by Sarah Graves
“As for George, what he tells them is this,” he said. “He tells them the name of his attorney, period. Nothing more without counsel.”
My heart thumped. “You think it could be as bad as that? I mean, everybody likes George. He couldn’t possibly have . . .”
He turned and looked down at me. “Jacobia, it doesn’t matter that he’s a good guy, even if he didn’t do it.”
If, he’d said. I noticed it right away.
Not a slip. After his years on the run, you didn’t slide too many fast ones past him, and he never paid anyone the false compliment of thinking they were too good to be capable of something.
Thinking that was what had put him on the run in the first place. Because he hadn’t triggered the blast that killed my mom and as good as orphaned me, years ago.
His best friend had. In the kitchen he picked up his leather satchel. “Better make myself scarce before the gendarmes arrive,” he warned me. “I need to get back to Jody Jones’s place, anyway.”
He was building a new chimney for Jody, whose record in the bill-paying department was not exactly stellar.
“Okay,” I said. My father went along so normally most of the time, you’d never guess how many years in prison were waiting for him if he were ever captured. “How are you going to get Jody to pay? Hold a gun to his head?”
That had been tried but Jody had a habit of bursting into tears when he was threatened, to the point where he’d earned the nickname, “Old Blubber-Puss.”
“Nope. I’ve got a secret method. He’ll weep, all right, and he won’t quit till it’s cash on the barrelhead. Wade back soon?”
“Uh-huh,” I said, not quite able to hide the annoyance in my voice. “Later tonight.”
After such a long time of not being able to care for me, my dad liked the idea of Wade being my protector. In fact, he liked it more than I did.
“Good,” he said. I looked up to find him gazing at me. Folks used to tell me how much I resembled my mother; her folks, who’d raised me until I lit out for the big city.
“Dad.” I stopped him at the door. “I’m sorry. Lots of things on my mind, is all. I’m glad you’re here.”
He replied with a small smile. Not enough, but we had that. It killed me that even with all he’d done for me lately, he still thought it was all he deserved.
And that sometimes it was what I thought too. “It was a long time, though, wasn’t it?” he asked quietly.
Like I said, not much got past him. He wasn’t the only one still trying to make sense of what we were to one another: what could be salvaged.
And what, perhaps, was too damaged to save.
“Tell George what I said,” he added, and went out.
Trooper Hollis Colgate pulled his squad car into my driveway and hustled for the house through what remained of the nor’easter now barreling away from us into New Brunswick.
“Had to wait at the causeway in Machias,” he said of the delay. “Tide was high, took an hour for the storm surge to clear off the road. Plenty of trees down, too. Lots of fender benders, other general nonsense.”
I caught the drift. This had better not be a false alarm. Colgate glanced around, noticed that our electricity was still on.
“There’s a generator on our island,” I explained. “When the power lines from the mainland go down, men from town go over and fire it up.”
Colgate nodded. “Handy,” he said, looking around some more.
Suddenly I felt glad we weren’t displaying any obvious signs of careless living. To help George—assuming he needed it and it was possible—I needed good credibility with Colgate. And while waiting for him I’d been too preoccupied to play Holly Homemaker.
Sam was at the kitchen counter making some sandwiches. “How do you do, sir,” he said when I introduced him to the officer.
With dark curly hair and hazel eyes, Sam was ridiculously handsome, not to mention much older than any child of mine had a right to be. I watched with pleasure as his manners registered with Colgate.
“D’yado,” echoed Sam’s friend Tommy Pockets, a red-haired, freckled boy whose round cheeks and big ears gave him a striking resemblance to Howdy Doody.
The boys went back to fixing their late lunch. “Are you all right, ma’am?” Colgate asked.
My eyes were red from weeping, a fact I’d tried to disguise with cold washcloths, unsuccessfully. Between my dad’s departure and Colgate’s arrival I’d had the call I’d been waiting for. It was from an associate of mine in the city who had law enforcement connections, and it hadn’t conveyed welcome information.
“I’m fine,” I told Colgate. “After I spoke with you I had some bad news on another matter, that’s all. Nothing to do with why I called you.”
Sam glanced at me. Later, I telegraphed at him. “Would you like some coffee?” I asked Colgate, “or—”
“No, thanks,” he replied with a practiced smile. He had good teeth, a ruddy complexion, sandy hair, and caramel-colored, pale-lashed eyes. His husky build might go to fat later, but for now it was easy to imagine him engaged in outdoor activities: fishing in summer, hunting in fall, and snowmobiling in winter.
“Maybe we could take a ride to the scene,” he suggested. “I can get a feel for just what the situation is.”
All business, but pleasantly enough. We weren’t chums but we weren’t adversaries either.
“Sure. Sam, if you could please feed the animals before you go out . . .” The dogs and our Siamese attack cat, Cat Dancing, were milling around the kitchen, agitating for snacks.
“Sure. Good to meet you,” Sam said to Trooper Colgate. “Mom, I could stick around if you want,” he added.
Once upon a time, the only reason Sam would stick around was in case there might be a chance to steal money from my purse. I was thanking my stars that our situation had changed and getting ready to turn down his offer when it hit me.
“Sam. The CPR course your father is teaching at the clinic? Listen, I hate to tell you this, but I signed us both up for it at the last minute and forgot to tell you.”
I looked helplessly at the clock. “And then I forgot . . .”
The class had begun an hour ago. “I’m sorry, Sam, I knew you needed it for the semester, and—”
Tommy listened in silence. Just Sam’s age and working at the Mobil station, he was tutoring Sam in algebra and geometry so Sam could take a challenge exam and get three college credits.
But to start the new semester as a sophomore, Sam needed four. “Damn,” I said. Even dead, Hector the Objector could really mess you up. But Sam only grinned.
“Don’t worry, Mom, it’s a great idea. Dad’ll catch me up on what I missed today. But you’d better watch out for him.”
At this Tommy did smile. He was such a good kid, I had to hide the way my heart ached for him; working at the gas station was fine as far as it went, but even the older men employed there thought what I did: Tommy should try for more.
Now, while he had the chance. “Yeah,” he teased me, “I heard if you miss one of Dr. Tiptree’s classes or you even come late, he lets the other students practice on you.”
Which sounded like something my ex-husband would do. As a man who delved into other people’s craniums for a living—back in the city, Victor was the guy you went to when your case was so hopeless that the other brain surgeons switched to doing nose jobs just to avoid you—he’d left squeamishness in the dust.
Unless he could use it against you. Meanwhile Tommy chose this moment to change the subject. “Uh, listen, if I could get hold of a pair of alpacas, could I raise them in your backyard?”
The kid was always looking for ways to make money. “There’s this guy here in Eastport,” he explained, apparently taking my stunned silence as an invitation to continue, “raising pot-bellied pigs. Like, for pets. But alpacas are way more valuable.”
Cory Williams; the guy with the red ants. The reminder sent a pang through me as Tommy went on. “Their hair, even, is worth a fortune.
But the yard at my house is too small.”
“How will you get alpacas?” I asked, momentarily diverted.
As it happened an old client of mine had just written to me on this very subject. Alpacas were the hot new back-to-the-land investment for urban rat-race escapees.
“Dunno,” Tommy said. “I figured I better have a place to put ’em, first.”
Besides a big yard, alpacas needed a fence, water troughs, a warm barn, feeding arrangements, grooming tools, and an area for a communal dung pile, which somehow I didn’t think my neighbors would appreciate.
Also, a breeding-age male alpaca went for upward of twenty thousand dollars. “In this case I think you’d better find out how to get them first,” I told Tommy.
Next I supposed he’d want to raise mushrooms in my cellar, which was at least a suitable environment. And if I didn’t get it fixed soon, he would be able to raise trout down there, too.
“Come on,” I told Trooper Colgate. “We’d better go do this before my ex shows up and starts demonstrating the kiss of life.”
We went out into a thin rain. “Have a fair amount of trouble with your ex-husband, do you?” Colgate asked mildly.
Delicate. But fishing, definitely. I decided to level with Trooper Colgate. “He’s a real pain in the ass. But he’s Sam’s father.”
I didn’t even try explaining it all; for one thing I didn’t understand the accommodation we’d come to, myself. But Victor had moved here and given up everything to be near Sam, and I had begun getting over my own bitterness enough to give him credit for that.
“Yeah.” Colgate nodded when I’d finished my summary, as he drove carefully through the rain-washed streets. “I’ve got two teenagers myself. They live with my ex-wife in Auburn. What we do for our kids, huh?” He turned on Water Street, past the nineteenth-century brick storefronts facing the bay. I scanned the pier and the tugboats tied there, the Pleon and the Ahoskie, looking for my husband Wade. But I didn’t see him.
“Your boy seems like a good kid.” Colgate turned left again, spotted the mansard-roofed mansion set back from the street.
“He is,” I confirmed. “He’s doing a work-study this semester out at the boat school. Back to U. Maine after the break.”
Colgate pulled over. “This it?” He got out his notepad and a utility flashlight. “Let’s have a look.”
The yard was an overgrown thicket of sumac, barberry bushes, and wild raspberry. A small forest of whippy, resilient softwood saplings grew around the rear of the structure.
“Nice new step,” he remarked, glancing down at my handiwork as we went in.
“Thanks.” I couldn’t resist bouncing on it a little. Solid, definitely solid. But it was the only thing so far about the whole morning that felt that way. And although I had my hopes because Colgate seemed like a serious and solid Maine State Trooper, I still suspected matters would get worse.
Inside, the smell was a mixture of old varnish and dry rot. A wide stairway curved up to the second floor, a carved mahogany banister turning with old-fashioned gracefulness at the landing.
“Quite a place,” Colgate commented, peering around.
I led him into the parlor. “There,” I said.
He aimed the flash, went in where the bodies were. I stayed out. Somehow in my mind the skeletal tree branches outside had gotten mixed up with Eva Thane’s withered arms; I didn’t want to see her again. Or Hector either, his body still taut with the agony of his last moments.
“Uh-huh,” Colgate said emotionlessly from inside the little room. Then: “You’re Wade Sorenson’s wife, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” When there was freighter traffic, Wade guided the big vessels in and out of the local waters; the rest of the time he sold and repaired guns, both collectibles and utility weapons. So between boats and firearms, almost everyone around here knew him.
“Quite the shooter.”
Wade, he meant. It was how I’d gotten to know Wade, too; on the target range. “You poke around in here?” Colgate asked.
The question snapped me out of a pleasant memory. “Enough to see them. That’s all. My friend knows who the old one is, though, or thinks she does.”
“Really.” He came back out again. “How’s that?”
“Her uncle owned the place, back in the early 1920s.”
Chester Harlequin, bon vivant and disgraced local physician, had given the house and himself a bad name that lasted to this day. “Ellie has photographs of him and the other people who lived here, and she recognized that headpiece. The tiara.”
“Right. And the other one is Hector Gosling?”
He glanced casually around some more as he asked, taking in the broken plaster, cracked windowpanes, a patch of the ceiling fallen to the floor and shattered. But his tone wasn’t casual.
“Yes. Everyone knew Hector,” I said. “No one liked him.”
Might as well get that right out there; plenty of suspects. Just because George hated Hector for a reason, that didn’t mean someone else couldn’t have killed him for some other reason.
“Anybody around here dislike him particularly?”
Drat. I hesitated a beat too long and felt him hear it. Being a cop would’ve given him ears like a bat, especially for a lie. “My friend’s husband had a beef with him,” I replied.
I explained it briefly. “But,” I finished, “George couldn’t have done it. You really need to look for somebody else.”
“Okay,” Colgate said. He’d stopped smiling but he hadn’t locked up behind a thousand-mile stare. And maybe it was better he heard it right away, not wonder later why I hadn’t told him.
“Just a sec,” he said. “I want to check one more thing.”
He went back into the little room and emerged a few moments later with a clear plastic bag in his latex-gloved hand. Inside the bag was a scrap of paper with some writing on it.
“Well?” I couldn’t read what it said.
He was frowning, thoughtful. “Well, what?”
And obviously he wasn’t going to tell me. “Can you at least reveal whether or not you happened to find the gun?”
“You spotted that, did you? Single gunshot to the head on the female deceased.” He looked shrewdly at me and stripped the glove off. “No, I didn’t find it. But here’s some good news. Just one door.” He waved at it. “But it’s not a locked-room mystery anymore.”
The mystery, he meant, of how someone got Hector through an eighty-year-old wall. It had been my big question, too.
Or one of them. He looked at me some more. “So what was the news you got, that you were crying about not long before I got here?”
Wham, out of left field. But not entirely; the news could’ve been George confessing to me that he’d done the deed.
So I leveled with Colgate again. “A friend of mine in New York was a fugitive from the Federal authorities for a long time. He got picked up a few days ago, they’ve got him over a barrel.”
Friend was putting it mildly. If not for Jemmy Wechsler I might have ended up with a bullet in my own head, all those years ago when I was little more than a child and alone in the city.
“And you knew where he was? This friend of yours?” Colgate asked.
In other words, did I need an attorney, too?
“No. But he was… probably I shouldn’t say this, but he was a hero of mine. And now he’s either going to prison or into the witness protection program.”
Witless protection, Jemmy always called it, because you had to be witless to get in a position where you needed it. And even more so to believe in it; I mean, that it could protect you.
Or that anything really could. “He was a mob guy,” I said. “Handled their money. Few years ago, he stole a big bunch of it and disappeared.”
Colgate whistled. “Nervy move. And you were a pal?”
“Yeah.” It was Jemmy who’d taught me to survive and thrive in Manhattan. Now he was in trouble and I didn’t know whether to be sad, scared, or furious with him for letting
it happen.
All of the above, I figured. “Anyway, that was the news,” I said to Colgate. “Nothing to do with this.”
We headed for the door. “What did you mean about no locked-room mystery?” I asked. “And what’s in that plastic bag?”
He held the big old ornately paneled door for me, scraped it shut behind us over the uneven wooden floor as we left the house.
“Body goes in, there’s got to be a way in,” he said. “That, like the man says, is elementary.”
I put the key in the lock and jiggled it, waiting for the tumblers to fall. A good hard kick would have pushed the old door right over, or someone could’ve broken a sidelight window and reached through to turn the dead-bolt knob.
But no windows were broken and the door hadn’t been kicked. I handed Colgate the key when I was finished with it; everyone on the historical society’s volunteer team had one.
As did George. “Same with a gun,” Colgate added. “Gotta be a way out for it, too.”
I wondered if someone took the gun eighty years ago when Eva Thane was shot in the head, or later when Hector was put here.
“And I don’t know if you noticed,” Colgate continued, “but there was an old carpet on that floor.”
Right, an ancient red rectangle, its vaguely Oriental design mostly obscured by dust. I’d barely paid any attention to it. Now Colgate strode to the squad car ahead of me through sodden autumn leaves torn down by the storm.
I stood still, working it out. He was already on the radio, reciting his unit number, location, and situation.
“A trapdoor? Is there a trapdoor under that rug?”
He glanced over, nodded to confirm. Which encouraged me; if he thought I was screwing around with him he wouldn’t have told me anything.
Waiting for him to finish, I leaned against the squad car. As the storm pulled off, the wind had swung around out of the south, bringing with it a burst of warmth and a false smell of spring mingled with a hint of wood smoke. Crows cawed, blue sky peeped between the departing clouds, and shafts of sunlight beamed down onto the puddles shimmering in the streets.