a solid right to the jaw.

  # # #

  A cold Colorado desert wind had come up and they were all inside the diner, the cast now including the town sheriff, fiftyish and twice Pellam's weight. His name was partially H. Werther, according to his name plate. He stood near the counter, talking to the cowgirl.

  Pellam was sitting at a table while a medic who smelled of chewing tobacco worked on his jaw. Pellam was mad at himself. He'd been in more fights than he could-- or cared to--count. He'd seen the squint in her eyes as he stepped close and had an idea that it was an about-to-swing squint. And all the while Pellam kept grinning like a freshman on a first date and thinking, Now, those are some extraordinary eyes.