Have Your Cake and Kill Him Too (30 page)

I said, “I have to find Rawlins.”

“I'll help, I promise. Just let me take care of you first. Let me find you a safe place to be.”

He let me go back in the house to get my overnight bag.

On the way out of the kitchen, I grabbed the cupcake box. I didn't want to leave it where someone might accidentally be poisoned, and I fully intended to see the cupcakes reached the police very soon. Michael locked the house behind us, and we got into his car.

“I have to make a stop first,” he said. “Then we'll find Rawlins.”

We didn't speak for ten minutes. I don't know what he thought about, but twice Michael looked at me as if trying to puzzle out a conundrum. Frightened, and not sure whether I might burst into a fit of laughter or tears, I couldn't speak, either.

He took the bridge across the Delaware into New Jersey, then wound down along the river to the unmarked road. We turned in. Two black SUVs blocked our path. One man who'd been lounging against a tree, talking lazily on a cell phone, got into one of the trucks and moved it to allow Michael to pass. We bumped along the narrow, winding road through the trees to the little house that was concealed by brush, rocks and trees from anyone who didn't know where to look. Michael's house, when he allowed himself the luxury of a home.

Today the yard was crowded with vehicles, and a handful of tough-looking men stood in the wet grass. They were the members of his ever-changing posse—mostly surly bikers, a couple of hulking thugs and one middle-aged, heavyset wiseguy named Aldo, who appeared to be supervising as he smoked a stubby cigar. Two of the younger ones leaned on shovels. A trench, six feet long, had been dug in the ground. They had heaped the earth messily on the grass nearby.

“Oh, my God,” Michael said.

He got out and came around the car. His crew turned around to watch me climb unsteadily out of the passenger seat.

Aldo stuck his cigar in the side of his mouth and limped forward. “Hey, boss.”

Michael slammed the car door behind me and glared at the hole.

“Hello, Aldo,” I said. “How's the knee?”

After nearly a year of acquaintance, Aldo and I had reached the point where we could exchange a few sentences and understand each other. He shrugged. “Healing, I guess. Thanks for asking.”

Michael said, “What the hell is going on here?”

Aldo shrugged again. “The kid, you know.”

“What, he's giving orders now?”

“What are we supposed to do? After moving him around so much, you said make sure he got what he wanted today.” Aldo's voice rose into a whine. “We couldn't say no to him. Maybe you thought keeping him happy meant some ribs and a few Pepsis, but things got out of hand.”

“I can see that. You just dug up my basketball court.”

Aldo swung around and stared at the grass. “Basketball court?”

With his jaw set, Michael said, “I was going to get the concrete poured in a couple of months. You had to dig a pit in the middle of it?”

Aldo looked a little surprised at Michael's tone. “Sorry, boss. We'll fix everything, you'll see. Good as new by tomorrow. You get the charcoal?”

Michael threw his car keys at Aldo. “In the trunk. Anybody else come visiting?”

“Nope. Like you said, they have other leads to keep them busy. And we've got two cars ready to take the kid out of here if we get word the cops are on their way. Nobody's gonna find him, boss. We're doing everything like you planned.”

“Good.”

“What about the other thing?”

“I'll take care of it later.”

“Later?” Aldo glanced at me.

“Don't worry,” Michael snapped. “I'll take care of it. Come on, Nora.”

We climbed the wooden steps of the deck that ran around three sides of Michael's house. It was a chalet-style vacation home built by some New Yorkers as a weekend place along the river, and Michael had bought it for himself a few years ago. He could fish from his deck when he felt like it, and the constantly rushing river gave him some peace. In the autumn months, we had sipped wine, sitting in Adirondack chairs above the Delaware.

Inside, it was just one room on the first floor, a comfortable living area with a fireplace, a TV set big enough for a drive-in movie, and a full kitchen with a fancy stove and a counter with tall stools on one side.

Behind the bar, a young man with the sleeves of an Eagles football jersey shoved up over his elbows was pounding an enormous side of pork with his bare hands.

“What the hell are you doing?” Michael said when the door was closed behind us.

It was the teenager I'd seen with Michael at Cupcakes.

“Oh, you're finally back,” said the boy. “Where's the charcoal?”

“Outside.” Michael made a short, frowning inspection of the slab of raw meat that lay on a sheet of plastic on his kitchen counter. “I thought once you got here you were going to smoke some ribs for everybody.”

“I sent Vinnie for the meat, and this is what the moron came back with. So I figured we'd have a pig roast. Well, half a pig roast. Hi,” he said to me with an infectious grin.

He wasn't very tall, but had big shoulders along with dark eyes and a wide forehead with curly black hair that spilled down over it. The grin seemed a permanent part of his cherubic face. On the counter, he had an enormous bottle of Mountain Dew, just as Rawlins might have done.

Michael said, “Nora, this is—uh, Joey. Nora Blackbird.”

Little Carmine smiled with dimples and started to put out his hand to shake mine. But his palm and fingers were encrusted with an orange goo, so he pulled back. “Sorry,” he said. “It's a rub.”

“A rub?”

“Like a marinade, only dry. A dry rub I've been wanting to try. Garlic and mustard and some herbs, you know, and a hell of a lot of brown sugar.” Again, the sunny smile. “I'm massaging it into the meat. Then we're going to put it in the ground with some charcoal and mesquite wood chips. In eight hours”—he kissed his fingers—“perfection! All we need is some beer and cole slaw. Can I send Vinnie for some cabbage and stuff?”

“Sure, whatever,” Michael said. “Just don't plan on rescuing the food if Aldo decides you have to make a break for it. If the cops or your dad even glance in this direction, the boys have orders to move you in thirty seconds, got it? We don't want anyone thinking you might be alive.”

“Yeah, okay. You guys going to stay?”

“No,” said Michael.

“May I have a glass of water?” I asked.

After one glance at my face, Michael got a pitcher out of the fridge. Equally fast, Little Carmine found a glass in the cupboard and filled it with ice. A moment later, I was sitting on a stool sipping water to settle my stomach while the two of them looked at me uncertainly.

Little Carmine said, “You okay? You don't look so hot.”

“I'm thinking of becoming a vegetarian.”

The boy nodded. “I know what you mean. I used to get squeamish seeing my meat so close to its natural, you know, state.”

“You seem to be quite the accomplished chef, uh, Joey.”

“I love to cook. You?”

“I prefer to eat,” I said. “Usually.”

“Cool. Well, if you come back later, there will be lots of eating going on.”

He had a lovable gleam in his eyes, and I could see how tempting it might be to rescue such a kid from a life he hadn't chosen for himself.

“All right,” Michael said. “I'll be back eventually. Don't do anything stupid.”

“Okay, Mick. We'll save you some leftovers if there are any.”

“Make sure there are.”

As we left, Little Carmine Pescara was beating herbs into his dinner while Michael's crew put the finishing touches on their barbecue pit.

On the way into Philadelphia Michael made a series of phone calls. He said very little and listened quite a lot.

When he disconnected at last, I said, “You've organized quite an operation to make that boy disappear. Did he kill a police officer?”

“No.”

“Does he know who did?”

“Probably. I didn't ask him.”

“So you're protecting him from the police? Or from the cop killer?”

“Both,” Michael said.

I'd suggested we start looking for Clover at Verbena's shop, but it was closed when we arrived. The door was locked and the lights were out. An all-woman television camera crew were packing their equipment into a van brightly painted with the logo of a local network affliliate. No doubt, the proprietress's arrest for Zell Orcutt's murder was going to put a dent in her business.

“Let's go around back,” Michael suggested as we cruised by. “In these places, there's always somebody inside trying to pilfer a little something to pad the paycheck.”

He was right. In the rear alley, we pounded on the door until it was opened by a heavyset woman in a dirty apron and a hair-net. Her arms were very red, perhaps from dish washing. She had a guilty belligerence about her.

I used all my social graces to find out where Clover might be.

Eventually, the woman decided we weren't there to cause her trouble and gave me the name of an apartment complex not far from UPenn. She said Clover had lived there for months.

We found it easily—a new complex of three-story buildings grouped around a center court with a “clubhouse” in the middle that appeared to do double duty as the rental office. I guessed the apartments appealed to graduate students or undergrads who could afford an upscale rent. Behind an aluminum fence, we could see the winter cover of a swimming pool flapping in the wind. Michael parked the car in front of a sign that read FUTURE TENANTS. Then he fished a baseball cap out of the backseat and put it on, and we got out of the car.

The apartments appeared to be laid out like a seaside motel, each unit with its own door that opened onto the balconies. On a weekday morning, no tenants wandered around the sidewalks. The place seemed deserted. From the roof of the clubhouse, the black eye of a camera watched us. Michael kept his head down and one shoulder turned to the camera. I hesitated, not sure I should go strolling into the rental office without a plausible story.

“Let's check the mailboxes,” Michael said, reading my mind.

Each building had a freestanding kiosk of mailboxes at the base of the staircase that wound upward. Together, we scanned the names on the boxes at the first two buildings. I pointed at Clover Barnstable's name.

“Let's go,” Michael said.

We headed for the open-air staircase. As we started up, two young men rounded the landing and came down toward us—beautifully groomed and leading a pair of equally perfect King Charles spaniels on matching rhinestone leashes. The dogs strained toward the tiny patch of grass beside the mailboxes. Their owners gave Michael his space.

One of them looked at my feet and said prayerfully, “Nice shoes.”

We got to the second floor, and Michael said, “Nice shoes?”

“You should be happy,” I said. “It's the only detail they'll remember about us.”

We found Clover's apartment in the middle of a long line of evenly spaced doors—some sporting decorative wreaths. On Clover's door, however, someone had thumbtacked a cardboard silver star. The points of the star were beginning to curl.

I knocked. No answer.

Suddenly Michael said, “There's blood.”

“What?”

He pointed. “On the door. Unless it's pizza sauce. But I think it's blood.”

“Oh, God.” I pounded on the door, louder this time. “Clover! Rawlins!”

Another door popped open several yards away, and a young woman put her head out into the hall. “You looking for Clover?”

It was Jane.

“Yes,” I said, “do you know if she's home?”

Jane came out onto the balcony, barefoot and holding a baby on her hip.

She wore a shapeless pair of sweatpants and a sexless big shirt that camouflaged her body. We could hear the
Barney
theme song coming from her apartment. The baby sucked on one grubby fist and hiccoughed tearily, as if just finishing an exhausting tantrum.

Jane said, “Clover went out last night. She's not back yet.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“She said she'd call this afternoon.” Jane looked at me more carefully. “Don't I know you from someplace?”

“We're concerned Clover might be in trouble. Can you guess where she might have gone?”

“Nope.” Jane began to gnaw on a hangnail.

Michael said, “Did she leave an extra key with you?”

“Yeah, sure. You want me to get it?”

“If it's not too much trouble,” Michael said pleasantly.

“Gimme a minute.”

She went back into her apartment and reappeared, still barefoot despite the cold, and padded up to us. The baby's eyes widened as she carried him closer. Someone had dressed him in a diaper and a T-shirt that was sopping with pink juice. He wore nothing else, and his nose needed to be wiped. When he saw she was getting too close to us, he burst into a howl.

“Shut up, Jackson,” she said, not unkindly, adding to us, “He's teething. What a production.”

Jane leaned over the doorknob with a key in her right hand. Michael's cell phone rang at that moment. He walked away and answered the call. The baby bawled and kicked. Jane couldn't manage him and the door lock at the same time, so I took the baby from her, tucking him inside my open jacket. I gathered his little bare feet in my hand and discovered they were freezing cold.