by Mary Daheim
“You’re too touchy,” Renie said as they reached the highway. “Hey, why are you driving so fast? The speed limit is forty on this stretch of road. Are you in that big of a rush to get your next drink?”
“Just hang on and shut up,” Judith retorted, her eyes on the rearview mirror as a siren suddenly sounded behind them. “Guess I’d better pull over.” She slowed way down and steered the Subaru to the first wide spot in the road. “We got busted. So far, so good.”
Renie merely shook her head.
The county cruiser pulled in behind them. “How lucky can we get?” Judith murmured. “It’s Jacobson.”
“You’re an idiot,” Renie shot back.
The lieutenant appeared beside the driver’s window, which Judith had already rolled down. “Would you please step out of the . . . Mrs. Flynn?” Jacobson said in surprise.
“Yes. I’m sorry. My foot slipped.”
“You were doing seventy in a forty-mile zone,” he said solemnly.
“I was? I didn’t think my foot slipped that far.”
Jacobson sighed. “Why did you speed up right after I pulled onto the road behind you? And why did I end up pulling a weekend shift?”
“I wondered about that,” Judith said. “I was surprised that it was you. We need to talk.”
“We do?” he asked, looking surprised. “Why?”
Judith chose her words carefully. “Quite by accident, my cousin and I have discovered some interesting information about various Obsession Shores residents. It’s the sort of thing that an official police investigation might not learn without a lot of tiresome work.”
He removed his hat and rubbed his buzz cut. “Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
The deputy slowly put his hat back on. “Okay. But first I have to write you up. The fine for speeding on the island is five dollars for every mile over the posted limit.”
“Does it count if it was intentional?” Judith asked.
Jacobson’s shoulders slumped. “Oh, hell. I could let you off with a warning. I’ll meet you back at the Webers’ place. Let me go first.”
“Of course.” Judith smiled. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“I can’t believe you got away with it,” Renie declared while they waited for the deputy to drive off in his cruiser. “You lead a charmed life.”
“At least I saved a hundred and fifty bucks,” Judith said. “I knew Jacobson seemed like a reasonable person.”
“It’d serve you right if I told him you’re FATSO. I mean, FASTO,” Renie said with an impish grin. “Why don’t you bribe me with that hundred and fifty bucks so I don’t reveal your lurid past?”
“Because you won’t rat me out, that’s why.” Judith drove back onto the road. “The problem with telling him what we’ve found out so far is that it sounds like gossip. He won’t like that.”
“It is gossip,” Renie said as two bicyclists appeared up ahead. “The young are exercising. The tide’s still out. We should be digging clams.”
Judith gave the bicyclists a wide berth. “We’re digging for truth and justice. How come you’re not insisting I run over that pair?”
“Because Jacobson would arrest you and then I’d be bored,” Renie replied. “I only get upset when they don’t observe the rules of the road.”
Judith followed Jacobson onto the Obsession Shores turnoff from the main highway. The sun was still out. She caught peekaboo views of the sparkling bay off to her right. There had been only a handful of other vehicles on the road from Langton. It was a different world from Heraldsgate Hill where a half-mile drive up to Falstaff’s Market could take ten minutes in traffic. Five minutes later, Judith pulled into the Webers’ garage. Jacobson had parked on the verge above the mailbox.
“This better not be a waste of time,” he said as they headed up the steps to the front door.
“Why?” Renie asked. “You got a big crime wave going on up here?”
“I’ve got a homicide investigation,” he shot back. “Isn’t that enough? I’d like to be able to knock off highway duty at four and kick back with my wife and kids.”
Judith managed to open the padlock with a minimal amount of bother. The first thing she did when she got inside was to pull the blinds that looked out to the bright sunlight. “We natives aren’t used to the glare,” she explained.
“I’m a native,” Jacobson said, sitting in the same recliner he’d used on his previous visit. “I grew up on the island.”
“Would you like some coffee?” Judith asked.
Jacobson shook his head. “I’d rather have a beer right now, but I’ll wait until I get home. Start dishing. It’s three o’clock.”
Renie sat down on the sofa, kicking off her shoes. Judith joined her cousin. “As virtual strangers,” she began, “we don’t know most of the locals, but we’ve met a few of them since we arrived.”
“And?” the deputy prodded.
“You probably already heard Mr. Glover didn’t have an enemy in the world,” Judith said.
Jacobson looked impatient. “Right.”
Judith decided to come up with some serious data. “Do you realize that the so-called meeting last night was a sham because Quentin Quimby runs the development and only allows freehold agreements?”
The deputy looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a form of lease,” Judith explained. “After a certain period of time, the property reverts to Quimby—or his heirs.”
“I never heard of anything like that,” he said in a dubious tone.
“It’s not common in this country, but it is in the UK,” Judith asserted. “To my knowledge, it’s legal.”
Jacobson took out his notebook. “I’ll check this out,” he murmured, still sounding skeptical. “The courthouse should have the records. What else?”
“There may be some sort of scam going on regarding counterfeit rare coins,” Judith said, no longer feeling on such firm ground. “Talk to Brose Bennett—who, I should add, may be divorcing his wife.”
“That’s all iffy,” Jacobson declared. “What would that have to do with the victim?”
“I don’t know,” Judith admitted, “but Brose and Kent Logan came to blows at the Mermaid about fifteen minutes ago. We saw it happen. Fou-fou—Mrs. Bennett—had been consulting Mr. Logan about a divorce. There’ve been some rumors that Mr. Glover may’ve played around.”
“I don’t deal in rumors,” Jacobson said. “Go on.”
Judith shrugged. “We paid a condolence call on Mrs. Glover. She didn’t seem like a typical grieving widow. Her attitude was very strange.”
“Shock, maybe,” Jacobson said. “She did strike me as capable of controlling her emotions. Some people are like that. Are we done here?”
“Not quite. Have you any idea about who left the note here?”
“No.” He got to his feet. “We’d need DNA from everybody in the development to figure out who warned you off.” The deputy took a couple of steps toward the door, but stopped. “What have you two been doing? Interviewing suspects on your own?”
“Of course not!” Judith exclaimed. “We just keep running into—”
“Stop.” Renie got off the sofa and put a hand on her cousin’s arm. “Judith is writing a mystery novel. She’s doing research. You can’t blame her for that, can you?”
Jacobson looked faintly nonplussed. “No. No, I can’t. But be careful. There’s a killer out there.”
Judith and Renie already knew that. But they weren’t going to tell the sheriff’s deputy there usually was.
Chapter 11
You,” Judith said to Renie after Jacobson had left, “just told a bigger whopper than I ever did. I only tell fibs for a good reason.”
“That was a good reason,” Renie countered. “You were having trouble extricating yourself. Should we call Auntie Vance now?”
“It’s three thirty,” Judith said. “Two hours time difference, right? She may be making dinner. Let’s wait. We should be back here by sev
en thirty. Auntie Vance stays up late.”
“Right,” Renie murmured. “Oh, good grief! You forgot to ask Jacobson about the phantom ship!”
Judith clapped her hands to her cheeks. “You’re right. I wonder if I should call him. He must have a cell. But he may be chasing a speeder. I don’t want to aggravate him.”
“Maybe we should talk to the Friedmans and the Sedgewicks about the boat,” Renie said, flopping back onto the sofa. “Mel and Sarah have seen it. I don’t know if Jane and Dick have, though.”
Judith sat down in the overstuffed chair. “I hope Jacobson can find out about the freehold lease thing. It struck me as weird, but the more I think about it, the more I can see why the people who buy in here would do such a thing. Depending on how reasonable the price is and how long the lease is good for, people of retirement age wouldn’t care if it was for, say, fifty or a hundred years. They’d still be able to leave the property to their heirs. After that, who knows if the kids or whoever would want to live up here.”
“I can see that,” Renie said, “but what I don’t get is why Quimby did it that way in the first place. Control, I assume. He thinks he can dictate from beyond the grave.”
“Probably,” Judith agreed. “I’d like to know more about his wife.”
“Blanche? Why?” Renie asked.
“She’s only been dead a few years. Blanche had the idea to sell off the old family farm. Did she allow her husband to handle the finances or was she the one who came up with the freehold lease idea instead?”
Renie looked bemused. “Interesting. How do we find out?”
“I don’t know,” Judith admitted. “I’m not sure that calling on the Quimbys would be a good idea.”
“But you’ll do it anyway.”
“Maybe.” Judith turned thoughtful for a moment. “I do wonder if Quimby changed after his wife died. Face it, he’s a mystery man to us.”
“You can’t let that go on for very long,” Renie said with a grin.
“He has to sleep,” Judith murmured as much to herself as to Renie. “Maybe a late-night visit is in order.”
“That sounds prudent,” Renie said, seemingly serious. “I can’t wait to run into the killer waving a saber at us.”
Judith sighed. “Right, right. We could take along our own knives. Which reminds me—there’s something wrong with Jacobson’s theory that the killer tossed the knife into the bay. Think about it. The tide was still way out, so he or she had to walk a long way to get to the water. Even if no one else was on the beach, all these people have binoculars or telescopes.” She nodded at a shelf under the kitchen counter near the door. “A second pair is in the master bedroom. Then there’s the matter of blood on the knife. What would you do about that?”
“Stick it in the wet sand,” Renie said, but quickly retracted the statement. “No. The sand by the body was above high tide and the rain hadn’t started until after he was killed.”
“Right,” Judith agreed. “I think the knife is somewhere, maybe not far from where we found Ernie’s body. Let’s take a look. We have to go down near the beach steps to get to the Friedmans’ house.”
“We still haven’t met the Crowleys or the Leonettis,” Renie said. “When do we pay them a call or do you figure they’re out of the loop?”
“Nobody’s out of the loop,” Judith replied, getting up. “We’ll deal with them tomorrow. Let’s go.”
They were on the beach five minutes later. A breeze had come up off the water, but the sun was still out, edging ever downward toward the mountains on the Peninsula. The ubiquitous cry of the seagulls could be heard as they swooped for food over land and sea. Two small boats were off Scratchit Head, each apparently occupied by a lone fisherman.
“Maybe,” Renie said as they walked to the log where broken crime-scene tape fluttered in the wind, “we should’ve brought a shovel.”
Judith shook her head. “I don’t think the killer buried it. That’s a guess, though.”
Renie frowned. “Don’t you figure Jacobson and the other deputies scoured this area?”
“Of course, but they’re men. You know they never can find things.”
“True.” Renie knelt down on the dry sand by the log. “The roots on this thing are really gnarled and twisted. You could shove a knife inside, but I suppose Jacobson thought of that.”
“Probably,” Judith said in a vague voice as she studied some of the smaller driftwood pieces that had piled up behind the log. Her gaze strayed to the boathouse. “I imagine they looked in there, too, though I doubt the killer would use the boathouse as a hiding place.”
“Are you talking to me,” Renie asked, “or to the seagulls?”
“I’m talking to myself,” Judith replied. “I really believe that the knife has to be here someplace.” She glanced to her right and saw two figures cautiously coming down the staircase. “Is that the Johnsons?”
Renie, who had stood up and was brushing sand off her slacks, didn’t respond.
“It is the Johnsons,” Judith said after the couple had descended the steps. “They’re coming this way.”
Renie shot Judith a wry glance. “Good. Now you’re answering yourself. I’m off the hook.”
“Stop,” Judith said. “Charles and May, right?”
Renie made a thumbs-up gesture. “Yes! Tell yourself you got their first names right. That’s ten points.”
“Someday I’ll . . .” Judith shut up. “Never mind. If I did strangle you, I’d have to turn myself in.” She broke into a smile and waved to the Johnsons, who were slowly trudging toward them. He was carrying a contraption that Judith guessed was a metal detector. “Hi,” she called out loudly, aware that they were deaf. “Nice day.”
There was no response. “Try yodeling,” Renie said. “We heard people do that in Little Bavaria.”
The Johnsons stopped a few feet away. “Howdy,” Charles said with a faint smile on his wrinkled face. “Don’t we know you somehow?”
Judith smiled back. “We sat by you during the meeting at the clubhouse,” she said in a loud voice.
Charles used the hand that wasn’t holding the metal detector to cup his ear. “Eh? Eating at the Chub House? Never been there.”
Judith shook her head and pointed in the clubhouse’s direction. “The meeting. Sewers.”
“Sue who?” Charles responded, looking puzzled.
May poked his arm. “The meeting,” she said in an almost normal voice. Maybe, Judith thought, Charles could read her lips.
“Oh, sure.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’m a bit hard-of-hearing.”
“No kidding,” Renie said under her breath.
Judith moved closer to the Johnsons. “I’m Judith and this is Renie.” She glanced around, noting that her cousin hadn’t budged. “We’re the Webers’ nieces.”
“Got the sneezes, eh?” Charles said, shaking his head. “It’s all the damp around here. Try steam.”
“Thanks,” Judith said, smiling before pointing to the device he’d just set on the ground. “Is that a metal detector?” she virtually yelled.
May nodded. “Yes. We bought this in Langton yesterday. We’ve already found some interesting things with it.”
“Coins?” Judith asked.
Charles apparently caught that word. “Not yet. But we will. Got to be more than Brose Bennett found. Nobody loses just one coin.”
May patted her husband and laughed. “Listen to him! Last fall he forgot to tell me he had a hole in his pants pocket and almost two dollars in change fell out in our front yard. So far we’ve found only the sort of things that people leave on beaches.” Her expression grew serious. “Beer cans, soda cans, rusted bolts, kitchen utensils, silverware—not sterling, though. Nothing of value. This is our second foray of the day. Maybe we’ll have better luck over here near the boathouse.”
Charles scowled at his wife. “I kind of hate to search around this part. Poor Ernie was killed here. Might be bad luck. It sure was for him.”
May looked ind
ignant. “That wasn’t bad luck, that was some crazy person’s doing. This is a good place to try. People coming off their boats must drop all sorts of things. You always did when we had our boat.”
“Maybe so.” Charles tipped his baseball cap. “Nice to meet you folks. We’d better get going before that wind blows in some rain.”
The Johnsons ambled off.
“You seem to have lost your voice,” Judith said to Renie.
“I get tired of yelling at people. Why don’t they get better hearing aids? At least May’s not quite as deaf as Charles.”
“They seem like very nice people. Admit it, they get out and do something. That’s a plus at their age.”
“True,” Renie allowed. “Shouldn’t we head for the Friedmans? It’s going on four, time to start getting blitzed like the other people do here.”
By the time they reached the steps, the wind had picked up, creating whitecaps out in the bay. Judith fastened her car coat and pulled up the hood. Even the seagulls were seeking cover, flying off from the beach onto the utility wires at the edge of the surrounding forest.
Mel greeted them at the door of their gabled cottage. “We saw you down on the beach,” he said. “Did the wind blow you up the stairs?”
“It threatened to,” Judith replied as they stepped into the small foyer. The smell of baked bread hung in the air. “There’s a lovely odor around here,” she noted, sniffing in appreciation.
“Sarah baked challah bread for dinner,” Mel replied, leading them into a surprisingly modern-looking living room with its stark black-and-white furnishings. “Have a seat. She’ll be right here.” He went over to a sleek mahogany cupboard and removed a bottle of wine. “A Bartenura Asti. It’s kosher. How does that sound?”
“Fine,” Judith said while the cousins settled into matching black-and-white-striped chairs that were more comfortable than they looked.
Sarah entered the room. “Ah!” Mel exclaimed. “The baker has completed her task.” He filled a fourth glass.
Sarah greeted their guests before settling onto a backless white divan by the leaded-glass front windows. “I’d offer a slice of fresh bread, but it has to cool before I can cut it. Have you heard any news about the murder? I saw a cop car by your aunt and uncle’s house earlier.”