Jeffery Deaver - Triple Threat

That mission, whatever it was, smelled funky to Caruso. He gave it two hours, for dark to descend and quiet to lull the neighborhood. Then he pulled on latex gloves and broke into the garage with a set of lock-picking tools, having as he often did at moments like this an imaginary conversation with the arresting officer. No, sir, I’m not committing burglary—which is breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony. I’m committing trespass only—breaking and entering with intent to find the truth.

Not exactly a defense under the New York State penal code.

Caruso surveyed the jam-packed garage. A systematic search could take hours, or days. The man was a carpenter and handyman so he had literally tons of wood and plasterboard and cables and dozens of tool chests. Those seemed like natural hiding places but they’d also be the first things stolen if anybody broke in, so Caruso ignored them.

He stood in one place and turned in circles, like a slow-motion radar antenna, looking from shelf to shelf, relying on the fuzzy illumination of the street light. He had a flashlight but he was too close to the house to use it.

Finally he decided: The most likely place one would hide something was in the distant, dusty corner, in paint cans marred with dried drips of color. Nobody’d steal used paint.

And bingo.

In the third and fourth he found what he suspected he would: stacks and stacks of twenties. Also two diamond bracelets.

All, undoubtedly, from Sarah’s safe deposit box. This was his payment from the Westerfields for disposing of the body. They hadn’t mentioned him, of course, at trial because he had enough evidence to sink them even deeper—probably enough to get them the death penalty.

Caruso took pictures of the money and jewelry with a low-light camera. He didn’t end his search there, though, but continued to search through all the cans. Most of them contained paint. But not all. One, on the floor in the corner, held exactly what he needed to figure out Sarah Lieberman’s last resting place.

# # #

“Come in, come in,” Eddie said to Carmel Rodriguez, shutting off the TV.

The woman entered his office and glanced around, squinting, as if he’d just decorated the walls with the sports pictures that had been there forever. “My daughter, Rosa, she plays soccer.”

“That’s my favorite, too.” Eddie sat down, gesturing her into a seat across from the desk. She eased cautiously into it.

“You said you found something.”

The PI nodded solemnly.

Most of Eddie Caruso’s work involved finding runaways, running pre-employment checks and outing personal injury lawsuit fakers, but he handled domestics, too. He’d had to deliver news about betrayal and learned there were generally three different reactions: explosive anger, wailing sorrow or weary acceptance, the last of which was usually accompanied by the eeriest smile of resignation on the face of the earth.

He had no idea how Carmel would respond to what she was about to learn.

But there was no point in speculating. It was time to let her know.

“This is going to be troubling, Carmel. But—”

She interrupted. “You told me there might be things you found that I might not like.”

He nodded and rose, walking to his other door. He opened it and gestured.

She frowned as her husband walked into the room.

The man gave her a sheepish grin and then looked back at the carpet as he sat next to her.

“Daniel! Why are you here?”

Caruso sat back in his office chair, which was starting to develop the mouse-squeak that seemed to return once a month no matter how much WD-40 was involved. He whispered, “Go ahead, Daniel. Tell her.”

He said nothing for a minute and Carmel asked pointedly, “Is this about Mrs. Sarah? Is this about what happened to her?”

The round-faced man nodded. “Okay, honey, Carmel—”

“Tell me,” the housekeeper said briskly.

“I haven’t been honest with you.” Eyes whipping toward her, then away. “You remember last year you told me the Westerfields wanted you to find Mrs. Sarah’s papers?”

“Yes. And when I said no they threatened, sort of threatened our daughter.”

“They did the same to me. They said they couldn’t trust you, you were too good. They wanted me to help them.”

“You?” she whispered.

“Yes, baby. Me! Only it wasn’t just find the papers. They…”

“What? What did they want?”

“Miriam told me Sarah didn’t have long to live anyway.”

“ ‘Anyway.’ What do you mean ‘anyway’?”

“She said Sarah had cancer.”

“She wasn’t sick! She was healthier than that bitch Miriam,” Carmel spat out.

“But they said she was. And she’d told them she’d cut us out of her will. We’d get nothing. They said, if I help them now, if she died now, they could make sure we had lots of money.”

“Helped them out.” Carmel eyed her husband coolly. “You mean, helped them kill her.”

“They said she was greedy. Why should she have so much and people like them, and us, have nothing? It was unfair.”

“And you didn’t tell me? You didn’t tell anybody they were dangerous?”

“I did tell somebody.”

“Who? Not the police, you didn’t.”

Daniel looked at Eddie Caruso, who picked up the remote control and hit ON .

The TV, on which a webcam sat, came to life with a Skype streaming image.

On the screen an elderly woman’s face gazed confidently and with some humor at the couple in the chairs and Eddie Caruso. “Hello, Carmel,” Sarah Lieberman said. “It’s been a long time.”

# # #

What Eddie Caruso had found in the last paint can in the Rodriguez’s garage was a letter from Sarah to Daniel with details of where she’d be spending the rest of her life—a small town near Middleburg, Virginia, with her widower nephew Frederick. Information about how to get in touch with her if need be, where she would be buried and the name of certain discreet jewelers whom he could contact to sell the bracelets Sarah had given him, along with suggestions about how to carefully invest the cash she’d provided, too.

He’d confronted the handyman this morning and while the letter seemed plausible, Caruso had insisted they both contact Sarah Lieberman this morning. She’d told them what had happened and was now telling the same story to her housekeeper.

The simple death he’d described to Carmel Rodriguez was anything but.

“I’m so sorry, Carmel… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you. You remember that day in July, just a year ago? I was going to take the phone Freddy gave me and record them?”

“Yes, Mrs. Sarah.”

“After you left, I started to go down there. But I met Daniel on the stairs.” Her gaze shifted slightly, taking in the handyman. “He had me come back to my apartment and he told me what they’d just said—that the Beasts wanted him to help kill me. He said they had it all planned. There was nothing anybody could do to stop them.”

“Why not go to the police?” Carmel demanded.

Sarah replied, “Because at worst they’d get a few years in jail for conspiracy. And then they’d be out again, after somebody else. I started thinking about what I told you. Remember the moth?”

“The big moth you and your husband saw in Malaysia. With the wings that look like a snake.”

“That’s right. But I decided: One way to protect yourself is to disguise yourself as a snake. The other way is to be the snake itself. I fight back. I couldn’t kill them but I could make it look like they killed me . I didn’t ask Daniel to help me but he wanted to.”

“I was so mad at them and worried about you and about Rosa! John hinted that he’d been watching her, watching our daughter!”