Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia (книги онлайн полные версии .txt) 📗

“They're not simple anymore.”

“Simple?”

“Yeah, like Doris. What we had wasn't complicated.

Then after thirty years she suddenly splits and I have to start over. I go to this friggin' dance at the FOP because some of the guys talk me into it. I’m minding my own business when Tanda comes up to my table. Two beers later, she asks me for my phone number, if you can believe that.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“I say, 'Hey, if you want to get together, you give me your number. I'll do the calling.'

She asks me which zoo I escaped from, then invites me bowling. That's how it started. How it ended is her telling me she rear-ended somebody a couple weeks back and was charged with reckless driving. She wanted me to fix it.”

“I'm sorry.”

I fetched his present from under the tree and handed it to him. “I don't know if this will help your social life or not.”

He unwrapped a pair of Christmas-red suspenders and compatible silk tie.

“That's mighty nice, Doc. Geez.”

Getting up, he muttered in disgust, “Damn water pills,” and headed to the bathroom again. Several minutes later, he returned to the hearth.

“When was your last checkup?”

I asked.

“A couple weeks ago.”

“And?”

“And what do you think?” he said.

“You have high blood pressure, that's what I think.”

“No shit.”

“What, specifically, did your doctor tell you?”

I asked.

“It's one-fifty over one-ten, and my damn prostate's enlarged. So I'm taking these water pills. Up and down all the time feeling like I gotta go and half the time I can't. If things don't get better, he says he's gonna turp me.”

A turp was a transurethral resection of the prostate. That wasn't serious, though it wasn't much fun. Marino's blood pressure worried me. He was a prime candidate for a stroke or a heart attack.

“Plus, my ankles swell,” he went on. “My feet hurt and I get these damn headaches. I've gotta quit smoking, give up coffee, lose forty pounds, cut down on stress.”

“Yes, you've got to do all of those things,” I said firmly. “And it doesn't look to me like you're doing any of them.”

“We're only talking about changing my whole life. And you're one to talk.”

“I don't have high blood pressure and I quit smoking exactly two months and five days ago. Not to mention, if I lost forty pounds I wouldn't be here.”

He glared into the fire.

“Listen,” I said. “Why don't we work on this together? We'll both cut back on coffee and get into exercise routines.”

“I can just see you doing aerobics,” he said sourly.

“I'll play tennis. You can do aerobics.”

“If anyone so much as waves a pair of tights near me, they're dead.”

“You're not being very cooperative, Marino.”

He impatiently changed the subject. “You got a copy of the fax you told me about?”

I went to my study and returned with my briefcase. Snapping it open, I handed him the printout of the message Vander had discovered with the image enhancer.

“This was on the blank sheet of paper we found on Jennifer Deighton's bed, right?” he asked.

“That's correct.”

“I still can’t figure out why she had a blank sheet of paper on her bed with a crystal on top of it. What were they doing there?”

“I don't know,” I said. “What about the messages on her answering machine? Anything?”

“We're still running them down… We've got a lot of people to interview.”

He slipped a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket and blew out a loud breath of air. “Damn.” He slapped the pack on top of the coffee table. “You're going to nag me every time I light up one of these now, aren't you?”

“No, I'll just stare at it. But I won't say a word.”

“You remember that interview of you that was on PBS a couple months back?”

“Vaguely.”

“Jennifer Deighton taped it. The tape was in her VCR and we started playing it and there you were.”

“What?” I asked, amazed.

“Of course, you weren't the only thing featured on that particular program. There was also some crap about an archaeology dig and a Hollywood movie they filmed around here.”

“Why would she tape me?”

“It's just another piece that's not fitting with anything else yet. Except the calls made from her phone the hang ups. It looks like Deighton was thinking about you before she was whacked.”

“What else have you found out about her?”

“I gotta smoke. You want me to go outside?”

“Of course not.”

“It gets weirder,” he said. “While going through her office, we came across a divorce decree. Appears she was married in 1961, got divorced two years later, and changed her name back to Deighton. Then she moved from Florida to Richmond. The name of her ex is Willie Travers, and he's one of these health nut types - you know, into whole health. Hell, I can't think of the name.”

“Holistic medicine?”

“That's it Still lives in Florida, Fort Myers Beach. I got him on the phone. Hard as hell to get much out of him, but I managed to find out a few things. He says he and Miss Deighton continued feeling friendly toward each other after they split and, in fact, continued seeing each other.”

“He came up here?”

“Travers said she'd go down there to see him, in Florida. They'd get together, as he put it, 'for old times' sake.' Last time she was down there was this past November, around Thanksgiving. I also pried out of him a little bit about Deighton's brother and sister. The sister's a lot younger, married, lives out West. The brother's the eldest, in his mid-fifties, and manages a grocery store. He had throat cancer a couple years back and his voice box was cutout”

“Wait a minute,” I said.

“Yeah. You know what that sounds like. You'd know it if you heard it. No way the guy who called you at the office was John Deighton. It was somebody else who had personal reasons for being interested in Jennifer Deighton's autopsy findings. He knew enough to get the name right. He knew enough to get it straight that he's supposed to be from Columbia, South Carolina. But he didn't know about the real John Deighton's health problems, didn't know he should sound like he's talking through a machine.”

“Does Travers know his ex-wife's death is a homicide?” I asked.

“I told him the medical examiner is still running tests.”

“And he was in Florida when she died?”

“Allegedly. I'd like to know where your friend Nicholas Grueman was when she died.”

“He has never been a friend,” I said. “How will you approach him?”

“I won’t for a while. You only get one shot with someone like Grueman. How old is he?”

“Somewhere in his sixties,” I said.

“He a big guy?”

“I haven't seen him since I was in law school.”

I got up to stir the fire.

“Back then Grueman's build was trim bordering on thin. I would describe his height as average.”

Marino did not say anything.

“Jennifer Deighton weighed one-eighty,” I reminded him. “It appears her killer yoked her and then carried her body out to her car.”

“All right. So maybe Grueman had help. You want a far out scenario? Try this one on for size. Grueman represented Ronnie Waddell, who wasn't exactly a pencil-neck. Or maybe we should say, isn't exactly a pencil-neck. Waddell's print was found inside Jennifer Deighton's house. Maybe Grueman did go to see her and he didn't go alone.”

I stared into the fire.

“By the way, I didn't see nothing in Jennifer Deighton's house that could have been the source of the feather you found,” he added. “You asked me to check.”

Just then, his pager sounded. Snapping it off his belt, he squinted at the narrow screen.

“Damn,” he complained, heading into the kitchen the phone.

“What's going… What?”

I heard him say. “Oh, Christ. You sure?”

He was silent for a moment. He sounded very tense when he said, “Don't bother. I'm standing fifteen feet from her.”