Unhinged

by Sarah Graves

  Her stubby tail twitching uncertainly, Prill looked back and forth between me and Harry. She’d stationed herself between us as soon as I entered, as if protecting him.

  “Harry, you can’t leave. What about Samantha? Don’t you want to be here when she gets out of the hospital?”

  “Samantha’s not coming back. It’s touch-and-go, they had to resuscitate her on the trip, and they aren’t sure she’ll make it. If she does, they doubt she’ll dance again.”

  He tugged on his leather jacket. “That’s what she gets for hanging around me. That’s what everyone gets. Wade, Sam… I’m leaving now, before anyone else gets hurt.”

  He zipped the jacket. “Samantha was targeted because she was my friend. No other reason. I’m not going to stick around here so I can watch someone get killed.”

  He’d hauled out Harriet’s old newspapers, stacking the bundles in the yard to await pickup. The chicken bones were gone, too. But there the effort ended, and now it seemed his nerves were getting to him, to judge by the cup lying on its side atop his formerly pristine table, coffee staining the book he’d been reading: Practical Homicide Investigation by Vernon J. Geberth.

  A classic: Harry saw me looking at it, gave a bitter laugh. “Too bad old Vernon J. isn’t here, give me some pointers. Because I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t know.”

  “Harry,” Ellie protested. “You can’t just run.”

  I wasn’t so sure. If he did go, trouble would go with him. But then my better angel kicked in. After all, Harry had pulled me out of some pretty bad wreckage, once.

  “I don’t deserve this,” Harry said bitterly with a wave at the window. “This… peace.”

  Outside, the pointed firs were purple cutouts on the orange sunset. The first stars poked through the deepening azure sky in the east. But dark streamers from the south pushed threateningly toward us; by tomorrow, we’d have thunderheads.

  “People here don’t deserve my problems,” Harry added.

  “But,” I said, still struggling with myself, “they’d want to help you, not send you away.”

  You don’t dump people when they’re in trouble, said the good angel. You just don’t. “If they knew what happened to you, and what you did about it,” I persisted.

  That he hadn’t got his man by shooting an innocent woman, I meant. If he had, he’d have ended up a hero instead of a scapegoat. It wasn’t the story that had been printed in all the newspapers, probably even in some of the ones Harriet had read, that he’d stacked outside. But it was, I thought, the real story.

  “They won’t care that I didn’t shoot her,” he insisted. “No one here’s going to feel a bond, no one’ll identify with a sick, crack-smoking hooker.”

  I didn’t contradict him; he hadn’t been here long enough to know otherwise. Beautiful, remote downeast Maine did seem immune to city woes. But it had pockets of poverty, deep and ineradicable as bone infections, and all the agony that went with them. The kid, for example, that I’d read about in the Examiner: he’d been muling Oxycontin, a painkiller with more abuse potential than heroin.

  “Maybe not,” I temporized. “But people here do know about having trouble, and having nowhere to turn except to friends.”

  And, I reminded myself firmly, so did I. “But Harry, we need to know more about why you’re so sure someone’s…”

  “I just know,” he declared. “I know, and now you do, too. Or do you believe Wade screwed up with the shotgun-shell reloader?”

  I’d already told him I didn’t. “Excuse me,” a voice cut in. It was Bob Arnold, looking severe as he walked in unannounced. “Harry, I’m very sorry. I just got word. Your friend didn’t make it. She passed away a little while ago.”

  A silence, lengthening sadly. I broke it. “Harry,” I said impulsively, “come to our house. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  He turned away, the black squares of windowpanes reflecting his stony face. “If I do stay, and we catch this guy,” he began, and I saw Bob Arnold open his mouth to put the kibosh on that idea.

  But Harry saw it, too, catching sight of Bob’s reflection in the glass. “Yeah,” he gave in too quickly. “I’m not on the job, I should let the cops take care of cop business.”

  He faced Bob, stuck his hand out. “Thanks for coming to tell me. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  Bob didn’t swallow it, of course. But he couldn’t very well order Harry not to interfere when Harry had just told him he wouldn’t. He did have one other thing to say, though:

  “You’ll hear it later, you might as well hear it now.”

  The dog stepped between me and Harry. “It’s okay, Prill,” I murmured to her, although of course it wasn’t.

  “In the Danvers’ house,” Bob began. “Somebody rigged that hot wire so it looked like the dummy one. Strung it into that length of filament so it fell right on cue. Trouble was, it was run up through a little hole somebody drilled in the floor and covered with carpet. Plugged into the household current.”

  So the circuit breakers for the basement had been off, but not the whole house. The power had still been on upstairs. “Somebody had to get in, in advance,” I said. “Substitute the hot wire for the dummy, get everything all ready so plugging it in would be the only thing left to do.”

  In the confusion in and around the Danvers’ house just before the filming began, that would’ve been fairly easy without the culprit being noticed. Everyone there had been focused on a task, not worrying about what someone else was doing.

  Ellie and I, for instance, had walked right in. “And that’s not all.” Bob spoke very slowly, which meant he was furious; the madder he was, the slower he got.

  Slower and more thorough. “After everyone else was gone, that cellar wall collapsed, all the water leaked in there, soaked that new mortar through, it let go. Any ideas about what we found behind the wall?”

  I took a wild, awful guess. “Harriet Hollingsworth.”

  “Yup. Her and a couple bags of lime. And in her hand…”

  He held up a plastic bag. Inside, the torn-off front page of an old New York Post with a blaring headline: TOP COP FLOPS!

  “Oh, Christ,” Harry muttered. Two photos: one a long shot of a city rooftop, black arrows where the action occurred. The other was a mug shot of a scowling, disreputable-looking woman with a nose ring, tattoos, and a missing tooth: Harry’s murdered hostage.

  “So if you were thinking of leaving,” Bob said, “put it off. I’m going to want to talk with you. State cops, too.”

  I turned away for only an instant; when I turned back, Bob was on his way out the door and the cup lying atop Harry’s book wasn’t there anymore. Which told me that Bob was planning to run Harry’s fingerprints. Like I said: thorough. But Harry didn’t seem to notice the cup was gone.

  “Any thoughts?” Ellie asked him when Bob had departed. “’Cause if you are going to stay around, now’d be a good time to share.”

  “Someone’s got a line on me,” he answered bleakly. “Knows what I’m doing almost before I decide to do it.”

  I could think of another explanation. Harry seemed to see it in my face, and faced me frankly.

  “The bank owned the house, not Harriet. They’d already had the redemption period.”

  Before the foreclosure auction, he meant. Once that period had been advertised in the papers and was ended you couldn’t just make your back payments and get your house back. That ball game was over.

  “They weren’t going to let her stay in it again. Alive or not, she couldn’t have stopped me from buying it. And even if that weren’t so, why would I kill an old woman for a house, then hide a body with the equivalent of a big red arrow pointing straight at me?”

  Good questions. “You met her, though? Harriet, before she vanished?”

  He shook his head. “Few minutes, out on the porch. Next time I came back, a day later, she was gone.” He wasn’t sure when that had been, but: “It was when the tourist drowned.” From Wyatt Ev
ert’s group, he meant. “Down at the diner everyone was talking about it, and it was in the Tides. Roy McCall was here then, too, scouting the location. I met him, and Wyatt Evert as well.”

  He took a step. Prill got up protectively. “So what if I do stay, try to corner this guy myself?” Harry asked.

  My turn to object. But: “Not get in Bob Arnold’s way,” Harry hastened to add, “just keep my own eyes peeled. And maybe you two could, too? I know this creep’s thinking pattern. I ate, breathed, and slept it.”

  Yeah, maybe too much. Harry looked from one to the other of us. “And you both know what’s normal here, you’d spot anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Or someone out of the ordinary,” Ellie agreed.

  “Now, wait just a minute—” I began.

  Harry didn’t know our reputations. Only local people did. We didn’t advertise that we were known around town as the Snoop Sisters; like the Shingle Belles, but with longer noses. Or that Ellie and I had spotted some things so emphatically not-normal they’d have curled even Harry’s close-clipped grey hair.

  All he wanted was two harmless Eastport busybodies to be his eyes and ears, ones with a growing personal stake in helping him finish an unfinished mission: catching the bad guy. Turning the tables, righting an old wrong.

  “But if I catch him,” Harry added, “whoever it is, he’s mine. Not Bob’s or the state cops’. I get an hour with him. That’s all I need. Agreed?”

  I opened my mouth again but Ellie spoke first: “Agreed.”

  It all sounded pretty crackpot; in particular I was doubtful about the idea of keeping secrets from Bob Arnold: the wisdom, or the possibility.

  But Harry had saved me out of some bad wreckage, years ago. The least I could do was try returning a favor, especially since this particular wreckage wasn’t even flaming.

  Yet.

  In the chilly darkness Ellie and I turned toward downtown and La Sardina, Eastport’s Mexican restaurant. Its cheery lights and music plus a funky decor of huge potted plants, hanging pinatas, and candles jammed into Kahlúa bottles were just what I needed.

  Something else I needed was there, too: information, in the prodigious brain of Quoddy Tides reporter Timothy Rutherford. Not that it came free, mind you. But I was prepared to trade.

  “Drinking alone again, I see.” I slid onto a stool at the bar beside the one Tim regularly occupied right up till closing.

  He glanced at me in the mirror behind the bar, taking in my fading bruises. “Hey, just the woman I wanted to see. Hi, Ellie.”

  “Hi, Tim.” Ellie ordered beer for both of us, and another orange soda for Tim. An Eastport native, word had it that in the early ’90s he’d drunk himself off one big-city news desk after another, boom-boom-boom like falling downstairs. Then about a year ago he’d come home to Eastport, sober but with his tail between his legs.

  “Little excitement around the old town, hey?” he observed with a nod of thanks as I paid for the drinks. Nowadays Tim could’ve had any of his old jobs back. His memory alone — the closest to being truly photographic that I’d ever seen — was a treasure.

  But as he said, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Five feet tall, maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, he lived in an apartment over the dime store, belonged to every social and civic group in Eastport, and spent most evenings here at La Sardina gathering information, storing it for future use in that amazingly absorbent brain of his.

  “Seems like you two are right in the thick of it as usual.” Tim stroked his small ginger beard thoughtfully. “I see you’ve been up on a ladder again. But is Wade okay? And Sam?”

  Tim’s number was one of those on my caller ID at home; he wanted details. But now that he had me in his sights he knew better than to push hard immediately. In Eastport, pushing for a story was an almost guaranteed method of not getting it.

  Or not getting it right. “Yeah,” I said. “Wade’s good. Sam, too. And I’ll tell you all about it…” I drank some of my beer. “Later. If you’ll tell me a couple things right now.”

  Tim nodded agreeably. Behind him the jukebox blared into a cover of “Here Comes the Sun,” rendered by someone who should’ve let that number alone. I saw Tim’s lips move. “Shoot.”

  “Harriet Hollingsworth.” The music was convenient. I didn’t want what I was about to say all over town in the morning.

  “Those letters she wrote to the Tides,” I went on.

  Tim nodded. “Any of ’em interesting?” I asked. By now what would be all over town was the news that her body had been found.

  Tim made the connection, shook his head in regret. “C’mere.” I bent my head nearer to his.

  “I thought of that myself,” he shouted into my ear. “Went to the office, see if anyone kept ’em. Like for a joke, anything. I didn’t find any, not that I really needed to.”

  Because he would remember. Word for word, probably. I looked a question at him. “Nah,” he answered, “we didn’t keep ’em around routinely. Had a Harriet Hollingsworth ceremonial ashtray.”

  Darn. “Burned them?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, but do you remember anything that…”

  Because I was already pretty sure, now: Harriet’s letters didn’t have anything to do with her death. But I needed to be sure sure.

  “Nope,” Tim confirmed. “I know what you’re thinking. Could be, someone wanted to stop that little leak at its source.”

  My turn to nod. The noise in here was astonishing, clatter of plates and din of conversation competing with the jukebox.

  “But I read her letters when they came,” Tim said. “People talked at first like they were full of hot secrets.” It was a notion that Harriet herself had made sure got all over town. “Adultery!” he said. “Thieving out of the church collection!”

  He sipped orange soda. The jukebox went off. Timmy modulated his volume to an unoverhearable murmur without missing a beat.

  “But they were all about who didn’t rake leaves off a lawn, whose garbage cans sat on the curb till the next day,” he said.

  Tame stuff. “And this became common knowledge, did it?”

  Ellie looked vindicated. She’d said all along no one took Harriet seriously. But that was before her corpse was found sealed up in a wall.

  “Yeah,” Tim confirmed sadly. “Too bad. I’d’ve loved finding a story there. But as a motive for murder, they’re just not on.” Then he brightened. “You mentioned a trade?”

  “Just a minute.” Most of the beer had vanished from my tall glass and the unaccustomed sudden rush of alcohol had relaxed the trap- doors on my brain cells, letting another question escape.

  “Lian Ash,” I said slowly.

  Tim grinned. “Keep free-associating like that, I’ll have to switch you over to orange soda, too. But okay, what about Ash?”

  Ellie checked her wristwatch. “Listen, I’d better go home. George said he’d call. He’s not bringing Sam until they kick him out of Maggie’s room. But if I’m not there to answer, he’s going to be worried.”

  I looked down; my beer was gone and I definitely didn’t want another one. But I didn’t want to go home to that big, empty house, either. Meanwhile, Tim sat there waiting for two things:

  First, to find out what I would tell him about the recent run of accidents around my place. I had offered to trade, after all, and I could see he intended to hold me to the promise.

  And second, to learn why I was curious about the old mason who was working on my house, in case there was a story in it. I followed Ellie outside and Tim followed me. His newshound’s nose was practically twitching.

  “I’ll be over later, after I talk to George,” she called to me over her shoulder.

  “Okay.” I turned back to Tim.

  All I wanted was to confirm what Mr. Ash had said: that he was a fairly recent arrival to the area, one with no interesting history that Tim in his chronically curious way might’ve learned and remembered. Because…

  The question floated up s
tartlingly: How had Mr. Ash known I hated heights? Probably there was a perfectly simple, harmless answer. But until I knew it, and knew it to be the truth, I couldn’t have him in the house anymore.

  Not with all that was going on around here. Then Tim startled me again, recalling even more than I had expected. “Yeah, I roomed with him in Machias,” he said. “Two years back.”

  Surprise must have shown on my face; Tim misinterpreted it. “Well, not in the same room,” he added. “Same house, though.”

  “Go on in if I’m not home,” I called to Ellie. She shot me a look but made no comment as she strode away.

  “So you knew him?” I questioned Tim. This didn’t jibe with what Mr. Ash had told me.

  “Nope. Not really. But I recognized him when he showed up here. Knew his face, he knew mine.”

  “Tim,” I said, waving at his car parked at the curb, a tiny, shiny-new red Volkswagen bug. The twinkling strings of Christmas lights that La Sardina kept on in its windows all year reflected on its grille. “Do you feel like taking a ride?”

  Tim looked at me, at the car, and at my face again. My own tumble from the ladder was no big news; as I may have mentioned, I’m not the surest-footed person on the planet. But he badly wanted the inside story on Wade and Sam. And if there was anything interesting to learn about Lian Ash, or anyone else in town, he wanted that too.

  And Sam wouldn’t be home for at least another couple of hours. Tim stepped to the VW and opened the passenger door with a flourish.

  “Madam, your chariot awaits.”

  Probably it was a goose chase. Probably I had no earthly business heading forty miles away to Machias with the express purpose of hauling some poor landlady from a well-earned evening of TV and knitting, to quiz her about an old tenant. But something about Lian Ash just wasn’t sitting right with me.

  “I was still pretty shaky,” Tim said about his own time at the rooming house. “Wanted to get my legs solidly under me, so I stayed away a little while longer. Like circling the airport a few times before landing, you know? If I was going to crash again I didn’t want to do it in Eastport,” he explained. “Then, when people assumed I’d come home straight from New York, I let them. No harm, no foul.”