Shotgun Lullaby (A Conway Sax Mystery) (33 page)

And stepped back and closed the door.

Randall wondered out loud what to do with Teddy's Mercedes. It was sure to grab the eyeballs of any cop who cruised this road. Pundo made a thirty-second phone call. When he clicked off, he said the SUV'd be gone in ten minutes and on a boat for Cape Town tomorrow.

Club owner. Jazz fan.

Then it was time to split up. The vibe was weird. It was as if summer camp was ending and we were all piling in with our folks to ride home—but something terrible had happened at camp, something nobody wanted to talk about.

“Well,” Randall said.

“Well,” Pundo said.

Nobody looked anybody in the eye.

When Randall dropped me at my F-250, both of us assumed Sophie would ride with me.

She didn't.

Wouldn't.

Instead, she took shotgun in the Biletnikov BMW, which Randall would drive back. Folded her arms, stared through the windshield.

Hell.

 

CHAPTER FORTY

Once we hit the pike eastbound, Randall buzzed me.

I said, “She okay?”

He knew who I meant. “She's out like a light. Before she crashed, I quizzed her on the snatch. The poor cheerleading coach was in over her head. She had fifteen dads, most of whom she'd met only once or twice, swooping in for their girls. Boxer glided up behind a bouquet of roses and elbow-walked Sophie right out of the Civic Center.”

“Just like that.”

“Just like that. At least the coach won't call in an Amber Alert.” Pause. “Imagine the day Sophie had.”

“Jesus.”

Randall said, “What state secrets did you and Charlie Pundo pass back and forth up on those steps?”

“For starters, he doesn't know about Fat Teddy.”

“What
about
Fat Teddy?”

Whoa.

I realized how little Randall knew of the day. Organized it all in my head, told him a two-minute version.

When I finished, he was quiet. We sat, each with a phone to our ear but saying nothing, all the way from exit 7 to exit 8.

“Wow,” he finally said. “Are you okay?”

“Sure.”

“Cut the shit, my friend. Are you
okay
?”

I thought it through. I took my time.

“I'm okay with Teddy,” I said. “Or as okay as I deserve to be. As to the way I used Emma? I don't know. Can you … do you think … what would
you
have done?”

“Like virtually everybody else on the planet, I would have washed my hands of Gus Biletnikov and Company a long time ago. So I wouldn't have found myself in your situation or anything like it. And I don't mean that as a criticism.”

“I picked up some dirt from Boxer, too,” I said.

“The late and unlamented. What dirt?”

“You won't like it.”

“Oh?”

“The shotgun the cops found in Crump's truck
isn't
the one used at Almost Home. Or on Gus. And that makes sense. Lima's been real closemouthed about that gun. Now I know why: it was one of those things the cops hold back to shake out the liars and the phony confessors.”

“Meaning?”

“Boxer said there were
two
shotguns. Identical. He planted one on Crump so the cops'd think everything was wrapped up tight. But Boxer got screwed, accidentally or on purpose. He did Almost Home and Gus, so he had to know what the gun looked like. But when it came time to make the plant, he brought a dud.”

Randall said nothing. I could feel the concentration as he worked through it.

“A matched set,” I said.

“Holy shit,” he said.

At the exact same time, we said, “Spurnings. Strikings.”

“Peter,” Randall said. “Brad.”

“Brad my ass,” I said. “He's a couch-bound pothead. It's Peter and Rinn we need to look at again.”

*   *   *

Charlene packed a heavy slap. I got instant whiplash, and my busted nose began to bleed.

We were in her kitchen. Her sister leaned on the stove, smoking a generic white cigarette and just about purring at the fight. Like I said, I hate the sister and she hates me.

Jessie was on the great-room sofa, staring at her phone but soaking in everything. Family court must have released her. I wanted to hear about that. It didn't look like I'd get a chance, though. Not now.

Sophie had woken up when Randall exited the pike, had called home to say we'd be there in ten minutes.

And here we were.

“And you
didn't
call the cops? How
dare
you!” Charlene said to me. Then she turned on Randall. “And you! You're the smart one. How did you allow this to happen, Randall Swale?”

Charlene had been in a good mood when we entered, likely because Jessie was home. But as soon as Sophie saw her, the kid gave in to the tears she'd hidden from me—the tears reserved for Mom.

Even to me, the story of Sophie's last few hours sounded bad as I told it. And I left out a fair amount.

I shook my head, chasing away the whiplash. Jessie was looking at me from the corner of her eye. I spoke to her. “Glad you got sprung.”

“Don't make nice with her!” Charlene said. “In fact, don't ever talk to my girls again. Just get out.”

I stepped close so I could speak quietly, without feeling like the sister was taking notes. But Charlene flinched, stepped back, deadened her eyes, crossed her arms. “Get
out of my house
!”

“Please don't chase him away,” Sophie said. “He was only—”

Charlene whirled.
“Shut up!”

Sophie popped an inch straight up. Even the sister flinched. Charlene swept to Sophie, who'd started crying hard again.

Charlene: her back to me, arms wrapping her daughter. “He's not a good man, honey. Sometimes he tries, but he screws everything up. Shush now, honey. He's
not
a good man.”

I backed from the room. I left through the front. I closed the door as quietly as I could.

Had the truck in reverse when Jessie followed me out and trotted down the concrete stairs to the driveway. Was she here to gloat? To pile on?

She stood at my window. I rolled it down.

She stared at the road. Gulped once or twice, clenched her jaw. Whatever she wanted to say, she was having a hard time with it.

I waited.

Finally, she said, “He doesn't.”

“Doesn't what?
Who
doesn't?”

“Roy. He doesn't use. He never has. Wouldn't even drink a beer, wouldn't smoke a cig.”

My chest went big.

“It was always a big point of honor with him,” she said. “It was why … a big reason, anyway … we broke up. It was like living with the Hardy Boys. I couldn't take it.”

“Well, hell,” I said. “Thanks. For telling me.”

“He always said he had two strikes against him in that department.”

I thought that through. “Me, of course. What was the other one?”

“He said you were both strikes. That you counted double.”

Then Jessie Bollinger made a tiny corkscrew smile and light-footed up the steps.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

I headed for Sherborn in full dark. It was a lucky break that Randall was still trying to calm Charlene—I wanted a crack at Rinn before he could swoop in to protect her.

Peter? Sure, I wanted a shot at him, too. But mostly at Rinn. She was the spurner, the striker. I had her pegged as the brains behind this second shotgun. I also had questions about how she fit in with the Pundos. Even with Boxer and Fat Teddy gone, I owed it to Gus to nail down every last detail, every last player.

She wasn't there, dammit. I read the guesthouse's nobody-home vibe at a glance, spare-keyed my way in anyway to confirm, then walked up the slope to the main house.

Peter answered the door. Took his time, but finally answered. Looked at me over his reading glasses, holding a thick magazine with a wristwatch on its cover.

You never know what's going to set you off.

The magazine did it.

Images bombarded me …

A pistol laid alongside Emma's pale skin.

Gut-shot Gus with bangs across his eyes.

Sophie's cheek deformed by Boxer's favorite handgun.

Teddy Pundo speed-hopping backward toward plateglass …

… And Peter Biletnikov was sitting at home reading a magazine about
wristwatches
?

“Where's your baby, Biletnikov?” I said, my jaw so tight I could barely speak.

He said nothing.

I slapped the magazine from his hand.

That didn't feel like enough, so I slapped his face. Hard, half-ashamed even as I did it, unable to stop myself. The slap spun his reading glasses to the floor. “Where's Emma? Doesn't look like you're beating the bushes to find her. Doesn't look like you've called the National Guard.”

“The baby's with Haley,” he said, looking truly puzzled.

“Yeah, but where? And why?” I stepped into the hall, forcing him backward.

“That is not your business,” Peter said. “Is it?”

“It's as much mine as it is yours. I'm as much Emma's daddy as you are.”

For the first time I'd seen, the Russian red drained from Biletnikov's cheeks. He backed three steps into his great room and plopped to a hassock, hitting it mostly by luck.

I let him stew.

He sat there a good long while. Elbows on thighs, face hidden in hands. “Rinn told you,” he finally said. “A secret like that … I knew it would come out.”

“It's worse than you think,” I said. “Gus wasn't the father either.”

That popped his face from his hands. “Of course he was.”

I squatted to set my face level with his. “No. And deep down, I think you knew it. There's an ugly suspicion in an ugly corner of your ugly brain. So you tell me. Say the ugly suspicion.”

He said nothing.

Was I savoring this?

Yeah.

Did I like myself for savoring it?

No.

Biletnikov was dripping silent tears now, refusing to meet my gaze like a dog that'd peed on the rug.

Still haunch-squatting, I reached for his chin with my left hand. I squeezed the chin, but only a little. I turned his face to mine. “Say it. Say it out loud.”

“Puh-Puh-Pundo.”

I nodded. May have smiled some, too. I let go his chin and rose, ignoring the pops from both knees.

“He was so…” Biletnikov said. “He exuded this … I
took
her there. To his club. I introduced them, dammit. Dear God, the look on her face when he joined us at the table, when he invited us to the after-party. The pair of them could have gone at it then and there.”

Peter Biletnikov began to really cry then.

I let him.

What else was I supposed to do?

The wristwatch magazine had tripped something lousy in me. I'd decided to destroy him. To strip him naked.

And I had.

And it didn't feel good at all.

It felt awful.

I gave him maybe three minutes to blubber. Then I said, “Pull yourself together.”

Blubber blubber.

“Tell me about the shotguns.”

He used his shirt to wipe his face. “What about them?”

“A matched set, right? Made by some crazy little Czech?”

“How did you know this?”

I ignored that. “Why the crazy Czech? I know Rinn was jerking you around, making you buy everything in pairs. But why not just get a couple of nice Benellis or Purdeys?”

“The best of everything.” He had the thousand-yard stare now, looking at nothing, speaking in a hollow voice. “That was our watchword.
My
watchword. I heard about the Czech from hunting friends. The guns cost a hundred thousand apiece, and getting them here cost another quarter of that.”

“Best of everything,” I said.

“For Rinn,” he said.

“Where do you keep them? I tossed the place.”

“You did? Well, you wouldn't have. Found them, that is. I had a gun safe buried in a corner of the basement. Exquisitely disguised, really.”

“So whoever took them knew where they were beforehand.”

He nodded.

“Rinn knew,” I said.

He said nothing.

“Where is she?”

He said nothing.

The doorbell rang.

“Better get it,” I said.

“No,” Peter Biletnikov said. “I believe it's for you. It's Detective Lima.”

Hell.

“You called,” I said. “It's why you took so long answering the door.”

He said nothing.

I sighed, walked toward the front hall.

I stopped.

I turned. “Almost Home I get. When that happened, I doubt you even checked your gun safe. No reason to. But then
Gus
got shot. Your
son
. Nearby. You'd known for a while about weird shit going on with Rinn, Gus, Brad, the Pundos. Didn't you check on your guns then? Didn't you wonder what the hell was happening around you?”

He said nothing.

“Only reason I can see for doing nothing at that point,” I said, “is that you knew. And you didn't want to know.”

Nothing.

I turned, took a few more steps. Sighed. Opened the front door.

Lima said, “Whole bunch of people looking to talk with you.”

“Cuffs?” I said.

“Anything you want to tell me?” he said.

“Nah.”

“You going to shoot it out with me on the ride over?”

“Nah.”

“No cuffs then.”

*   *   *

Lima didn't have to let me ride up front, but he did. I appreciated that.

“When did you know the shotguns belonged to Biletnikov?” I said as soon as he made the hard right from the gravel drive.

“We went back with a search warrant after Crump got shot. By then, we'd put together enough customs data to convince a judge Biletnikov was doing business with the crazy Czech. When Biletnikov saw the warrant, he folded and showed us his safe.”