The Pied Piper of Death Read online

  “Then you wouldn’t have killed him over that?”

  “Not only wouldn’t I have, but I couldn’t have. On the night of the murder, I was too drunk to do it.” She let the stemmed crystal glass slip from her fingers. It dropped into the void over the river. “A beautiful thing destroyed. Like Markham. Too bad.”

  She moved to the side of the king-size bed and tore the spread from satin sheets. Her robe dropped into a puddle on the floor as she slipped the shoulder straps off her gown. She sat down in a slow, sensuous movement and patted a place by her side. “Join me?”

  “Not at the moment, thank you,” Lyon said. “Was Peyton angry enough over your affair with Markham to murder him?”

  Katherine Piper broke into gales of laughter that were choked off by a cough. She drank a sip of milk from the tray by her side and grimaced. “Peyton doesn’t kill people. He does something far worse. He ruins them financially. He was perfectly capable of doing that to Markham. I am quite sure he intended to have him blacklisted with every contact the man had. But it wouldn’t have been over me, Lyon. My husband became immune to the jealousy virus after the second time he was required to ruin the career of the tennis pro at the country club.

  “No, he wouldn’t kill for me, but possibly he would over Paula. I know that Markham intended to work on her as his next project. I don’t know how far he had progressed.” She pulled the straps of her gown back over her shoulders. “I care more for Paula than most people realize. If Markham had seduced her, I might have killed him. Consider that, Lyon. Drunk or not that night, I would have found a way.”

  Bea believed in being thorough. Lyon had asked her to run a background check on Nevins. She’d done that and turned up nothing except a few traffic violations. She’d go one better and make a personal visit.

  The address they gave her at the Piper Corporation personnel office indicated that Barry Nevins lived at 2000 Elysian Fields. She knew the address, which was for a trailer park located on the outskirts of Murphysville.

  It often seemed incongruous to her that house trailers, designed for movement on the open road, should so often be parked in the smallest possible lots. There was something of the dispossessed to those who lived in these portable shantytowns, as if they clung to the edge of society as they burrowed into their rusting metal homes.

  The Nevins unit perched on cement blocks at 2000 Elysian was more disposable than most. Two abandoned cars squatted on either side of the rusted trailer and hugged the earth on flattened tires. Other detritus of living was strewn haphazardly over a tiny lot enclosed by a ruptured picket fence barely two feet high. The unit’s windows were streaked with dust and mud that made them opaque from the outside.

  Bea parked in a narrow aisle between two trailers and knocked loudly on the small door.

  The door was wrenched open. Barry Nevins loomed over her. His feet were bare, his faded blue jeans splotched with a collection of unknown stains, and he wore a rumpled T-shirt. He clutched a can of beer and gazed down at her with a blank look. As recognition dawned, his expression registered acute distaste.

  “Well, if it ain’t little miss big shot who loves to get people fired.”

  Bea straightened up with as much dignity as she could muster and looked up at the man on the steps above her. “They tell me you’re still employed by the Piper Corporation?”

  “You came all the way out here to check on that? You are weird, sister. No thanks to you, I got canned. But certain things happened and now it looks like I’m back.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “I do special favors for the boss. That satisfy you?”

  “May I come in?”

  He stepped away from the door and Bea followed him inside.

  Nevins opened a small refrigerator with such vehemence that its door cracked against the wall with a loud thump. He snatched a can from a half-empty six-pack of Bud and popped the top. He drained the can in a long continuous gulp while looking at Bea standing in the small living room area. When the beer was finished he crumpled the can with a one-handed flourish and tossed it to the side, where it clattered across the linoleum.

  “What the hell do you want, lady? Wasn’t it enough that you tried to get me fired?”

  “I thought you were.”

  “Like I told you, the boss needs a man who will do as he’s told.”

  She wondered what that might involve.

  Something bothered her about the interior of the trailer and it took her a few moments to realize what it was. It was not just the apparent paucity of furnishings and personal belongings, or the scruffy condition of those things that were there; it was the battering. The interior of the trailer had actually been attacked. There were holes in the walls and wide spidery patterns on other partitions where blows had shattered plaster and Formica. Chunks of wood and processed board had been torn from furniture and dividing walls. The trailer had the hell beaten out of it.

  “Is Mrs. Nevins here?” she asked.

  “There isn’t any Mrs. Nevins anymore, lady. She took off two years ago. Went out one night for a pack of beer for me and never came back. Went to a shelter, they said. I never could find her, even with my police contacts. Came back once, the bitch. Came back when I was at work and got some of her clothes. Took the kids with her, not that that’s any loss.”

  Thank God for small favors, Bea thought. “You and Harry were watching the TV security monitors the night Markham Swan was killed.”

  “So? That’s how I spotted the Fraxer guy crawling in the sack with Miss Goody Two-Shoes. Bonus from the old man for that one.”

  “That happened just after the man was murdered.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “I checked,” Bea said. “There’s a monitor on the front gate that swivels. It would have a good picture of the gate cottage every four or five seconds. You might have seen something.”

  “I saw nothing, lady.” He snatched another beer from the small refrigerator.

  Their eyes met for a brief moment until he looked away. “Nothing?” she repeated.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “And you just coincidentally happened to be in a rowboat on the river near the underground station tunnel at about the time a cannon almost killed my husband and Paula?”

  “Like you said, lady, coincidence.”

  “I think not,” Bea said without thought and immediately realized that the remark was a mistake.

  Barry Nevins dropped his can of beer. It rolled across the marred linoleum floor and spewed out its contents in gulping bursts. His eyes, frightening in their complete absence of feeling or compassion, focused on hers. He viewed her in the same manner he might look at a small rodent he was about to kill. Bea suddenly realized she was dealing with a sociopathic personality.

  “I have to leave,” she muttered.

  She took two steps toward the door before he grabbed her arm and spun her around. His features had changed from the dark opaque quality of a moment before to a skewered smile that was his unskilled attempt to camouflage a leer.

  “Where you going, lady?”

  Their faces were inches apart.

  “Let me go,” she said in a very low voice keyed to a calm level.

  He didn’t answer. There were obviously several thoughts shifting behind his dark eyes and she did not care for any of the alternatives. “Let me go, Barry,” she said again in the same calm and level voice. “Let me go or you will regret it more than you have ever regretted anything in your life.” She delivered the command in the most matter-of-fact voice she could muster.

  He looked at her for another long moment and then slowly let his hands drop from her body. “I got a feeling we aren’t through with each other, lady,” he said as she stepped out the door.

  Peyton Piper was coolly formal. He stood in Bridgeway’s library, impatiently running his fingers along the case of a matched pair of flintlock dueling pistols. “You know, Wentworth, just because we were classmates and
fellow members of the Thumpers does not allow you to call me at the factory and demand I return home. Is that understood?” Once the formal display of tempered authority had been displayed, Peyton smiled and clapped Lyon on the shoulder. “Right, old top?”

  Lyon’s shiver was not due to that morning’s river swim. Nor was it from residual fear over the cannon incident. It was anger at this pompous mannequin. “I was never a Thumper, nor did I want to be,” seemed to be the worst insult at hand.

  “Yes, that’s right. Sorry. You were blackballed, weren’t you?”

  Lyon was chagrined at the sharp pain. After all these years, it still hurt that he had been denied access to a snobbish club that he hadn’t wanted to belong to in the first place. No matter what intellectual positions we stake out, we are still so vulnerable, he thought. “You know, it was always a mystery to me why you took Markham into the Thumpers.”

  Peyton gave a ribald laugh. “Initially we didn’t take his application seriously, although he had two damn good sponsors. That was before Markham revealed his true talent. He had an ability that made him the strongest of that fall’s applicants, except for Jiggs Chaney of the Connecticut tobacco Chaneys, of course.”

  “His writing ability?”

  “Good Lord, no. Markham Swan was born with the ability to get women. He was our official pimp, although we never called him that. If you didn’t have a date for Saturday night and wanted to get lucky, Markham was the one to see. He was quite popular in his own slimy way.”

  “And you knew that and still had him in your home with your wife and daughter?”

  “As I told you earlier, I thought he had outgrown that stuff the way you do acne. Still, he knew better than even to look at Paula. Katherine?” Peyton shrugged. “I suppose you could say that gives me a motive, doesn’t it?”

  “Paula and I were almost killed a short while ago. I believe your daughter was probably the target of the attack.”

  “I have already investigated that incident and find your conclusion highly exaggerated. Your problem, Lyon, is that you are far too imaginative. You find ghouls behind every pillar and suspects hanging from the rafters. My best security man called me before you did. Barry tells me that there was a minor explosion at the cemetery, but that its cause was obvious. You were the object of Rabbit’s practical joke.”

  “Hardly. That cannon was fired.”

  Peyton shook his head. “I think not, Lyon. Let me tell you about Rabbit. That little rodent hates normal people and will do anything to embarrass them. He drinks too much, which makes his foul mouth worse. He only works here because his father and grandfather before him were family retainers and my wife has taken a strange liking to the little runt. If it weren’t for that, he’d be on an unemployment line calibrated to his height. The so-called attempt on Paula’s life was undoubtedly hidden firecrackers planted by that pipsqueak. The only danger my daughter faces is from that gold-digging hippie, Fraxer what’s his name? I have given orders that she be protected from him.”

  “The cannon was fired. I heard it, felt it, and sniffed it.”

  Peyton snorted. “Easily faked. I mean, face it, Lyon. No one would be fool enough to fire that ancient thing. A full charge would probably blow it up in their face. Why should they risk it when there are enough assault rifles around the country for a hundred mass murders?”

  “Whoever fired that cannon escaped through the Underground Rail tunnel that goes from the crypt to the river.”

  “Underground Railroad! You don’t believe that old saw? If there’s any secret passage down there, it was constructed so old Caleb could smuggle his bimbos in for a little extracurricular slap and tickle. Rabbit’s granddaddy was probably the lookout.”

  “No freed slaves?”

  Peyton shook his head. “It’s my understanding that old Caleb was such a bigot that if the State of Connecticut had allowed it he would have had slaves working in his factory. I can’t believe that he ran a station on the Underground Railroad. Now, maybe his eccentric wife who threw herself off the parapet would have done that sort of thing. Her final exit proves that she had a flair for the dramatic.”

  “Then those old stories aren’t all true?”

  “Markham Swan included the Underground Railroad in his book because it made good sympathetic copy and I thought it might swing me some of the black vote.”

  “I think I’d like to see Swan’s notes.”

  Lyon shifted the chair closer to the computer on the cluttered desk in the dining area of the gate cottage. He was convinced that Markham would never have asked to meet with him unless he had something substantial to reveal. The fact that the murdered man was researching a book on the Piper family and felt that Paula was in danger increased Lyon’s suspicions.

  Markham Swan was not murdered by an irate lover, or his own wife. He was killed by someone his discovery threatened.

  What was it?

  The answer had to be in Markham’s notes. His dangerous information related to the Piper family. This meant that Swan’s discovery might be accumulated data or something he had turned up recently. The dead man had undoubtedly done something in the last day or two that had warned his killer.

  A threat to whom?

  Swan’s note to Paula talked about the Pie. How did the Piper family cemetery fit in?

  The small room containing the computer and other files was a shambles. Every flat surface held a collection of old newspapers, computer software, files, and historical memorabilia. Only the computer sat alone, with its empty screen staring blankly into the room.

  Lyon knew that, like many writers, Swan appeared more haphazard and inefficient than he really was. No matter how the two men disagreed, Markham was still a thorough researcher, a trained historian. Eventually his collection of miscellaneous and seemingly haphazard facts coalesced into a coherent study of his subject. Somewhere inside this computer there was a logical collection of data that might solve the problem of the Piper Pie.

  He clicked on the computer.

  The screen flickered to life as the initial booting sequence began. For a moment lights flickered in the tiny windows of the various drives, and then built-in memory and system tests flashed on the screen as the system activated.

  Instead of merging into a DOS prompt or Windows display, the screen flashed a dark blue screen with a yellow rectangular insert with a heading: PASSWORD.

  Lyon exhaled slowly as he hummed two verses of Rabbit’s “Clover” song. “Damn,” he finally said.

  Bypassing the password required a revamping of the computer’s motherboard or else a hacking ability far beyond Lyon’s rudimentary knowledge. He placed computer lore in his personal realm of useful but esoteric subjects, alongside catalytic converters in his automobile, the Hubble constant in cosmology, and some women’s selection of eye makeup.

  Although Markham had the necessary education and intellectual tools of an academic historian, he kept his work on a commercial level. His history book on the battle of Gettysburg had been for a young adult market, his work for the tobacco company and now the Piper corporation paid hack jobs. Lyon did not think that the dead man’s password would be some esoteric Latin phrase, or a quote from Homer in the original Greek. The password would be something that had meaning for Markham, although it might be laced with a touch of irony.

  Lyon leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, visualizing the dead man whose secrets he hoped to examine. Markham was not only a conservatively oriented research writer, but also a man with a Don Juan complex. A man of that sexuality with a researcher’s background must have kept a tally or score of some nature. Markham Swan might not maintain his financial records in good order, but his conquests would have statistical and anatomical descriptions.

  The password might be a synonym or play on words for the act of sexual congress.

  Swan was far too sophisticated for the password to be a simple bathroom wall epithet. Nor would it be the obvious synonyms in French, German, or Russian.

  Lyon b
egan to type all the esoteric synonyms for having sex. When none of his alternatives were the correct password he began to type in foreign phrases for the act.

  Still no response. He tilted the chair back in fatigue.

  He had used every phrase and slang he could think of without result. He thought of Swan’s personality again. The man did have conservative beliefs. With that in mind, he began to type in a new series of potential passwords. He began with a list that consisted of men the dead writer might admire: George Patton, Ghengis Kahn, Machiavelli, Adam Smith … the list went on without result.

  Next he tried a list of writers and artists that Swan had mentioned to him in passing over the years. No result.

  He would have to speak with the dead man’s wife to find important personal combinations that might work. If that wasn’t successful, he would have to dig up a discreet computer expert who could jump the password through the motherboard.

  Damn! He should be able to figure this out. He had known Markham Swan since college, when they had both been up for membership in the Thumpers. As Peyton had recently pointed out, Lyon had been blackballed, but Markham had been admitted for his pandering ability.

  Lyon casually typed “Thumpers” into the computer. It was a word important to Swan, and from what Peyton said, it also had a strong sexual connotation.

  The screen changed to an icon display. He was in.

  A fast review of the hard drive files indicated a neat and orderly progression of notes concerning the book called The Piper Contribution.

  He began to read.

  It was an hour before Lyon had it. The list that scrolled down the screen was a simple genealogy of the Piper family with a few identifying notes by each name. He stopped scrolling and stared at the list.

  It was now quite clear why Markham Swan felt the answer was in the cemetery plot known as the Piper Pie. It was obvious what he had found out and why he had been killed.

  NINE

  These dead now held a new significance.