Hellbox nd-37 Page 3

  As soon as he was gone, the atmosphere in there climbed back up to normal. The man named Verriker said, “Balfour gets weirder and weirder all the time.”

  “Well, you keep yanking his chain, Ned,” one of his friends said.

  “Hell, it’s just a joke. He used to be able to take being kidded.”

  “Not anymore. He always was a hothead, but now it’s like he thinks everybody’s out to get him.”

  “Brought it on himself, didn’t he? The way he does business, treats people?”

  The other friend said, “Never know what a guy like that’s liable to do. I say it’d be smart to cut him some slack.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  Conversation among the three lagged after that. A couple of minutes later, they paid their bill and went out in a bunch.

  Kerry said, “Now what do you suppose that was all about?”

  “No idea.”

  “People here don’t seem to like their mayor very much.”

  “If he is the mayor. Didn’t look like a politician to me.”

  He wasn’t one. When the waitress came over with our check, Kerry, who is neither shy nor retiring, asked her if Pete Balfour was the mayor of Six Pines. The question brought a wry and somewhat sour chuckle.

  “Not hardly. That man couldn’t get elected dogcatcher if we needed one.”

  “He’s not running for mayor, then?”

  “Not of Six Pines,” the waitress said. “He wouldn’t get fifty votes.”

  So we still didn’t know what it was all about. Not that it mattered or was worth pursuing. Local business and none of ours.

  After lunch, Kerry and I drove down to the south end of town. Just before you got to the Six Pines Fairgrounds, there were a couple of stands selling fireworks. Both had prominently displayed signs written in large letters: WARNING! FOR USE IN DESIGNATED AREAS ONLY! HEAVY FINES FOR UNAUTHORIZED USE!

  Kerry said, “The fire danger must be high this time of year.”

  “Probably is, as hot and dry as it is.”

  “I wonder why they allow fireworks at all.”

  “If they weren’t allowed, people would just go buy them somewhere else and bring them in. This way, the authorities can exercise some control.”

  “We’re not going to let that effect our decision to buy here, are we? The fire danger, I mean.”

  “I don’t see why we should,” I said. “The earthquake threat doesn’t keep us from living in San Francisco.”

  The fairgrounds were built on several acres of flatland just before the county road began its climb up out of the valley. What we could see from the road was a single set of pale green bleachers alongside an oval track and field, a handful of low shedlike buildings and animal pens, part of an open grassy area ringed by picnic tables where a flea market was going on, and a wide hardpan parking area. A marquee sign on a couple of tall poles announced the Fourth of July festivities, and advertised stock car racing the last Saturday of every month through September and a flea market every Sunday.

  There were quite a few people wandering among the vendor tables in the flea market. Kerry suggested we go in and see what they had for sale.

  “More useless junk, probably,” I said.

  “They might have some local produce. Flea markets usually do.”

  I turned into the lot and we wandered around among the two dozen or so vendors sweltering under awnings and umbrellas and not doing much business. A lot of junk, all right, but Kerry was right about local produce; she bought a carton of ripe strawberries and some vegetables. I didn’t expect to buy anything… until I spotted an old guy who had a bunch of old paperback books spread out on a table and in boxes underneath. I hadn’t brought along anything to read, figuring on just an overnight stay, but now that we were going to be here for a few days, I would need some escapist entertainment. Most of the paperbacks were westerns in ratty condition, but I rummaged up a couple of mysteries by Fredric Brown and Day Keene, pulp writers I’d read and admired.

  We didn’t stay long-too hot out in the open field. After we left, I drove us a few miles up the county road to where a small lake was tucked in among the pines, around the lake, then back into Six Pines. We made a brief stop to pick up some additional groceries, did a little roaming in the hillsides above the town, and finally headed up-valley to the rented cabin. Enough exploring for one day.

  The cabin faced west, into the blistery eye of the sun, so we stayed inside, sipping cold drinks and reading until early evening. Kerry made a light supper, and by then it was cool enough to eat on the deck. Afterward, we sat and watched the sun fall below the westward mountains, the sky taking on a smoky red color. A light breeze kicked up and it was much cooler as dusk began to settle.

  “Nice day,” Kerry said. “Just about perfect except for that little incident in the cafe.”

  “Jerks everywhere. The other locals seem friendly enough.”

  “I thought so, too. The more I see of Green Valley, the more I like it. If Emily wasn’t coming home Sunday, I wouldn’t mind staying over the Fourth. The parade and picnic sound like fun.”

  “Well, we could stay for that and drive back early Saturday.”

  “Yes, we could, but the traffic is sure to be horrendous. Anyhow, we don’t have to decide yet. Let’s just take it one day at a time.”

  “I’m all for that,” I said. “What I’d like to do tomorrow is check out the river and the trout streams.”

  “Go right ahead. No fishing for me.”

  “You might enjoy it if you’d just give it a try.”

  “Stand in an icy stream and murder some poor trout? I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t keep or eat them anymore,” I said. “Catch and release.”

  “The hooks still tear up their mouths. I just don’t see the fun in it.”

  The fun was in tramping through the woods, communing with nature, as much as in testing your skill with a fly rod. But I’d made that point to her before and it wasn’t worth repeating. You either had the fishing gene or you didn’t.

  After a time she said, “Shall we go ahead and make an offer before we leave? Or should we wait until Emily sees the place?”

  “She’ll like it all right, but there’s no need to rush. If we seem too eager, the owners may try to hold out for their asking price.”

  “But you do want to make an offer?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Then we’ll come back up next week with Emily and do it then. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  She nodded and smiled. “We really are going to love it here,” she said, as if the offer had already been made and accepted and the property was ours. “Beautiful views, peace and quiet, and only three hours from home. What more could we ask for?”

  3

  PETE BALFOUR

  Verriker again. Verriker and those sons of bitches Ramsey and Lucchesi. Humiliating him in the cafe in front of all the locals and tourists. He could imagine what it’d been like in there after he stomped out. Verriker saying in that loudmouth voice of his, “There he goes, folks, there goes the Mayor of Asshole Valley,” and everybody hooting it up then, even the goddamn tourists, hooting and making fun of him behind his back.

  Verriker, Verriker, Verriker.

  He kept seeing that smug face, hearing that cackling laugh burn in his ears like acid. Saw that face and heard that laugh no matter where he went, in his truck, in his own house, in his sleep. Christ, how he hated that bastard! He’d never hated anybody as much as he hated Ned Verriker.

  The only way he could breathe again, start living a normal life again, was to get rid of the hate by getting rid of the poison from that mayor label. But how? There wasn’t any way. Not as long as Ned Verriker was alive, there wasn’t.

  As long as Verriker was alive.

  But what if he wasn’t anymore? If Verriker was dead, the label would die with him. And so would the laughter. And Pete Balfour wouldn’t be a joke anymore.

  Payback.

&n
bsp; Payback in spades.

  The notion came into Balfour’s head just like that after he got home, and he couldn’t of got rid of it then if he’d wanted to. And he didn’t want to. He’d never killed anybody before, nothing human, just deer and ducks and old man Henderson’s cat that kept coming around and making Bruno bark half the night so a man couldn’t sleep. He never wanted to kill anybody so bad before. But he had a real hunger for Verriker’s blood. Imagined him on the ground, the blood running out of him, eyes all wide and starey like a gutshot buck.

  Verriker dead.

  He grabbed up an invoice pad and a felt-tip from the table next to his chair, wrote Verriker dead half a dozen times in big black letters. The words looked good written down like that. Looked fine.

  So fine that he said them out loud. “Verriker dead, Verriker dead.” Sweetest taste he’d had in his mouth in a long time.

  That afternoon, sitting in his easy chair with his feet up and a cold Bud in his hand, he thought about ways to do it. A gun, sure, that was the simplest, and he had plenty to choose from. He liked guns, liked the feel of them, the recoil, the smell after he’d triggered off a round. He had revolvers, a couple of deer rifles, a regular pump shotgun and a sawed-off, the Bushmaster assault rifle and Sterling MK-7 semiautomatic pistol that he’d bought from that black market Russian, Rosnikov, who Harry Logan had steered him to down in Stockton.

  But hell, he couldn’t do it with a gun, not any kind. If he just went out and shot the son of a bitch, no matter how careful he was, he’d be the number one suspect. Everybody knew how he felt about Verriker and having that mayor tag slung around his neck. Bugger turned up shot, the county cops’d come straight to his door. Same if he used a knife or a hatchet or a hunk of firewood.

  Accident.

  That was the ticket. Make it look like an accident. Accidents can happen to anybody, any time. They couldn’t blame Pete Balfour if he was nowhere around when Verriker had a fatal one.

  Took him the rest of the afternoon and a full six-pack to work out a plan. It was a good one, slick and not too risky, and it’d fix Verriker better than a gun or some other weapon. The only problem with it was he wouldn’t be there to see it happen, but that was all right. He could live with that as long as Verriker died with it.

  Verriker’s wife, Alice, would get it, too, but Balfour didn’t care about her. She was almost as vicious and mouthy as her husband, with a tongue as sharp as a razor. Humiliated him once herself, he remembered, that time in high school when he’d hit on her before she started going with Verriker. Laughed at him in front of a bunch of other girls, called him Frogface and told him his breath smelled bad, why didn’t he go home and drink a gallon of Listerine? Bitch. She had it coming to her same as Verriker did.

  How soon? Hell, sooner the better.

  Balfour popped another Bud and leaned back with his eyes closed, picturing how it would be. How he’d work it, step by step, and what he’d do afterward and the high he’d feel when he got the news. Biggest high of his life. It’d last a long, long time, too, he’d make sure of that. Go about his business, pretend to be real sad when somebody mentioned what’d happened. Keep a straight face and laugh like hell behind it, the way Verriker and the rest had been laughing at him.

  Just thinking about it started him chuckling. And once he got started, he couldn’t seem to stop. The chuckles turned into snickers and the snickers into guffaws.

  He laughed so hard thinking about Verriker dead, he almost peed his pants.

  4

  KERRY

  They stayed in bed late again Monday morning. No sex today, just cuddling and dozing. Weekend getaways were all well and good, but one or two nights wasn’t really enough time to relax and unwind. Even if they only spent a few more days in Green Valley, it would still have the feel of a real vacation-the first one she and Bill had had in a long time.

  Well, that was her fault as much as his. He’d been a workaholic most of his adult life and so had she. Long hours at Bates and Carpenter as a copywriter, even longer ones after last year’s promotion to vice president. The advertising business, like the detective business, put demands on a person that had more to do with passion and dedication than a striving for financial security. Ad woman wasn’t what she did for a living; it was who she was, what she’d been born to be. Same with Bill in the detective profession-the reason he’d been having so much trouble following through on his vow of semiretirement.

  But there came a time when you had to back off at least a little, take some time for yourself before you burned out physically, mentally, or both. Start seeing what else life had to offer while you were still young enough and healthy enough to enjoy the experiences. The breast cancer had taught her that. She’d been fortunate to survive the months of surgery and chemotherapy and psychic drain, even more fortunate that there had been no recurrence (knock wood) and the cancer seemed to be in permanent remission. Still, she hadn’t learned the slow-down lesson as well as she should have. Continued to work too hard, still didn’t treat herself to enough TLC. Bill’s decision to limit his agency time to two days a week had been something of a wake-up call for her. She hadn’t thought he would stick to it this time, any more than he had on his previous pledge, but so far he had. And if he could, so could she.

  A second home in Green Valley would be a good start. Quiet, stress-free environment, a place to relax, recharge your batteries whenever you felt the need. It would be good for Emily, too, in smaller doses. Thirteen-almost-fourteen-year-old girls were tightly wedded to their home turf and their circle of friends, but exposure to country life now and then ought to provide some perspective. Emily was extremely bright and well-grounded, but nonetheless impressionable and edging into a difficult period of adolescence. Kerry remembered her own early teens, the peer influences and the raging hormones, the silly choices and mistakes she’d made. Oh, yes, difficult and worrisome both.

  Having a second home didn’t mean that you couldn’t or shouldn’t go anywhere else. She’d always had a mild yen to travel, visit England, western Europe, parts of Canada, but she and Bill had been such urban-dwelling, work-driven homebodies that they’d never made any plans that went beyond the casual discussion stage. Talk herself into spending a couple of weeks on foreign soil and she’d be able to talk him into it, too. At least one trip before Emily left the nest in another four or five years.

  First things first, though. Make an offer on this cabin, and establish themselves here. The rest would take care of itself in due course. There was plenty of time (knock wood again).

  Bill was still asleep when she got up. Good for him; he didn’t get enough sleep at home. Even when he wasn’t working, he was up early and rattling around looking for something to occupy his time. Definite Type A when she first met him; that and the long hours and job stress and his less-than-sensible eating habits had made him a heart attack or stroke candidate. He’d slowed down some in recent years, after Emily had come into their lives and then her long struggle with the breast cancer, but she still worried about him. Another reason, the main one, for owning a place like this.

  Thinking about Bill’s health led her to start worrying again about Cybil’s. Her mother was in her late eighties, still mentally sharp, at least most of the time, but frail and too stubborn and independent to move into an assisted living facililty. Redwood Village, the retirement community in Larkspur, was her home now she said, and she fully intended to live there until she died. She had close neighbors, including one in the other half of her duplex, and they all watched out for each other. That was fine in theory. So was the fact that Redwood Village had a small clinic with a physician and nurse on twenty-four-hour call. But she’d had two falls in the past five months, and on the second, she’d banged her head on a table leg, blacked out, and lain on the floor for God knew how long-Cybil wouldn’t say-before coming around. Cybil made light of the episode because that was her way, but the fact remained that she could have hurt herself a lot more seriously than she had. Could have
died there on her living room floor.

  Kerry had called her Thursday night to tell her about the trip to Green Valley, and she’d been all right then. A little vague in her responses, though, as if what she was hearing didn’t fully compute. Call her again this morning? Two things Cybil didn’t like (well, two among several): being a burden to anyone and being checked up on. Any more than one call a week, unless she was the one who initiated it, fell into the checking-up category. But under the circumstances…

  When she finished making coffee, Kerry took a cup and her cell phone out onto the front deck. Another glorious morning, already very warm. Too warm to sit in the sun, she moved her chair over into a patch of shade. Her excuse for calling, she thought, would be to report that their second home search was finally over. It wasn’t strictly true yet, but a little while lie was better than incurring her mother’s wrath by saying, “I just called to see how you’re doing.”

  She made the call, waited through six, seven, eight rings. No answer. That didn’t have to mean anything ominous-Cybil might be out shopping or for a walk with a friend, or puttering in her small garden-but it was a little nervous-making just the same. Kerry let the line buzz emptily four more times before she disconnected, telling herself not to worry, if anything had happened, she would have had emergency notification. But she couldn’t help thinking about those two falls, Cybil lying unconscious on the floor…

  Bill was up; she could hear him singing inside. Singing… my God, it sounded more like a rooster being strangled. He was a wonderful man in most ways and he genuinely loved music, especially jazz, but he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

  She finished her coffee and tried Cybil’s number again. Still no answer. She had numbers for two of her mother’s neighbors; maybe she should call one of them-No, that was a panic reaction. Cybil was all right, just out somewhere. She’d be furious if Kerry started contacting neighbors without definite cause. Just keep trying until she answered.