Page 56 of The Furies

“All this over a coin?”

“People get stabbed to death for small change. That coin is worth much more.”

“I have to confess,” said Will, “that the whole story sounds bizarre to me. I mean, I accept that Buker might have developed some funny ideas while he was locked up, otherwise he wouldn’t have got himself that damned tattoo, but it doesn’t mean the rest of us are obliged to accept them as true.”

“I believe that Raum and his partner, Egon Towle, stole valuable items from Kepler,” I said. “The rest is irrelevant. Kepler is trying to avoid a face-off, which is why he put that fancy little camera in the peephole, in case Raum had stashed some of the takings in his room or decided to use it as a showroom for prospective buyers. If I was pressed, I’d put money on a miniature microphone or voice transmitter being hidden somewhere in the unit, because it’s what I’d have done. That way Kepler would be able to listen in on at least one side of any conversation using his cell phone.”

“But how did he gain access to the Braycott?” said Will.

“The surveillance camera on the back door is broken, so he could have bribed a tenant to admit him, but I suspect he just paid Bobby Wadlin to turn a blind eye. Wadlin denies that he let Kepler up there, but he’d deny his own name if there was a dollar in it. He’s stubborn and ornery. I think it’s all those westerns he watches.”

“So what next?”

“I smoke out Raum, and try to persuade him to hand back what he took.”

Will considered this.

“I hope you have a plan B,” he said.

“That would be to trace Kepler, and convince him to keep his distance from Dolors and Ambar while I work on the Raum problem. The final and most sensible measure would be to go to the police right now, tell them everything I know, and let them figure the whole mess out, but Dolors will blame you for it. Also, if we go to the police, it’s likely that Dolors and Ambar will get dragged through legal thorns, and they won’t emerge unscathed, because no one ever does.”

Will squinted at me. He might have been relatively inexperienced in matters of the heart, but that was about the limit of his ingenuousness.

“You think Dolors and Ambar know about the coins,” he said.

“That’s what the police will assume,” I said, “because of their prior intimacy with Raum.”

“And what do you assume?”

“That the police would be right.”

Will rested his face in his hands. Not approaching the police went against every instinct he possessed. He was a good man, with faith in the institutions of law and justice, but he also had faith in me. I didn’t want to tell him it might be misplaced, because honesty can be bad for business, so I sat back to see which way he might tilt.

“So where’s this Kepler?” he said, finally.

In your face, due process.

“He must have a temporary base near here,” I said, “even if it’s only a motel room or an Airbnb. I’ll start following up that angle in the morning—and I’ll also be calling on Dolors again, so you can tell her to expect me. Feel free to divulge to her what I’ve told you. It might help focus her attention, and convince her to arrange a sit-down with Raum. Whatever she may say to the contrary, she has an idea of where he is, if only through Ambar.”

“What about Egon Towle?” said Will. “Isn’t he involved, too?”

“He was,” I said, as I stood to leave. “Whether he remains so is open to question.”

* * *

I WAS ALREADY HOME and half-undressed when I realized I had forgotten to get back to Dave Evans. I decided it could wait until morning, because Dave wouldn’t thank me for calling him at such a late hour. Despite my tiredness I took a while to get to sleep. I knew I was handling this case improperly, and even the twenty-four hours I had permitted myself before involving the police constituted at least twenty-three too many. I could justify it on the grounds that the intelligence I had obtained was sketchy at best, and were I to run to the law with every tidbit I picked up, I’d become as much a fixture in station houses as the bars on the holding cells, not to mention a laughingstock. I hadn’t even seen a picture of the rare coin mentioned by Eleanor Towle, and I was hesitant to believe the lore being peddled about Kepler. I could accept that Raum Buker and Egon Towle might be coin thieves, and Kepler their victim, but that was the limit of my credulity.

More to the point, if I were to approach the police each time I entered a legal gray area, my career as a private investigator would come to a rapid close, clients expecting some degree of discretion in my dealings with them, if not absolute confidentiality. But the truth was that my curiosity had been piqued, and curiosity, as with cats, was the curse of my breed. So far, it hadn’t killed me. Admittedly, it had come close on occasion, but close doesn’t get you a cigar.

I stretched, and felt old pains sing out.

Wounds, maybe, but no cigar.

CHAPTER LXIII

Lucas Tyler was playing hooky. He didn’t do this very often, only once every month or two, when the mood hit. His mother always covered for him because Lucas was bright: too bright for his class, too bright for his school, too bright for his town. He aced every test at Kingswood Regional, New Hampshire, and had his mind set on a degree in computer science and molecular biology at MIT. He planned to take the SAT in October, using the summer break to study, and was confident of nudging a score of 1600. It was a confidence shared by his teachers without reservation, because in addition to being bright, Lucas was a decent kid. His family income, which came from his mother, his dad being long dead, was well below the $90,000 cut-off point for the MIT scholarship. If he was accepted—and there seemed no reason he should not be—he would attend tuition-free.

Lucas drove a 1990 VW Golf he’d bought with savings from his weekend job at a home improvement store. He loved the car. Minor defects he could repair himself, and those beyond him were easily tackled by any moderately accomplished mechanic. It also had enough room to entertain his girlfriend, Annabeth, in relative comfort, neither she nor Lucas being above five seven in their stocking feet, and access to private space being an important detail to consider when you shared a house with your mom—especially a mom who volunteered at First Congregational and still hankered for the days when married sitcom couples slept in separate beds.

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