Стюарт Вудс - Standup Guy

It was a beautiful spot, he thought. The sun sparkled on the little lake, and a light breeze rustled the trees around the house. It didn’t look like the sort of place where two men had died over the past few days. He went back into the house and, using the groceries from the two bags, started breakfast. The smell of bacon got everybody up, and soon they were having scrambled eggs. They had just finished when Dino’s phone rang.

“Bacchetti,” he said. He listened for a minute, then turned toward Stone. “You know where Oxford Airport is?”

“Yes,” Stone replied. “Don’t you remember? You and I attended a shoot-out there a few years back. It’s a twenty-minute or half-hour drive.”

“Oh, yeah. Dan, we’ll be there in half an hour.” Dino hung up. “Let’s get going.”

“What’s happening there?”

“He didn’t say.”

Dino’s driver brought the car to the house and they piled in.

“I hope they caught her,” Stone said.

“You hope they caught your five million bucks,” Dino said.

“That, too.”

The drive took less than half an hour. “Go to the main terminal,” Stone said. They drove down the road for half a mile, and some buildings hove into view at the top of a hill.

“That’s it,” Stone said.

There were two police vehicles in the parking lot below the terminal building, and one van, a black one. They pulled into the lot and got out.

Sparks was standing next to the van, looking in through the driver’s window. He turned as they approached. “Well,” he said, “we’ve got your woman.” He stepped back so they could look inside.

Hank Cromwell was lying across the bench front seat, her head resting on her crooked arm. She looked asleep, but the seat was soaked with drying blood that had dripped onto the passenger-side floor, as well. Nobody said anything.

The medical examiner’s van pulled into the lot, and everybody stood back to let them pass.

“A jet landed at eight-thirty this morning,” Sparks said. “The pilots refueled and waited another half an hour, made some phone calls, then took off again. We’ve got the tail number and are checking it out. After the jet had gone, somebody parked down here, saw the body, and called us.”

The ME left the van and approached Sparks. “Single gunshot wound, right side,” he said. “If she’d had reasonably prompt medical attention, she would have survived. Looks like she parked here, went to sleep, and bled out.” He held up a Glock in a plastic bag. “This was underneath the body. We didn’t find a shell casing, so I don’t think she shot herself.”

“We found the shell casing last night,” Sparks said.

They stood back to let the stretcher be wheeled past and put into the state van. “It’s your scene now,” the ME said to Sparks.

Sparks put on some latex gloves and opened the van’s side door. There were two suitcases on the rear seat. He opened them both and found only a woman’s clothing, then he went to the rear door and opened that. Two black nylon suitcases with built-in wheels sat in the luggage compartment. Sparks tipped one on its side and unzipped it. The case was filled with stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

“Mystery of the money solved,” Sparks said.

“Stone,” Dino said, “it was nice of Hank and Parese to change all that cash into hundreds. Much more convenient to deal with.”

“You’re right, Dino. I wonder how much they paid whoever did the swap.”

“You can count it all over again when it gets to your house.”

“As far as I’m concerned,” Sparks said, “you can take it with you. Just give me a receipt, I don’t want it on my hands.”

Dino took out his notebook and wrote out a receipt. “Received of Dan Sparks two black suitcases, contents: uncounted.” He signed it and ripped off the page. “There you go, Dan,” he said. He grabbed one of the bags and set it on its wheels. “You get the other one, Stone.”

Stone followed Dino to his car with the other bag, and they stowed them both in the baggage compartment of the SUV.

“I want to go straight to my bank,” Stone said to Dino as he got into the car.

“Your bank is closed,” Dino said. “Holiday weekend, remember? You’re going to have to take the money home with you.”

Stone made a loud groaning noise. “Then you’re going to have to help me count it.”

“Fat chance,” Dino said.

59

Stone and Dino got the two suitcases out of the SUV and rolled them into Stone’s office.

“There you go,” Dino said. “Have a good time.” He left.

“Shirker!” Stone called after him, but the only reply was the slamming of the office door.

His office smelled faintly of vomit, and his desk was a mess of papers and currency bands. He swept everything off and emptied a suitcase on the top. As he did, Joan came into the room.

“I saw Dino outside the window, and I got curious.”

“That’s your misfortune,” Stone said. “Now you have to help me count the money.”

Joan picked up a stack of bills and examined them. “All hundreds? What did you do? Wave a magic wand?”

“Don’t ask, just count.” He found a legal pad and a calculator. “Each bundle is a hundred hundred-dollar bills, or ten thousand dollars. It’ll be easy.”

“You always say that when it’s hard,” she replied, taking the legal pad and calculator from him. “Did you sleep in those clothes?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“What happened with Hank?”

“Hank is dead.”

“What? You killed her?”

“Of course not. She and her boyfriend had a little tiff, and she brought a knife to a gunfight.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Buono’s buddy Marty Parese, who, incidentally, killed Buono and cut off his head. Hank managed to knife Parese before he shot her. Neither survived.”

He filled in the rest of the details for her.

“So you were in this office, trussed up like a turkey, when I was watching Tiger Woods play golf on TV? I should have been helping you.”

“That crossed my mind, but don’t worry about it. If you had happened upon us, you would have been trussed up, too.”

“Well, at least you’d have had some company.”

Stone finished counting the bundles, stacking them back in the suitcase as he did so. He closed and zipped it, then he set it on the floor, picked up the second case, unzipped it, and started again.

“Neither of us would have been much company, since our mouths would have been taped.”

“Why didn’t Parese shoot you?”

“He was about to, but he was interrupted by Kate Lee leaving a message on the voice mail. That stopped him in his tracks and helped Hank talk him out of it.”

“Poor Hank,” Joan said.

Stone continued his count, and Joan continued to mark down the results and do the arithmetic. “I warned her before she left the house that he’d kill her if she didn’t kill him first. She just didn’t do it soon enough. If she had, she’d have been on a chartered jet bound for God-knows-where, with five million in cash.”

“No,” Joan said, adding her final column and noting the balance on her legal pad.

“What?”

“She’d have had four and a half million—that’s the total.”

“Oh, so Parese paid somebody five hundred thousand to bring him all hundreds. I guess ten percent wasn’t a bad deal.”

“It was for you,” Joan said.

“Call my insurance agent tomorrow and explain things to him. I don’t have the heart. If he wants to see the money, tell him to get over here pronto, because I’m sending it back to the bank before lunch.”

“I think the deductible on your household policy is fifty thousand,” she said. “So you won’t get hurt too badly. Are you going to leave the money in the office again?”