“No problem. If you spot Buddy, give me a call. My deadline’s tomorrow afternoon.”.
She glanced through the paper as she sat in the car. Darryl Kelly had disappeared on May twentieth. Nobody knew exactly where he had been when fate overtook him. He had driven to the Westpoint Marine Patrol substation early in the morning, before his shift started, and taken out a boat. He had not said where he was going. When his shift began and he hadn’t radioed in, the dispatcher tried to raise him. He never answered, never turned up, was, in fact, never seen again. His arm was found in the shark three days later and was identified by a plaid fragment of a jacket sleeve.
May twentieth. Isabel dropped the papers on the seat and drove around the corner to Clem Davenant’s office.
The place was modest but comfortable, with old maps of St. Elmo and Cape St. Elmo and historic photos on the wall. Clem’s secretary buzzed him, and soon he stuck his head out the door of his office and told her to come in.
After Isabel sat down Clem opened a folder on his desk and launched into a discussion of the value of Merriam’s property (not great, because it wasn’t beachfront); the taxes (considerable); the condition of the house (terrible). “After her expenses are paid, there’ll be a little cash left over,” he said. “I’m not sure exactly how much. Maybe ten thousand.” He closed the folder and sat back.
Isabel tented her fingers and pressed them against her lips. “I’ll have to sell the place. What else can I do?” she said at last.
He tapped his gold pen on the blotter. “The house is a local landmark. It ought to be preserved.”
“Yes, but you’re talking about a lot of money, and I don’t have it. I can’t look after the place any better than Merriam could.” She had never been happy there. Why should the thought of selling the house be so painful?
“You don’t have to decide right now. Give it some thought.” He opened his desk drawer. “Here are the keys.” He pulled out a small stainless-steel ring and handed it to her.
She dropped them in her bag, started to stand, and said, “One other thing. What day was it that Merriam had her accident?”
“What day?”
“The date. Do you remember?”
He leafed through a leather-bound calendar on his desk, ran his finger across it, and said, “I have a notation here that she was taken to the hospital on May twentieth.”
“Thanks.”
“Isabel—” He played with the pen again, let it go. “I’m disturbed by what you said about Merriam yesterday. About your suspicions.”
“Oh, well—” She shrugged. She didn’t want a replay of their disagreement.
“I hope you’ll let me know if you discover anything.”
“All right.” Maybe she would. Maybe she wouldn’t.
The drive to the Cape gave her a chance to muse about her research. Both Merriam and Darryl Kelly had been extremely unfortunate on May twentieth. Darryl Kelly could have been at Cape St. Elmo that morning, although nobody had seen him.
Unless Merriam had.
Preoccupied, Isabel walked into the trailer. She was standing on a white envelope— a blank envelope. She had not put the weather stripping along the bottom of the door, damn it. She picked the envelope up. Sealed, like the one before.
She tore it open wearily. The printed message, in red felt-tip pen, was similar to the first: NOW YOU CAN GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM, YOU WHORE. She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall.
20
Harry and Scooter got in late from a long day of diving, and Harry really didn’t have time to stop by Isabel’s. But when he got in his truck to go home, he turned toward the Anders place anyway.
Isabel must have heard him, because she was looking out the window. By the time he had gotten out of the truck, she was standing in the doorway.
Harry stood by the step. He said, “I came to see how things went today.”
“Not too well.”
Harry didn’t know whether her bad mood had to do with him or something else. “What’s the matter?”
“Oh”—she pushed hair off her forehead with a worn-out air— “I talked to Clem Davenant about Merriam’s estate, and I think I’m going to have to sell the house. There isn’t enough money to keep it up.”
“Did you want to hold on to it?”
She looked toward the old building. “I don’t know. Why should I, really?” The corner of her eye jumped, the way it used to when she got jittery.
He said, “Something else is wrong. What is it?”
He wasn’t sure she was going to answer. Finally, she said, “I’m getting anonymous notes.”
The mosquitoes were descending. A cloud of them had congregated around the lamp by the door. “What do you mean?”
“Somebody is writing notes calling me a whore and saying I should go back where I came from. I found the second one when I got home this afternoon.”
“Can I see them?”
She let him in. A piece of paper and a torn envelope were lying on the table. She handed the paper to him.
Harry studied it. NOW YOU CAN GO BACK WHERE YOU CAME FROM, YOU WHORE. Written in red felt-tip marker. He shook his head the way he did when water clogged his ears. Isabel handed him another paper. Same general message.
A drumming had started up inside Harry’s head. “I can take care of this for you,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“It won’t happen again.” He dropped the notes on the table. He had to get out of here.
“Wait a minute, Harry. I want to know if you—”
He didn’t wait. He remembered the door slamming, but he didn’t remember getting in the truck. The first thing he knew he was on the road, heading for home.
“I wrote them because I wanted her to go away and leave us alone, Harry,” said Kathy Mercer.
Harry tried to feel something besides revulsion. “You’re damn lucky she didn’t tell the cops,” he said. He was overcome with disgust.
Harry and Kathy were in their kitchen breakfast nook. An uncut meat loaf and cool baked potatoes sat untouched on a platter. Limp green beans swam in a bowl.
“You used to be in love with her,” Kathy said.
Harry had an impression of watching this scene from a long distance away. Kathy’s distress couldn’t touch him.
Harry had not confessed to sleeping with Isabel. He had stormed in to confront Kathy, and he had told her he happened to run into Isabel and she happened to complain about getting anonymous notes. He had taken the high ground, gone on the offensive before Kathy could start asking questions.
Blindly, Kathy reached across the table toward him. Her arm hit a tea glass, knocking it off balance. He caught it before it tipped over and said, “Watch out, for Christ’s sake.”
Kathy quailed. “Don’t you love me at all?” she whispered.
Harry couldn’t answer. He couldn’t say a word. To put everything back like it used to be, all he had to do was say yes, he loved her, but his jaws might as well have been welded shut.
He didn’t even have to conceal what had happened with Isabel. He could speak up and tell Kathy everything. Kathy wouldn’t like it, but she would forgive him.
Or, if he could force himself to speak, he could gloss over the whole thing with lies. Kathy would jump at any flimsy, farfetched excuse. Everything could be exactly the same.
Harry closed his eyes and willed himself down into the cool underwater world of the Cape St. Elmo shoals. He felt himself becoming weightless, unencumbered. All he could hear was his own breath, in and out. The surface shimmered above him, silvery and remote.
“Harry?” Kathy’s voice sounded like she was choking.
He opened his eyes “What?” His own tone was dry and brittle.
“Don’t you have anything to say?”
The time had come. He had to speak his piece now, make everything all right. He wet his lips. “Maybe I should move out,” he said.
Kathy recoiled as if he’d hit her. “No!”
/> “Yeah. I think I better.”
Kathy scrambled around the table and threw herself against him. He could feel her heaving as he rocked backward. Woodenly, he put his arms around her and patted her back. He was going. It was so simple and obvious.
“I hate her!” Kathy screamed, her voice reverberating in his ear.
Harry winced. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Isabel,” he said. He thought maybe it was the truth.
“I don’t believe you!” She pulled back to look at him, her face smeared and damp. “I don’t!” She pounded his chest with her fists.
Breath jerked out of him. He caught her wrists in his hands. He was calm but sensed the beginnings of a yawning sadness.
She struggled briefly before pulling away. She stood up. “All right, go, you bastard.”
Jerkily, as if his legs were likely to give way, he walked down the hall to their bedroom and got his duffel bag from the top of the closet. He stared at his clothes hanging on the pole: his one good suit; a metal hanger contraption holding the Christmas-gift ties he never wore; his jacket, chinos, sport shirts. He couldn’t imagine what to take.
He went to his dresser and started unloading his underwear drawer, stuffing jockey shorts into the duffel bag. He would need underwear. Somehow, it seemed as if he could do without most of the rest.
He was in the bathroom getting his toothbrush and razor when Kathy came to the doorway. She wasn’t hysterical now or even crying. Her face was yellow-white, her eyes behind the lenses of her glasses big and shocked. “You aren’t really leaving, Harry?” she said.
Of course he wasn’t really leaving. This was his house. Kathy was his wife. He had two daughters who would be coming home from camp next week. This was his life, a bedroom with a satin spread on the bed and a big TV and meat loaf on the table and a truck in the driveway and a boat berthed out at Cape St. Elmo.
“I better go,” he said. He saw himself in the bathroom mirror. His own eyes looked big and shocked, too.
“Don’t,” she said, but now it was clear in his mind.
“I’ll be at the Beachcomber,” he said. Less than five minutes later, he was on his way.
21
Buddy Burke stood in the dank mud at the river’s edge and listened to cars whizzing by on the bridge over his head. In the near cool of morning, the concrete pillars around him emitted a clammy chill.
Buddy could feel his heart beating. He could smell his own rank smell mingling with the other odors around him.
If Buddy had been smart, which he would be the first to admit was questionable, he would have gotten here to cross the bridge early, when the traffic was light and the chances of being seen slim. He hadn’t done that. After he arrived and assessed the situation he had scrambled down the bank with the thought, humorous as it was, that he might find a skiff here, or even swim across. He took three seconds to discover that his fairy godmother had not left any skiff for him, and two more seconds to decide he wasn’t about to swim.
Buddy’s jailbreak was turning out to be a bigger pain than he’d anticipated. Mainly, he was a lot more scared than he had imagined he’d be. The idea of standing out and hitching a ride struck him as suicidal craziness now. He believed anybody who stopped to pick him up would know right away he was Buddy Burke, escaped convict, armed and dangerous. Except Buddy wasn’t armed and dangerous. He only wished he was.
Buddy had tromped through the woods until late the night before, unsure where he was heading until by sheer luck he found himself at Sawmill. It must have been eleven o’clock or thereabouts, and the gas station and the convenience store attached to it were about to close. He had a little money, enough to buy himself a Coke and some beef jerky sticks. The clerk was more interested in closing up than he was in watching Buddy, so Buddy stole a Reese’s peanut butter cup, slipping it in his pocket, sweating like a pig the whole time. He hadn’t even eaten the damn thing. It was still in his pocket, probably smushed by now.
Buddy had slept last night, what sleep he got, in a spider-filled woodshed behind a brick ranch house in the middle of nowhere. The house was dark, no car in the drive, no dogs in the wire pen out back, a satellite dish near the shed like a big white moon.
The sun was up good and proper now. A yellow jacket buzzed past and the mosquitoes were getting bothersome. Across the river, next to the bridge, was a low wooden structure with a painted sign: RIVERSIDE TAVERN. It put Buddy in mind of the song: Gonna lay down my burden, down by the riverside, down by the riverside—
No cars were coming. He galloped up the bank and onto the bridge. There was no walkway on either side. Feet pounding, hugging the railing, he sprinted forward. If a car came he would slow down but keep walking. He didn’t want to look scared or like it wasn’t perfectly natural to cross this bridge on foot.
He heard a car behind him. He slowed to a fast walk and didn’t turn around. The car swooshed past, horn blaring. Buddy didn’t give him the finger or even look up.
First thing you know he had made it, and was standing in the packed-clay parking lot of the Riverside Tavern, heaving to catch his breath. He was leaning against the building, still breathing hard, when he saw the back wheel of the motorcycle.
There was a motorcycle behind the tavern, half-covered with a tarpaulin.
Buddy moseyed back there, took off the tarp, and inspected the machine. A Yamaha. Some trusting soul had even left a helmet hanging from the handlebars. Buddy loved motorcycles. He’d had several that he used to take apart and put back together. Joy had made him sell the last one when Toby was born.
In a lean-to in back of the Riverside Tavern, Buddy found paint cans, brushes with their bristles stuck together, a quantity of rags, a tackle box filled with rusty fishhooks and moldering lures, and several kinds of wire. He found enough makeshift equipment so he could easily crank the motorcycle. Without letting himself think about it too much, that’s what he proceeded to do. The engine spit and roared into life. “Aw, baby,” Buddy said.
Nobody came rushing out of the Riverside Tavern to demand an explanation. “Let’s go, baby,” Buddy said. He stuffed his cap in his pocket and put the helmet on. He didn’t even have to adjust the strap.
He wheeled around and put-putted down to the road. He loved this machine. Loved it. Next break in the traffic, he was on his way. The sun was strong now, and the wind was full in his face. Soon, he passed a sign that told him he was only five miles from Alma.
22
“I reckon he escaped so he could bring me some boots,” said Kimmie Dee Burke. She pronounced it ex-scaped.
“Maybe,” said Isabel. “Be still for a second more, all right?”
Kimmie Dee was sitting on an upturned bucket by the trailer door, a crocheted shawl of Merriam’s draped around her head and shoulders. She looked more striking than Isabel had anticipated. In repose, her face had a pensive sweetness that was almost too appealing for the villainous Marotte. Isabel was working as swiftly as she could, since Kimmie Dee was not the most patient sitter in the world.
“I’m hot with this thing on,” the girl complained.
“Just half a second, all right? Look the other way, like you were doing before.”
Kimmie Dee sighed but resumed the pose. Great. Isabel made a few modifications. “Okay. All done.”
Kimmie Dee took off the shawl and dropped it on the step. She said, “Don’t you think that’s right? He’s coming to bring me the boots?”
Isabel wasn’t sure what to say. “Maybe so, Kimmie Dee.”
“If he does bring them, I’ll have two pairs.”
Kimmie Dee was wearing new white majorette boots, boots Isabel had bought for her in town that morning. According to Kimmie Dee, her mother knew about their outing and its purpose. “I told her. I sure did,” she had declared.
“What did she say?”
“She said it was okay.”
“Just okay? That’s all?”
“That’s all. She wasn’t paying much attention, because she’s worried abou
t my daddy.”
Kimmie Dee studied her feet for the hundredth time. “These are just right,” she pronounced. Then she said, “Isabel, I’m kind of worried.”
“About what?”
“My daddy.”
Why shouldn’t she be worried? Still, Isabel asked, “Why?”
“I’m afraid Mr. Stiles will shoot him.”
Isabel had been studying her drawings. She closed the sketchbook. “Why should Mr. Stiles do that?”
“I don’t know. But he’s got a gun. I saw it.”
This was disturbing news. “Are you sure?”
Kimrnie Dee nodded. “I saw it. It’s under his jacket.” Her face clouded. “I wish I could tell my daddy to stay away.”
Guns were common around here. It wasn’t terribly surprising that Ted Stiles would have one. “Just because Mr. Stiles has a gun, it doesn’t mean he’d shoot at your father.”
“I bet he would, though.”
Isabel began to comprehend how upset the girl was behind her matter-of-fact facade. “Kimmie Dee, don’t you think your father will turn himself in? That’s what the police are hoping.”
Kimmie Dee shook her head. “He’s coming. He got my letter, and he’s coming.”
Isabel had no counter-argument. She gave Kimmie Dee a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of lemonade. Just before Kimmie Dee left, she took off the new boots, dusted them with a tissue, and replaced them in their square white box. She offered the box to Isabel. “You keep them for me. Keep them here.”
“Don’t you want to show them to your mother?”
“No. Not right now.”
Isabel hesitated. Kimmie Dee held out the box again. “All right?”
“All right.”
Isabel walked Kimmie Dee to the road, watched her cross it and run to her back door, and came back down the drive. A bright green lizard on the path puffed out his chest.
The Complete Mystery Collection Page 129