One Good Deed(104)

Though he should have been expecting it, he nearly jumped when Lucas Tuttle’s voice came on.

“To Sam Malloy, Attorney-at-Law. Dear Sam, Now that I’ve changed my will, disinheriting my traitorous and worthless daughter, and with all this new money coming in, I want to make a few more changes to everything. I would like you to come by next Friday to discuss them. Let me know a good time for you. Sincerely, Lucas Tuttle.” There was a pause and the man next dictated a few other short business letters to various people.

The recording left off at that point and Archer tipped his hat back. So the old man had cut out his daughter. That explained a lot, but not in a good way for Jackie.

He pocketed the tape, left the room, moved down the hall to Tuttle’s office, and opened the door.

Inside he once more shone his Ray-O-Vac light around.

There was some blood on the desktop, from where Tuttle had been shot. He next examined the console where the revolvers still lay side by side.

Archer walked over to the safe and swung open the door. It was indeed empty. He noted twin holes drilled into the door. The locksmith’s doing, he figured. He next shone his light on some framed pictures lined up on the mantel. He had seen them on his prior visit here but couldn’t make out who was in them. There wasn’t a single picture of Isabel or Jackie.

Archer noted the large plant in a vase on a stand next to the fireplace. He had seen it before but paid it no attention. He poked around it and then shone his light behind the broad leaves of the plant. The light beam reflected off the glass. He pulled out the object that had been placed right behind the vase. It was a framed photo. Why would Tuttle have hidden this back there? When Archer looked at the photo, he thought he had his answer.

There were two men in the photo.

One was Lucas Tuttle. The other was Malcolm Draper.

What in the hell?

He slid the frame into his jacket pocket, stepped back, and looked over at the desk. There was nothing of particular importance on it except for the bloodstains. There were some on the floor, too, where the man had fallen. Archer looked through the drawers and wastebasket and came up empty. He figured Shaw had been all over this room anyway. But maybe he had missed something else besides the photo of the two men. Archer pulled out the drawers again and checked not in the drawers, but under them.

He found nothing.

He perched on the desk and his eyes alighted on the Remington over-under leaning against the fireplace stone. He picked it up, broke the breech, and saw that there were no shells inside. Then he turned it around and shone his light down the one barrel where he had previously seen something strange. There was definitely an object hidden in there.

He used a letter opener on the desk to work the item from the barrel. It was a curled-up piece of onionskin, a carbon copy of a typed letter. He uncurled it and started reading. It was from Tuttle and was addressed to Poca City’s district attorney, a Mr. Herbert Brooks. As he read down the letter, Archer’s insides turned to putty.

That son of a bitch.

He put the letter in his pocket. Well, at least the damn shotgun had been good for something.

He glanced at the device on the desk.

A Dictaphone, Tuttle had called it. The little receiver he had been holding when Archer had walked in here previously was lying on the desk, its squiggly cord attached to the machine.

As Archer kept staring at the thing, the image of Shaw’s recording their talk at the police station popped into his head. He shone his light on the machine and, as he had with Desiree’s machine, he quickly figured out the functions of the buttons.

He hit one and heard a whirring sound coming from within the innards of the Dictaphone as the tape rewound fully. He also saw that the thing you spoke into had a little button that you held down, presumably when you were speaking into it. There was also a little catch that you could engage. This kept the speaking button down without having to use your thumb the whole time. Archer saw that this catch had indeed been set, keeping the button down.

When the tape stopped rewinding, he pressed another button. The whirring sound took up once more.

He flinched, as the dead man’s voice suddenly filled the room.

He was dictating more letters to various people, methodically, without pause. Then there was a long gap. Then he heard the man say in connection with a letter to another gent, “Desiree, depending on how my meeting with Jackie goes tonight, we may have to make arrangements for her to move back in here. I will discuss those details when I return from my business trip next week.” Tuttle went on with some more instructions for the woman, and then the tape fell silent. Archer turned the machine off.

It appeared that Tuttle had every intention of visiting his daughter that night. So what had happened? The thoughts were catapulting through his head like ack-ack fired at enemy planes. Because on the one hand it seemed that Tuttle was expecting his daughter to move back in. But then there was the letter to Herbert Brooks: What he had communicated in there did not mesh with having his daughter back home. But maybe it did somehow to Lucas Tuttle.

Desiree had typed up a letter from Tuttle where he had disinherited his daughter. He had a feeling that Desiree had let Jackie know about this. That would explain why Jackie would come here and clean out the safe. Otherwise, she would get nothing.

Next to the desk, he spied a small wooden box with a handle that the Dictaphone was evidently meant to be stored in. With a sudden thought, he wound up the machine’s electrical cord and slipped it into the box. He wanted to know what Shaw would make of all this.