Purgatory Chasm: A Mystery Part 21

Two and a half hours later we were hot, waders and wet suit long removed, s.h.i.+rts peeled off. Trey had backed the Dodge to the edge of the drop; he stood next to the car's open trunk. "You want me to come down there and help?"

I craned my neck to look at him. "Stay. We'll do a bucket brigade."

I pulled out my multi-tool, cut down the climbing rope, and gathered gear. Randall was wedging bogus floorboards back in place. He wrist-wiped sweat from his forehead and looked over his work to make sure he hadn't missed anything. "What an absolutely ingenious setup," he said.

It was. The southernmost section of floorboards, the downriver side, had been cut where they rested on a rib, so you couldn't see the cut from below. We'd poked around fifteen minutes before we figured out the rib had been rigged to pivot. To make that happen, we had to pound out a couple of dowels way over on the outboard side of the shack, where the fast water was over my head. Phigg must've figured n.o.body would ever get to those dowels without scaffolding. He was almost right: Randall had barely reached them by setting his good foot in our rope rigging and stretching. I'd worried he'd fall backward and whip downriver.

He hadn't. When he'd popped the second dowel out, the far end of the rib had pivoted eight inches, enough for us to see where the bogus planks had been added. A four-foot-square section had been glued and screwed together. It fit so well Randall and I both had to lean on a cat's paw to pop it out.

Once it was out, you could see why Phigg had rigged it this way: The false floor was low enough so that the real one sagged and squeaked the way a hundred-year-old floor should.

It was a h.e.l.l of a hidey-hole.

And a well-packed one.

We hadn't told Trey yet. I wanted to eyeball his reaction. He stood next to his trunk, trying to be cool but knowing something was up. Finally, as Randall and I stacked gear, he said, "Anything?"

We pretended we didn't hear. I tossed one rope end up to Trey, tied the other to the boat, put most of the gear in it, and told him to pull. He did, then dumped the gear and sent the boat back down the slope. We filled it with the rest of the gear and sent it up again.

Randall began whistling while we loaded the rubber boat a third time. It took me a few seconds to recognize the tune: "Money," by Pink Floyd.

I said to Trey, "That'll do it. Haul away." While he pulled, Randall and I scrambled up the bank. We made it as the boat crested the rise. Trey looked inside. Came to a dead stop. Did a double take. Grabbed a packet to triple-check.

Randall and I eye-locked, both thinking the same thing: No matter what anybody's timeline said, Trey Phigg hadn't known about any pile of money, hadn't killed his father.

Finally he said, "What the h.e.l.l?"

The rubber boat held four packs of money, each pack sixteen inches by sixteen by the width of a dollar bill. They were machine-wrapped in industrial plastic. Everything was vacuum sealed, professional quality-the way you'd protect money if you planned to store it four feet above a river.

Trey looked at me, then at Randall, then at me. "What is this?"

"Hard to tell until we count it," I said. "We were hoping it was all hundreds, but if you look close you can see everything from fives on up."

"Which is good news," Randall said. "It means your father already laundered it. The only thing better than money is money Uncle Sam doesn't know about."

Trey's mouth made an O as his head swiveled from me to Randall and back again. "But what is it?"

"It's yours is what it is," I said, glancing at the main road. "We're vulnerable here. Let's finish loading and split."

Two hours later in Framingham, I sat on a couch with Tuan and watched a TV show about sharing and the letter P. Trey and Randall had taken the money upstairs to count it. I was lookout.

On TV, something purple said sharing only works if everybody does it.

I pulled my cell and dialed Charlene's house. She picked up.

I said, "How is he?"

"Hang on a sec," Charlene said. I heard footsteps and pictured her moving from the great room into the living room, wanting a little privacy.

"Shaky," she said. "Grand and expansive one minute, then dead quiet. He ... he goes away, inside his head, and when he comes back it takes him a few seconds to remember who we are. Then he goes in his room-Jesse's room-with the phone and calls that guy. That seems to calm him down."

"What guy?"

"I was going to ask you," Charlene said as the purple thing on TV shared an ice cream sandwich with an orange thing. "Fred says you know the guy. I a.s.sumed you'd hooked him up with a sponsor."

Huh. "No. What's the number he's dialing?"

"I'm embarra.s.sed to say I checked, or tried to. He's masking that somehow."

Huh. Fred barely knew his shoe size; no way had he figured out how to erase call logs without instruction. Who the h.e.l.l was he talking to? Mental note: Find out.

"He have any more accidents?" I said.

"No, but he's paranoid about that. Strictly saltines and ginger ale so far. I'm trying to get some lunch into him. How was your little adventure?"

"Phigg had a big pile of money stashed in his shack," I said. "We found it."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned. How much?"

"Randall and Trey are counting it right now."

"Trey's in on the count? You trust him with that?"

"He didn't kill anybody."

Long pause. "The thing about you," Charlene finally said, "is that you don't trust anybody until you trust them. And then you trust them too much."

I told her if she'd watched Trey the way I had, fired questions at him the way I had, she'd understand.

She didn't sound convinced.

I was relieved when Randall and Trey clomped down the stairs. Said I had to go.

The three of us. .h.i.t the kitchen, where Kieu was cleaning the countertop like it was the president's shoes. Trey shot some Vietnamese at her and she went to watch TV with Tuan.

"Seventy-five K," Randall said as we sat. "Ratty old bills, everything from fives to hundreds. Fully laundered money."

I whistled and clapped Trey on the back. "Nice score."

"Like h.e.l.l it is," he said, slapping the table.

The room went quiet.

Trey looked at my face, then at Randall's, then around the kitchen. His face turned red as he realized how his comment had come across. "I'm sorry, guys," he said. "It is a lot of money, I guess. It all depends on your expectations."

"What were yours?" Randall said.

"High six figures, maybe seven," Trey said. "I knew my father was drawing down the Phigg Paper Products legacy, but I didn't know he was actively squandering it."

We were quiet awhile, Randall and I thinking about how to respond to that.

"Once we get this house fixed up, I'll be lucky to get a hundred grand for it," I finally said, then nodded at Randall. "He's driving around in his dad's twenty-year-old station wagon with rust holes you can step through."

Trey got it. "I hear you, and I'm sorry about the dilettante bit," he said. "In my defense, I just spent four years with four generations of in-laws in an apartment no bigger than this kitchen. I'm not exactly a silver-spoon kid."

"Or maybe you were, but got past it?" I said.

"Maybe."

That was enough for me.

From the family room came a song about the letter P.

After a while Randall said, "So what the h.e.l.l was he doing with seventy-five K stashed in his floorboards?"

"And living like a b.u.m?" I said.

"Who the h.e.l.l killed him?" Randall said.

"Where the h.e.l.l do we start?" Trey said.

Randall and I locked eyes, said it at the exact same time. "Hebron Crossroads, South Carolina."

Eight hours later I sat in a rented Ford Focus at the bottom of Myna Roper's driveway, wondering whether to knock on her door or backtrack to a Motel 6 I'd pa.s.sed twenty minutes ago.

My Seiko said 9:05. Purplish daylight hung tough to the west, this being one of the longest days of the year, but the eastern sky was black. I squinted up a rise at an unlit house-a small ranch or a big trailer-and wriggled my shoulder blades. The flight to Charlotte, then the three-hour drive south, had more or less locked up my back. Stiff, hungry, and tired, I wondered how the pizza was down here and lit the Focus. As I got set to U-turn north and head for the Motel 6, a light went on in the house. "h.e.l.l," I said out loud, wriggling my shoulders again as I pulled up the asphalt drive.

I'd spent most of the flight trying to think through my approach to Myna Roper. How would I establish trust? What info should I use? What should I hold back? But my brain doesn't like to work that way, so I'd mostly read Racer magazine and watched the college girl next to me play a game on her laptop.

As I climbed three wooden steps, I saw the house was a double-wide trailer, but a nice one: Mature bushes and flowers hid the bottom, and the vinyl siding was no more than a couple years old. I heard a TV, hesitated, knocked.

The TV went off or mute, and after a few seconds of scrabbling-dog?-the trailer turned quiet. I figured Myna Roper didn't get a lot of callers at this hour. I knocked again and said her name.

No movement, no sound. Just a frightened old lady keeping still and wis.h.i.+ng she hadn't turned the d.a.m.n light on.

"I'm here about Tander Phigg," I said, and waited.

It took her a full minute to crack the door. "Pardon me?" she said.

"He hanged himself last week in New Hamps.h.i.+re," I said, wis.h.i.+ng I was better at planning these things. "Can I come in?"

She opened the door wide, took two steps backward, and hit a light switch. By the time I stepped in and closed the door behind me, Myna Roper was leaning on a Formica counter, one hand over her mouth.

A spiky gray dog no bigger than my cats sniffed my ankle. I was grateful it hadn't barked the way those dogs usually do. I dropped to one knee and petted it and waited for Myna Roper to say something.

But she didn't. I rose and took a good look at her.

Chas Weinberg had called her an Amazon. You could see why. She was five-ten, even with an old woman's stoop; must have been very tall for her time. Her hair had been straightened and was cut in a very short pageboy, like something from an old Motown girl group. She wore no makeup, but her eyelashes were long and her dark skin was pure. Her flannel nightgown touched the floor.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't know how to do things like this. He killed himself, and I'm working with his son to figure out why, and we both thought I should talk to you."

She looked at me another ten seconds, then uncovered her mouth and nodded. "He did have a son, didn't he?"

"Tander Phigg the Third," I said. "He goes by Trey."

She put the hand over her mouth again-tried to make it a casual gesture, but I'd already noticed she didn't have her teeth in. "Pardon me," she said behind the hand, "but who did you say you were to Tander?"

I said my name and told her I'd known him a decade or more from AA. She nodded, waved to a brown-and-tan sofa, and asked if I'd like to sit while she made herself decent. The wave pulled my eye to an end table. Atop it were a short lamp and a tall mixed drink with two cherries. Her eye followed mine to the drink.

Her dark skin couldn't hide the blus.h.i.+ng.

I waited ten minutes. At first I sat near the lamp, but I could smell the drink and it bothered me. It was a Manhattan. Funny the things you remember, the things you can't clear from your head.

I moved to the opposite end of the sofa and looked around. The walls were paneled, the TV an off-brand plasma, a thirty-two-incher. The dog sat beneath the TV and stared at me, head c.o.c.ked. On the walls were a clock made to look like a compa.s.s, a framed thank-you from a church youth group, and a twin frame with two pictures: a high-school graduation shot of a girl who had Myna's eyes and lashes, and an uncomfortable-looking man with a broad nose and a half-a.s.sed Afro.

There was also a black-and-white photo, framed, of young Myna Roper.

She'd been stunning. In the shot she wore a black dancer's leotard and posed on a stage or platform, right thigh tucked beneath her rear end, left leg extended straight before her. The twist of her arms and the way her neck swanned made her look like a hurdler, a ballerina, and a warrior all at once.

"Tander shot that one," she said, stepping from the bedroom at the end of the narrow trailer. "It's the only memorabilia I keep from that time."

She'd put on black stretch pants, a baggy T-s.h.i.+rt that said CLEMSON, and her teeth. She must have gotten over her embarra.s.sment about the drink while she changed, because she plopped into her spot on the sofa, hefted her Manhattan, and took a pull. "To the memory of Tander Phigg Junior," she said, toasting, and took another. "You said he hanged himself? Dear G.o.d. Please tell me the circ.u.mstances."

I did, while she drank.

When I finished, Myna Roper said nothing for a long time. I watched her play movies in her head. Her eyes would crinkle, then soften as she moved from scene to scene. "My, that was a long time ago," she finally said. "I imagine you've got quite a story to tell about how you managed to run me down. Are you a detective?"

"Just a friend of Tander's, Miz Roper."

"Myna, please. Just a friend, and come all this way?"

"We were in the same AA group," I said. "Tight bunch. We help each other out."

"How do you plan to help a dead man?"

"His son's not dead."

"What is the son like?" she said. "Did the apple stay good and close to the tree, the way they tend to do?" She sipped, watched me close. I made a quick decision to go for honesty.

"I've only known Trey a week," I said, "but I think he's a much better man than his father was."

Myna smiled big, showing me bright white dentures. "How so?"

I thought about it. "He knows who he is," I finally said. "I'll bet he knows what he's good at and what he's bad at, and I'll bet he's okay with both."