Death on Beacon Hill Read Online Free PDF

sip of tea and set his cup down. Raising his gaze to Nell, he said, “After Pratt left, Chief Kurtz went in there, and this time I could hear almost everything, ‘cause Kurtz tends to roar when he’s on the warpath.”
    “On the warpath? Against Skinner?”
    “What I’m about to tell you,” Cook said evenly, “you didn’t hear none of it from me.”
    Nell raised her right hand as if taking an oath. “I’ll swear on a Bible if it’ll help,” she said, knowing Cook wasn’t the type to speak out of school and appreciating it as a gesture of respect. No doubt he was also motivated to some extent by Skinner’s contempt for him and the miserable working conditions this created.
    Leaning forward, elbows on his desk, Cook said, “Kurtz was all het up about some book of Virginia Kimball’s that no one seems to be able to find.”
    “A book? What kind of book?”
    Cook twitched his shoulders as he sat back and lifted his teacup. “They called it ‘the Red Book.’ It was somewhere in her house, or should have been. From what I could gather, Skinner had torn the place apart looking for it—or claimed he did. Kurtz seemed to think Skinner might have it and be holding on to it for some reason, but he swore it wasn’t so. Kurtz asked him if the Red Book had anything to do with all the rich la-di-dahs that had been paradin’ in and out of his office all morning.”
    “Did he mention any names?”
    “A few. Maximilian Thurston, the playwright.”
    “He was a friend of hers,” Nell said, recalling that morning’s newspaper article. “He’s the one who found the bodies.”
    “Yeah, he was apparently waiting for Skinner when he showed up at work this morning. Then there was Horace Bacon...”
    “The Criminal Court judge? I’ve met him.” Nell had hand-delivered a sizable bribe to Judge Bacon a year and a half ago, on Viola’s behalf, to encourage him to overturn another judge’s denial of bail after Will was arrested for murder. The judge had accepted the fat envelope as if it were a routine part of his job. “Who else?” she asked.
     “Weyland Swann, the banker. And Isaac Foster.
Dr.
Isaac Foster—Harvard big-shot.” Cook rubbed his great boulder of a jaw. “I reckon that was it.”
    “And Chief Kurtz thought they were all coming to see Skinner about the Red Book?”
    “Either that, or they were paying him off to wrap up the case all quick and tidy, with nobody calling them in and asking them any uncomfortable questions.”
    “Which implies some measure of guilt on their parts,” she said. “Four men? All guilty? And then there was Orville Pratt this afternoon—that makes five.”
    “Like I said, Pratt may have been here on legal business,” Cook said. “But as for them others, one thing you learn in this job is almost everybody’s got
something
to hide.”
    Too true
, thought Nell, who’d been no more forthcoming about her past with Cook than with Brady.
    “Kurtz said he assumed Skinner’s wallet was a good deal fatter after them fellas visited him than it’d been when he came to work this morning,” Cook continued, “but that he should remember he was on the city’s payroll, too.”
    “Did Skinner deny taking payoffs from those men?”
    “Nah,” Cook said. “He wouldn’t have insulted Kurtz’s intelligence—not to his face, anyway.”
    Nell bit back her opinion of Police Department graft. After all, Colin Cook held his hand out every now and again; it was the way of things.
    “Kurtz told Skinner to find that book, and fast,” Cook said. “Said he didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands and complicating things. Ordered him to go back to Mrs. Kimball’s house after work and search it again. Skinner said that wouldn’t be possible, on account of Orville Pratt had hired a crew of day laborers to go over there tonight and get the place in shape—clean it up, haul out the bloody carpeting, scrub the viscera off the walls...”
    “But it’s a crime