The Death at Yew Corner Page 11

  “He’s clean,” the gravelly voice of his attacker said.

  Lyon tried to twist away, but a firm grip kept him pinned against the counter. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Tinkerbell.”

  “Search the house,” a woman’s voice said.

  Lyon’s arms were released. The man in the dark suit padded softly up the back stairs. Lyon turned to face a woman holding a small-caliber automatic that was pointed at his midsection.

  He judged her to be thirty. She wore a bright red pantsuit that matched her hair. It was nearly the reddest hair he had ever seen, made astonishingly more vivid by its contrast with the albino white of her skin. Slim, arched lines of false eyebrow jutted over deep blue eyes. Her mouth was a thin, narrow line with a touch of lipstick in the same shade as her hair.

  She was a striking woman with a touch of the grotesque.

  “May I ask the obvious?”

  “Serena Truman. I assume you have tea?”

  “What?”

  “I do hope you have something interesting. I like my tea with a little body.”

  “Tea? To drink?”

  “Of course.”

  Lyon turned and opened a cupboard. “I do have some Ann Page which has an amusing nuance.” He heard a resigned sigh as he turned the flame on under the kettle. He wondered if he should reach for a knife in the utility drawer or run for the phone and dial 911. As long as the lady held the automatic, he didn’t seem to have much choice except to try to stay calm and see what developed.

  Horace was back in the kitchen. “A dame’s asleep in the upstairs bedroom, that’s all.”

  “Thank you, Horace. Wait in the living room so we can talk. Make sure you take the phone off the hook.”

  “Got it.”

  Lyon watched the rapid conversation between the unusual-looking woman who so professionally held the small gun and the large man who hovered over her so respectfully. Horace left the kitchen and Serena Truman slipped the safety latch on the automatic and put it back in her shoulder bag.

  “I like lemon with my tea, thank you.”

  “I wouldn’t have it otherwise.”

  When the teapot whistled, he gathered cups, saucers, and spoons while watching Serena Truman from the corner of his eye.

  The teapot whistled impatiently and he poured the scalding water over tea bags and set the cups on the table in the breakfast nook. “I don’t suppose you’ve just dropped in for a get-acquainted visit?”

  “Do I look like the Welcome Wagon?”

  “I’d hate to think what you might be giving away.”

  “Your wife is having an affair with my husband, Ramsey McLean. In addition to that, someone is trying to kill me.”

  “My wife is the lady asleep upstairs.”

  “Who had drinks and games with my husband this afternoon at the Great Sound Inn.”

  “Drinks, yes. Games, I don’t think so.”

  “You sound ridiculously sure of her faithfulness. What if I were to tell you that I have my husband under constant surveillance?”

  “I think you’d be telling a fib.”

  “I know he took her to the Inn. He has a room there reserved for such times.”

  “Reservation and occupancy are different.”

  “He usually gets what he wants.”

  “He doesn’t usually have lunch with Bea.”

  Her eyes flickered briefly for the first time with a sense of uncertainty. “No matter. It’s not even academic at this point. I have already made up my mind concerning my marriage.”

  “Then that isn’t the reason for your visit?”

  “No. As I said, I am going to be killed.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because of this.” She handed Lyon a news clipping from a Bridgeport paper.

  He read it carefully:

  PRODUCE MANAGER FOUND ASPHYXIATED

  Robert Ryland, 41, of 32 Nesbitt Court, manager of the Arcadia Produce Company, was found early this morning by co-workers locked in a refrigerator unit. Company officials conjecture that Ryland inadvertently became trapped in the freezing unit over the weekend. No explanation was given as to how Mr. Ryland became trapped.…

  Lyon finished the article and placed it carefully on the table between them. “What’s your connection with Arcadia Produce?”

  “I own it.”

  “I see.” Her eyes and body language portrayed concern. This was a frightened woman who was fighting to retain possession of her faculties. “How does this concern me?”

  “You discovered what may have been a grave.”

  “Your sources of information are excellent.”

  “You were responsible for saving Smelts.”

  “I happened to be there.”

  “Don’t be coy, Wentworth. I’m aware of your background. Your involvement in murder cases is well-known to me.”

  “I write children’s books.”

  “Practically an avocation, it would seem.”

  “I have, from time to time, inadvertently been involved in certain murder cases.”

  “And solved them.”

  “Only when they were thrust upon me.”

  “Which is why I am here.”

  “I don’t see how …”

  “I need your help!” She bit the words off and again he detected the hidden traces of fright.

  “You have a strange way of asking for it.”

  She sipped her tea and grimaced at the taste. “I am convinced that someone is going to try to kill me.”

  “Why don’t you explain?”

  “My father, who died several years ago, started his career with the Arcadia Produce Company. I suppose you could go beyond that and say he started with a stall at the farmers’ market. He was a good businessman, Mr. Wentworth. By the time of his death he had myriad interests.”

  “The nursing homes, the produce company. Linen supply also?”

  “He believed in integrated development.”

  “Which includes your own labor union.”

  “Let me just say that we watch Mr. Smelts’s union with great interest.”

  “Everything is interrelated. The nursing homes buy from Arcadia, rent linen from …”

  “Ajax Linen and Uniform Supply.”

  “Surely you didn’t forget wholesale groceries and meat, and what about hospital supplies?”

  “Do you need the names?”

  “Not unless they become important.”

  “All of these deaths by asphyxiation are leading directly to me.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I run the business, as my father did, with a firm hand. I have made certain enemies along the way.”

  “Does this firm hand include the kidnapping of Marty Rustman?”

  “I am certainly not going to answer that.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Find the killer.”

  “The police are looking for Rustman.”

  “And not succeeding. And who’s positive that it is Rustman?”

  “I have no official capacity.”

  “That hasn’t stopped you before.”

  “I am not a licensed private investigator.”

  “Don’t play games with me.”

  “Do what she says, Lyon.” Bea, dressed in an old, frayed terry cloth robe, stood in the doorway. “Whoever is killing these people is also directly or indirectly responsible for Fabian Bunting’s death. Do what she wants.”

  Lyon looked from Bea to Serena Truman. “I would say that our interest in these killings is more profound than I realized.”

  Serena stood up. “Come to my house tomorrow at four. Several of my associates will be present later in the evening.”

  “At four.”

  She handed him a small business card with her address and left the house with Horace following.

  Lyon let the card fall into the wastebasket. He knew where she lived.

  10

  They saw the house when the car topped the rid
ge and started down the incline into the valley. The turreted brownstone building seemed to squat between the hills. It dominated the surrounding fields and woods like a feudal castle, but without the warmth of an English manor. It was a bleak house, with high flat walls broken only by an occasional window or small ornamental balcony. A line of yew hedges bracketed the winding drive from the gate. The hedges had been clipped into grotesque gargoyle-like topiary figures.

  “My God, look at those hedge figures,” Bea said.

  “‘Slips of yew, slither’d in the moon’s eclipse.’”

  “What?”

  “The witches’ scene in Macbeth. They slipped the guy yew. Got him into all sorts of trouble.”

  “Oh, the topiary. Well, Ramsey McLean said it was a fortress fit for haunting.”

  “It must have taken some doing to get those hedges back into shape. The place was vacant for years,” Lyon said. “I believe there was some sort of estate dispute. Who’s going to haunt it?”

  “Serena’s father.”

  “Old Benny. I’m not surprised. He was a mean old curmudgeon.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I checked up on him this morning. They called him the Hartford Strong Man. He just about controlled the wholesale produce market in the entire state. He made a good deal of his money during Prohibition, and God only knows what else he was into.”

  “Then you didn’t buy her pushcart-to-entrepreneur story?”

  “If he sold anything from a cart, it was a case of Prohibition Scotch.”

  “Was he connected to organized crime?”

  “He was his own organized crime. Strictly a one-man show. Pat tells a story that the organization from Providence sent over a couple of men to talk with Benny about cutting up percentages. On the following morning they were found dead in an alley with their tongues cut out.”

  “Sounds like an unpleasant person.”

  “Serena is his only living child. I wonder how many of his business methods she inherited?”

  “Sometimes the second and third generation of dirty money becomes laundered. Do you realize how much of what is now considered old and venerable New England money came from the slave trade?”

  “True, but I doubt that Serena has divested herself of the old man’s tricks. After all, she is the one who established the phony union and organized its strong-arm tactics.”

  “I’m still a little vague as to what miracle she expects you to perform, but the day is not a complete loss, since I’ve always wanted to see the inside of that house.”

  “She’s a very frightened woman. At this juncture, I believe she’d call on the powers of the occult if she thought they could help her. Looking at the way she’s had that topiary trimmed, maybe she already has.”

  A high wall topped with jagged glass shards surrounded the estate and enclosed ten acres of trees, well-tended lawn, and the oppressive yew topiary. A heavy wrought-iron gate was guarded by a large man in a dark business suit who held a shotgun.

  “You Wentworth?”

  “Yes, I have an appointment.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “My wife,” Lyon answered.

  “Uh huh.” The man in the business suit picked up a telephone attached to the wall and spoke in a low tone. He nodded and hung up. “Horace says you can come in. Leave the car outside.”

  “Not very gracious,” Bea said as Lyon parked the Datsun along the edge of the wall. They walked back to the gate, which was now held open by the guard.

  A golf cart chugged down the driveway and swung in a half-circle in front of them. Lyon recognized the driver as Serena Truman’s companion of the night before. “The big one driving the cart is Horace,” he whispered to Bea.

  “They both look big,” she replied as the first guard swung the gate shut behind them and locked it.

  Horace reached from the golf cart and grabbed Bea’s pocketbook. He unlatched it and began to paw through the contents.

  “Hey!”

  Lyon was unceremoniously braced against the wall and frisked for weapons. The two men nodded to each other and motioned to the Wentworths to climb into the golf cart. Horace drove silently up the long driveway.

  As they approached a portico, Lyon noticed another guard with a leashed dog pacing along the side of the house. “Has the estate always been an armed camp like this?”

  “Only the last few days,” the guttural voice replied. The cart swiveled to a stop near the front door. Horace beckoned them to follow.

  The door was opened as they approached. The butler who admitted them was a carnival mirror image of Horace. Where Horace was tall and chunky, he was short and thin; where Horace’s features were flattened and broad, the butler’s were aquiline. They had one thing in common: they both carried shoulder holsters.

  Bea and Lyon followed the butler while Horace fell into step behind them. A wide hall bisected the house with various rooms off to either side. Somber portraits of nineteenth-century men and women graced the walls.

  “I think the pictures came with the place,” Bea whispered to Lyon as she glanced at the portraits.

  “Instant family.”

  They were ushered into a library where Serena Truman sat at an elegant French Provincial table, which had obviously been pushed to the side, away from a direct line with the windows. Horace took an alert, expectant position by the door while the butler disappeared into the interior of the house.

  Serena wore a dark blue pantsuit and half glasses that perched on the edge of her nose. She looked over the lenses at them and gestured to two uncomfortable-looking chairs. “You’re late.”

  “The body search at the gate delayed us,” Bea said coolly.

  “I’ve had to take a lot of precautions lately.”

  “Like moving your desk away from the window?”

  “There’s no sense in tempting a marksman hiding in the hills with a high-powered rifle.”

  “Your house is very … unique,” Bea said.

  “We haven’t had many visitors since we moved in, but tonight will be a unique dinner party. I know you will both find it interesting.

  “I’m sure.” Lyon wondered what sort of strange guest list this unusual woman had concocted.

  Serena closed a file folder containing computer print-out sheets she had been examining and removed her glasses. “Tell me, Mr. Wentworth. Is Marty Rustman alive?”

  “We’re not sure. Officially he’s listed as missing.”

  “Missing! That could be a euphemism for almost anything.” She stood and Lyon was surprised at her height. Although she was not a beautiful woman, there was an inchoate quality about her that hinted at a sublimated sexuality. She walked to the window and stood looking out pensively until she realized where she was standing and rapidly moved away. “I’m afraid to leave here. I’m a virtual prisoner.” When she turned to face them, her façade had momentarily fallen away and it was obvious that she was frightened. “It’s the way the deaths have occurred that bothers me the most.”

  “Asphyxiation?”

  She looked beyond them toward something invisible to the Wentworths. “Yes. Asphyxiation. I suppose that all of us have one particular terror that frightens us the most, one special way of death that haunts our nightmares.”

  “And that’s yours?”

  Her steel veneer slipped further. “Yes, God, yes!” Her retreat was complete, and she now inhabited some long-ago place where she had been as a child. “We once lived in a house on a hill. My brother was two years older and rarely allowed me to play with him. One day he started to build a fort and tunnel into the side of the hill and he let me help. We didn’t know about such things, of course. How many children know about shoring and roof supports? It caved in with us inside. We weren’t missed for a long while. I remember choking, gasping for breath in the small space left open around me. Finally I lost consciousness, knowing I was dead. The ambulance was there when they finally got me out, and the attendants were able to use the resuscitator. My brother died. Perh
aps that was why my father made me into the son he lost.” She looked at them blankly until recognition slowly returned to her eyes. “You’ve got to help me. The dreams have started again.”

  “You’re certainly safe enough here with your guards.”

  “Am I to live like this for the rest of my life?”

  “The authorities will eventually solve the case.”

  “Eventually could be an eternity for me.”

  “Mrs.…”

  “Serena.”

  “You know that we’ve found what may be Rustman’s grave.”

  “How can there be a ‘may have been’ grave?”

  “It didn’t hold a body.”

  “Then it’s not a grave” was her pragmatic reply.

  “It did once.”

  She made an impatient gesture. “That’s no help.” She paced the room in masculine strides. Her veneer had fully returned. “I manage rather extensive holdings. In that position I deal in facts, cause and effect, profit and loss. If I apply that same logical system to my present circumstances, I come up with unpleasant answers.”

  “I’m sure that any costs to your interests will be salvaged when it’s over.”

  “Cost! I’m concerned about my life! People have died who are connected to me. Someone is methodically destroying my operation by murdering my subordinates. I am convinced that I am next.”

  “I mentioned your security.”

  She laughed bitterly. “My father would have loved it. I live in a fortress, Wentworth. A prison. As long as I stay hidden away here I am safe.”

  “Has it occurred to you that keeping you immobile might be beneficial to someone?”

  She appraised him with nearly a smile. “Of course. That’s why I want you here. You sense these things. I’m well aware that my nursing home executive is about to engage in a proxy fight with my major corporation. It is most beneficial to him that at this critical time I am a prisoner.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “My husband is a philanderer. It is most convenient to him for me to be locked away in this place. Then there is Mr. Smelts who seems to bear me some ill will due to a certain recent confinement of his. But, you shall see them for yourselves. Tonight at dinner you can observe all the leeches.”

  “I would like to see more of the house,” Bea said.