The Bee Balm Murders Read Online Free PDF

knew him better than I did,” said Orion. “Know anything about his sons?”
    “You mean, will they carry out their old man’s intention to invest?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Even if they do, it’ll take time,” said Martin. “Funeral, grieving, probate. Might take a couple of years.”
    “We don’t have that kind of time,” said Orion. “Do they have money of their own?”
    “This isn’t the best time to ask.” Casper Martin stopped talking and Orion said nothing.
    Martin broke the silence. “Who killed him, the mob?”
    “I haven’t a clue,” said Orion.
    The man next door came out of the house holding an umbrella over a Cronig’s grocery bag he was carrying, the kind with paper handles. The bag bulged with something heavy and the handles seemed ready to tear off. He slung the bag into the back seat, closed the umbrella, got into the front seat, and backed out of the drive.
    “Vulpone was a stubborn son of a bitch,” said Martin. “He wouldn’t listen to anyone except those two kids of his. Nobody liked the guy, but nobody hated him, either.”
    “Someone did. Enough to kill him. How closely was he connected to the mob?”
    “Hard to know,” Martin replied. “He probably was since just about everyone in the Jersey–New York construction business has dealings with the mob at some time or other.”
    “I assume his killing is mob related,” said Orion.
    “If so, we’ll never know. The question I’m asking is why was Vulpone on the Island? Checking up on the project? The company? You?”
    “The head of Public Works told me that Vulpone was asking for me by name last night.”
    “Probably paying a surprise visit,” said Martin, “check up for himself. That would be like him.”
    “Who told him where we were working? The ball field is not a place you’d think to look for someone installing optical cable. Had you mentioned it to him?”
    “I haven’t talked to him for a couple of weeks. The ball field operation’s come up since then.”
    “We’ve got two years to complete a job that should take eighteen months,” said Orion. “But I’m learning that with six governments in six towns on this Island and not a single engineer among the lot…” He took a breath. “Every meeting I go to has two or three activists in attendance convinced that communicating by fiber optics is going to produce two-headed babies—”
    “Okay, okay,” Martin interrupted. “We’re talking about adding an extra two years to educate the populace. We don’t have that kind of time.”
    Orion sighed. “We can complete the project in two, even with town politics. But only with enough capital. You want to see what you can do about that?”
    “Yeah,” said Martin.
    “Vulpone didn’t sign anything, did he?”
    “Nope. He was too canny.”
    Orion said, “It shouldn’t be difficult to find the money, even now. The communications business is pretty much untouched by recession.”
    “Yeah,” said Martin.
    “My best estimate of the total project cost was twenty-four million,” said Orion. “You found potential backers for about two-thirds. That leaves a shortfall of the eight million Vulpone had promised.”
    Looking down from his window, holding the phone against his ear, wishing he could lift his feet up on his desk, Orion imagined what it would be like to lead a normal life. Coming home with the Sunday paper and sharing sections. The kids reading the comics, he and the wife working on the crossword puzzle together …
    “I’ll see what I can do,” said Martin. “There’s money out there, only a question of finding it.”
    After they’d hung up, Orion thought about the man next door and wondered why he’d brought his Sunday paper home and left almost immediately with that Cronig’s bag.

 
    C HAPTER 5
    That afternoon, contrary to Victoria’s prediction of a three-day rain, the sky cleared and the sun appeared. Victoria went out to the garden with her secateurs to snip bouquets of bee