Now I’m afraid of the bastard, Gill thought.
No question about it, he would have to find a way to get rid of Paxton. Maybe he could figure out how to kill Paxton as well as Truett with Daydream and blame both murders on crazy Adelaide Blake. Maybe he could salvage the original plan. Maybe he could survive the mess.
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed obvious that he did not need Paxton. He promised himself that by the time he got back to Rushbrook, he would come up with a scheme to ensure that he was the last man standing. He and he alone would control Daydream.
He got as far as Cliff Road before the explosion erupted, shattering the silence of the night. He died instantly.
The intense fire crackled to life a short time later.
* * *
? ? ?
?Paxton stood in the shadows and watched the Ford burn. It had been so easy to light the fuse on the stick of dynamite he had hidden under his coat, so easy to toss the explosive into the trunk of Gill’s car.
The thrill of satisfaction was intoxicating. They were all gone now—Ormsby, Madam Zolanda, Thelma Leggett, and finally, tonight, Gill. The drug ring had been shut down—except for him, of course. He was the last man standing. Now he and he alone controlled the powerful hallucinogen called Daydream.
Unlike Gill, he had no intention of selling it to a foreign government or anyone else. The potential was too promising. A few refinements were all that was needed to make Daydream more predictable. He could use derelicts and transients for the final phase of development.
Once he was sure that the drug was reliable, he would be able to control the most powerful people in the nation: industrialists, newspaper magnates, politicians—hell, maybe even the president.
Paxton envisioned his destiny with a sense of wonder. Soon he would become the most powerful man in America.
There was no reason to worry about Conrad Massey. It was true that he knew too much but everything he knew was connected to Gill and Ormsby, and both of them were now dead. Massey had never been aware of the drug ring that had been operating for years out of the Rushbrook Sanitarium. He had never known that Zolanda and Thelma Leggett had been dealing drugs to celebrities in Hollywood or that Gill’s old pal from medical school had been involved from the start.
Gill had been right about Adelaide Blake. No one would take her seriously once it became known that she had escaped from an asylum. Jake Truett was the only unpredictable element in the equation. He was evidently the kind of man who would keep asking questions until he was satisfied. Gill’s idea to have Adelaide Blake poison her lover was not a bad one. It had been easy enough to slip some Daydream into Truett’s drink at the Paradise Club. It was just a fluke that Truett had survived the first dose. He would not survive a second.
The front door of the hotel slammed open. The night clerk rushed out onto the porch to view the fiery scene at the end of the street. A few startled guests raised their windows to see what was going on.
The night clerk hurried back inside, no doubt to telephone the fire department.
Sure enough, a short time later sirens sounded in the night. By now the night clerk was back outside on the porch. He was accompanied by a handful of guests in their bathrobes.
Paxton waited a moment longer before he left the shadows of the oleanders and entered the hotel through the back door. There was no one in the lobby. The registration book was open on the front counter. It showed that a Mr. Smith had been staying in room five. The key was still on the counter where Gill had tossed it on his way out.
Paxton grabbed it and headed upstairs. It wouldn’t take long to set the stage.
He left the crumpled receipt in the trash basket and then he hurried back downstairs. His car was waiting on the street behind the hotel. Time to return to the Paradise. The most beautiful woman in Hollywood was waiting for him. Vera would start to worry if he didn’t get back to her soon. She got very anxious when he was not around.
Chapter 46
Luther hung up the phone on the wall of Adelaide’s kitchen. “Oliver Ward says that Paxton left the Burning Cove Hotel earlier this evening and has not yet returned. My manager told me that Paxton showed up at the club a short time ago. He is currently seated with Miss Westlake. They are both enjoying martinis.”
“That leaves a lot of Paxton’s time unaccounted for,” Adelaide pointed out.
“He’s involved in this thing,” Jake said. “I know he is.”
It was going on two thirty in the morning. She was at the kitchen counter making coffee. Jake, Luther, and Raina were gathered around the big table. It had been a night of shocks and surprises, she thought, but at long last they were getting some answers. Things were falling into place.
“Well, we know one thing for sure,” Raina said. “Paxton is alive and having cocktails with Vera Westlake, so that tells us he’s not the dead man in the Ford. It must be Gill.”
“There’s no way to know for certain until that car cools down enough to allow the authorities to pull the body out of the front seat,” Luther said. “And even then we might never know for sure.”
“That fire was very intense,” Jake said. “I doubt if there will be enough left for a positive identification, but unless Gill shows up alive at Rushbrook, I think it’s safe to assume he was the one behind the wheel of the Ford.”
Luther looked at him. “I agree with you, Jake. Paxton is closing down the drug ring that was operating out of Rushbrook.”
“All we’ve got at this point is that receipt for three sticks of dynamite,” Adelaide said.
“Dynamite is not exactly a subtle method of getting rid of people,” Jake said, “but it does have one very useful side effect.”
“It doesn’t leave much in the way of evidence,” Raina observed.
Adelaide turned around, coffeepot in hand, just in time to catch the expression on Luther’s face. He was watching Raina with an interesting mix of speculation, curiosity, and admiration.
“You make an excellent point,” he said.
When news of the explosion reached the police station, they had all piled into cars and followed Brandon and his officers to the scene. There was enough left of the burning vehicle to identify it as a Ford, but the warped and twisted metal was still too hot to allow the fire department to extract the remains of the body in the front seat. The hotel desk clerk said that one of his guests had driven the Ford.
Detective Brandon had not argued when Jake, Adelaide, Raina, and Luther accompanied him up the hotel stairs to number five. Gill had done a thorough job of packing but he had missed the crumpled receipt for three sticks of dynamite in the small trash basket. Jake was the one who had noticed it.
“What we know for certain is that someone, presumably Gill, purchased three sticks of dynamite from a hardware store in a small town about halfway between Burning Cove and Rushbrook,” Jake said. “If we assume that one of the sticks was used to blow up my car, that means Gill might have had two more in the Ford.”
Adelaide poured coffee into the four mugs on the table. “If Gill was the one who purchased the dynamite sticks, the explosion tonight must have been accidental.”
Jake picked up his mug and cradled it in two hands. “A stick of fresh dynamite is not particularly unstable, but old dynamite is very dangerous. The stuff degrades over time. The nitroglycerin seeps out and that, of course, is highly volatile. Wouldn’t take much to set it off.”
“Dynamite purchased in a small-town hardware store might be old,” Luther observed. “A careless match or even a strong jolt could cause it to explode.’”