The chimes played a few bars of 'Ode to Joy.' Only minutes had passed since Julian Campbell terminated their phone call. Five billion a year in revenues was a treasure that he would do anything to protect, but he couldn't have gotten a fresh pair of gunmen to Anson's place this quickly.
Mitch cranked off the water at the sink and, face dripping, tried to think if there was any reason he should risk checking on the identity of the visitor through a living-room window. His imagination failed him.
Time to get out of here.
He grabbed the trash bag that held the ransom and plucked the pistol off the table. He headed for the back door.
The Taser. He had left it on a counter by the ovens. He returned for it.
Again the unknown visitor rang the bell.
'Who's that?' Anson asked from the laundry room.
'The postman. Now shut up.'
Nearing the back door once more, Mitch remembered his brother's cell phone. It had been on the table beside the ransom, yet he had grabbed the bag and left the phone.
Julian Campbell's call, Anson's hideous revelations, and the doorbell, coming one on the heels of the other, had rocked him off balance.
After retrieving the cell phone, Mitch turned in a circle, surveying the kitchen. As far as he could tell, he had forgotten nothing else.
He turned off the lights, stepped out of the house, and locked the door behind him.
The inexhaustible wind played chase-and-hide with itself among the ferns and bamboo. Leathery, wind- seared banyan leaves, blown in from another property, scrabbled this way and that across the patio, scratching at the bricks.
Mitch went to the first of the two garages, entering by the courtyard door. Here his Honda waited, and John Knox ripened in the back of the Buick Super Woody Wagon.
He'd had a vague plan for hanging Knox's death around Anson's neck at the same time that he extricated himself from the setup for Daniel's and Kathy's murders. But Campbell's looming reentry into the situation left him feeling that he was roller-skating on ice, and the vague plan was now no plan at all.
None of that mattered at the moment anyway. When Holly was safe, John Knox and the bodies in the learning room and Anson handcuffed to the chair would matter again, and matter big-time, but now they were incidental to the main problem.
More than two and a half hours remained before he could swap the money for Holly. He opened the trunk of the Honda and tucked the bag into the wheel well.
In the front seat of the Woody, he found a garage-door remote. He clipped it to the Honda's sun visor, so he could close the roll-up door from the alleyway.
He put the pistol and the Taser in the storage pocket in the driver's door. Sitting behind the steering wheel, he could look down and see the weapons, and they were easier to reach than they would have been under the seat.
Triggering the remote control, he watched in the rearview mirror as the big door rolled up.
Backing out of the garage, he glanced to his right, saw the alleyway was clear — and stamped on the brakes in surprise as someone rapped on the driver's-door window. Snapping his head to the left, he discovered that he was face-to-face with Detective Taggart.
Chapter 53
Muffled by glass: 'Hello there, Mr. Rafferty.' Mitch stared at the detective too long before putting down the car window. His surprise would have been expected; however, he must have looked shocked, fearful.
Warm wind tossed Taggart's sports coat and flapped the collar of his yellow-and-tan Hawaiian shirt as he leaned close to the window. 'Do you have time for me?'
'Well, I do have a doctor's appointment,' Mitch said.
'Good. I won't keep you too long. Should we talk in the garage, out of this wind?'
John Knox's body lay exposed in the back of the station wagon. The homicide detective might be drawn to it by a keen nose for the earliest odors of decomposition, or by admiration for the beautiful old Buick.
'Sit with me in the car,' Mitch said, and he put up the window as he finished backing out of the garage.
He remoted the big door and parked parallel to it, out of the center of the alley, as it rolled down.
Getting into the passenger's seat, Taggart said, 'Have you called an exterminator about those termites?'
'Not yet.'
'Don't put it off too long.'
'I won't.'
Mitch sat facing forward, staring at the alley, determined to glance at Taggart only from time to time, because he remembered the penetrating power of the cop's stare.
'If it's pesticides you're worried about, they don't have to use them anymore.'
'I know. They can freeze the creepers in the walls.'
'Better yet, they've got this highly condensed orange extract that kills them on contact. All natural, and the house smells great.'
'Oranges. I'll have to look into that.'
'I guess you've been too busy to think about termites.'
An innocent man might wonder what this was about and might be impatient to get on with his day, so Mitch risked asking, 'Why are you here, Lieutenant?'
'I came to see your brother, but he didn't answer the door.'
'He's away until tomorrow.'
'Where's he gone?'
'Vegas.'
'Do you know his hotel?'
'He didn't say.'
'Didn't you hear the doorbell?' Taggart asked.
'I must have left before it rang. I had a few things to do in the garage.'
'Looking after the place for your brother while he's away?'
'That's right. Why do you want to talk to him?'
The detective drew up one leg and turned sideways in his seat, facing Mitch directly, as though to compel more eye contact. 'Your brother's phone numbers were in Jason Osteen's address book.'
Glad to have something truthful to say, Mitch reported: 'They met when Jason and I were roommates.'
'You didn't stay in touch with Jason, but your brother did?'
'I don't know Maybe. They got along well.'
During the night and the morning, all the loose leaves and the litter and the dust had been blown to the sea. Now the wind carried no debris to suggest its form. As invisible as shock waves, massive slabs of crystalline air slammed along the alleyway, rocking the Honda.
Taggart said, 'Jason was hooked up with this girl named Leelee Morheim. You know her?'
'No.'
'Leelee says Jason hated your brother. Says your brother cheated Jason in some deal.'
'What deal?'
'Leelee doesn't know. But one thing's pretty clear about Jason — he didn't do honest work.'
That statement required Mitch to meet the detective's eyes and to frown with convincing puzzlement. 'Are you saying Anson was involved in something illegal?'
'Do you think that's possible?'
'He's got a Ph.D. in linguistics, and he's a computer geek.'
