Ransom at Sea Page 25

  Barnes waited a while before asking his next question. “So you did come back to the boat a second time.”

  She looked up. “Yes, of course. But—” Her jaw dropped open and her eyes grew wide. “No! I don’t mean that! I didn’t come back right away. After they left me, I sat there for quite some time and … I just didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe what Johnny had gotten me involved in. By the time I got back to the boat, the hue and cry had already begun. Marcella had been discovered dead … and … and…”

  Emily was gazing at her shrewdly. “And you thought that the young couple had come to the boat looking for their package and murdered her.”

  Claudia nodded briskly. “I’ve never been so frightened in my life! She was murdered, and once everything was … over … once everyone was gone, and Rebecca had been taken away, while everyone was at dinner I searched Marcella’s room. The package was gone! And the sheriff’s people hadn’t said anything about finding it when they searched the room. Don’t you see? That couple had taken it!”

  “Yes, I do see,” Ransom said flatly

  Claudia looked over at Barnes. “Please … please, I’m so tired. Could I go now? I need to lie down.”

  “Yes, I think that’s all for now,” Barnes said after a beat. “We’ll need a full description of the couple, but that can wait a while.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Without a word or glance at Ransom and Emily, Claudia got up shakily and left the dining room.

  “You seem angry,” Emily said to Ransom.

  “I am—at the thought that that woman, knowing what she did, would let an innocent woman go to jail rather than risk herself or that strung-out grandson of hers.”

  “I daresay you’re right,” Emily said with a sigh. “But familial devotion can be very strong—and very misguided. Particularly if it is for one’s only living relation.”

  “I also have very little patience for stupidity,” Ransom said. “Especially when a seemingly intelligent woman can’t see what her grandson’s friends are really trying to do.”

  “She knew there were drugs in that package, all right,” said Barnes, “even if she won’t admit it.”

  “I don’t mean that. These people were trying to get her on the hook. They must’ve known where the grandson was getting the money to pay them off. They thought if they could just get her to do this one little thing, they could bleed her of all her money. They could hold over her head that she’d been involved in drug trafficking, or something of that sort. I doubt if she would’ve tried to fight them.”

  Emily clucked her tongue.

  Ransom continued. “I would be even angrier if it weren’t for one thing—I don’t think that couple did the murder.”

  “What?!” Barnes exclaimed.

  Emily’s brows had risen to points. “Really?”

  “We already know one or both of them could’ve sneaked onto the boat unseen,” said Barnes. “Claudia Trenton did it.”

  “Not entirely unseen,” Emily reminded him.

  “They could’ve gotten on the boat,” Barnes said, “and then when they were in her cabin, she could’ve come back unexpectedly and found them, and they killed her. Makes perfect sense to me.”

  “It would to me as well if it weren’t for one thing,” said Ransom, the right corner of his mouth turned upward. “Unless I miss my guess, that young couple is currently staying at my motel.”

  “Well, that’s great! Then we don’t have to look for them!”

  “Yes, but that’s just the point.”

  “Oh, I see … yes…,” said Emily.

  “You want to tell me?” Barnes said.

  “You see, it’s easy to believe that they would stay here if they were waiting for Claudia Trenton to come up with the package. It’s much harder to believe they’d stay after committing murder and getting what they wanted.”

  After a moment, Barnes sat back in his chair dejectedly. “I see what you mean.”

  “Although…,” Emily began, her gaze becoming somewhat distant, as if she were picturing something written in the air, “although they might have stayed if they committed the murder, but hadn’t been able to find the package, knowing that Claudia had ample incentive to find it for them.”

  “Whatever’s in that thing, it would have to be awfully valuable.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Ransom said darkly.

  “So we just go over there and talk to them,” Barnes said impatiently.

  “No. In the first place, I don’t know it’s the same couple. Secondly, we don’t have any evidence that they had anything to do with the murder. There were no strange fingerprints in the cabin, remember?”

  Barnes huffed irritably. “We just sit on our hands?”

  He hadn’t noticed Emily’s cunning smile. “There is one way we could get evidence, at least of one crime.”

  “How’s that?”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Would you happen to have a shoe box we might use?”

  10

  It had taken Barnes nearly an hour to come up with a box of the right size, wrap it in brown paper, tie it with twine, and get back to the boat. He appeared on the deck carrying the box concealed in a black plastic bag, just in case the boat was being watched.

  “How are we supposed to contact those people?” Barnes asked.

  “They must have given Claudia a way to do that,” said Emily. “Remember, we were supposed to sail the morning after she saw them. There was no guarantee we’d still be in Macaw when she was able to get the box, so she’d have needed some way to let them know she’d found it and where she was.”

  “If the boat was going to sail,” Barnes said, “I don’t know why they would be hanging around here.”

  Ransom supplied the answer. “If they’ve gone out of their room at all, they know the boat’s still here. Everyone within a twenty-mile radius knows about the murder, and they’d know the boat was being held. I’ve never been anywhere that news travels as quickly as it does here.”

  “You don’t get out of Chicago much, do you?” Barnes said with a sly smile.

  “No, thank God,” the detective murmured.

  The trio found Claudia sitting on the bed in her cabin. As Emily had predicted, the couple had given her a number to call when she’d found the package, presumably for another cell phone.

  “We want you to call them,” Ransom explained, “and let them know that you’ve found the box.”

  “Oh … oh, I couldn’t,” said Claudia, her eyes wide with fear. “They’re killers! I couldn’t…”

  Ransom crouched in front of her so he could look her in the eye. “I know it’s difficult, but I believe you can do it, Miss Trenton. Tell them you’ll bring the thing to Lookout Point. Tell them it has to be today, because the boat is definitely going to sail in the morning.”

  Tears coursed down the old woman’s face. “I can’t … really, I can’t.”

  Emily sat down on the bed beside her and laid a stabilizing hand on her leg. “Yes, you can,” she said firmly. “You have always been a very strong woman—you’ve already faced much more than most any other woman I know could bear—and I know that you can gather the courage to see this through. I also know how much you must have loved your grandson, and this may very well lead the police to the people who so callously used him, and killed him.”

  She had chosen her words judiciously, and they had the desired effect. Claudia’s back straightened as she listened to Emily, and the tears stopped. She gave a final sniff, then said, “All right.”

  The tragedy of her grandson’s death, the stress she’d already been under, and the genuine fear she felt at dealing with the people who were involved in the murder, gave Claudia’s telephone demeanor the exact note of distress it needed to convince the young man who answered the phone that she was in earnest. He told her to be at Lookout Point in an hour, then abruptly hung up.

  “Well done, Claudia,” said Emily once the call had been completed. Then she went into the hallway with Ransom and
Barnes, closing the door after them.

  “She made the call,” said Barnes, “but I don’t think she’s going to be able to do the rest of it.”

  Ransom sighed. “Perhaps not.”

  * * *

  Trail number six was much like the other paths at its start: wide enough to be comfortably walked, with occasional plaques describing the local flora and fauna. The old woman wended her way carefully along the path, clutching the parcel in both hands. The woods smelled musty and dank. The path was deserted except for the lone figure in the floppy sunhat, its string tied beneath her chin.

  Half a mile into the woods the land to the left of the path began to fall away, forming a ridge along which the path continued, protected by an old fence of dark brown wood.

  Lookout Point was a semicircular natural balcony on the edge of the ravine. From its bench, one could look down through the trees below and see the dried bare outline of the stream that had created the anomaly.

  The old woman sat down, laid the package to one side, and waited with her hands neatly folded in her lap. The scene was silent except for bird calls and an occasional rustling in the woods behind her. Under normal circumstances, she would have found the peacefulness a welcome change, but at the moment she was far too concerned with the matter at hand. Her back was straight and stiff, her ears pricked up, listening for the stealthy approach of the man she was supposed to meet.

  She needn’t have bothered to strain her ears. After an interval of about a quarter of an hour, a loud voice cut through the tranquility with a booming, singsong air: “‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, It’s through the woods we go.’”

  It was a male voice, not too far off and approaching at a steady pace. It sounded unnaturally—almost menacingly—carefree as it sang the same lines over and over again.

  The old woman listened as not one but two sets of footsteps sounded on the wooden floor of the lookout.

  “Hey, old lady,” the man’s voice demanded, “where’s my stuff?”

  The woman turned around and looked up from under the hat. There were the two of them: a young man with stiff brown hair and pale skin. His nose was slightly bent in the middle as if it had been broken and hadn’t set properly. His cheeks were sunken, and his chin came to a narrow nub. His eyes were exactly as Claudia had described them: small and cruel. With him was the young woman with long, stringy blond hair. She was severely emaciated and had dull, vacant blue eyes. She wore a formfitting shiny pink knit top and a pair of skintight blue jeans.

  “Hey! You ain’t old lady Trenton!” said the young man.

  “No, I’m not,” Emily Charters replied, manufacturing an excessively timid manner. “I’m just acting as … her agent. Miss Trenton was not well enough to come, so she asked me to do it for her.”

  “Well, you better’ve brought my stuff. I don’t care who you are, you ain’t got it and you’re gonna get hurt!”

  “I wouldn’t … I wouldn’t … what is the phrase for it? The one they use in the movies? Oh, yes—double-cross! I wouldn’t double-cross you,” Emily fluttered. “Neither would poor, dear Claudia. She told me what the … consequences would be!” She widened her eyes. “She told me about her grandson!”

  “Too damn bad about him!” the young man sneered contemptuously. “But my pals thought he’d ‘double-crossed’ us.” He broke off and laughed, amused by the mocking way he’d said it. “We thought he’d stolen the stuff to sell it! But it taught his granny not to screw with us, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” the young woman said limply.

  “Well … I have the box right here,” Emily said fussily. The box had been blocked from their view. Emily now turned to the side and picked it up, then handed it to the young man.

  “It don’t feel right!” He frowned, shaking it. “It don’t feel heavy enough! Not for what was in it! That Trenton kid must’ve taken some out!”

  “What was in it?” Emily asked breathily.

  “Heroin!” he spat back. “Real pure, and real simple!”

  “Heroin,” the girl echoed lazily.

  The young man leaned in toward Emily, towering over her. “You been delivering heroin—you and old lady Trenton. Tell her that. Tell her we got it on her now—she’s been delivering heroin!”

  A slight flutter in the foliage was the only noise that preceded the appearance of Barnes, Ransom, and a pair of deputies from the woods onto the platform.

  Barnes’s rich baritone called out calmly but firmly, “All right, you two, don’t move.”

  Presumably it was the couple’s familiarity with similar situations that caused them to freeze the moment they heard him. The young man continued to glare down at Emily as one of the deputies searched him, turning up both a gun and very nasty-looking knife, while Barnes read them their rights. Suddenly the young man’s face relaxed, and still staring at Emily he began to laugh—lightly at first, building to something unnervingly out of control. His girlfriend giggled helplessly at his side, her eyes shifted back and forth as if she were trying to figure out what was so funny.

  * * *

  Ransom was allowed to sit in on the interrogation of the pair, whose names proved to be Denny and Janet. Whatever amusement Denny had found in their situation in the woods had disappeared the minute he was at the sheriff’s station. Barnes assured them that they were “going down”—a phrase that, to Ransom, sounded hopelessly anachronistic coming from his rural counterpart—as he put it, on drug charges and complicity in the murder of Johnny Trenton, but the surly youths were unimpressed, particularly when pressed about the matter of Marcella Hemsley.

  When Barnes asked them what they had done after they left Claudia Trenton at Lookout Point, Denny replied churlishly, “We just went back to that fleabag dump and partied.” He childishly emphasized the last word, as if he intended for it to encompass a multitude of sins that would shock his listeners.

  “What I think you did,” said Barnes, “was go to the boat, the Genessee, and tried to find that package yourself. And you got caught. And you panicked and killed a woman.”

  “Yeah, prove that!” Denny replied with the curt confidence of someone who knows an accusation can’t be proved.

  It went on like that for some time, and Ransom finally left. Emily had waited in the outer office, and rose when Ransom came out.

  “Is it over?” she asked.

  “Not by a long shot. The drug charge is certain, and probably their part in Johnny Trenton’s death. But they’re not going to admit anything, and they insist they never went to the boat.”

  As they walked out to Ransom’s car, Emily said, “It makes my blood run cold to see young people like that. So lost at such an early age. And no comprehension of the value of life. They must’ve called their confederates and told them to take care of Johnny.”

  “That much we can assume from what they said to you.”

  Ransom opened the passenger door and helped her in. Once she was buckled into her seat, he closed the door, went around to the other side, and climbed in behind the steering wheel. But before he started the car, his phone rang. He pulled it out, flipped it open, and said hello.

  “Jer, it’s me,” Gerald White’s voice crackled across the not-too-clear connection. “I got an answer on Stuart Holmes. He was a divorce lawyer. He was supposed to be a really good one—wealthy clients, that kind of thing.”

  “Ah,” his partner said, grinning into the phone.

  “You planning to get a divorce?” Gerald said, amusement in his tone. “’Cause I should tell you, you have to get married, first.”

  “Then I’ll have to find another lawyer. Holmes is in his seventies. By the time I get married, he’ll probably be dead.”

  Gerald laughed. “You making any progress up there?”

  He told Gerald about the arrest of the young couple and the Chicago connection.

  “So you have a couple of names to go on now,” he concluded.

  “Great. Does this mean you’ll be back soon?”

  Ransom paused
. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.” He disconnected, snapped the phone shut, and stuck it back in his pocket.

  “What was that about Stuart Holmes?” Emily asked.

  “Holmes was a high-powered divorce lawyer. Rich clients.” He stopped for a second, knitting his brow. Then he smiled. “Oh, yes! That’s where I’ve seen Percy Faulk—his client—before. In the newspapers. I can’t remember in what context, but he’s got money.”

  “So Mr. Holmes really was seeing a client, just as he told you, completely unconnected to this case. There really was nothing shady about it.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. The surreptitious way they were going about it leads me to believe that Faulk must not have wanted anyone to know he was consulting Holmes. If he was simply getting a divorce, it would be natural for him to see the proper attorney. So I would suspect that there’s something more to it … perhaps not quite legal.… Perhaps he’s interested in hiding assets? Anyone with Holmes’s experience would know how to do that.”

  “But it didn’t have anything to do with Marcella’s murder. It was exactly as Mr. Holmes said. Oh, dear!” Emily’s brow furrowed so deeply that she almost looked cross. “I really have been very, very stupid!”

  “What is it?”

  She didn’t appear to have heard him. “Weaving mysteries out of things that have perfectly logical explanations.”

  “Emily, what is it?”

  She turned to face him, leveling her crystal blue eyes at his. “Jeremy, suppose everything is exactly as it seemed?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  She took a deep breath. “Well, Holmes was telling the truth; the reason for the Millers’ anxiety over their pictures had a perfectly natural reason.…”

  “I think you mean au naturel reasons,” Ransom said wryly.

  She ignored this. “We now also know that what I overheard that first day on the deck was Claudia talking on her cell phone, so Mr. Driscoll’s arrival on the scene was just coincidence. So I think we can also assume that there was nothing really suspicious about Mr. Driscoll and Claudia having dinner together at the pub in Sangamore. It was just as he explained. Propinquity.” She stopped abruptly. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open slightly. “Propinquity. Oh, dear, dear, dear! It’s exactly as I thought from the beginning!”