“I know. Actually, when I was saying ‘they,’ I should have said ‘he.’ I think the big guy went overboard and got hurt and probably drowned fairly early on. Even if the little man somehow got him into the Zodiac, I imagine he died soon. Loss of blood, shock.” Sonny glanced at Janet. She was leaning against the sink, a little pale but seemingly not about to faint. “Then,” he continued, “I think the smaller guy dumped him or left him or whatever and came ashore. If either of you see a little Hispanic guy wandering around, you call me.”
“It makes sense,” I admitted. “He doesn’t know the Bertram’s boat cushions and the Zodiac were found. Presumably he has money. He could rent a room and just figure he’ll lie low until things calm down and then quietly leave. He probably has money from the Plymouth robberies.”
I thought of all the talk in the Wharf Rat. “Sonny, if so many people think this is drug-related, couldn’t they be right? I mean, these robbers—couldn’t they have been hitting all those Plymouth stores to get cash for drugs? And couldn’t they really have planned to make some sort of pick-up at sea and just got caught in the storm?”
“Yeah, that could be the story,” Sonny nodded. “And there are always crazy things happening with drug buys . Not enough cash, bad product, personal quarrels, and—in this case—maybe just plain bad weather.”
I lit a cigarette, and Sonny took it from me as he continued. “My main problem is the Zodiac and the little man. Anyway, we’re going to start checking around any motels and B&Bs that are open this time of year. Now don’t get macho and approach this guy if you see him, Alex. He may still have a gun, and he sure in hell has nothing to lose. I, on the other hand, would just as soon not lose my sister. At least not permanently.”
“There speaks the big brother,” Janet smiled fondly.
“Um, very sweet,” I muttered, somehow embarrassed that Sonny would vocalize affection. “Okay. If I see this guy, I’ll run for the cell phone.”
“That’s an excellent—not to say sensible—idea,” Janet agreed. “But there’s another thought that keeps going through my mind. What did you say was the name of the people in Plymouth who kept falling down the steps? McKinley?”
“McKinney, I think.” Sonny grinned in remembrance.
“Okay. Either way, it’s Irish and a lot of the Irish in the Boston area are IRA supporters. They’re not all barflies who think they’ve done a great thing if they toss a fiver into the hat at the pub, you know, there’s some big money involved, too. The McKinneys could have supplied the boat and paid for the two men to run illegal firearms out to some ship. And something went wrong. A fight, an accident, murder.”
I found myself beaming at Janet’s idea. It was both creative and logical! Didn’t we make a fine pair? Maybe we could combine our analytical talents. Peres and Meacham, Private Investigators. Oops, she didn’t know that about me yet. Well, soon.
Sonny sighed deeply. “Lord, Janet, you’re beginning to sound like Alex. Next you’ll being trying to tell me they went out to meet a ship carrying illegal Chinese immigrants!”
Janet laughed. “How about South American or Caribbean instead? They’d be less obvious than fifty new Chinese suddenly wandering around the town.”
“Come on, Sonny,” I pursued. “It could be drugs or it could be IRA. You just want it to be your robbers. Don’t be so stubborn. There’s a difference between being focused and having tunnel vision, you know.”
“Oh, hell, all right. But I will not call the FBI. If I do we’ll have ten of ’em running around looking under every clam shell. I will ask the Plymouth police to take a quiet look at the McKinneys. I know Bob Reynolds pretty well over there. And I will call Chief Wood at the Coast Guard Station—unofficially. He’s a wise old bird. Okay? Enough? Will you two promise not to have any more bright ideas?”
“I suppose so, detective,” I smiled sweetly. “Although I would think the police would be grateful for assistance from concerned citizens.”
“Alex! You can be the most irritating . . .”
Janet interrupted him by standing up noisily. “I’m going to run for the hills, commonly known as Mrs. Madeiros’ place,” Janet said. “I’ve really got to get back.”
“Don’t let me interrupt your evening,” said Sonny. “I have to go home. I promised Mom I’d be there for dinner.”
“You’re not interrupting. I’m a little tired.” She blushed prettily. “And I want to get up early in the morning to get some writing done. That’s my best time.”
“Well, if you’re sure. Are you walking? Can I give you a ride?” She thanked him and nodded.
With surprising tact, Sonny took Fargo out into the back yard, giving Janet and me time to say our good-byes. We kissed gently, concurred that the day had been great and agreed that Janet would call me the next morning.
As they drove away, I looked at my watch and swore. I was running late if Ray was on schedule. I grabbed my coat and called the dog. I decided not to go by Miller’s house and hope he would still be there, but to go directly to Marcia Robby’s, hoping that Sonny was correct in saying Miller went there on Thursdays. This way I would have time to swing by the drive-in over on Bradford and pick up something to eat. Maybe Janet could live on doughnut crumbs. I was starved.
I dashed into the restaurant and ordered a cheeseburger with the works and a large fries for myself, a plain burger for Fargo, a Diet Coke for now and coffee for later. Three minutes and I was rolling back toward Marcia’s. She lived almost to the end of Commercial Street in the West End. The bottom floor of the house was her Select Antiques store, which included anything not ostensibly new.
She lived upstairs. I’d been in her apartment a time or two, and it was charming—as light and airy and uncluttered as her store was dim and crowded and fusty with the aroma of lemon oil.
The clutter served to showcase Marcia’s dramatic talents. When prospective buyers came in she would ask them to describe their home a little, so she could visualize them in it and “feel what they felt it called out for.” Then she would walk directly past various pieces to, say, a table. She would stroke it lightly. “This. I can feel this would find the perfect spot in your home. But it is expensive and you have told me you are on a budget and I understand that. So . . . !”
And she would leave it and walk to other tables in the shop, always glancing back at the first with a warm smile and soft eyes, but resolutely telling the virtues of some other, cheaper tables. Suddenly, she would turn away, pressing her fingers to her eyes. “No. No. I cannot sell this cheaper piece to you. You can afford it. I would make some small profit, but later you would never forgive me. I cannot let you take what isn’t right for you. In the long run you will think more highly of me if you take nothing. I am sorry, perhaps you should simply go.”
Nine times out of ten she had a check or credit card for the more expensive piece in less than five minutes.
I admired her acting ability and salesmanship, but one small part of me believed she really meant all she said. Several years ago she and Sonny had a brief liaison right after his first wife had left him, taking his small son with her. He hadn’t cared so much about his wife, but he was truly heartbroken over losing a lot of his contact with the little boy.
During that period I ran into Marcia at the Wharf Rat and we had a drink together. I happened to mention I had that afternoon found a sandpiper with a broken leg and taken it to my vet to be patched up.
She put her hand on mine for a moment and smiled. “Perhaps we both do a service in this town, Alex. You care for the flying wounded and I for the walking wounded.” At the time I thought it was the martini talking, but later I realized what she had meant. And now I was spying on her. Sometimes I really loved my job.
I parked a couple of houses before Marcia’s, and Fargo and I wolfed down our dinners with about the same amount of grace. I saw headlights coming up behind me and slid down below window level until they passed. He parked right in front of the shop. I got a couple of shots of him ringing
her bell and one of her letting him in. With my latest camera the prints would be automatically date and time stamped. I settled down to wait, figuring I might as well wrap the whole thing up with a photo of him saying a perhaps passionate goodnight. I just hoped it wouldn’t be the middle of the night.
Tempus didn’t fugit. I was having an awful time staying awake. No matter what I tried thinking about, it started to put me to sleep. Thoughts about neither sex nor murder could seem to hold my interest. I was tired, and right this moment one seemed as dull as the other. I finished the Diet Coke and started on the lukewarm coffee. Next I’d probably have to pee. What a way to end a great day. All I needed was some neighbor to walk out his door as I stumbled bleary eyed from his shrubbery, pulling up my pants.
Finally, finally, lights went on downstairs. The door opened and Miller came out. He did not embrace her. He actually sort of bowed and kissed her hand. I wondered how far this would go with a divorce lawyer. But then, I doubted if Diane Miller had any thoughts of divorce. I felt she wanted information just to shorten Ray’s leash, and this would probably be enough to put Ray right smack in the doghouse exactly where she wanted him. I really didn’t care. I didn’t even bother to follow Ray home. If he stopped somewhere for a drink, I cared not. I was just very grateful the evening was over and I could go to my nice warm bed.
Fargo did his evening chores while I quickly brushed my teeth and donned my pajamas. He jumped into bed beside me, sniffed the pillows and immediately began to make that whuffling noise dogs make, like they are blowing air out through their lips. The vet says it simply means they are processing an unfamiliar scent, but somehow it always sounds disapproving to me.
“Fargo! Settle down or get down!”
He stopped whuffling and lay down. Then he rearranged himself several times, managing to give me a couple of mule-kicks in the middle of my back as he did so. I chose to assume they were accidental.
“Dammit, Fargo!” He sighed deeply and lay still. I burrowed into the pillow, still faintly reminiscent of Janet’s cologne, and may have whuffled a bit myself. But almost immediately I began to drift into sleep.
As I did so, I began a beautiful, colorful dream. I was steering a deep purple Bertram cabin cruiser through a lovely, calm lavender sea. Janet stood smiling beside me, both of us clad in woad-colored sailor uniforms. She pointed to the rear of the boat. There, bobbing merrily along behind us on a short tow rope, was a giant, bright yellow sneaker.
“What is it?” I asked stupidly.
“It’s a Zodiac.”
“It looks like a sneaker.”
“You silly goose. Surely I know a Zodiac when I see one. I was an admiral in the Coast Guard. And look here.”
She waved a large piece of stiff, heavy pink paper in front of my face. At the top was a graceful pen and ink sketch of a smiling Janet in a toga, reclining on a Roman couch, holding a bunch of magenta grapes over a glass of pale yellow wine. Printed beneath the sketch in large ornate gold calligraphy were the words “Filet of Sole Veronique.”
“It’s the menu to my famous new restaurant, and sole Veronique and your Aunt Mae’s borage herb bread are all I’m going to serve.” She hugged me and smiled. “But don’t worry. I’ll always make scallops and french fries for you.”
Thus reassured, I sighed and fell more deeply asleep.
Chapter 7
I slept well and was awakened early Friday morning by a breathy and cavernous yawn in my right ear.
“Good morning, Fargo.”
He stood with his front paws on the pillow and grinned down at me, teeth bared, looking totally ferocious. Then he flopped onto his back for a belly scratch, with all four legs in the air, looking totally ludicrous. I let him outdoors while I showered and made a pot of coffee. I let him in and gave him fresh water and food. Finally, I settled at the kitchen table, feeling totally indolent and quite content with my world. Fargo let me enjoy my lazy morning until after my second leisurely cup of coffee. Then he started a series of tentative tail wags and elbow nudges and deep sighs. Reluctantly, I let myself be cajoled into a trip to Race Point.
Well, obviously I had to go sometime. And sooner was probably better than later, before I let my reluctance to visit the scene of the unpleasant discovery build into something more important than it really was. I took my camera with the black and white film along, telling myself it was just another working day to build up my collection of photos for the summer season.
It was a calm and somewhat dank morning, with a low fog bank lying sullenly just offshore. It did not dull Fargo’s pleasure, although I shivered in the chill as he ran along splashing noisily and happily in the cold wavelets, hoping as always for gulls to torment or sandpipers to herd along the shallows.
As we walked along, I noticed an interestingly shaped piece of driftwood lying half-buried in the sand. Near it was an old wooden lobster-pot marker with worn-away paint, and a few feet further on, the carapace of a long-dead crab. I resolutely refused to think of errant feet as I arranged them artistically and took a couple of close-ups from different angles. Look, ‘nature’ photos are not always exactly ‘natural,’ okay?
After I figured Fargo had had enough exercise for the morning, I picked up the driftwood and marker, and took them along as we walked back to the car. I would give them both to Aunt Mae. Come the summer, she’d place them attractively among her herb displays and someone would give her a good price for them. Tourists. Never forget the tourists—or their wallets.
On the way back to town I remembered I’d better stop by the bank for some cash. Fortunately, the ATM was actually working, and there was no line this early in the day, so my visit was blessedly brief, and we were on our way home again when I noticed a young man walking up Commercial Street. He was slight and of dark complexion, which was not at all unusual in Provincetown, but I didn’t recognize him and he seemed somehow uneasy in his gait. He wasn’t exactly looking over his shoulder, but he impressed me as being wary of his surroundings. I slowed the car and finally stopped and saw him turn down the alley toward the Wharf Rat Bar.
Joe’s wife Billie usually opened the bar in the mornings and did the cleaning, such as it was, and handled any early business, such as it was. She was also the lunch cook, and not a bad one, either. Joe didn’t come in to tend bar and serve food until around eleven, when the traffic began to pick up. My curiosity was piqued. Not too many people visit bars at 9:15 in the morning, even in Provincetown, and most of them are the regular daylong drinkers you find ensconced in every bar from the moment the key turns in the lock. I had never seen this kid around the Rat at any time, and from a distance he didn’t look old enough to drink, whatever the hour. Of course, he could be job hunting or looking for someone, or maybe he was a lot older than he looked. And of course, there was one good way to find out.
I parked the car and rolled the windows down for Fargo and gave him a drink and a biscuit from his stash in the back seat. As I walked down the alley, I saw that Billie had the door propped open to let the morning light in and the night’s smoke and beer and booze smell out—or as out as it ever got. I stood in the doorway for a moment, letting my eyes adjust. Even on a dull morning the interior of the Wharf Rat was considerably dimmer than the outdoors. Then I strolled in, barely missing a pail full of grey water and a mop precariously standing in it.
One regular was already settled in at the end of the bar with a draft beer. It was Sergeant York. At least that was what everyone called him. If I ever knew his real name, I can’t remember it. He had been a Marine hero in WWII in the Pacific, and he regaled anyone who would even pretend to listen to him with detailed battle histories by the hour. If no one were handy, he’d talk to himself, as he was doing now. Around noon he’d move on to Kelly’s Bar and Grill, later he’d call in at the Fisherman’s Bar and finally back to the Rat, where around ten in the evening, someone would drive him home.
I looked at the level in his glass of beer. It wasn’t that he drank so much. Actually he didn’t.
He simply had no place to go. He shared his house with a yuppie son, a snippy daughter-in-law and a squeaky clean little snob of a granddaughter. The house was impersonally furnished according to Better Homes, pages seventeen through twenty, and kept ready for invasion by the Ladies’ Aid Society at any time. It had no comfortable place for an old man who hourly relived the triumphs of his young life and spilled mustard on his shirt.
“Morning, Sergeant! It’s a fine day for March. Not too cold and not too hot but just right, as they say.”
“Good morning, Miss. A bit foggy though. Good enemy weather, we would have said on the Canal.”
“Yessir. A day to exercise caution, I’m sure.” I moved on down the bar to where the young man sat with an impressive stack of money in front of him. Billie leaned across the bar toward him with a look of irritation on her face, tempered by little greedy glances at the pile of bills on the bar.
“Hi, Billie. What’s up?”
“I’m up, that’s what, and way too early on a damp day like this, if you ask me, which you did. And this young pup is sittin’ here demanding a Mudslide cocktail, which sounds like we oughta be in California which we certainly aren’t, as I don’t have any idea how to make even if he would show me some ID so’s I knew if I should even try and look it up if he did.”
“Right.” It paid to listen closely when Billie spoke. I turned to the young man. “Why won’t you show the lady some ID, so she can look up how she might make your drink, if you have any, that is?” I grimaced. Was Billie’s syntax contagious?
“None of your business.” His dark eyes flashed under the brim of his cap, and the wispy wannabe mustache quivered with indignation. Obviously he intended to brazen out this scene. Two mere women weren’t going to keep him from his Mudslide.
Caught in the Net Page 7