Didn’t I warn you to keep your peepers wide and your ears unplugged?
I scrambled to my feet. “What are you doing here?” I fired back with false bravado. “The owner of this house is dead!”
The man’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “My father died this week, it’s true,” he replied, his voice hoarse.
“You’re Peter Chesley’s son?”
“I’m Raymond Chesley…. Who are you?”
“Listen, I know this looks bad,” I began, my words tripping over themselves. “But I can explain. My name is Penelope Thornton-McClure. I co-own a bookstore in Quindicott, and I met your father just the other night, the night he died. In fact, I was the one who found him—uh, his corpse. My aunt Sadie and I, that is. You see, it was really my aunt who—”
“Be quiet.”
My mouth snapped shut.
“I don’t care a whit about my father,” Raymond Chesley said. “I lived most of my life in Boston, with my mother and stepfather. My father and I were estranged, so I don’t want to hear your explanations. You have to leave now.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
I refused to budge. Instead, I began to tell Raymond about the Phelps Poes, the Poe Code, and the treasure hidden somewhere in this library. His reaction shocked me. He laughed, right in my face! A laugh that quickly broke into a cough. He drew a handkerchief from his pants pocket and wiped his nose.
“A treasure? You sound as insane as this despicable family—like all the Chesleys. My late mother was right to get away from them as soon as I was born.”
“Listen, Raymond. We’ve sold two of the Phelps books. We will sell the rest. That means we owe the estate—you—some money. Thousands of dollars—”
“Keep it,” he said, waving his hand. “He gave them to you, and I don’t care. I’m selling everything you see as soon as possible, and giving it all to charity. An antique dealer is coming here to assess this junk and haul it away.”
“What! When?”
“Tomorrow. The only reason I’m even staying in this rattrap tonight is because the man was supposed to come this afternoon and postponed at the last minute.”
“But the treasure—”
“Go, Mrs. McClure. It’s time for you to leave, before I call the police and have you arrested.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” I muttered. “Not again.”
CHAPTER 19
Dream in a Ditch
Maybe I did have a taste for death. Maybe I liked it too much to taste anything else.
—Mike Hammer in One Lonely Night,
by Mickey Spillane, 1951
“DAMN THOSE WEATHERMEN! Slight chance of rain, my rear!”
The precipitation had been light when I left Prospero House, a pacific patter on the roof. I’d slid behind the wheel of my Saturn, started the engine, and once again negotiated the twisting turns of Roderick Road.
By the time I reached the highway, however, the skies opened up. Sheets of rain transformed my windshield into a mini Niagra. The road was awash in water, and I half expected to see men with beards and yellow slickers trolling for cod.
Don’t get excited, baby. Eyes on the road.
“No jokes?” I thought. “No jibes?”
That’s when I realized Jack was as worried for me as I was. I tried to calm down and concentrate on the driving, but it wasn’t easy. My mind was still racing with the revelation that Nelson Spinner had been working with Peter Chesley and he hadn’t bothered to mention it. In fact, it seemed to me, he’d gone out of his way to hide it.
And then there was Raymond Chesley. So hostile to his biological father that it made me want to cry. The guy looked pretty hardy. Was he capable of murder and assault?
What’s wrong, baby? I know it’s not the weather.
I shook my head. “Peter Chesley must have been a real bastard at one time. Certainly, his own son seems to think so. I found him sweet and eccentric…but then, I only spent an hour or so with him.”
What’s your auntie’s take?
“She’s struggling with a lot of regrets about what happened between them. She says their squabbles all seem petty in retrospect, but I know my aunt. She’s made of pretty stern stuff and she’s got a lot of fight. The man must have been a real jerk for her to have wanted the relationship to end.”
I had a dame tell me something one time. It seems to apply.
“What’s that?”
If a guy’s not happy, it doesn’t take long before he makes a girl miserable.
“Sounds like my marriage.”
Well, we know your husband wasn’t happy, that’s for sure.
“What gave you your first clue? The swan dive?”
And how about your old friend Claymore?
“What do you mean?”
I mean the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“There’s a thought. If Peter was anything like Claymore at the same age, then I can see why his relationships went south.”
Maybe that’s why the yegg left his sweet gig in sunny California. In the end, Claymore may not be such a great son, running home to help out Ma and Pa Chesley. Maybe he’d already burned his bridges and was looking to start over anyway.
The highway was slick, and there were very few cars behind me. When the single car ahead of me turned onto an exit, I flipped on my high beams for better visibility. A minute later, I saw the illuminated road sign for the Comfy-Time Motel rest stop, and I exhaled with relief. Quindicott was just around the next dark corner.
“Jack, that ‘dame’ you quoted a minute ago, why do those words sound so familiar to me?”
You tell me, baby.
“Wait! That was Mindy Corbett who said that. I dreamed she said it to you the night before she was murdered—”
I was slowing the car down, anticipating my exit’s tricky off-ramp when I felt a violent bump.
“Whoa! What the heck?!”
I checked the rearview and saw bright headlights bearing down from behind. The car was big and black—an SUV, for sure—but I couldn’t see anything more than the dark silhouette of a man in the driver’s seat.
“What the hell does this jerk think he’s doing?!”
I never got an answer.
The impact came just as I’d turned onto the exit ramp. The SUV slammed me from behind but not full on. He hit me at an angle, driving me off the road and into a shallow ditch. The front end bounced down then up, and smashed into the massive trunk of a very old tree.
Like a ragdoll, my body had been thrown forward, then back, then forward again. With an exploding hiss, my airbag deployed, and I felt the painful impact of the bag’s cold inflated material smacking my face.
Dazed, close to passing out, I heard the sound of a car door slamming somewhere nearby. The jerk, I realized. The jerk is coming to pull me out.
But he didn’t.
I heard a car door opening and realized the man had entered my car through the back door. He was searching the back seat for something. Then he opened my door and felt around the floorboard for the trunk release. I was strapped in and nearly unconscious, but I willed my head to turn out of the bag. The night was so dark, the rain still falling. All I could see was the silhouette of a man in black, a ball cap shoved low on his head, a dark scarf tied around his face.
“Who are you?” I murmured, the words jumbled gibberish to my own ears.
The sound of the trunk popping open was the only reply. Then the man’s dark image was gone; the cold rain continued to pelt the windshield, and my eyes fell heavily closed.