Strachey's Folly - Stevenson Richard - Страница 17

I drove up the highway past K Mart, past E-Z Mart, past Pizza Hut, Valu-Video, and Hall's Beer Distributor to the Kozy Korner. It wasn't on a corner and with its cold-white-light and Formica interior it wasn't cozy. Two specials were scrawled on a blackboard propped next to the cash register. The fried had­dock with FF & apple sauce was $3-85- The ham croquettes with mac and cheese was $3.15.

I asked the round, clear-skinned young woman who took my order—I couldn't resist the croquettes—if she was Karen. She smiled, showing me her braces, and said uh-uh, she was Stacy; Karen didn't come in on Sunday.

While I waited, I read the ads on my place mat for a tire store, a sealer of driveways, and, among others, Ron Diefender-fer, CPA, and Helen's Pitch-n-putt. The other tables and booths at the Kozy Korner were occupied mainly by middle-aged and elderly married couples who had apparently run out of anything to say to each other some years back. They seemed to take their gratification from their haddock, which I figured they knew they had earned. At a table near the back, three voluble older women sat, loudly comparing doctors with Indian names. They liked Dr. Patel best because, one woman said, he didn't give you the

bum's rush.

I could see over the counter and through a big window into the kitchen. I saw no Mexicans there, just a woman in a blue smock; her origins looked local. She seemed to be the cook, and a skinny teenaged boy in a baseball cap that was on frontward— was this a clue?—washed dishes.

I enjoyed the comfort food, which I followed with plain coffee—no sign was up announcing "brussels sprouts" or "Ro-bitussin" as the ground-roast flavor of the day—and I had a small saucer of rice pudding. The bill came to just over five dol­lars, including tip. Driving back into Log Heaven, I exercised my tongue as I attempted to pry loose the mac and cheese still stuck to the roof of my mouth. I got most of it.

Just after nine o'clock, I parked the car along Susquehanna Drive across from the address for Betty Krumfutz that the motel clerk had given me. I was up on a bluff on the western outskirts of Log Heaven. To my right was a sharp drop-off, with the river in the darkness below. Across the street to my left was a wide, split-level flagstone ranch house on a partially wooded hillside. A broad driveway, newly tarmacked, ran up to a two-car garage. A gray Chrysler LeBaron with Pennsylvania plates was parked on one side of the driveway, a Chevy pickup truck with plates I didn't recognize was on the other.

Lights were on behind the drawn drapes in the big picture window. Another room was lit—the kitchen?—between the liv­ing room and the garage. There were no floodlights or other il­lumination outside the house. Clouds had moved in, and I decided that I could get away with a quick bout of voyeurism under cover of the October darkness. I knew that if I was caught by the Log Heaven police, I would have no plausible explana­tion I could safely provide them for spying on former congress-woman Krumfutz. And if Mrs. Krumfutz and her two Mexican shootists got hold of me, I might long to be in the custody of local law officers. But a quick look around seemed minimally risky, so I got out of the car and shut the door quietly.

Susquehanna Drive was also the main road to Engineville, twenty-six miles upriver, where Nelson Krumfutz and his girl­friend, Tammy Pam Jameson, now consorted. Traffic to En-gineville on Sunday night was sparse, so I had no trouble ambling across the road apparently sight unseen. The nearest streetlight was a quarter of a mile east, and the houses on either side of the Krumfutz place were lit inside but with the shades drawn. I strode directly up the Krumfutz front lawn, passed under a good-sized maple—black trash bags apparently stuffed with fallen leaves had been piled up alongside the driveway— and on to the back of the property. I lingered there for a couple of minutes getting used to the darkness and listening for any pets Mrs. Krumfutz or her neighbors might have had on the loose. I'd once had, in a similar set of circumstances, an encounter with a warthog in a poodle suit that I did not want to repeat.

I went around to the darkened rear ell section of the house. I passed an air conditioner jutting out from a window—I could just make it out in the near-darkness—and I was careful not to whack into it. What if, when he hit the air conditioner, OJ. had been knocked unconscious? What if Kato had gone out with a flashlight and discovered O.J., knocked out, with a bag full of bloody clothes? Whom would Kato have phoned? Nine one one? William Morris? O.J.'s dry cleaner? How might it all have turned out differently? I wondered.

Staying close to the wall of the house, I moved across a stone terrace to the sliding glass doors that I estimated were op­posite the picture window out front. Heavy white drapes blocked my view in—and Mrs. Krumfutz's view out—so I continued on beyond the doors to a smaller, darkened window that looked in on what appeared to be a breakfast nook. The Venetian blinds were only half-shut, so by standing close to the window on the far side I found an angle that afforded a line of sight into the liv­ing room behind the drapes.

"Don't move!"

I turned, and a bright light hit my face.

"I want to see your hands!"

"You bet."

"Both of them!"

"Two is my limit."

A floodlight mounted on the side of the house came on, il­luminating the entire terrace, and I saw that the man with the flashlight in one hand and a drawn revolver in the other was wearing a police uniform.

"Assume the position!" the cop barked.

That phraseology had always sounded like something out of my high school debating-club days, but I knew what this man meant.

"Spread 'em! Get 'em up!"

I pressed my palms against the wall of the house as the cop patted me down. He had pocketed his flashlight, but he still held the police special. A door opened off to my right, and I heard a nasal female voice say, "What's going on? Horse, what in the world are you doing?"

"Speck Spindler saw somebody in your yard, Mrs. Krumfutz, and called it in. It's this guy here!"

"Oh, for heaven sakes!"

As the cop yanked my wallet out of my jacket pocket, I turned far enough to catch sight of a bulky woman in a pale green sweat suit. With her small mouth open in a look of shocked surprise, she was identical to the woman I'd seen the day before at Jim Suter's quilt panel, minus the shades and the golf-cart-motif head scarf. Mrs. Krumfutz did have a bandanna tied around her head, but instead of golf carts it had pictures of cherry pies all over it. I knew they were cherry because each pie had a C carved in the crust.

"Are you all right, Mrs. Krumfutz?" the cop said as he flipped through my wallet with one hand.

"Yes, Horse, I'm just fine. Don't worry about me. Who is he?"

"Is there someone else here with you?"

"No, but this fella didn't get inside. Who is he?"

It was not true that Mrs. Krumfutz had been alone in her house. In the instant before the cop—Officer "Horse" seemed to be his name—came upon me and shouted, I had caught a fleet­ing image of two figures in the Krumfutz living room. They had seemed to be kneeling on the floor side by side, but it all hap­pened so quickly that I couldn't be sure of what I had seen.

"His name is Donald Strachey." To me the cop boomed, "Are you Donald Strachey?"

"Yes."

"What do you think you're doing on this property?"

"Conducting an investigation."

"An investigation? What do you mean, an investigation?"

"I'm a private investigator licensed in the state of New York.