Andrus said, 'What are you doing?'
I coaxed out the folded white paper, undamaged from the shot. At the bottom of the box, bits of brick from the exit hole on the back wall lay around a flattened slug.
I unfolded the paper. Headline-sized words again, but twice as big as the snips from the earlier notes.
'ALL BAD THINGS COME TO AN END CU-NT.'
I doubted Roja could read what it said, but she certainly could see what it was. The secretary began to cry.
24
'SO WHAT MADE YOU CHECK THE MAILBOX?”
Neely had a pad and pen on his lap, actually taking notes once in a while. Slouching on the parlor sofa of the Andrus mansion, he'd visited a new barber since I'd seen him last. The currycomb cut made him look like a lowland gorilla.
I said, 'The shooter threw the second one high after the first slug already wrecked the lamp over the doorway. Seemed kind of coincidental that he'd happen to hit the mailbox after my client had been getting threatening notes.'
Neely used the pen to scratch behind his ear, then swung it in an abrupt arc toward the staircase. 'How's this Andrus taking it?'
'Pretty well. She made calls to cancel things out for tonight. The secretary who came to see you is pretty shaken up.'
'Minute ago, you said the shooter was a 'him'?'
'Just an assumption. We're figuring the shooter was the guy sending the notes.'
'So you didn't make him on the roof there.'
'No.'
'You been looking into these threats for what, about a month now?'
'More than two.'
'Anybody handy with guns?'
I'd been giving it some thought. 'The Spanish son, Ray Cuervo, mentioned hunting with his father in the old country. Louis Doleman, the guy whose daughter committed suicide, talked a little about hunting too. And Walter Strock has a bunch of marksmanship trophies in his office.'
'How about the other names I ran for you?'
'I don't see Steven O'Brien as a rifleman. And Gunther Yary of the Fourth Reich says he doesn't believe in guns.'
'A Nazi who don't believe in guns?'
'He says freedom of speech will set us free.'
'Christ on a crutch. The hell can you count on anymore?'
'One of Yary's storm troopers seemed a little more in the mold.'
'Don't get you.'
I laid it out, including the address of the storefront in Dorchester. Neely said, 'How's about you leave the Nazis to us?'
'Fine.'
He finished scribbling and lowered his voice. 'That guy, the houseman. Manello?'
'Manolo. M-a-n-o-l-o.'
'Right, right. Manolo. He was where when the shots were fired?'
'Getting the car. Supposed to have been stuck behind a truck.'
'Supposed. Why 'supposed'?'
'Because I didn't hear any horns.'
'Horns. Like you would if some truck was fucking up the traffic there.'
'Right.'
'Stupid thing for him not to think of.'
'Yes and no. He's deaf. Might not have occurred to him.'
Neely looked skeptical. 'You really figure he could be the guy?'
'If so, I'm the only one who does.'
'Let's hear it.'
'One, Andrus pushed over the man who basically pulled Manolo back into life. Two, he's always around her for the notes except when she goes off to the Caribbean, and then a note appears at the law school when not many people know she's gone and nobody outside the school could easily access the internal mail system.'
'Motive and opportunity for both the notes and the shooting. But why does he miss, then?'
'Don't know.'
'Why does he wait – what, ten years? – to start at her?'
'Same answer.'
Neely shook his head.
I said, 'The husband's also not accounted for.'
'The husband?'
'Tucker Hebert. Andrus says he was out running errands.'
Neely plainly didn't like trying to keep track of all these people.
'So opportunity. How about motive?'
'He gets most of the estate.'
'If the professor there buys the big one.'
'Right.'
'Meantime?'
'Meantime, he's a former pro tennis player who gets sported like a trophy.'
'What?'
I explained it to Neely.
He scratched behind his ear some more with the pen. 'So we got a husband who's riding his wife's money either way.'
'Except if Andrus were dead, he'd be enjoying it without her.'
'Yeah, but if the perp is either Manolo or the husband, how come she's not getting notes out in California there?'
'I've thought about it.'
'And?'
'If it's either Manolo or Hebert, hand-delivering a note out there points the finger.'
'So the guy could use the post office.'
'Without an accomplice to mail the notes from another city, the postmark would give the guy away.'
Neely shook his head again.
I said, 'You get anything from across the street?'
'From the roof, you mean?'
'Yeah.'
'Nah. The techies went up. Easy to do, some kind of scaffolding on the far side. Too windy and cold for the roofers today, though. No shell casings, no footprints they could make out.'
'How about the slugs?'
'They'll run them through ballistics, but don't wait by your phone, okay? The slugs, one splattered and the other got flattened by the professor's brickwork. I seen ones like that before they couldn't do much with.'
I figured that gave me an opening. 'Homicide going to be by?'
