Say No to Murder

by Nancy Pickard

  “Yes,” Geof said, and Belzer nodded.

  “So it would not necessarily have resulted in his death,” I continued. “He might not even have been injured. Am I right, or not?”

  “You’re right,” Geof agreed. “It might have been a practical joke that went terribly wrong.”

  “Practical joke,” said Belzer unexpectedly. “Ha.”

  “Or,” Geof continued, “it might have been someone who wanted to scare Reich for some reason. Maybe well get a rash of these incidents and well find out that some garage in town is staging brake failures to drum up business.”

  “I’ll ignore that pun,” I said, and Belzer grinned at the floor.

  Geof smiled. “It wouldn’t be the most amazing thing I’d ever seen, you know. At any rate, whatever the cause of the brakes failing, the final effect is the same.”

  “Homicide,” I said.

  “Sure. He’s dead, whether somebody meant to kill him or not. If they didn’t, the only difference will be in the nature and severity of the charges we bring against them.”

  “You may have other charges to bring against them, too,” I suggested. “In the last twenty-four hours, the foreman of the project is killed, the project itself is torched, and somebody slashes the tires on the builder’s vehicles. Murder, arson and vandalism. I get the feeling somebody has a grudge against Liberty Harbor!”

  “Looks that way,” Geof said, “although you’d be the first to tell me how, supposedly, everybody loves the place.”

  “Still, it’s a whale of a lot of coincidence that these events occurred on the same weekend—when the harbor has no previous record of any trouble at all.”

  “Well, we will investigate them as separate incidents, with an eye toward linking them. All we need is a motive,” he said ruefully. “All we need is to find somebody who doesn’t love Liberty Harbor.”

  “He ought to stand out,” I said, “like black on white.”

  But Geof had turned back to the young mechanic. “Good work, son,” he said, “I’ll send Ailey Mason down to get your full workup. Make it fast, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Geof put a hand under my elbow to steer me toward the door. I smiled a goodbye at Belzer, but he didn’t notice. He was lovingly stroking the chassis of the ’52 Chevy, sharing his moment of glory with something that would understand.

  The door closed behind us. We stood once more in the stairwell.

  “Son?” I said.

  “He brings out the paternal in me, I guess.” Geof paused, started to say something, paused again. “For lack of someone shorter and whiter who looks like me.”

  I stared at his back as he led the way upstairs.

  Well, I thought, here’s a new twist: children.

  But I said nothing, acutely aware of his awareness of my saying nothing. At the first landing, I tugged at the bottoms of his swim trunks. “This being homicide,” I said, “I won’t be seeing much of you for a while.”

  He stopped, turned and looked down at me.

  “Know one of the things I love most about you? About our, for lack of a better word, relationship?”

  I shook my head.

  “I like it that I’m going to be gone days and nights until we solve this Reich business, or don’t solve it. And that you’ll miss me, but not much.”

  “Some men would be insulted by that.”

  “Some men are little boys who still want to be the center of Mommy’s universe. It gives me a fine free feeling to know you can live without me.” His smile grew lopsided. “Whether or not I could live without you, though, that’s a question to which this detective does not have a clue.”

  “Well, that’s one case we don’t have to solve today.”

  He leaned down, gripping my shoulders and pulling me toward him. He pressed my head against his belly; I felt the damp heat of his body through his shirt. He said, pulling me up to a higher step so that my face was closer to Ms, “But when this is over, Jenny, then we face it, I mean it. I’m not willing to play house with you forever. I want to make a home.”

  He kissed me. I returned it forcefully.

  We drew apart. “I thought I already had my answer last night,” he said, “but that kiss makes me wonder if you know your own mind.”

  “It is,” I admitted, “sometimes a stranger to me.”

  But I had nothing more to say then. When he saw that was the case, he turned and recommenced our silent trek back to his office.

  chapter

  8

  On Monday, I returned to the more mundane, but more immediately rewarding world of foundation work.

  When I walked into the office, I found my staff gathered around that morning’s paper, which contained the first printed word of the weekend’s death and destruction. Faye Basil’s expression was maternal, concerned. “Jenny,” she said, “are you all right?” I assured them all that I was. My assistant director, Derek Jones, wanted to know who killed Reich, as if I were privy to secret information. “Do the police know something they’re not telling?” Derek demanded.

  “If they do,” I said, “they’re not telling me, either.”

  “Why would anybody want to harm the project?” asked Marvin Lastelic, our part-time controller. He looked hurt, as would many people in this town when they considered that same question. “It’s a good thing for everybody!”

  “I don’t know, Marv.”

  The paper headlined: HARBOR PROJECT SABOTAGED, with a subhead that read like my own thoughts: Foreman Killed, Buildings Ablaze, and Vandalism Spell Trouble for Renovation. The first paragraphs detailed Reich’s plunge into the bay and the subsequent discovery of the slice in his brake line. Inside, there was a full-page spread of photographs from the groundbreaking.

  “There’s you with the Reverend Eberhardt.” Faye Basil pointed at one of the pictures. Hardy and I grinned at each other as at some private joke, all hair, teeth and eyeballs. She said, “My, he’s nice-looking.”

  “Here’s the one I like.” Derek chuckled. He pointed to a group picture that had been snapped at the exact moment when our committee fully comprehended the magnitude of the danger roaring toward us. It was funny, if inadvertently so. The photographer must have shot it seconds before he dropped his camera on the pier and joined the committee in our dive for safety. (One of the humorous ironies of that afternoon had been the anguish of the press corps who’d been in the news for once—while most of their equipment floated uselessly to the bottom of the bay. “Up a creek with a Pentax,” as one camerawoman had mourned.) There we all were, all ten of us: one face was openmouthed in. disbelief; another was dumb with shock; a third looked as if the devil himself were approaching in a pickup truck. As for me, if there had been a caption above my head, it would have read, “Oh shit.”

  Derek’s finger moved down to a photograph of the police bringing Reich’s truck back up to the surface of the bay. “Jeez,” he said, and whistled. “When we promise publicity for the groundbreaking of Liberty Harbor, we deliver.”

  “Jenny,” Faye interrupted, “the media are after you, I’m afraid. There are messages for you to call the Port Frederick Times, WKYZ, WNAB . . .” She held up a sheaf of pink slips and waved them under my nose, “And a couple of papers in Boston, or maybe they were TV stations . . .”

  “They want to interview you as an eyewitness,” Marvin Lastelic said proudly. Marv was the oldest one of us on the Foundation staff; he was honest, loyal and dedicated. “I looked for you on the morning news shows, but I couldn’t find you.”

  “I skipped town, Marvin.”

  “So how is the detective?” Derek, ever impudent, grinned.

  “Busy,” I said repressively. “As we all should be. Faye, I’ll take those messages now.” As I Hipped through them, I had an odd sensation that my staff was holding its collective breath. Then I came to the last pink slip. “Oh Lord,” I groaned. “My father called.”

  They exchanged glances they meant to be discreet. It was no secret that James Damon Cain
III was contentedly living out his forced retirement in Palm Springs, on the fat of the trust funds his father had left him and which the company bankruptcy had not touched.

  “Did he say what he wants?” I asked Faye.

  Again, those discreet glances that should have told me something.

  “Uh,” said Faye.

  “What?” I demanded, “What?”

  “He’s here, Jenny,” Derek said.

  “Here?” My voice rose in dismay. “In Poor Fred?”

  “No . . .” Faye’s hazel eyes drifted toward the closed door of my office. “He’s here now . . . in your office.”

  “Oh God, give me strength,” I moaned.

  On cue, as if he’d been listening—which I doubted since my father had never really grasped the fact that entire hemispheres of people proceeded with their lives in his absence—his remarkable face appeared around the door. It was a deeply tanned face framed by a movie-star sweep of silver hair that brushed the collar of his open-neck golf shirt. You’d have sworn this was the American ambassador to the Court of St James, or Gary Grant’s twin brother. I’d known strangers to walk up and ask for his autograph, just because he looked as if he ought to be famous.

  He was famous, all right, at least in Port Frederick.

  Death and arson faded from my mind as I faced the more immediate dangers posed by the walking, talking disaster I called “Dad.”

  “Jennifer, my dear,” he said, “how lovely to see you!”

  Faye, despite all she knew about him, sighed.

  I slumped within my sophisticated executive suit. I felt shrunken to ten years old again, and wishing my beautiful father would recognize my existence apart from his own. If he knew what I’d been through that weekend, he didn’t give a clue.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said, thoroughly depressed. “How’s tricks?”

  We pecked cheeks.

  He followed me into my office and took the chair across from my desk. He’d never seen me at work before, but he didn’t comment on that, either.

  “I nearly drowned this weekend, Dad,” I said ruthlessly. “And then I was nearly incinerated.”

  “Were you?” He brightened as if I’d said a particularly clever thing. “Well, you’re looking fine now, dear. Do you know, there is no decent accommodation in this godforsaken burg? I’ve had to resort to a Ramada, if you can believe it.”

  “How awful for you.”

  “They don’t even turn down the bed linens at night!” He shook Ms gorgeous head over the slovenliness, not to mention the sheer inconsiderateness of it all “I’m so glad I didn’t bring your stepmother.”

  One small step for mankind, I thought ungraciously.

  “And how is your mother?” He was unaware of the incredible tactlessness in his conversational juxtaposition of the two women, one of whom he’d left for the other. “Is she doing well, Jennifer?”

  “As well as can be expected,” I said in a dead-steady voice, “when one is comatose most of the time.”

  “Good, good.” With my father, you were never sure if you were part of the conversation, because he never actually replied to anything that was said to him, but just carried on wherever his ephemeral mind led him. It was a lovely land my father inhabited, and one where no one else was admitted. He said, “Well, I thought I’d drop by Jack Fenton’s office at the bank this afternoon and offer my assistance.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  ’They’ll want the family to be part of it, of course,” he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was going on about. “And I do have all that valuable experience with major building projects.”

  “Major building projects?” I stared at him. “You mean the canning plant you had built that threw us into bankruptcy? Is that the valuable experience you’re talking about, Dad?”

  “Of course, dear.” He smiled, taking from my question only those words he chose to hear. “They’ll want me for an advisor of sorts, I expect. I’m a bit surprised I haven’t heard from Jack before this.”

  “Dad?” I waited until I thought I had his eye, “What are you talking about, Dad?”

  The fine gray eyes drifted toward the window and out to sea again. “They might have named it Cain Harbor,” he said with an unmistakable trace of miff. “The plant was just up the road, after all, and the family has been awfully important to this town.”

  “You can say that again.” And if he didn’t, all those employees he had betrayed would. I was beginning to get a familiar sinking feeling that I associated only with my father. With a sense of dread, I said, “You’re not talking about Liberty Harbor, are you?”

  “Such a meaningless name, no connection to history at all,” he replied, conveniently ignoring three hundred years of black struggle. “Now Cain Harbor . . . that has some snap!”

  “Snap,” I said like a stunned parrot. “Dad, you haven’t come back just to get involved with Liberty Harbor . . . have you? Is that what you’re saying?”

  His eyes focused for a brief instant.

  “Of course,” he said petulantly. “I wish you’d pay attention, Jennifer. They’ll need the backing of some of the more influential families, don’t you know. It seems to me a small thing I can do for my hometown.”

  “Noblesse oblige,” I murmured, reeling.

  “I want you to get the press on the phone,” my father said firmly, as if they were one entity with one telephone. “And let them know that Jimmy Cain is back in town!”

  I couldn’t speak. It was all I could do not to laugh hysterically. As I struggled to maintain sobriety, he gazed benignly out the window, smiling to himself at some private amusement. And suddenly I felt protective toward this loopy person who was my father. No way would I deliver him into the hands of reporters to whom he would be tasty front page copy. I could see the headlines; calamity caw returns! No, he and the town must be spared that ordeal. Besides, if he made the papers again, my sister would go bonkers, and that would further complicate my life.

  “Dad.” I was brilliantly inspired. “As long as you’re here, how would you like to stay on a boat?”

  He seemed to think it over.

  “Is it a nice one?” my father said.

  At that moment, Faye put through a phone call from Webster Helms, the project architect.

  “Jenny!” His voice, always reedy, was registering on this day in the higher ranges of hysteria. “I’ve called an emergency meeting of the advisory committee. My office. Conference Room. Two o’clock.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Got to nip this in the bud!”

  “Fine.”

  While she had me, Faye put through another call.

  “Thought you’d like to know,” Geof said in evident disgust, “that thanks to the shortsightedness of yours truly, Belzer got his own fingerprints all over Reich’s truck. It’s useless to us in that way now.”

  “Um.”

  “Jenny, are you there?”

  “Sure.”

  “You sound preoccupied. What’s going on down there that’s more engrossing than murder?”

  “I don’t believe you’ve met my father,” I said.

  The next call was one I made, and with it I got Dad fixed up with a place to stay that was more to his liking. The Amy Denise was no billionaire’s yacht, but it was nicely appointed for a boat its size. Even though there would be no “one to turn down his sheets at night, the idea of staying on a boat offered just enough social cachet, with a hint of daring, to tickle my father’s fancy. Furthermore, Ted Sullivan professed delight at having a guest aboard to look after his boat for a while.

  “I hope it will be a short while,” I told Ted.

  “I’m sure you do,” he said with toll understanding. “Just keep me posted as to where he takes her.”

  “I will. Ted.”

  But what to do in the meantime with my dad?

  “Derek!”

  His trim blond head appeared in my office doorway.

  “Drive my fath
er to the bank, will you?” I said. “And personally escort him to Jack Fenton’s office.” If anyone could keep Jimmy Cain out of trouble for the rest of the day, the banker could.

  “Gotcha,” said Derek, with a knowing nod.

  Finally, I was able to turn to Foundation business. For the first time since Friday morning, life seemed a little more under control.

  chapter

  9

  It continued to seem so until later that day at the emergency meeting of the Liberty Harbor Advisory Committee.

  As we all stood around before the meeting, telling war stories about the previous Saturday, Betty and Pete Tower served hors d’oeuvres.

  “But this is a business meeting, Betty,” Webster Helms protested. He lifted from the tray a chunk of charcoal-broiled seafood that was mated to a hunk of canned pineapple on a toothpick. Webster eyed it with distaste. He said, “You don’t serve hors d’oeuvres at a business meeting, for heaven’s sake.”

  “These hors d’oeuvres are business, Webster,” Betty Tower snapped back. Betty still sported the French roll, ruffled blouses and tight skirts of the 1950s; she looked like a homecoming queen with a lot of miles on her. Her rotund husband affected stark black suits and starched white shirts, like the Parisian restaurateur he fancied himself to be. Betty said, “We’re thinking of serving them at the café. Oh, for God’s sake, eat it, Webster. It’s dead, it won’t bite you.”

  He chewed it, then swallowed.

  “It’s lobster,” Pete Tower informed us, beaming proudly. “From our lobster pound at the harbor.”

  At that unappetizing little piece of news, Webster Helms turned ashen. And Ted Sullivan quickly withdrew the hand he had extended toward the tray. Goose Shattuck, who had already taken one of the pineapple and lobster concoctions, stabbed the air with it and boomed, “You think I’ll eat from that filthy pound? It’s bad enough to smell it every day in this miserable weather. When you gonna clean the damn thing out?”

  “Don’t you start on us again, Goose,” Betty snapped, growing red in the face and leaning angrily toward him. The hors d’oeuvres slid dangerously close to the far edge of the tray. I slipped a hand under it to prop them up and when she didn’t notice, slid the entire tray away from her. She was saying loudly to Goose, “We will clean our pound next spring when the café is ready to open, and not one minute earlier, do you read me? We’ve got shedders in that pound, and they’ll stay there until they’re ready to sell, and that’s that!”