Into Thin
Air, part 2
-- Written by Anne
White and grey, seagulls and pigeons wheeled over
"None of the firearms in our seized
property lockers seemed to have any
Peter Holland came walking up
"That's what I love about
"What's the word from your
non-conventional sources?" McGray asked.
"Anything percolate down through the nosy gossips in the
Peter smiled and held up his hand. "Now, now, that's hardly nice to say
about concerned citizens performing their civic duty," he said. "Especially when little notes like these
get slipped into my lunch." And he
showed them the napkin with its message.
Mort took it and read it. "What's at
"Tony little restaurant down in a
corner of the
McGray snatched it next and read it for
himself. "Yeah, but how do we know
this is good?" he asked. "This
could be another lead that grew in the telling, like that one you gave me last
year that came down through three restaurants, two antique stores, that used
book place on
"Hey!" said
"Yes, and I was the laughingstock of
the bomb disposal unit for months."
"That's hardly my fault."
Now Mort took the napkin back and looked
at it again. "The way I see it,
there's only one way to find out how authentic this is," he said. "Seth, tonight you and I are dining
out."
*******
The filing room. That, Jessica felt, was probably where the
key to this whole matter lay. But
getting in there alone so she could poke around uninterrupted was going to be a
problem.
Fortunately, the guards were not being as
vigilant as they might have been. She
had made no escape attempts as of yet, and she was getting the impression that
they considered her not much of a risk to try.
Usually either
Jessica was keeping much closer tabs on
him than he was on her. Sooner or later
he would be distracted, and she needed to be ready the instant that
happened. She lingered around the second
floor, and bided her time.
She didn't have long to wait.
"Hello?" he said, turning his
back and moving away so that he wouldn't be overheard. "No, everything's fine. The shipment should come in today, and then
we'll be sending it out tomorrow or the next day ..."
Jessica ducked into the filing room.
She remembered from the night before which
cabinet drawer LeMasters had been slumped over, and immediately went over to
it. She opened it and started to rifle
through the files, trusting her intuition to alert her to anything significant
she might stumble across. She was so
intent on this that her intuition failed to warn her of the danger coming up
behind her.
"What do you think you're
doing?" he demanded. "Answer
me!"
Jessica was too startled to do anything
but stare back at him.
"Is there a problem,
Jeffrey?" Thomas VanDower stood at
the door, looking in.
"Something that probably would not
have happened if you had been paying closer attention," VanDower said
mildly. "But no matter now, what's
done is done." He turned to
Jessica, who was leaning against the wall trying to catch her breath, and
asked, "Did he hurt you?"
Jessica, who'd had the wind knocked out of
her, shook her head.
"Wait outside," VanDower said to
"If I had, would you have granted
it?"
VanDower smiled. "Probably not," he said. "These files are rather sensitive, and I
do not think they bear any relevance to the attempts on my life or LeMasters's
murder."
"I disagree," said Jessica,
pulling herself back up to her full height and straightening her jacket. "We don't know for certain that
LeMasters wasn't the intended victim.
And if that's the case, he might have been killed for something he
discovered in that drawer."
VanDower sighed in resignation, went over
to the open drawer, and pulled a file out from the front, which he handed to
her. "This," he said, "is
the file that LeMasters's hand was in when he was stabbed."
Jessica took it and looked at the
contents. "Jewelry invoices?"
"Yes," said VanDower. "We cover our money trail by converting
our payments into gemstones and then back again at a later time. We have an agent in another state who works
with us; we send him the jewels, and an
invoice under separate cover."
"Who makes up these packages?"
she asked.
"I do," he said. "I was a jewelry appraiser by trade; no
one else in the organization has the ability to accurately assess what is being
sent out. So it falls to me to write up
the invoices. I rather enjoy it; it's
not often I get to revisit my former profession."
"And a copy of the invoice gets filed
away up here."
"For our own records, yes. That's good business."
"Yes," she said. She looked at the most recently dated
invoice; four pages detailing some very interesting pieces. "By the looks of this the last shipment
must have been very impressive," she observed.
VanDower seemed to swell a little with
pride. "Yes," he said, "I
was very pleased with what I picked out this time. I would show you them myself, but unfortunately
they have already been boxed up to be sent out."
"Well," said Jessica, closing
the folder, "perhaps some other time."
"Yes," he said, his lip curling
slightly. "Perhaps."
*******
35 Wharf Street proved to be the highly
acclaimed Wharf Street Restaurant, famed for its trendy Italian seafood and
cozy atmosphere. The restaurant was
surprisingly small and narrow, with tables clustered together against the brick
walls. Wooden beams ran overhead hung
thick with ropes of garlic and hot peppers, and the limited menu was written on
chalkboards that were placed around the room.
Sharp-looking waiters and waitresses maneuvered around the close
confines of the restaurant floor, carrying platters laden with pasta topped with
fresh shellfish that had been brought from the Sea that morning, loaves of
crusty Italian bread, and various specials, everything from grilled swordfish
to clams casino. Up in the very front of
the restaurant the chef worked in a small kitchen open to the floor for all the
patrons to watch him in his work.
The place was packed when Seth and Mort
walked in, and the sounds of conversation and silverware ricocheted off the
brick mason walls as a contented cacophony.
Seth jumped as the chef lit a flambé near
his right elbow, the flames leaping nearly as high as the ceiling.
"Trendy yuppie eatery," he
grumbled. "I'll bet they don't even
have lobster on the menu!"
"Sure they do, Doc," Mort
replied. "See, it's part of the
fettucini primavera with garlic and seafood special. Sixteen bucks a plate."
"Fettucini," Seth sniffed. "Give me an old fashioned clam bake any
day!"
A waitress with her blond hair tied in a
bun at the back of her head approached them and asked, "Two?"
"Actually, we're not here to
eat," Mort said with a sidelong glance at his friend. "We're looking for someone by the name
of Matthew Jacobs. We were told he works
here."
"Yes, he's one of the
sous-chefs," she replied.
"Would you like me to see if he's available?"
"Please," said Seth.
"In the meantime, would you like to wait
for him at a table? We have one setting
for two left."
Seth started to open his mouth to protest,
but Mort cut him off and said, "Thanks, that'd be great."
She led them to the back of the
restaurant, where a small table was crammed into a corner, and left them with a
complimentary loaf of bread.
Mort didn't hesitate to cut himself a
thick slice and spread herb butter on it.
"Come on, Doc, it's not a clam back, but this place doesn't get the
rave reviews in the Portland Phoenix for
nothing."
Seth hesitated. "Ohhh ... when in Rome," he said at
last, and picked up the bread knife.
He had just bitten into his third slice of
the bread when they were approached by a young man wearing an apron and wiping
his hands on a towel.
"Are you Matthew Jacobs?" Mort
asked him.
"Yes, sir," he answered,
slinging the towel over his shoulder and extending his hand. "Maria said you wanted to speak with
me."
"I'm Sheriff Metzger, and this is
Doctor Hazlitt," Mort said as they shook hands with him. "We were wondering if you'd seen this
lady here recently." And he took
the paperback edition of Jessica's book out of his coat and showed him her
picture on the back.
Jacobs's mouth compressed into a tense
line when he looked at it. "Oh,
boy," he said quietly.
"I take it that's a yes?" Seth
asked.
"I did see her," the young man
said. "She was here about three
days ago. Why do you want to know?"
"Because she's been missing now for
two days," Mort answered.
Jacobs looked distinctly
uncomfortable. "Um, listen, this is
not a good place to talk," he told them.
"I get off work at nine tonight.
Meet me at the observatory on Munjoy Hill at nine-thirty. It's right on lower Congress Street; you
can't miss it."
*******
The Old Observatory on Munjoy Hill was not
in the nicest section of the city; this part of Congress Street was thronged
mostly with houses converted to apartments, convenience stores, and
laundromats. The observatory itself was
an ancient wooden tower sitting on the very top of the gently-sloping hill, where
it commanded sweeping views of Portland and Casco Bay. Normally open during the day to tours, at
this hour it was locked and quiet, with only a single spotlight illuminating
the memorial plaque mounted at its base.
It was fully dark when Seth and Mort
arrived, and behind them the city was sparkling with lights against the last
remnants of dusk in the West. Out across
the dark sweep of the horizon they could see the flashes of lighthouses and
navigation buoys in the bay, and the red and green lights of the occasional
fishing boat. The cruise ship Scotia Prince was passing out of the
harbor on its regular nightly excursion to Nova Scotia, ablaze with lights from
every porthole and strung from the masts from bow to stern.
"Sheriff ... Doctor," a voice beckoned
to them from the shadows, and Matthew Jacobs stepped out from under the stairs
leading up the side of the tower.
"Thanks for meeting me here.
You never know who might be listening to you in the restaurant - it's
not the greatest place for a quiet, confidential chat."
"We understand," said Mort. "So - what can you tell us about Mrs.
Fletcher?"
"She stopped by the restaurant three
days ago, like I told you," he replied.
"She was looking for information about a murder that occurred on
the waterfront ten years ago."
"Bernard Patterson," Mort
said. "So what's your connection to
him?"
"I was Bernie's friend," Matthew
told them. "Before I got this job I
used to work down at Barry’s Chowder House on Commercial Street. Bernie was a dockhand, he worked around the
various warehouses on the piers, and he'd stop by for a beer when he got off
his shift. He used to tell me what was
coming in from where; most of the time it was pretty routine.
"Bernie dropped out of sight for
awhile, and I didn't see much of him.
Then one night he came in scared.
He said he'd seen something in one of the warehouses that he wished he
hadn't, and he was afraid he wasn't going to be able to let the right people
know about it in time. Then he told me
what was going on, and made me swear that if anything happened to him, I wasn't
to tell anyone about it, ever."
"And what, exactly, was going
on?" Seth prompted.
Jacobs took a deep breath. "He told me that for the past few weeks
he'd been keeping tabs on one of the organizations that was using one of the
run-down warehouses in the port. He told
me that he knew something fishy was going on, that he'd been able to find out
that whatever they were moving through there, the money from it was being
passed through semi-precious stones, Maine tourmaline."
"Money laundering," Mort said
grimly.
Jacobs nodded. "That's what Bernie thought. Change the money into jewels and back again,
and it makes the trail almost impossible to follow back. Anyhow, that night he'd gone down there to
poke around, and the warehouse was packed to the rafters with crates of illegal
guns - semi-automatics, that sort of thing."
"Did he know who this organization
was?" Mort asked.
"No," said Jacobs, "but he
was afraid they already knew who he was.
And he was scared. By the next
night he'd been killed."
"And you told Mrs. Fletcher all of
this?" Seth asked him.
"Yes," said Matthew. "Everything Bernie had told me ten years
ago. It's been branded into my
memory. I told her about the tourmaline,
about the guns, where the warehouse was located. I didn't figure they'd still be using the
same cover after ten years, I had no idea they were going to go after
her." He shrugged as a chill gust
of wind blew over them from off Casco Bay.
"She knew too much - just like Bernie Patterson knew too much a
decade ago."
"And they killed Bernie
Patterson," said Mort.
*******
One thing Jessica had learned during the
restless nights since being taken prisoner was that one of her guards, Sydney
Morse to be exact, snored. Although he
was supposed to sit outside her door and guard it all night, he reliably fell
asleep in his chair in spite of himself somewhere around two in the
morning. His snores were loud enough to
wake the dead, and were more than adequate to cover any sound as she endeavored
to pick the lock.
The night after LeMasters's murder, her
third night in captivity, Jessica finally succeeded in overcoming the trick of
the lock with a nail file. When she had
got it, she tentatively opened the door just a crack, and peeked out. Morse was fast asleep, slumped in his chair,
raising his usual nightly ruckus.
Encouraged, she opened the door still wider, and stepped out into the
hallway - causing a floorboard to creak beneath her foot.
Jessica cringed and froze in place,
certain that the groan of the floor would awaken her guard and bring down
instant retribution. But Morse merely
shifted in his chair, and resumed snoring in his usual cadence, oblivious to
the rest of the world. Jessica gave a
silent sigh of relief, and started off down the hall.
A dim light at the end of the hallway lit
her way, and she went down the carpeted stairs to the first floor. Escape was not foremost on her mind - she had
seen the securities set upon this house with her own eyes, and they were
formidable. Rather, her goal was
VanDower's personal office. It was
becoming obvious that a great deal of information was being withheld from her,
and if she did not go looking for it herself, she might never have all the
pieces she needed to put this puzzle together.
One of the double oak doors stood open; in
his own stronghold VanDower saw little reason to lock the office at night. But he did lock his desk drawers, she soon
found out, and left nothing out on the desktop for her to use. Jessica was very disappointed to have come so
far for so little, and was just about to head back to her room to figure out
her next move, when a thought occurred to her, and she returned to the desk,
sitting down behind it in VanDower's huge leather chair.
VanDower bought his postage stamps by the
roll, and kept them on his desk in a fancy little dispenser with his initials
on it. Jessica picked this up, and
pulled a length of the strip of stamps out.
Then she took a tissue out of her pocket, dampened it with her tongue,
and very, very carefully wiped as much of the glue as she could off the backs
of the first five. When this had been
done, she fed the strip back into the dispenser, and got up to leave.
A heavy tread on the stair coming down
made her retreat back into the shadows of the office. Her heart was pounding with panic - what if
it was VanDower, coming down to his office to do some late night work? What would he do if he caught her there? There was nowhere to hide, and nowhere to
go. Eyes wide, she shrank against the
wall, where she could just see the foot of the stairs.
Her relief was profound when she saw that
it was just Sydney Morse, come down to get a midnight glass of milk. But she was hardly out of the woods; there
was still the matter of getting back into her room before Morse knew she had
been out of it. She waited until the
bleary-eyed henchman had vanished around a corner, and made for the stairs with
all the stealth she could manage.
She took the steps carefully, keeping a
hand against the wall to steady herself and looking back over her
shoulder. Morse's footsteps could be
heard on the stairs behind her as she reached the top, and she fled ahead of
him down the hallway. She stepped on the
creaky floorboard again as she reached her door, eliciting another wince of
annoyance, and then vanished inside just as the guard appeared at the top of
the staircase.
Morse paused at the end of the hallway -
he thought he had heard something, but could not be sure. Returning to his post, he opened the door and
looked inside to check on his prisoner.
The room was still and dark; Jessica was curled up on the cot apparently
fast asleep. Reassured that everything
was as it should be, he closed the door and sat back down in his chair to
resume his watch - and most likely his nap.
Jessica opened one blue eye as the door
shut behind him. Then she reached out
and took the nail file from the table where she had left it out in plain sight,
slipped it back into her pocket, and counted her blessings.
*******
"Look, sir," Mort said with
growing exasperation, "all we want to know is whether anyone has purchased
a large amount of your tourmaline stock recently, and if so, who it was."
"As I have said, information
pertaining to our clients is strictly confidential," Stephen Marcus, the
president of Casco Bay Jewelers, said.
Seth and Mort had come to his shop on Congress Street in the middle of
the afternoon, and Marcus had come out to speak with them in the store's small
display room, where glass display cases showed off the finest they had to offer
in tourmaline jewelry. "It is not
our policy to give out the names of our clients and compromise their
privacy."
"I'm afraid something more is at
stake here than the privacy of your clients," Seth said. "This is the third jewelry store dealing
in tourmaline that we've visited; the others at least could tell us that no one
had made any unusual purchases!"
Marcus looked pained. "You put me in a difficult
position," he said.
"Would it make a difference,"
Seth said, "if I told you that this was a matter of life and death?"
"What do you mean, life and
death?"
Mort took out the paperback and showed it
to him. "This writer is
missing," he said. "She was
kidnapped in Portland three nights ago.
Anything you could tell us could help the authorities find her before
it's too late."
The store's president stared at Seth
open-mouthed - something in Seth's very serious expression seemed to convince
him. "All right," he said
quietly, "all right. Yes, we do
have some 'special' clients who occasionally order unset stones from us. They tend to be hobbyists interested in
setting their own pieces, or independent appraisers acting on the behalf of
another buyer. We know who most of them
are, they have made no secret of it, but there is at least one who prefers to
remain anonymous. Periodically we are
sent a sum of money and requested that we supply an assortment of our best
uncut stones worth that amount."
"So when was the last time your
'special' mystery client placed an order?" Mort asked.
"Quite recently," Marcus
replied. "Within the past few days,
actually."
"And how much did they want?"
The jeweler sighed. "Twenty-thousand dollars worth of
tourmaline, bicoloured was preferred," he replied.
"And when's he coming to pick it
up?"
Marcus stiffened, and said, "I'm not
at liberty to say."
"Oh, come on!" Mort said. "What do you mean, you're 'not at
liberty to say'?"
"I mean that I have already
substantially pushed the envelope on this matter, telling you this information. I'm sorry, I realize the gravity of the
situation, but we have a trust with our clientele. I've told you everything I can. I can only hope it's enough."
"Yeah," said Mort. "So can I. For that matter, so can Jessica
Fletcher."
*******
Seth and Mort came back out onto Congress
Street feeling discouraged.
"Damn," said Mort. "We're so close!"
"I'm afraid that in this case, Mort,
a miss is as good as a mile," said Seth heavily. He took a deep breath. "Well, we can at least tell Detective McGray
about this. Maybe he can use some power
of jurisdiction and get somewhere with it."
They started back up towards their hotel,
but before they had gone more than half a block, they heard someone running
after them in high heels.
"Dr. Hazlitt!" an out of breath
voice called. "Sheriff
Metzger! Wait!"
Turning, they saw the curly-haired woman
from the jewelry store come up to them.
"Look," she said when she had
caught up, "I know it's against store policy, and I could lose my job if
anyone were to find out, but ... I recognized that book you showed Mr. Marcus, A Faded Rose Beside Her, JB Fletcher's
second novel. I've been such a fan of
Mrs. Fletcher's books for so long, I just couldn't stand by and do nothing to
help her!" She took a couple of
deep breaths to steady herself.
"That big tourmaline purchase," she then said. "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but
that's supposed to be picked up by a courier this afternoon, just after we
close at five o'clock."
"Do you know who the purchase was
made by?" Mort asked.
The woman shook her head. "No.
I didn't see the billing information, only the note on the schedule to
have the pieces ready by closing today.
Sometimes we let people in through the back to pick up orders after
hours, especially expensive ones. It's
happened before."
"This could be the break we're
looking for," Mort said.
"Thank you very much, Miss, er ..."
"Valya," the woman said. "Georgina Valya. I have to get back to the store now, before
someone notices that I'm gone. Oh, I do so
hope you find her! And if you do, do you
think it would be too much trouble to ask her if she could sign a book for
me?"
*******
Jessica was wandering the downstairs late
in the afternoon, under guard as usual, observing the usual goings-on of the business
from an inconspicuous distance. As she
passed the foyer she paused - the mail had come, and was lying in a pile on the
floor under the mail slot. And sticking
out from under a piece of junkmail she could see the bright yellow "return
to sender" label on a letter.
Aware that Sydney Morse was watching her,
she ventured further into the foyer and pretended to study the artwork on its
walls. A quick glance down confirmed
what she had suspected - there was no postage stamp on the envelope. Her idea had worked, then - one of her
doctored stamps had fallen off, and without postage, the letter had returned to
where it came from in the afternoon mail.
Now there was the matter of getting hold
of it, no easy thing to do under the watchful eye of VanDower's henchman. She stared at a vase on a little display
table, her mind racing. Time was of the
essence; if she lingered too long Morse would get suspicious of what she was up
to, and make her move on. But if that
happened, someone would collect the mail in the meantime, and the letter would
be out of her reach ...
She looked out one of the ornate glass
windows flanking the door, and took a step back.
Morse noticed her sudden movement
instantly. "What's the
matter?" he asked.
"Outside," she said, pointing. "Someone is coming to the door."
"That's strange, no one has an
appointment," Morse said, and he headed for the front door to see who was
there. As he went past her, Jessica
casually stuck her foot out, and tripped him.
Morse had not anticipated this, and
pitched forward, flailing his arms in a futile effort to regain his
balance. He made a grab for the table,
but only succeeded in bringing the antique down with him; there was the sound
of splintering wood, and a crash as the porcelain vase shattered into a million
pieces on the marble floor.
Jessica seized her opportunity and
snatched up the letter, and not a moment too soon because Morse was quickly
back on his feet, and he was angry.
"Bitch!" he shouted at her. "You - you did that deliberately!"
Jessica backed against a wall and tried
her best to look innocent.
Morse looked like he was counting to
ten. He stopped somewhere around eight
and advanced upon her, clenching and unclenching his fists with his face a mask
of rage.
"I'm going to be in a lot of
trouble," he said with surprising patience, "and it's your
fault. Now you are going to go back to
your room before I get into more trouble for doing something to you that Mr.
VanDower would not like. Now move!" And he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her
back upstairs.
*******
Morse threw her into her bare little room
and slammed the door shut behind her, turning the lock with a solid click. Jessica caught her breath, then crept up to
the door and pressed an ear against it, listening for any signs of life out in
the hall. Hearing none, she let out a
shaky breath and pulled the letter out of her pocket.
It was a business-sized envelope,
originally addressed to someone she had never heard of in Aspen, Colorado. She turned it over in her hands, and broke
the seal in the back, pulling out its contents.
The letter consisted of sheets of paper
that she immediately recognized as being the invoice she had seen in the
storeroom, the one listing all the pieces of tourmaline that were being sent abroad
for conversion into hard currency. She
scanned the first page, the second, and the third ... and then looked in vain
for the fourth.
"I know there were four pages,"
she said softly to herself, "so why were only three sent out?"
She stared at the three sheets before her,
thinking hard, and then the answer occurred to her. And when it did, she sank down into a chair,
rested her head in her hand, and closed her eyes in despair. The papers slipped out of her fingers and
fell to the floor unnoticed.
*******
At five o'clock Mort, Seth, and Peter
Holland were sitting in Seth's station wagon in the parking lot on Free Street
that served Casco Bay Jewelry's rear entrance.
Holland had insisted on coming along; knowing the city as well as he
did, he knew that he would be able to find his way back to any place a courier
led them later.
Mort checked his watch. "It's just five now," he said. "They should be closing up about
now."
"We'll give it half an hour,"
Seth said.
They hadn't been waiting long when headlights
pierced the gathering twilight and a car swung into the parking lot and into a
space across from them. They ducked down
so that they wouldn't be spotted, and peeking over the dashboard, watched as a
young man got out of the car and disappeared into the rear entrance of the
store.
Ten minutes later, he re-emerged carrying
a black jewelry case. He went straight
to his car, not paying any attention to the watchers at all, and starting up
the engine, pulled away.
"This is it," said Mort as Seth
turned the key and the station wagon roared to life. "Give him a bit of a head start, Doc, we
don't want him to know he's being tailed."
"I know that, Metzger, do you think
I'm an idiot?" Seth retorted, and they pulled out on to Free Street a
respectful distance behind the courier's car.
They wound through mostly residential
streets and into the Deering Oaks district of the city. Here brick townhouses lined quiet streets
shaded by tall trees of venerable age; cobblestone sidewalks were lit by ornamental
street lamps that were beginning to come on with the fall of dusk. At length the car stopped in front of one
particularly asture home. The courier
got out, passed through the wrought-ironwork gate, and vanished around the side
of the building, presumably headed for some private entrance around the back.
Seth, Mort, and Peter observed this from
half a block away, their headlights extinguished. Then Seth cautiously pulled up in front of
the house so they could read the number on the brick pillars flanking the gate.
"402," Holland repeated to
himself softly. "I know this
place!"
"You do?" Mort asked, turning
around to look at him.
"Yes.
The guy's name is VanDower. He's
a philanthropist, gives a lot of money to the city every year, supports the
symphony, that sort of thing."
"What's he do for a living?"
The reporter shrugged. "That I can't tell you. I remember something about him making a
fortune on the stock exchange, and that he's pretty much independently wealthy. It's hard to believe that someone so
respected in the community would be involved in such a nasty business as gun
smuggling!"
"Wouldn't be the first time,"
said Seth. "Maybe it's his
hobby."
"Well, either way, I think we may
have enough for McGray to get hold of a search warrant," said Mort.
"If he phrases his request carefully,
you mean," Holland said.
Seth passed a hand over his eyes. "He'll have to think of something,"
he said.
*******
Thomas VanDower was surprised when an hour
later Jessica broke into a meeting he was having in his office with his
partners, not bothering to wait to be ushered in. She was followed by a panicky looking
Flanders who seemed barely able to keep up with her determined pace. The writer looked pale and her hand shook as
she clutched some sheets of paper, but her eyes were bright and when she spoke
it was with the careful control of one who was keeping a tight rein on her
fury.
"Mr. VanDower," she said
steadily, looking him straight in the eye, "I have concluded who was
behind the attempts on your life, and the murder of Ken LeMasters."
VanDower rose to his feet. "Most impressive," he said. "I didn't expect you to come to a
conclusion so soon. So - tell me, who is
the guilty party?"
"You are."
VanDower laughed. "What a preposterous notion!" he
exclaimed. "Really, Mrs. Fletcher,
I expected much better from you. This
isn't one of your books, after all."
But Kim Harris, Rick Collins, and Ryan
Longwell weren't laughing. They looked
at her, and then they looked at their boss, and it was plain who they
believed. VanDower was shocked.
"Why - surely you can't be taking her
seriously!" he exclaimed.
"I think we should hear her
out," Longwell said, perfectly serious.
"Very well," he said, and faced
his opponent. "Tell me how you
arrived at this fascinating conclusion."
Jessica continued to maintain her strict
mask of control. "There were never
any attempts on your life," she said.
"You engineered those accidents yourself, to set the stage for the
real murder you were planning. You knew
that Ken LeMasters had figured out that someone was skimming the profits from
your gunrunning operation, and you knew it would only be a matter of time
before he had proof that it was you. And
so the very night that he went to the filing room to confirm his suspicions,
you followed him and you killed him."
"But the room was dark when LeMasters
was found," VanDower reminded her.
"How could the killer have known it was LeMasters he was
stabbing?"
"Because when the murder took place,
the room wasn't dark," Jessica said.
"The filing room is equipped with motion detectors designed to turn
on the ceiling lights when someone enters the room. I noticed them when I first arrived. When LeMasters came in, the lights went on,
and so long as he was there moving around, the lights stayed on. There is no way the killer could have
mistaken him for you. After LeMasters
was dead, the lights naturally turned off again after a period, until Mr. Flanders
here arrived and tripped them on again."
"That's very clever," said VanDower,
"but it still doesn't prove that I had anything to do with it."
"No," said Jessica, "but
this does." And she showed them the
invoice that she had brought in with her.
"You were very careful in choosing which clues you allowed me to
see. You used the pretense of protecting
your business interests in the event that you released me, but in actuality you
were screening out any clues you thought might lead me to you. And so I took the liberty of gathering a few clues
of my own. This," she said, indicating
the papers, "is the invoice you sent out in the morning mail. It came back into my hands after the stamp I
had prepared fell off, and it was returned for postage. It's the same invoice as the one you let me
see yesterday, the one LeMasters had been looking at when he was killed, except
for one thing - this one is missing a page.
"What better way to keep a share of
the tourmaline you were using in your transactions for yourself? The agent in Aspen would only be expecting
what was listed on this invoice, so he would never know if
another whole page's worth of gemstones failed to arrive with the others. But LeMasters must have noticed a
discrepancy, and started to look into it.
He probably thought at first that the Aspen jeweler was cheating you, but
then it occurred to him that the omission might just as easily have occurred on
this end before the tourmaline was even sent out. And when he realized that, you knew you had
to murder him before he put it all together."
"But why me?" VanDower exclaimed. "Anyone in this organization could have
been responsible for skimming the stones and sending out an incomplete
invoice."
"Because you told me yourself that it
was you personally who wrote up the invoices, since only you had the expertise
in appraisal to do it. What's more, the
envelope this went out in was addressed in your handwriting. As the author of the invoice and the one who
mailed it out, you were the only person here with the opportunity to tamper
with it."
VanDower was speechless. Jessica took a deep breath before going on.
"This whole thing was a set-up,"
she said. "You never intended to
set me free. My involvement was only
part of an elaborate game that you put together, using me for your own
amusement."
Thomas VanDower sat back down behind his
desk and regarded her with cold eyes.
"Very true," he said at length, "though I never guessed
that you would come to see the entire picture so clearly. Truly you deserve the reputation that you
have earned."
"So what happens now?" she asked
quietly.
"You lived up to your end of the
bargain beautifully," VanDower said, "and I regret the fact that I
cannot honor my end as well. But you
represent a double liability, and that needs to be dealt with. So I'm going to adjourn this meeting and ..."
"Wait a minute, we're not
finished," Kim Harris said.
"I'm not letting this meeting end until we deal with your cheating
us out of our fair share of the profits.
Tom, how could you do this to us?"
"I founded this organization
..." VanDower began.
"You founded it with our hard
work!" Ryan Longwell said with some heat.
"We were out there making all the arrangements, taking care of all
the details, risking prison, while you were hiding behind the scenes taking
advantage of us!"
"Now just a minute ..."
"I agree with Ryan," Rick
Collins said. "There had better be
some kind of payback or I just might decided to turn informant."
"Yes, even the Feds have some idea of
what fair play is," Harris added.
VanDower, under obvious strain and seeing
a possible mutiny on his hands, let go of the last of his temper and slammed
his fist down on the desk.
"Quiet!" he shouted at his
unhappy partners. "Granted, I admit
that we have much to discuss, and that perhaps some explanations are
required. But may I remind you all that
we are all in danger so long as she
remains alive. I am tabling this
discussion until after Mrs. Fletcher has been disposed of. Morse, Flanders," he barked, "get
her out of here. Take her to the cellar,
and guard her there until I arrive."
Flanders pulled a small gun out of his
pocket and held it on her while Morse brought out his ropes; under such
circumstances Jessica had little choice but to submit to having her wrists
bound before her as when she had first been brought here. Morse still bore the grudge of the trick she
had played on him in the foyer, and tied the ropes so tightly that tears welled
up in her eyes. Harris, Collins, and
Longwell looked away, but Van Dower watched intently, overseeing the tightening
of each loop around her wrists. When
this had been done, Morse clapped a firm hand on her shoulder and pushed her
out of the office.
*******
With Flanders leading and Morse following,
they brought her down a flight of wooden stairs into a dark basement room. The air was cool and slightly damp; the scent
of old wood suggested that it might have once been a wine cellar. Windowless, the only light came from a single
low-wattage bulb hanging from the ceiling, which cast dark, wavering shadows
before them.
Morse gave her a hard shove that sent her
tumbling forward, unable to use her hands to regain her balance or to catch
herself. She fell to her knees, and her
shoulder hit the concrete floor with such force that she stifled a cry of pain. Then Flanders and Morse left her to return to
their post outside the door at the top of the stairs.
For many long moments Jessica lay where
she was, stunned, trying to collect her wits.
She became increasingly aware of the throbbing in her shoulder and
knees, of the bite of the rope around her bound wrists, and of the coolness of
the concrete against her cheek. Closing
her eyes, she summoned all the reserves of strength she had left, and with an
effort managed to push herself up into a sitting position against the wall.
"It was hardly unexpected,
Jess," she reminded herself softly, and drew her knees up for warmth.
After what seemed like an eternity, she
heard the door creak open on its hinges above her, and the sound of feet coming
down the stairs into the wine cellar.
Thomas VanDower stepped into the pool of light cast by the ceiling bulb
and looked down at her, arms crossed, his eyes hard and cold. All at once he reached down and struck her
across the face, the ring on his hand cutting a slash across her cheekbone.
"You played the game a bit too
well," he said. "Have you no
sense of self-preservation? It's enough
that you discovered my guilt, but then
to fling it in my face in front of my employees ...!"
Jessica fought back tears from the
stinging blow. "I serve the
truth," she said through clenched teeth, "not you."
"And for this you threw away your
only chance at freedom. Does it not
matter that you will never see your beloved Cabot Cove again?"
"If I have destroyed your
organization from within," she said, "it will have been worth the
sacrifice. Besides," she added,
"you weren't going to let me walk out of here alive no matter what I
did."
VanDower allowed the faintest quirk of a
smile to cross his features.
"Touché," he admitted.
"Clearly I underestimated you.
Fortunately, however, that is a mistake I will not be in danger of
making again." He pulled a Beretta
from the pocket of his jacket and began to attach a silencer to its muzzle.
"This
is where it ends," thought Jessica sadly, and she steeled herself to
face her death with all the dignity she could summon ... when there came the
sound of shouting from upstairs.
The door at the top of the stairs was
kicked open, sending a shaft of light down into the cellar as VanDower raised
his gun and pointed it at her. Three
figures, two with their own guns drawn, appeared silhouetted against the light,
and she heard Mort Metzger's familiar voice shout, "Hold it!"
But VanDower, his face a tight mask of
rage and hate, did not lower his arm.
His hand shook as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Jessica tore her eyes from the barrel of
the Beretta she was staring down and steadily met VanDower's. "Maybe no one can punish you for all the
innocent lives your gun smuggling has claimed," she said softly, "but
it's too late to escape punishment for the murder you are about to
commit."
Still VanDower hesitated. Jessica held her breath, and all around them
there was absolute silence.
Then, like a man transfixed, Thomas
VanDower's arm went limp, and the gun clattered to the floor.
"You win," he said.
The silhouettes watching from the top of
the stairs now rushed down; Lieutenant McGray and Mort took VanDower into
custody, while Seth Hazlitt rushed over to his friend.
"Jessica!" he cried, taking her
shoulders in a gentle grip. "Did he
hurt you badly?"
Jessica felt rather faint; she knew that
if she tried to stand up she would collapse on the spot. "Just some bruises," she replied
weakly. "Nothing fatal. And this," she added, bringing her bound
hands up to the bleeding cut on her cheek.
"We'll put some ice on that,"
Seth told her. He had his pocket knife
out and was sawing through the ropes.
"There," he said when they fell away. "That better?"
"Much," she murmured, her eyes
drooping. "I'm sorry, I can't stand
up ... not just yet."
"Did anyone ask you to, woman?"
Seth retorted. "Just sit there and
rest, and let Mort and Lieutenant McGray clean up things upstairs. I'll stay here with you," he added
reassuringly.
This seemed to comfort her, and she let
out a sigh. "Thank you, Seth,"
Jessica whispered, and she released her tenuous hold on consciousness.
*******
Back at the Eastland Hotel, Seth tended to
the wound VanDower's ring had inflicted on Jessica's face, cleaning it with a
washcloth dipped in cold water and then placing a light bandage over it. He also examined her shoulder and knees,
which were bruised but not broken, then ordered her into a hot bath while Mort
called up room service for the three of them.
The bath did much to revive Jessica's
spirits, and when she came out, wrapped in a thick robe supplied by the hotel,
she looked and felt more like herself.
They sat down to dinner, speaking of anything but what they had recently
gone through, and were just finishing when Peter Holland knocked at the door.
"McGray just told me," he said
when he came in. He went over to Jessica
and shook her hand warmly in both of his.
"Mrs. Fletcher, I am so pleased to meet you at last."
"I understand you were instrumental
in finding me," she said, smiling.
Holland shrugged modestly. "It's a long story," he said.
"And one which I'm dying to
hear."
And so Seth, Mort, and Peter took turns
telling her their tale from their arrival in Portland until they had found her,
after which at their insistence Jessica poured herself a cup of tea and told of
what she had been up to during her captivity, about the murder and how she had
come to solve it.
"So who killed Bernie
Patterson?" Mort asked when she had finished.
Jessica twisted a slice of lemon into her
tea and wrapped her hands around the cup gratefully. "Ken LeMasters did," she said. "From the coroner's report on
Patterson's murder ten years ago, it was clear that he was hit from behind by
someone left-handed. How else to account
for the fact that he was found face down with blunt trauma to the back left
side of his head? Now, VanDower's
organization was very small, and I had plenty of time to watch all of the
members at one time or another. All of
them were plainly right handed - except for LeMasters. I suspected as much the first time I met him,
and when he was found dead, he was clutching a pen in his left hand."
"Huh," said Seth
philosophically. "In a way, what
went around, came around."
"Yes," said Jessica,
"though I think there were other, better ways that justice could have been
brought about."
"No doubt," said Seth. "Though under the circumstances, I'm
glad enough that we got whatever justice we could."
Holland put down his coffee cup and stood
up. "This is the biggest scoop of
my career," he said. "I see it now: 'Respected Portland
Philanthropist Accused in Alleged Gun Running Operation and Kidnapping.' The affiliate is going to sweep the ratings
on this one. I need to get back down to
Channel 8; if you're still awake at eleven o'clock, check us out." At the door he paused. "Thank you,” he said unexpectedly, and
left.
Staying awake until eleven o'clock was
clearly out of the question for Jessica.
She protested weakly when Seth gave her his bed and offered to sleep on
the couch, but it didn't take much convincing for her to give in and
accept.
She was asleep practically before her head
hit the pillow.