“Cassone’s dead.”
I searched his face for any hint that he was toying with me. “That can’t be,” I finally managed.
“He was found early this morning lying behind a used car lot halfway between Rivertown and Falling Star. He was shot four times and then beaten so brutally his face was hamburger, super rare. Both his shoulders were smashed and his kneecaps pulverized.”
“He was beaten postmortem?”
“I surely hope so. The sheriff’s deputies are scratching for a motive. That’s why they’re going through his house. They don’t know about Amanda or the fancy painting. Or, for that matter, the baseball bat you used on Cassone to get the painting back. If they did, they’d be real interested in you, Elstrom, because someone needed real rage to beat Cassone so badly after he was already dead.”
“You know damned well I didn’t kill Cassone.”
“I know because I had two men watching you last night.”
“Black Impala?”
“You asked that when you called from outside the bar. The answer’s still no. I had one man in a white Crown Victoria, the other in a yellow Ford Explorer. The Crown Victoria followed you shopping after you left the tavern. The Explorer slipped your lock and had a look around inside your stone tube. Neither was in the bar with you and Cassone. Help Amanda, Elstrom. What don’t I know?”
“Cassone noticed someone watching us.”
“You told me that last night, and I just told you the Crown Victoria was mine.”
“Someone else, inside the bar.”
“Wasn’t one of mine. Did you see his face?”
“No. I just felt a draft on the back of my neck as he left.”
“Who else wants the painting?”
“Snark Evans, because he was the one who stole it in the first place. A divorcing couple out in Hollywood. Underneath the cows is a picture of a flower, one in a set of four. The couple owns or has options on the other three. The value of their pictures and options would go up immensely if they recovered the long-lost fourth in the series.”
“We’re done for now,” he said, sliding out of the booth. “Mr. Phelps has got the two million ready, and now I have the painting. All we can do is wait, and be careful how we make the exchange.”
“Wendell’s the wrong man to be running this. He’s too cocksure, convinced of his own wisdom.”
“It’s out of my hands.”
“You can treat this as a kidnapping, have your people question anyone who might have been in the bar or on the sidewalk last night. Maybe someone saw somebody following Cassone.”
“Like you pointed out when I came to your castle, I have no jurisdiction.”
“Let me in on this, Jarobi.”
He shook his head.
“I’ll report her missing in Rivertown.”
“On what grounds? That she left your place and hasn’t been seen since?”
“Sure.”
“They’ll call Mr. Phelps. He’ll say everything is fine. He wants this hushed, so he can control it himself.”
Outside, I went to the trunk of his car, but it was for show.
“Not a chance,” he said.
Forty-two
I drove back to the turret because I had nowhere else to drive.
Robinson was across the frozen lawn, standing with another man in the city hall parking lot. I walked over, because going inside the turret at that moment would make me feel caged, like an animal.
Robinson was trying to ease a jimmy bar down the passenger’s door of a silver Escalade. His hands were shaking too badly to work the bar. He handed it to the other man.
“You wouldn’t believe how many people used to drop their cars off at the garage and leave the keys locked inside,” Robinson said.
“Maybe your hands are too cold,” I said.
The other man jiggled the bar, drew it up along the glass, and popped the lock.
Robinson motioned for me to walk with him down to the Willahock. “You’ve got to help me,” he said.
“You’re sure you’re being followed?” I had no room for his problem, but I asked anyway.
“He switches between a light-colored sedan and a small SUV, blue I think.”
“Is it the same man?”
“He’s always too far away to tell. He’s not always there, but it’s when I’m headed to work, or driving to lunch or driving home.”
“A light-colored sedan or a small blue SUV? How about a black car, an Impala, maybe?”
“No. Just the light-colored car or the blue SUV.”
“Do you have any idea why someone would be following you?”
He stopped and spun to face me. “No, but like I said before, I think you brought him to me. You came around saying Leo Brumsky wanted to know about Snark Evans. I told you Snarky was small time, a punk who lifted trinkets, and that he was dead. Next thing, Tebbins is dead, shot in his house, and you’re back, asking about the floater that got stuck downriver. Now I just heard Rudy Cassone was beaten to death. I looked Leo up in the phone book, and still nobody’s answering. Maybe he’s dead, too. Three deaths, maybe four, all of them linked to that damned fool Snarky-and I’m linked to him, too, because I was there with the rest of them. You still think all this has to do with something Snarky stole off Cassone?”
“I don’t know,” I said, meaning I didn’t know how much I should tell him.
“Listen, you got to find some way to stop this.” He shook his head, hard. “No way; no way I knew about Snarky stealing off Cassone.”
“You haven’t heard who the floater is, Mr. Robinson?”
“You mean is it Snarky, if he didn’t really die that summer? Hell, maybe it’s Leo, since everybody that’s dying around here goes back to that garage, that summer.”
“It’s not Leo.”
A faint sweat had built on Robinson’s forehead, despite the cold. “Look, Tebbins and Snarky I can understand getting killed, if they stole something expensive from Cassone, but that makes Cassone the killer, doesn’t it? Yet now he’s dead, too. There’s nobody else, Elstrom, not now.”
He was right. There was no reason to tail him. An exchange was already in progress: Amanda for the painting and a couple of million bucks.
Unless there was someone else after the painting, someone who didn’t know a ransom demand had been made. Someone, nonetheless, who might be connected to the person who’d made the ransom demand.
Someone who might be the actual kidnapper.
“When’s the last time you were tailed?” I asked.
“This morning, driving to work.”
“What time do you quit?”
“Four thirty, but I’ve got to do a damned forms inspection before that. I’ll be leaving around three.”
I took the river walk back to the turret. Inside, I rummaged through an old address book and found Wendell Phelps’s phone number. I called his office.
His secretary said he was out.
“Out, like in temporarily out?”
“I’ll have him call you,” she said and hung up. She hadn’t asked for a message, or my number.
I called Jarobi. “I’m having nasty thoughts.”
“Such as?”
“I think there are two parties after that painting, and they might know each other.”
“You mean like that man and woman divorcing, out in California?”
I told him about Robinson.
“How can Robinson being tailed relate to Ms. Phelps?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Look, Elstrom, the divorcing Bennetts are a possibility, I’ll give you that. Both might know Ms. Phelps has been kidnapped, even if only one’s got her. We’ll make sure Mr. Phelps deals with the one that’s got Amanda.”
“How will he know? What if somehow he’s negotiating with the wrong one?”
“Call Mr. Phelps.”
“I tried. He’s out, and his secretary is not taking messages.”
“I’m out, too, Elstrom. I’m not in the loop much.”
I sat then, and drank coffee, and made sense of nothing. At two forty-five, I drove to Thompson Avenue and parked where I could see across the spit of land.