The Last Altruist by Richard J. Cass

Author:Richard J. Cass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: amateur sleuth detective mysteries mystery series; noir suspense; Down East Maine local small town; map maker cartographer cartography land survey; former military soldier; set-up framed; crime novel crooked land developer
Publisher: Encircle Publications
Published: 2024-02-12T21:22:42+00:00

30

I still didn’t trust him not to fuck me over, but if it protected Robbie and Rebekah, even temporarily, I could work with him. I knew too many variations on the tale of the frog and the scorpion crossing the river not to suspect he would sting me if I gave him the chance. Not only was it his nature, he believed I owed him: for the loss of his Army career, the prison time, and the public opprobrium.

We agreed on a division of labor. He would get in touch with Dakins without telling him why. He had a better chance of finding out what his second was up to than I did. I was still suspicious of the coincidence, the two of them here at the same time, but we needed to know where Dakins was.

I would encourage Rebekah not to sign anything Lee-Lee handed her, not to sell the block to anyone else, and preferably, to go into hiding. If I didn’t have to worry about her, I could concentrate on finding Robbie.

“You fuck me over?” I said as McGinty yanked the Town Car’s door handle. “Leavenworth will seem like a dream.”

“Two days, maybe three,” he said. “And I’ll be gone. You can go back to drawing pictures and staring at the ocean.”

* * *

I drove down Cottage Road, which turned into Shore Road once you crossed the line into Cape Elizabeth. If nothing else, I would be able to tell her, assuming she didn’t know, that what Walter had taken and hidden was a set of photos. If she knew exactly what everyone was looking for, she might have a better idea where they were hidden.

The neighborhood around Rebekah’s house was quieter today, the late summer landscape in less need of attention, the lawns browning up toward the dormancy of fall. The thrash of waves on the rocks greeted me as I walked up the driveway.

I walked the perimeter of the sprawling house. It looked buttoned up, the windows closed, doors latched tight. Maybe she’d fled on her own, though I couldn’t imagine her leaving without Robbie. Had he returned? Or been returned?

As I rounded the corner from the back, a man stepped out of the sun porch of the house next door. He stared down at me from the top step.

“Help you?”

He was a caricature of New England coot: tall, lean, and stooped; bony as a birch, in a short-sleeved plaid cotton shirt, permanent press pants, a thin leather belt with a brass trout for a buckle.

“No, sir. Looking for Mrs. Horvath.”

“Well.” He cleared his throat and spit onto the driveway. “When you find her, tell her I don’t much care for being awakened at three in the morning with the cars coming and going and the singing and all that. This didn’t used to be that kind of neighborhood.”

He turned to go inside.

“Hold up. Sir. Please.”

He leveled a glare of ice and steel at me. Former executive of some kind, maybe high-ranking military. Used to

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