“I should have done this a long time ago.”
“Yes, you should have.”
Dennis gripped the steering wheel tighter and shot a reproachful look at Angela. She raised her gloved hands blamelessly. “Hey, I agree with you, boss,” she said brightly.
They found Fire Chief Reginald Morrigan dead early one winter morning, drowned in a large bathtub full of bootleg gin inside the town firehouse. For five years he had been using the firehouse in Calerton, New York as a front to make rye, gin and scotch and to sneak good Canadian whiskey and beer into Upstate New York right near the American-Canadian border.
Ed Dugan and the other firemen dragged Morrigan’s alcohol-soaked corpse out of the tub, laid it down on the floor and waited for the local meat wagon to come pick it up. The whole firehouse reeked of booze and it made Ed’s eyes water. Seeing the chief like that also filled him with anger. He had to wait outside the fire hall and light a cigarette, ignoring the cold that bore right down into his blood and bones.
He knew who had done this. It was the Rogan family, Irish mafia that had come up from New York City. Although they hadn’t left any message, Morrigan’s body made the message quite clear. Stay out of bootlegging trade or else you’re next.
The first time I ever saw white crosses to mark the scenes of fatal crashes was the day we moved to New Hampshire. My wife, Lindsey, pointed them out as we drove along Route 101. She wasn’t impressed. “Oh my God. How fucking depressing.â€
Ben straightens his back and adjusts the heavy new briefcase in his left hand before he rings the doorbell of this non-descript house. He’s never carried a briefcase before, yet somehow a briefcase seems necessary to give him an air of authenticity. Dana helped him pick it out. They sat in front of the computer for an hour and ordered it online, along with the other things they’d need, and then they climbed into bed and she was crying. And although Ben is used to her tears, it continues to disturb him in a way he cannot explain.
Arizona sun leeched blue from the sky, scorched blacktop.
The heat got so bad Joe Pender abandoned his office for the front stoop of U-Save Storage. A wind picked up and spat warm dust at him, but it was movement, at least. Air circulated past his armpits. The sweat clinging to his Dickie shirt started to dry.
And then: two shapes approached along the frontage road.
He was waiting for his luggage at Schiphol Airport when he spotted her. She was wearing the somber, seal-gray coat he had given her last Christmas, and it was only the crimson in the scarf at her throat that caught his eye. They had decided it was silly for her to meet his plane. He had outlined the reasons against it; she nodded her acceptance. But here she was anyway looking lovely, standing as still and pale as a porcelain figurine amidst the stolid Dutch pea-soupers in their bulky winter dress. Almost involuntarily, his hand rose in a greeting. She placed one gloved hand up to the glass in response and smiled. The delicacy of her movement encapsulated all that he loved about her.
Moments later, he pulled his bags off the carousel and walked quickly through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ gate. She turned for his kiss and they bumped noses. He wondered whether other married couples miss each other’s lips as frequently as they did.
Stuart eased the Accord onto the Van Nuys off ramp and glanced at his rearview mirror. Shit. “Check it out, Eddie. White Navigator getting off, been behind us for a while now.â€
Eddie took a look at the sideview mirror. “First of all, that’s an Escalade. Don’t hold a candle to the Navigator. Second, it was a QX4 behind us before. Turned off a couple, three miles back. The Escalade got on after that.â€
Stuart said, “Maybe they’re using two vehicles.â€
“You thinking they’re cops?â€
“In 1592, one hundred years after Columbus discovered the Americas, Johann Van der Flieder and sixty-one men landed on a small island off the coast of Maine. That was in the summer. Their ship left them with a supply of tools, food, weapons, and water. They spent the remainder of the summer building two longhouses to use as barracks, and a small command post for Van der Flieder and two officers along with a surgeon.
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The call troubled Pete Thorsen. It wasn’t like Sam Lawrence to call him in the evening, much less when he was out to dinner with a client.
When Pete got back to Sears & Whitney, he found Sam hunched over a small conference table in one corner of his office, staring intently at a document. A jumble of paper covered the table with a couple of glasses, one tipped on its side, mixed in. Crumpled scraps of paper littered the floor nearby. That wasn’t like Sam either. Pete’s old friend and mentor was the most meticulous man he knew. Even in his prime, Sam’s office had always looked like the set for a magazine shoot rather than the workplace of one of the busiest and most successful lawyers in Chicago.
Neighbors and business associates said the kindest thing Rupert Ames ever did was die. That he was shot dead in his bed cut no slack with them. His heirs would agree; he was as rotten to them in death as he had been in life, as they were to find out shortly when his will was read.
Who murdered Rupert Ames? And why bother, he was eighty-eight years old? He was ailing. Bed-ridden, in fact. The killer had slipped into his bedroom through a second floor balcony door, whacked him, and exited by the same route.