Dirty Money p-24 Read online

  “I’d be delighted,” said Mrs. Bartlett. “And you’re the Willises,” she said, looking at the credit card.

  “Claire and Henry,” Claire said.

  Mrs. Bartlett put the card in her apron pocket. “I put you in room three upstairs,” she said. “It really is the nicest room in the house.”

  “Lovely.”

  “I’ll give you back your card when you come down.” She turned to say to Parker, “And you’ll have tea?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  * * *

  It was a large room, with two large bright many-paned windows, frills on every piece of furniture, and a ragged old Oriental carpet. They unpacked into the old tall dresser and the armoire, there being no closet, and Parker went over to look out the window toward the rear of the house. The trees began right there, red and yellow and orange and green. “I’ll have to look on the map,” he said. “See where this is.”

  “You mean, from the robbery site,” Claire said, and laughed. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Bartlett will tell you, in detail. Will you mind sitting through that?”

  “It’s a good idea,” Parker said, “for me to know what the locals think happened.”

  “Fine. But one thing.”

  He looked at her. “Yeah?”

  “If she gets a part wrong,” Claire said, “don’t correct her.”

  * * *

  Over tea and butter cookies in the communal parlor downstairs, Mrs. Bartlett gave them an exhaustive and mostly accurate description of what had gone on up in those woods last Friday night. It turned out, she said, that two of the local banks were going to combine, so all of the money from one was going to the other. It was all very hush-hush and top secret and nobody was supposed to know anything about it, but it turned out somebody knew what was going on, because, just at this intersection here— she showed them on the county map— where these two small roads meet, nobody knows how many gangsters suddenly appeared with bazookas, and smashed up all the armored cars— there were four armored cars, with all the bank’s papers and everything in addition to the money— and drove off with the one armored car with the money in it, and when the police found the armored car later all the money was gone.

  Parker said, “How did the gangsters know which armored car had the money in it?”

  “Well, that,” Mrs. Bartlett told them, leaning close to confide a secret, “that was where the scandal came in. The wife of the bank owner, Mrs. Langen, she was in cahoots with the robbers!”

  Claire said, “In cahoots? The banker’s wife? Oh, Mrs. Bartlett.”

  “No, it’s true,” Mrs. Bartlett promised them. “It seems she’d taken up with a disgraced ex-guard in her husband’s bank. He went to jail for stealing something or other, and when he came back they started right up again where they left off, and the first thing you know they robbed her own husband’s bank!”

  “But the law got them,” Parker suggested.

  “Oh, yes, of course, the police immediately captured them,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “They’ll pay for their crimes, don’t you worry. But not the robbers, no, not the people who actually took the money.”

  “The people with the bazookas,” Parker said, because the Carl-Gustaf antitank weapons from Sweden had not been bazookas.

  “Those people,” Mrs. Bartlett agreed. “And the money, too, of course. There’ve been police and state troopers and FBI men and I don’t know what all around here all week. I even had three state police investigators staying here until Tuesday.”

  “I’m sorry we missed them,” Claire murmured.

  “Oh, they were just like anybody,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “You wouldn’t know anything to look at them.”

  “I suppose,” Claire said, turning to Parker, “we ought to go see where this robbery took place.”

  “It’s still traffic jams over there,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “People going, and stopping, and taking pictures, though I have no idea what they think they’re taking pictures of. Just some burned trees, that’s all.”

  “It’s the excitement,” Claire suggested. “People want to be around the excitement.”

  “Well, if you’re going over there,” Mrs. Bartlett said, “the best time is in the morning. Before nine o’clock.” She leaned forward again for another confidence. “Tourists, generally, are very slugabed,” she told them.

  “Well,” Claire said, “they are on vacation.”

  Parker said, “So, when we go out to dinner, we shouldn’t go in that direction.”

  “Oh, no. There are some lovely places . . . Let me show you.”

  There was a specific route Parker wanted, but he needed Mrs. Bartlett to suggest it. He found reasons not to be enthusiastic about her first three dinner suggestions, but the fourth would be on a route that would take them right past the church. “New England seafood,” he said. “That sounds fine. You want to give Claire the directions?”

  “I’d be very happy to.”

  7

  It was still a couple of hours before sunset, and Claire wanted to walk outside a while, to work off the stiffness of the long car ride. They stepped out the front door, and a young guy was just bouncing up onto the porch. “Hi,” he said, and they nodded and would have passed him but he stopped, frowned, pointed at them, and said, “I didn’t talk with you folks, did I?”

  “No,” Claire said.

  “Well, let me—” He was patting himself all over, frisking himself for something, while he talked, a kind of distracted smile on his face. He looked to be in his early twenties, with thick windblown brown hair, a round expectant face, and large black-framed glasses that made him look like an owl. A friendly owl. He wore a dark gray car coat with a cell phone dangling in front of it from a black leather strap around his neck, and jeans and boots, and it was the car coat he searched as he said, “I’m not a nut or anything, I wanna show you my bona fides, I’ve got my card here somewh— Oh, here it is.” And from an interior pocket he plucked a business card, which he handed to Claire.

  The card was pale yellow, with maroon letters centered, reading

  TERRY MULCANY

  Journalist

  laureled with phone, fax and cell phone numbers, plus an e-mail address. There was no terrestrial address.

  Claire said, “It doesn’t say who you’re a journalist for.”

  “I’m freelance,” Mulcany said, smiling nervously, apparently not sure they’d be impressed by his status. “I specialize in true crime. No, keep it,” he said, as Claire was about to hand the card back. “I’ve got boxes of them.” The grin semaphored and he said, “I lose them all the time, and then I find them.”

  “That’s nice,” Claire said. “Excuse me, we were just—”

  “Oh, no, I don’t want to take up your time,” Mulcany said. “I just— You heard about the robbery, here last week.”

  “Mrs. Bartlett just told us all about it.”

  “Oh, is that her name, the lady here?”

  Claire bent to him. “You aren’t staying here?”

  “Oh, no, I can’t afford this place,” and the smile flickered some more. “Not until my advance comes in. I’ve got a deal with Spotlight to do a book on the robbery, so I’m just here getting the background, taking some pictures.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, we can’t help,” Claire told him. “We just heard about the robbery ourselves half an hour ago.”

  “That’s fine, I don’t expect—” Mulcany interrupted himself a lot, now saying, “You’re here for the foliage, aren’t you?”

  Claire nodded. “Of course.”

  “So you’ll be out, driving around, walking around,” Mulcany said. “If you see anything, anything at all, anything that seems a little weird, out of the ordinary, let me know. Call me on my cell,” he said, holding it up for them to look at. “If you find me something and I use it,” he said, grinning in full, letting the cell phone drop to his coat front again, “I’ll give you the credit, and I’ll put you in the index!”

  “Well, I don’t know what we might
see,” Claire told him, “but that’s a tempting offer. I’ll keep your card.”

  “Great.” He was suddenly in a hurry to move on. “And I gotta check a couple details with— What was her name again?”

  “Mrs. Bartlett. Like the pear.”

  “Oh, great,” Mulcany said. “That I can remember. Thanks a lot!” And he hurried into Bosky Rounds.

  Claire laughed as she and Parker started away from the B and B and down the town road with its wide dirt strip instead of a sidewalk. “Isn’t that nice?” she said. “You lost money on that expedition, but he’s going to make some. So it’s working out for somebody, after all.”

  “I don’t like him being here,” Parker said.

  “Oh, he’s harmless,” she said.

  Parker shook his head. “On some wall,” he said, “that guy’s got those wanted posters tacked up. This time, he looked at you. Next time, maybe he looks at me.”

  8

  As they drove toward their New England seafood dinner, Parker said, “Nick’s the one found the church. It’s abandoned for years, off on a side road. The original idea was, we’d spend the first night there, split up the cash, head out in the morning. But the law presence was so intense we couldn’t move, and we couldn’t take the cash with us. So we left it there.”

  “In the church.”

  “We’ll be going by it in a few minutes.”

  “I won’t see much in the dark.”

  “I don’t want you to even slow down,” Parker told her. “The story the law is giving out is that Nick escaped before he could tell them anything, but they don’t always tell the truth, you know.”

  “You think they might know the money’s there, in the church?”

  “And they might have it staked out, waiting for us to come back. So we’ll just drive by. In daylight, I’ll try to get a better look at it.”

  They kept driving, on dark, small, thinly populated roads, until he said, “It’s on the right.”

  A small white church crouched in darkness, with parking around it. Claire looked at it as she drove by and said, “I don’t see anybody.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  * * *

  They passed the church again on their way back from the not-bad seafood dinner, and still didn’t see any sign of anybody in or near the place. But then they walked into Bosky Rounds and there in the communal parlor they did see somebody they knew: Susan Loscalzo.

  She got to her feet with a big smile when they walked in, tossing Yankee magazine back onto the coffee table as she said, “Well, hello, you two. Fancy running into you guys here.”

  9

  There were five guest rooms at Bosky Rounds, and with Sandra’s arrival late this afternoon all five were occupied. Now, in another corner of the communal parlor, two couples murmured together, planning their itinerary for tomorrow. Glancing toward them, ignoring the fact that Parker and Claire hadn’t said anything to her greeting, Sandra said, “I saw a bar on the way here looking like it had possibilities. Want to check it out?”

  “Sure,” Parker said, and to Claire he said, “You want to come along?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Nodding, with a little smile at Claire, Sandra said, “One car or two?”

  “We’ll follow you,” Parker said.

  As they turned toward the front door, Sandra looked around and said, “Where’s Mrs. Muskrat?”

  Claire said, “I think we’re on our own till morning.”

  “It’s the kind of place,” Sandra said, “I feel I oughta check in with the proctor before I do anything.”

  Her car, in the gravel lot beside the building, was a small black Honda Accord that would have been anonymous if it weren’t for the two whip antennas arcing high over its top, making it look like some outsized tropical insect in the wrong weather zone. Sandra got behind the wheel with a wave, and Claire started the Toyota to follow.

  Driving down the dark road with that humped black insect in front of her, Claire said, “Tell me about Sandra. Does she have a guy?”

  “She isn’t straight,” Parker said. “She lives with a woman on Cape Cod, and the woman has a child. Sandra supports the child. She thought she was the brains behind Roy Keenan and maybe she was. We got linked to her because she wanted the Harbin reward money and we led her to it. What she wants now I don’t know.”

  “The bank money?”

  “Maybe.” Parker shook his head, not liking it. “It’s not in her line,” he said. “I’d think she’d be out looking for another Roy Keenan now. I don’t know what she’s doing.”

  “Was Roy Keenan straight?”

  “Oh, yeah. That was just a business arrangement. She’d be out of sight with the handgun while Keenan asked the questions.”

  Claire said, “I don’t mean to be a matchmaker, but why wouldn’t McWhitney be a good new Roy?”

  “Because he’s too hotheaded and she’s too hard,” Parker said. “One of them would kill the other in a month, I don’t know which. This looks like the place.”

  It was. The Honda, antennae waving, turned in at an old-fashioned sprawling roadhouse with a fairly full parking lot to one side. The main building, two stories high, was flanked by wide enclosed porches, brightly lit, while the second floor was completely dark. A large floodlit sign out by the road, at right angles to the parking lot, told drivers from both directions WAYWARD INN.

  They parked the cars next to one another and met on the gravel. “I didn’t go inside the place before,” Sandra said. “It seemed to me, big enough for some privacy, dining rooms on both sides, bar in the middle.”

  “Bar,” Claire said.

  “You’re my kind of girl,” Sandra told her, and led the way as Claire lifted an eyebrow at Parker.

  The entrance was a wide doorway centered in the front of the building, at the end of a slate path from the parking area. Sandra pushed in first, the others following, and inside was a wide dark-carpeted hall with a maître d’s lectern prominent. To left and right, wide doorways showed the bright dining rooms in the enclosed porches, the customers now thinning out toward the end of the day. Behind the lectern a broad dark staircase led upward, and next to that a dimly lit hall extended back to what could be seen was a low-lit bar. Atop the lectern a cardboard sign read PLEASE SEAT YOURSELF.

  “That’s us,” Sandra said, and led the way past the lectern and down the hall to the bar, which was more full at this hour than the dining rooms, but also quieter, with lower lighting. The room was broad, with the bar along the rear, high-backed booths on both sides, and black Formica-top tables filling the center.

  Sandra pointed toward a booth on the left: “That looks pretty alone.”

  “Good,” Parker said.

  They went over there, Sandra sitting to face the front entrance, Claire opposite her, Parker beside Claire. From where he sat, the bar’s mirrored back wall gave him a good view of the hall down toward the entrance.

  A young waitress in black appeared almost immediately, hugging tall black menus to her breast. “Supper menu?”