Turning the Tables: An Alex Peres Mystery

by Jessica Thomas

  Now I made my second mistake. I’d had enough of his cant and my own temper flared. “Cut the shit, Mather. I used to see you drive round and round ‘patrolling’ Gay Beach, to make sure there was no ‘raunchy behavior.’ Yeh. Getting an eyeful of all those cute buns and the bikinis showing off the size of the equipment. Probably masturbating as you drove.”

  I read his eyes and grabbed for the wooden kitchen chair behind me, holding it up in front of me, rather like a lion tamer. He spat at me. “You have no idea of the torture it is. You Whore of Babylon! You bed with any pretty woman as casually as you drink a cup of coffee.” I thought that was a bit overstated, but it didn’t seem the time to be picky. “You have not felt the pain of looking, longing, even loving in vain, knowing it can never be. Rarely have I given in, the agony is not worth the moment’s pleasure. The Serpent will die!”

  He swung again and the score immediately went to Lions 3, Tamers 0. I was left holding the top of the chair with a few dangling slats. The rest of it splintered and fell to the floor.

  Aunt Mae picked that moment to walk quietly in the back door, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape. I didn’t want Mather to become aware of her—she might still be able to get out. So I tried to keep his attention.

  “What happened, Jared baby? You sobbed over his body while you jerked off? And Fratos saw it and blackmailed you, so you killed him, too?”

  “Filthy-minded fornicator!”

  Several things happened at more or less the same time. Jared swung, the rest of the chair disintegrated and my right arm went numb. Fargo made his terrified “leap to safety,” pushing me into Mather’s embrace, as it were. And Aunt Mae poured the soup over Jared’s head.

  He screamed in surprise and pain and I didn’t blame him. I could feel stinging little needles of spatters hitting my neck and forearms. My feet began to slide on the wet, food-strewn kitchen floor. My right arm now felt on fire to the elbow. I clutched desperately at Mather with my other arm, and we began a kind of clumsy, slow-motion skaters’ waltz in the soup. We went down together and he lost hold of the leg. I fell on top of him, trying to keep him from reaching it again, but he was strong. My right arm was useless and my left arm wasn’t going to stop him for long—it had barely recovered from its Halloween sprain.

  At this point Fargo landed on top of both of us. I think he had it figured for a new and wonderful game. He barked excitedly into Mather’s face and my ear, pausing from time to time to lick a morsel of food from Mather’s neck and shirt. Mather looked distraught, but wasn’t distracted enough to quit inching his hand for the leg, and I was losing my grip on his arm.

  Aunt Mae stood over us, looking fearful and distressed, still clutching the soup pot. “Hit him on the head!” I yelled. She looked at me blankly. “Hit him!”

  Finally she tapped him on the head with the empty pot. He bellowed with anger but was very much still with us. “Hit him hard!” I screamed desperately.

  “I don’t want to kill him,” she wailed.

  “Why not? It’s what he’s going to do to us!”

  That got through to her. She brought the pot down on his head like a woodsman felling a tree. Mather’s eyes rolled back and I felt him go limp beneath me. I dumped Fargo off my back, rolled off of Mather and sat up.

  Cindy ran through the back door, did a surprisingly graceful glissade across the kitchen, crashed into the sink, grabbed it and turned around—a little pale and out of breath. “I—I called—cops. Cell—phone. They’re on—the way.”

  “Splendid! How did you ever know to do that?”

  “The noise.”

  She looked as if I should have known that, and probably I should. I was a little scattered right then. “You done good. Could you give me a hand up?”

  “Oh, sure.” She walked carefully to me and extended her hand.

  “Other hand, please.”

  She then looked at my visibly swelling right hand and arm, and put out her other hand. “You’re right,” she said gently, “definitely not that hand.” With great care she got me to my feet and over to a chair.

  “Now,” I said, “Please kick that table leg aside. Don’t touch it. If Mather moves, break his ankle with the pot.”

  I turned and rested my arm on the table, which helped. Police sirens sounded comfortingly near. Cindy picked up the pot and stood alertly near Mather. Aunt Mae and I sat quietly.

  And thus were we posed when Mitch ran through the back door, .38 in hand, slipped, fell flat on his back and fired his pistol through the kitchen ceiling.

  Chapter 22

  I sort of lost the picture for the moment. At the report of the pistol, Fargo leaped for my lap and I yelped in pain as he jarred my arm. Aunt Mae screamed. Cindy looked as if she thought she should hit somebody and waved the soup pot threateningly. A large chunk of the on-duty Provincetown Police Force tumbled through the back door and went through various contortions to maintain their balance, and everybody began to talk at once.

  Finally, Sonny yelled, “Everybody shut up!” and everybody did.

  By the time I had given a fairly coherent description of the recent events, Mather groaned and stirred. Pete Santos and Jeanine got him into the only remaining chair and stood beside him watchfully. All four cops looked at my tumescent arm and then at Mather, and I got the feeling his prior rank would earn him no favors at the Ptown jail.

  Mather blinked and then looked at me, completely calm. “I’ve hurt your arm, Alexandra, and I am truly sorry. Could I have some water? So much has gone wrong . . .” He looked around until his eyes met Sonny’s. “Oh, Sonny, so much.”

  Sonny hoisted himself onto a counter. “You want to tell me what happened, Jared? Shall we do the Miranda thing?”

  “Don’t be silly, I know the Miranda warning perfectly well. Oh, yes, I’ll tell you what happened . . . what little Alexandra hasn’t already spread around town!” He was revving up again. “Mae, she used our friendship to try to gain power over me! I never knew it at the time. She sneaked up to my house and peeked through windows and listened from outside.” He sipped the water Aunt Mae handed him. Sonny and Ptown’s Finest were staring open-mouthed as he rambled on. “I assure you, it was one of the few times I gave in! I have sought the Lord’s forgiveness, but Alexandra, here, thinks—”

  Sonny leaned forward. “Jared, I’m not quite sure where you’re going with this.”

  “Oh, of course . . . the murders. Ah, Lewis, that beautiful, beautiful boy, headed for hell. Yes, I killed him. He called me ‘old man.’ I hated that.”

  Mather reached in his shirt pocket. We all tensed. He pulled out a cigarette pack and lit one. His eyes were slightly unfocused, as if he were watching a distant scene unfold. “Frankly, I think the wound was fatal, but I should have tried.”

  He closed both fists and beat them gently on the table, cursing himself, I thought. He went on softly. “But I was—still very excited—and mad. I was afraid people would guess what had happened, and what a joke that would be! The anti-gay cop—of course I had been anti-gay. I hated the sin within me and within them all. Now the anti-gay cop would be the laughingstock of the town.” He stopped, as if he were finished.

  Sonny finally spoke. “Jared, I’m not quite clear . . .”

  “Alexandra will tell you later. I’m tired.”

  I asked, “Why did you take him to the amphitheater?”

  He shrugged. “It was off the beaten track. It could have been days before he was found. Who knew that damned meddling Harmon would be on one of his drug-busting crusades? And, it seemed appropriate. Lewis . . . so handsome lying on stage, like a young Greek god fallen in battle. He deserved that. His life had been so sordid. In death he was glorious.”

  My arm was throbbing with a drumbeat far from glorious. I mouthed the word “ice” to Cindy. She quietly picked up a tea towel, put some cubes in it and placed it softly on my arm. It helped some, and I didn’t want to miss this. Jared Mather had tried to be a good man—by his lights—and he had tried to be a good cop
. It seemed tragic his efforts to attain those ambitions had led him to madness.

  Sonny noticed the ice pack and asked, “Are you all right? We can finish this later, and I’ll take you to the clinic. That looks broken to me.”

  “It feels broken to me, but I want to hear this. Maybe some Tylenol.”

  He nodded and slithered off to the bathroom, returning with four capsules. I can count on Sonny’s knowing when to be generous. Now Mitch was asking, “Mr. Mather.” It was strange how nobody was calling him chief anymore. “Mr. Mather, did you empty his pockets?” Poor Mitch had to be furious and humiliated, knowing now that Mather had used him as a handy tool for getting information and planting false ideas.

  “Sure. I wanted to suggest simple robbery. I found a handkerchief that probably belonged to Frank Wolfman. I put that in my pocket, mostly to get it out of my way. I emptied his wallet, you know what I did with the money. It never occurred to me Alexandra would wrangle it out of Larry Bartles that he had received it. I thought he would have spent it on the mission in an hour. The wallet itself and Lewis’s watch I tossed in one of the ponds.”

  He was beginning to sound spent. “At home I shoveled the bloody sawdust around the garden. I rinsed the table leg in solvent and tossed it on the scrap heap. Another mistake, I should have burned it. But then, Sergeant, you had Mellon and Wolfman burning things, didn’t you?” He gave a sour grin. “They certainly did all they could to look guilty until Alexandra started butting in and until Mae showed up without her glasses and said the leg looked fine.”

  Sonny put him back on track. “Why did you kill Fratos? Blackmail?”

  “Yes. Slimy bastard. He cornered me outside the Rat. Told me he’d been at Race Point the night Lewis was killed. He saw me driving back, thought nothing then, but put it together later.”

  “Why had Fratos been at Race Point in the middle of the night?” Mitch queried. “Did he tell you?”

  “No. But it was his favorite pastime. He loved to sneak up on couples parked out there, shine a light into the car and scare them half to death. Thought it was funny. Sometimes he would show his old police badge, and offer not to arrest them for ‘public indecency’ if they gave him money. But nobody was ever willing to go into court against him, and we could never prove it. He was a rotten cop!”

  Mitch was writing quickly in his notebook, with no clicking noises, thank God. He looked up as Mather spoke. “Anyway, Fratos demanded money. I told him I’d have it at my house at ten o’clock. Then I noticed Harmon’s old truck . . . with the keys in it. I saw a way to take care of Fratos and get a little revenge on Harmon. I took the truck and hid it behind my shop.”

  In the midst of this Aunt Mae had somehow made a pot of tea. She placed a steaming mug in front of me, laced with rum and heavily sugared. Nothing had ever tasted better. I smiled my gratitude silently. Jared still had the floor. Like Bartles, when he decided to talk—he talked.

  “I was ready for Fratos, with a spare tire iron, when he got out of his car. I put him and the iron in Harmon’s truck and went to wash up. I noticed Wolfman’s handkerchief on the window ledge, where I’d tossed it, and put it in the truck. I drove to the amphitheater and arranged the body . . . no reason, just mischief. The same with his money, more confusion. I drove Harmon’s truck to his house, Fratos’s car to his apartment—and went home.”

  He smirked slightly. “Incidentally, Mitchell, I knew you would never get any real evidence on Mellon and Wolfman. Much as I detest them, I wouldn’t have let them go to trial. I figured it would just fade away into one of those unsolved murders, assumed to be a transient hate crime or robbery.”

  Sonny slid off the counter and stretched. “Well, I guess that covers it, Jared. We’d better get moving. I want to get Alex down to the clinic.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Again, I’m sorry, Alexandra, but you shouldn’t be so nosy. It’s unbecoming.” I was feeling worse by the minute. I nodded silently. I guess there was nothing to say.

  “One thing, Sonny,” Mather added. “I want you to know I greatly regret Lewis’s death. I would do anything to reverse it. As to Fratos, I could as easily have killed a fly.”

  Mather stood up but grabbed the table, grimacing. “Sorry, I’m still a little dizzy, and I seem to have done something to my knee. Jeanine, Pete, can you help me here, please?” Automatically both officers walked over to him.

  Sonny turned to Mitch with some litany of instructions. I cradled my aching arm and started for the back door. Mather had an arm over the shoulders of Pete and Jeanine, limping heavily and groaning with each step. I followed them out, telling Cindy and Aunt Mae I’d catch up with them later. Cindy looked like she wanted to cry.

  Mather seemed to stumble on the top step, but his grip on the two cops looked, if anything, tighter than ever. They all tumbled down the steps into a heap.

  I heard Pete yell, “Shit!”

  Jeanine wailed, “Oh, goddammit! Noo-oo!”

  Mather was already on his feet, backing away with no sign of a limp, and with Pete’s .38 revolver in his hand. “Stay back!” he called. “I don’t want to hurt anybody. Don’t come this way.” He reached the driveway as Sonny reached the top of the steps.

  Jeanine had her pistol out and pointing at Mather. Pete stood clasping and unclasping his fists helplessly. Mitch had gone out the front and come around the side of the house. Mather saw him and swung the .38 toward him. “Stop, Mitchell, I’ll shoot if you come closer.”

  Sonny spoke calmly from the porch, his gun still holstered. “Jared, you know you can’t escape. Please don’t make this worse. Toss that piece onto the grass and stand still.”

  “I’m not going to hurt anybody, Sonny. Try to remember I was an honest cop. Mae, I’m sorry to do this here.”

  He put the barrel of the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.

  Chapter 23

  In the open air the crack of the pistol sounded more like a medium-sized firecracker than a lethal weapon, but there was no doubting the reality of the blood, bone and brains that spewed across the driveway. For two or three eternal seconds nobody moved, and nobody spoke, as Jared Mather still stood there, a slightly bemused look on his face. Then he began slowly to crumple and the police converged.

  Pete got there first and knelt beside him, looking sick, as he felt for a pulse. “He’s gone. He shot straight.”

  “He would,” Sonny said with infinite sadness. “He was a cop.”

  I looked at Sonny and said softly, “That’s why you didn’t remind them to cuff him when they took him out? You figured he would do this.”

  Sonny shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I know there was no way would he go to prison. No way.”

  He turned and said to Mitch, “Wrap it up. I’m getting Alex patched up now.”

  “Yes. Good luck, Alex, hope it’s minor. Sonny, should I put Pete and Jeanine on report?”

  Sonny looked startled. “Whatever for?”

  “For neglecting to cuff Mather, plus Pete let him take his gun.”

  “Sure. And add your name to the list. You’re their superior officer.”

  Mitch blanched. “Yes, sir.”

  “And add mine, too. I’m senior officer present. And Alex’s, she noticed the omission but said nothing. And Aunt Mae’s. She bopped Jared in the head, although she did manage to subdue him without shooting up the ceiling. Mitch, there are times I despair. Come on, Alex.” He actually held the car door for me.

  He stayed with me as we sat in the waiting room, and sat in the examining room, and sat in the X-ray room and sat in the examining room again. Sometimes my brother could be quite sensitive. As time passed, I began to get shaky. I wanted something to take my mind off the events of the day and the throb of the arm. “I’m tired of murders and suicide. I want something more pleasant. Tell me about your vacation.”

  “The most amazing thing about my vacation is that it didn’t end in murder and/or suicide.”

  “That good?”

  “It started as
we drove down the main drag of Gatlinburg. Paula thought it looked hokey. Well, it does, but it never claimed to be the Vatican. We got to the hotel I showed you in the brochure. It was too rustic. We never even got to the room. She didn’t like the lobby! So, we went to this big hotel downtown . . . just like any fairly good hotel in any town you’ve ever been in. I swear even the pictures in the rooms are the same.” He walked to the window, spread the blinds with two fingers and stared out.

  “What’s the town like? And the people?” I asked.

  “Very friendly. And what scenery! You’ve got to see those mountains someday! Anyway, we went horseback riding, and the horses were nags. We went on a helicopter sightseeing ride in one of the little bubble-canopy jobs and she got vertigo. We took a hike and she was afraid of bears. We went fishing and the rocks were slippery. The town was too touristy and the people too hillbilly.”

  I was dying for a drink and a cigarette but didn’t know where to find the one and figured two oxygen tanks in the corner precluded the other. “What did you do, hang her in the closet?”

  “Fortunately, we met this couple, Dave and Ann. Ann was Paula’s soul mate and Dave and I got along. The women spent all day in the beauty salon or spa or the boutiques. Dave and I took some horseback rides, tried some golf, hiked, had a little fun. We got to some of the real craft shops, and they were interesting. I had never seen a dulcimer before, much less watched one being made. They come in different ranges, like a sax.” Count on Sonny to find the unusual.