Point Blank

Dix said, “Helen Rafferty plays the piano beautifully.”

“Hmm. I wonder what Dr. Holcombe will tell us about this.”

“It’ll be interesting. Chappy told me one of the reasons he calls his brother Twister is that he can wriggle out of anything.”

Ruth looked out the window at the lovely expanse of white pristine snow. Two hawks cruised overhead, their wingspan impressive against the clear blue sky. When she lost sight of them, she said, “If I’ve got this right, Erin Bushnell wasn’t only a brilliant music student at the Stanislaus School of Music, she was also in love with the director and was the best friend of the director’s niece-in-law.”

CHAPTER 19

CHAPPY HOLCOMBE SAT at the head of the spit-polished Chippendale dining table. “Well, how about it, Cynthia, do you think Twister was sleeping with your good friend Erin Bushnell?”

Cynthia Holcombe finished chewing her breadstick, swallowed, and regarded her father-in-law as if he’d made a tacky joke. “No, I don’t,” was all she said. She picked up another breadstick, as if in self-defense.

Chappy waved his fork at his daughter-in-law. “Fact is, I don’t, either. Cynthia, you’re the one I’d swear old Twister wants to sleep with, given all those lusty looks he tosses your way.”

“Dad, please,” Tony said, but his voice was more resigned than angry or embarrassed.

“All right, all right,” Chappy said. “Mrs. Goss, where’s our lunch?”

“Yours is right here, Chappy.” Mrs. Goss, fiftyish, was blessed with striking, heavy black hair she wore loose and curling down her back, like a gypsy. A long bright yellow velvet skirt swished gracefully around her ankles, a peasant blouse, cut low, the final touch. She leaned down to set a platter of shrimp salad at Chappy’s right hand, her cleavage not three inches from his face.

“Looks good,” Chappy said, “even the salad.”

“Control yourself,” Mrs. Goss said and swished back to the kitchen.

“You’re in for a treat, Agent,” Chappy said to Ruth. “Mrs. Goss makes the best shrimp salad in Virginia, and she knows it.”

“That may be,” Cynthia said. “But she should wear an apron over her ridiculous hippie outfits.”

“She’s a gypsy, not a hippie,” Chappy said, annoyance in his dark eyes if not in his voice. “She doesn’t press her bosom in your face, Cynthia, only mine. Otherwise I wouldn’t see any bosoms at all. Leave her alone.”

Mrs. Goss finished serving, seemingly oblivious, and left them to it, her large silver hoop earrings flashing in the sunlight.

“Cynthia, tell me about Erin Bushnell,” Dix said. “Tony said you two were like sisters.”

Cynthia replied calmly, “Tony is out of date. Erin and I got along nicely until she started eyeing my husband. Her death, well, it’s a great shock, as you can imagine, because at one time we were quite close. I still grieve for her.”

Dix said, “So Tony didn’t know how you felt? He saw your grief and believed you and Erin were still as close as before?”

“Erin never came on to me, Cynthia, never,” Tony said.

“I saw her pull you into the moonlight last Tuesday night at that cocktail party Gloria Stanford threw. It was cold that night, but that didn’t stop either of you.”

Tony speared a shrimp on his fork and stared at it. “I don’t even remember that. I’m surprised you noticed, since you were flirting with Uncle Gordon.”

Chappy set his fork on his plate, leaned back in his chair, and laughed until it was the only sound in the dining room. He said to Ruth on a hiccup, “You look shell-shocked, Agent Warnecki. It’s always a circus between the two of them.”

One of Dix’s black eyebrows shot up. “Add you to the mix, Chappy, and we’ve got the wild animal act.”

“Nah, I’m as tame as your little Brewster.”

“Brewster thinks he’s a Doberman.”

Tony asked Dix, “You find out yet who hired those guys to kill Agent Warnecki on Saturday night?”

The question brought the conversation to a halt. Ruth could hear Mrs. Goss humming in the kitchen.

Chappy said into the heart of the silence, “Dix probably doesn’t want to talk about it, Tony. Fact is, identifying them may not be possible. I heard the bodies were badly burned. That right, Dix?”

Dix shrugged. “We’ll see. The FBI forensic lab is using their fingerprint recognition program on the partial prints we have. We’re looking for where the men might have come from. We may have something more to go on soon.”