“Uh-huh. Seems like he was always snooping around where he didn’t belong, and sometimes he’d ask me what I’d found out about people while I was working on a story. It was just this eerie feeling I had about him. But drugs would make more sense.”
“How do you mean? Wait, let me get some coffee.”
The harsh, grassy smell of India’s tea had been bothering me, but she’d finished it by the time I came back with my cappuccino.
“OK, go ahead. Why does Guy dealing drugs make sense to you?” Not having much faith in her eerie feelings, I skipped over the blackmail theory. “Is there much of a drug trade on the island?”
“Sure. Canada’s only fifteen miles from here, and everybody knows there’s smuggling. I think most of it goes on to Los Angeles or wherever, but—” She nibbled on her lower lip. “You know, I just remembered something. Guy asked to borrow my boat once, and he offered me three hundred dollars in hundred-dollar bills! That sounds like a drug dealer, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe. You have a boat?”
“Just a little Mako outboard, nineteen feet. No cabin or anything, so I don’t take her out when it’s rough. But she helps me commune with the sea. Sometimes I turn my cell phone off and just drift. I named her Sedna. That’s the Inuit goddess of the ocean.”
“Really.” I myself preferred to commune with a hot shower, but to each her own. I returned to the more pertinent point. “So you loaned Sedna to Guy?”
“No way!” She tossed her hair. “He had this weird aura, you know, kind of dark. I didn’t want him messing up Sedna’s spirit force.”
“Right. Of course not.” Someone came to clear our table then and glanced pointedly at the other people waiting for seats. I stood up. “Let’s take a walk, shall we?”
As we passed the gardens, admiring their overblown late-summer glory, a man rose casually from one of the benches and sauntered along parallel to us. His round pale face looked familiar, but as India said, it was a small island.
I steered her out along the main dock of the marina. Sleek luxury yachts shone in the sun, their owners sipping cocktails in the cockpits, and smaller boats bobbed at their moorings. All along the pristine white railings small American and Canadian flags flickered in the breeze. Such a bright, festive place to talk about murder.
“I suppose Guy could have been storing drugs for someone who did have a boat,” I said.
“And then he stole some for himself and they shot him! You always hear about revenge killings with drug dealers.”
India seemed to have separated Guy Price, the person, from Guy the abstract figure in this hypothetical drama. But that’s what I needed to do myself, if I was going to unearth the truth.
“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “When Guy went out that night, I was sure it was for pleasure and not for business. And then the way he was killed . . .”
We stopped at the end of the dock, and I glanced around to be sure no one was listening. A father and daughter were feeding the gulls some distance behind us, and beyond them I saw the moonfaced man again, apparently inspecting one of the yachts. He didn’t look like a yachtsman, though. In any case, they were all out of hearing.
“Guy wasn’t shot,” I told India quietly. “He was stabbed. In the back.”
“Oh, jeez.” She gulped, but pressed on with her theorizing. “I don’t suppose he was mugged, way out there in the woods?”
“Not unless the mugger was taking a midnight stroll. In fact, I don’t see how anyone could have come across Guy accidentally. Someone deliberately met him at the mausoleum and stabbed him.”
“That doesn’t sound like drug dealers, does it? It sounds more personal.” India leaned on the rail and unstoppered the perfume vial to dab at her throat. The scent was rank and musky, and I wondered which religion du jour it sprang from. Then she came upright with a gasp. “Personal or else ritual. Maybe it was the Masons!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t you know?” She plunged an arm into her shoulder bag, an oversize piece of Peruvian weaving with long floppy drawstrings, and rummaged around inside. “John McMillin built all kinds of Masonic symbols into Afterglow Vista, and the Masons have secret ceremonies there sometimes. Guy was always snooping in other people’s business. Maybe he spied on them and so they killed him! I’ve got a thing in here about it.”
She produced a small pamphlet and began to read bits of it aloud. “The broken column represents an unfinished life . . . winding path is the way of the spirit . . . seven steps for the seven liberal arts . . .”
“I really doubt that,” I said, but she kept on reading. “Hey, would you listen to me?”
She looked up, coltish eyes bulging in excitement. “What?”
“India, my dentist is a Mason, for crying out loud. They don’t go around murdering people.”
“Well, some people think they do. I read this one book about a secret international plan to—”
“Some people think a lot of things.” Oh, Lord, I’ve hooked up with a conspiracy nut. “Let’s get serious here. Did Guy have any enemies that you know of? Not that he’d rendezvous with an enemy in the middle of the night.”
“A rendezvous,” breathed India, savoring the word. “Maybe it was a lovers’ quarrel.”
“A woman scorned,” I murmured. “Guy said something about hell hath no fury. I wonder if he was thinking about a woman scorned.”
“You mean a man, don’t you?”
I recalled those little electrical currents I’d felt. India must be low wattage. “One or the other. Do you know anything about his personal life?”
“Not really. But I could ask around.”
“That would be good. Tell people you’re writing a profile about him or something.”
“OK. What are you doing next?”
“First off, I need wheels. Could you drive me to Frugal Fred’s? And after that I’ve got a wedding to work on.” She looked puzzled, so I explained about Made in Heaven.
“What a fabulous job!” she whinnied. “So romantic.”
“Yeah, today I’m going to romantically arrange for a porta-potty. Listen, you go ahead to your car. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Once she’d left, I walked up behind the moonfaced man and tapped him on the shoulder. If I was wrong about this, I’d just ask for the time, but when he turned around I knew that I wasn’t. I really had seen him before, in Jeff Austin’s patrol car yesterday—only then he was in uniform. What do you know, I’m being followed. It was a nasty thought.
“Hello, officer,” I said evenly. No point being rude. “Listen, I’m going to Friday Harbor to rent myself another car, so when you guys are done with the SUV, would you just return it to Frugal Fred’s?”
Moonface reddened and groped for words, but I just gave him a big smile and walked away, absurdly proud of my petty victory. Suspect me, will you?
India was nice and quiet on the way to Friday Harbor, and I was lost in thought about Lily’s wedding. I was determined not to let this fiasco interfere with her big day. No paging through the photo album years from now, wincing at the memory of the marriage license that Carnegie forgot to pick up, or the full-bladdered guests searching for the facilities that Carnegie forgot to arrange. If ever I wanted a wedding to go perfectly, this was the one. No foul-ups and no glitches.
But the first glitch came at Frugal Fred’s, after I sent India on her way. Fred—a morose and goateed youth whose name was George—had just rented out his very last car.
“There’s, like, two big family reunions starting up today,” he said, “and they got ’em all. But don’t you have that SUV Owen Winter ordered for you? Aw, dude, don’t tell me you wrecked it.”
“Nothing like that,” I assured him, but didn’t elaborate. Might as well preserve what shred of privacy I had left, until the police delivered said vehicle back to him and blew my cover. “I just need another car. You don’t have anything at all?”
“Well, there’s like a Hummer out there,
if you think you could handle it.” He looked at me dubiously. “It’s a lot of horses.”
I groaned. I hate those things. The gas-guzzling was bad enough, but the thought of people playing soldier on the way to the mall or the video store, let alone on these peaceful island byways, made me gag.
I was desperate, however. “Let me take a look at it.”
George left the counter and pushed open the door to the parking lot. Outside in the low sunshine, the lucky guy who beat me to the last car stood with his back to us, bending over the trunk to stow his suitcase. He wore snug jeans and a Red Sox cap, and at the sight of him I stopped so fast that George ran into me. The cap could have been anyone’s, of course, but not that fine-looking rear view.
The lucky guy was Aaron Gold.
Chapter Fifteen
There should have been fireworks, or at least violins. Some sort of cinematic crescendo as we fell into each other’s arms and melted into a long, passionate, rewind-and-replay-worthy kiss.
Yeah, right. Instead there was me stammering “What are you doing here?” while Aaron jerked around in surprise and said, “Why shouldn’t I be here?” and Fred aka George said, “Look, dudes, if you just chill I can call around for another car.”
Aaron and I dispensed with George and then we did kiss, but awkwardly. He hugged me with his left arm, and afterward he kept the right side of his face turned away from me. That meant we weren’t making much eye contact, and eye contact would have been useful given my idiotic response to his sudden appearance on the island.
Being suspected of murder was playing hell with my social graces.
“Aaron, when did you get to Seattle? Why didn’t you call me?” I heard the shrillness in my voice and tried again. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have . . .”
“You’d have what?”
“I don’t know, hired a band. Had my hair done. Deported my Italian gigolo.”
The joke fell flat. Aaron looked at the ground and tugged the right cuff of his long-sleeved shirt down over the edge of what looked like a cast or a brace. It was way too warm for long sleeves today.
“I flew out from Boston last night,” he said. “Lily wanted to tell you I was coming, but I asked her not to.”
“So you could surprise me?”
“So I could back out if I wanted to. Three guesses why.”
Aaron looked me full in the face then, and slowly turned the other cheek. A dark and tentacled scar crawled out of his collar and up his neck to splay along his jaw, as if trying to claw its way into his eye. The scar was thick and raised and quite remarkably hideous. Sickening, even. I couldn’t look away.
“Sorry, Stretch,” he said.
That tore it. I started bawling, and if Aaron thought I was only upset about his face, the fact that I blubbered the words murder and search warrant soon disabused him of the idea. We ended up sitting in the rental car while I poured out the whole story of Guy Price and went through all three of my handkerchiefs.
The third hankie was really for Aaron. Not for the scar, but for the ordeal he’d been through, and especially for the unfamiliar look of bitterness in his eyes. I didn’t tell him that, of course. Even as rattled as I was, I held on to a few of my wits.
“So I can’t go back to the B-and-B yet,” I said with a final snuffle, “and I don’t want to go back to Owen’s house. There’s this reporter who’s helping me, India Doyle, but—”
“Helping you with the wedding?”
“No, with finding out who killed Guy.”
The look in his eyes now was quite familiar: wariness mixed with amusement. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Of course I’m not kidding. The police are never going to figure this out if they’re concentrating on me.”
Aaron closed his eyes and opened his mouth, then reversed the procedure with an exasperated sigh. “Listen, Stretch, the food on that ferry looked like bus-station stuff, so I’m starving. Let’s get some dinner and— What?”
George was peering into the driver’s window. “Dudes, I gotta close. You still fighting about the car?”
Aaron smiled for the first time, making the scar pucker and twist. “I’m taking the car and this other dude too. Go ahead and close up.”
ZZ’s was the only restaurant I could think of. As I directed us down Spring Street and onto First, I tilted the rearview mirror and dabbed at my face.
“Lord, I look like a train wreck.”
“Join the club,” Aaron cracked, and I actually snickered. Then he noticed me stop myself. “Go ahead, Stretch, laugh. Humor is an important element in the rehabilitative process. Says so in all the articles.”
“Been reading up on the subject?” I asked, trying hard to sound casual.
“You bet. Shock, denial, grief, anger, all those phases. They interest me strangely.”
“So you’re in the humor phase now?”
He did a deft three-point job into a tight parking space, mostly using his left arm. “Only sometimes. I rotate through just to keep it interesting.” He peered up at ZZ’s awning. “Let me guess, this place makes the world’s best barbecue.”
“Very astute, Watson.”
I was doing so well with the lighthearted tone, then I blew it by fumbling at the restaurant door. I was trying to save Aaron from having to open it for me, but I bumped into him instead. We did a brief do-si-do, then he barred my way by reaching out his right arm.
“Would you just let me?” he snapped. “It’s not very strong yet, but it still works. And give me a minute to eat something before we talk, OK?”
I went in ahead of him, flushing hotly. The early-supper crowd was sparse and I was relieved not to see ZZ around. I wasn’t up to his hearty hospitality at the moment. We ordered brisket sandwiches, and when a basket of corn bread arrived first Aaron made short work of two hefty squares.
Then, with some food to cushion them, he gulped down a couple of capsules from a bottle in his pocket. Not quite surreptitiously, but in a way that warned me not to ask what they were. I could guess, though: painkillers.
“Now,” he said, “let’s start again. Tell me, without tears if possible, exactly what the police have said and done.”
So I told how I’d been questioned, how I’d put Adrienne briefly and mistakenly under suspicion because of her watch, and how I’d ambushed Moonface at the Roche Harbor marina. I had missed lunch, so once the sandwiches came I had to talk between bites, but I managed.
I also managed to forget about the scar. E-mail is so flat and impersonal, but Aaron in person was still Aaron, and all the unscarred parts of him looked damn good.
“So now the police are following me!” I concluded, with dramatic indignation. “Owen’s daughter made them think I was involved with Guy somehow, and now they’re following me. Can you believe that?”
“Of course I can. They’d be fools not to.”
He wiped ZZ’s savory sauce from his lips with a red-checkered napkin, and I was so distracted by the thought of kissing him again that it took a moment for his words to register.
“What? Whose side are you on?”
“Well, look at it from their angle. This guy Price is going along . . . That’s funny, isn’t it? This guy Price is named Guy Price.”
“Never mind that,” I said, increasingly irked. “What angle?”
“OK, Guy Price is going along month after month, year after year, not getting killed, and then this woman from Seattle shows up. She’s seen in his bedroom, reason unknown—”
“I was just using his e-mailer!”
Aaron held up a silencing hand. “She’s seen in his bedroom, and the very next morning she comes running out to the road, covered in blood, saying she just happened to be traipsing around the woods at dawn and just happened to find the man’s corpse. Why wouldn’t the cops follow you?”
“But—”
“But nothing.” He drained his water glass and set it down. “You’re the logical suspect. I bet they’ve tweezered up every hair in your clot
hing by now, looking for a match to the victim’s. For all they know the two of you were longtime lovers, or estranged spouses in a custody battle, or partners in some criminal enterprise, or who knows what else.”
This wasn’t going at all the way I expected. I hate it when that happens. I took a pull on my beer. “So you don’t think I’m being hounded and harassed?”
“Nope.”
“But you are going to help me find the real killer.”
“Nope again.” He waved for the waitress. “Two coffees, please. Unless you want decaf, Stretch?”
“Regular’s fine,” I said sullenly.
The coffee, when it came, was borne by the slender little hands of ZZ’s granddaughter.
“Hi, Carnegie,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at me. Instead she leaned closer to Aaron than was strictly necessary, handing him his mug with an impish smile. “Who’s your friend?”
“Aaron Gold, meet Peggy Nickles,” I said dryly. “She’s going to bake Lily’s wedding cake.”
“Hi, Peggy.”
Aaron’s voice was neutral, but I saw the glint in his eye. The top button of the girl’s uniform had come undone—no doubt by accident—and a lacy red bra peeped from the opening.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “Gosh, what happened to your face?”
Someone hit the Pause button in my brain, and apparently in Aaron’s too, as Peggy stared at him like a curious child. But the endless awkward moment was only a moment, and then Aaron spoke.
“I had a run-in with a forest fire, and the fire won.”
“Ooh, that must have been scary.” Peggy gave a delicious little shiver, and a little more red lace showed. “But, you know, it actually looks kind of cool. Like a gangster or something. Are you going to have plastic surgery?”
I caught my breath. The same question had been in my mind, of course, but I’d been too leery of trespassing to ask it.
“Probably,” said Aaron. He sounded almost nonchalant. “They can’t do it until the scar tissue ‘matures.’ Could be a year or even longer. Meanwhile, I’ve quit smoking!”
The two of them laughed, and it struck me that he was more at ease with Peggy than with me. But was that a good thing or a bad thing? I was pondering that as ZZ appeared behind her shoulder, looking stern and patriarchal.
You May Now Kill the Bride Page 9