P'town Murders: A Bradford Fairfax Murder Mystery

by Jeffrey Round

  "Thank you for coming, friend," the Rinpoche said in heavily accented English. "It is good to see so many people at funeral."

  "Death is a terrible thing, isn't it?" said Ruby.

  "On the contrary," the Rinpoche replied, his voice soft and calming. "Death very beautiful. It return us to where we come from."

  Despite his poor English, Brad had no problem understanding the man.

  "Important to remember, we begin to die as soon as we are born," the Rinpoche intoned like a malevolent fortune cookie.

  "Then we should be very practiced at it when the time arrives," Brad said.

  The Rinpoche nodded and said, "Dying very easy for those who know how."

  "But funerals are so much more fun!" Cinder exclaimed.

  Everyone turned to look at him. "I'm sorry," he mumbled.

  "All that separate this life from next is single breath," the Rinpoche went on, looking at Bradford. "A skillful death is most desired when the time come."

  "It's so beautiful when he talks about death," Ruby gushed.

  Clearly, Ruby thought her Rinpoche was a god on earth, but when Brad looked at him all he saw was a muscle dude in a brown suit. Guess I'm just not the enlightened sort, he mused.

  Brad watched as Bill lifted a leg and peed on the man's shoe. Good aim, he thought. Boy, sometimes it pays to be the little guy!

  Oblivious to the insult, the Rinpoche reached down to tug Bill's ears. "Animals very fond of me," he said, smiling.

  Brad looked around the graveyard where the assembly was breaking up. Ruby turned to look at the coffin. She shook her head. "He'll never hurt my loved ones again!" Brad heard her whisper fiercely.

  The chanting had resumed. There was probably little else for Brad to learn there.

  "I'm afraid I've got to take my leave," he said. He shook hands with the Rinpoche again, letting his grip linger while he gazed into the man's eyes. "I've got a duty of my own to perform."

  Cinder took that moment to have a mild breakdown. His chest heaved with sobs. "It's all right, honey," he said, waving off Brad with a hanky. "I'll be okay in a moment."

  At the gate, Brad nearly walked into a wall of sex as a figure stepped out of the bushes directly in front of him. It was Johnny K., with the ghostly Jeremiah standing behind him.

  "Mr. O'Shaughnessy," Jeremiah intoned icily. "How nice of you to come to our patron's funeral. We're touched."

  "Life has its surprising turns, doesn't it?" Brad said. "You must be very broken up by the loss."

  "It was a terrible shock," Jeremiah said, his eyes rolling heavenward like Mary Pickford portraying Sorrow.

  "What will happen to the guesthouse now?" Brad asked.

  "I hope we'll be able to continue with our patron's traditions," the man said solemnly.

  Brad shrugged and said, "Why kill a good thing?"

  "Precisely," Jeremiah said, with no indication he'd caught the irony.

  Johnny K. was silent, as usual, but the hand inside his jacket pocket might well have been clutching a gun. Brad remembered Grace's warning about his suspected past as a hit man. He wasn't going to risk making it a double funeral.

  "If you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I must be on my way."

  The bodyguard's eyes bore into him as he passed. A block from the cemetery, Brad turned and looked back. The pair was still watching him.

  He continued walking. On the next block, he remembered the note he'd tucked into his pocket. He opened it.

  To the World's Most Beautiful Man:

  I've been lying awake all night thinking of you! I just realized I don't have your phone number! I'm dying to see you again. Meet me at Café Edwige for breakfast around ten, if you get this. My treat!

  xoxox

  Zach

  That's quite an appetite, Brad thought. You had me for supper two nights ago, Perry for brunch yesterday, and now you want me again for breakfast today. Clearly, the young man was not all he seemed. Brad folded the note and carefully returned it to his pocket. It might be useful later for fingerprints, or even DNA sampling, if it ever came to that. He checked his watch. It was past eleven—too late to meet Zach even if he'd wanted to.

  Besides, Ross was waiting for him.

  26

  Brad picked up the earthenware urn with Ross's remains and carried it to the edge of town. Ross had wanted to see fireflies coming through the smoke. Only Bradford could give him that. He walked all the way to Race Point with the vessel tucked beneath his arm. By the time he arrived the afternoon was nearly over, but he wasn't ready to let go. He sat on the sand and waited for the sun to finish crossing the sky, while a handful of beachcombers straggled back to their cars and dune buggies. He watched as they climbed into their vehicles with cheers of farewell before heading on their way.

  Seagulls wheeled overhead, crying raucously as they searched for a silvery glint of fish in the dying light. As the sun set, the air grew chill. Dusk gathered as evening slowly turned to night. Still, he waited.

  In the distance, headlights of passing cars gleamed along the interstate like roving lighthouses. The moon rose over the water. Brad could feel the cold. He was starting to wonder if it would ever happen. Finally, he saw what he'd been hoping for. Ghostly wisps of fog began to come in off the sea, creeping over the sand and rocks.

  He stood, clutching the urn as he walked. The fog grew denser till he could no longer see the water or the rise of dunes off to his right. He was cut off from both land and sea as the fog enveloped him.

  Here's your smoke, Ross, Bradford said silently. Now let's see if we can find your fireflies.

  He remembered a joke Ross had told him about a dying Lama who'd gathered all his students around him to say he was leaving them forever. This is my last hour on earth, he proclaimed. The monks were stupefied. But Master! How will we go on living when you are dead? The Lama smiled. These two things are both the way of all things, he answered calmly. What do you mean, Master? they cried. Well, said the Lama, you know what they say: when it rains, it pours. And with that, he died.

  Brad smiled at the memory as he trudged along. He might have been the only living creature for miles in any direction. At last, when he'd gone far enough, he looked down and scuffed the sand. A ghostly glint flashed. He walked on, keeping his eyes trained on his shoes. With each step-flash! step-flash! the phosphorescent algae beached in the sand ignited on contact with air.

  Look, Ross! Here are your fireflies! Tears fell from Bradford's eyes. I set you free for the last time!

  He put the urn down and unscrewed the lid. His fingers dipped in and brought out a handful of coarse grains. Here was all that remained of the body he'd loved, of the man he'd loved. He flung the ashes upward into the wind.

  And so departs the soul, a voice said somewhere in the back of his head. Whether it was his own or someone else's, he would never be sure.

  Zach was huddled on the step waiting for him when he arrived back at his guesthouse. Brad wiped his cheeks with his hand, hoping the tear tracks weren't noticeable.

  Zach stood at his approach. "Hi there!" he called out.

  "Hi," Brad responded flatly.

  "I was beginning to worry that something had happened to you. Given your recent history of unusual occurrences, that is."

  The memory of seeing Zach laughing and talking with Perry rose before his eyes. "I had things to do," he said, setting the urn down on the stoop.

  "What's that?" Zach asked.

  "A duty I needed to perform."

  Zach watched him without approaching. "They're Ross's ashes, aren't they?"

  "Were," Brad answered. "They were his ashes."

  Zach hesitated. "This probably isn't a good time for me to be here," he said.

  Brad didn't reply.

  "Do you want me to go?"

  Brad nodded.

  "I'm sorry," Zach said, reaching out a hand to Brad's shoulder.

  Brad stepped back. "Look!" he snapped. "Don't fall in love with me. I can't be there for you!"

  Fo
r a moment, Zach looked crushed. "I understand," he said, then rushed down the walk and around the corner.

  Brad picked up the urn and entered the darkened house. Instead of turning on the lights, he went directly upstairs and set the empty container on the window ledge facing the sea. He lit a candle and placed it beside the urn.

  If you're here, Ross, give me a sign, he asked silently.

  Nothing happened.

  Blow out the candle, Ross.

  Still nothing.

  Figures, Brad thought. Serves me right for believing in spooks.

  OK, Ross. Wherever you are, I still believe in you. And I still love you. You don't need to give me a sign.

  An instant later, a crash splintered the glass as a softball-sized object flew through the window, knocking over the candle.

  Jesus!thought Bradford. Couldn't you have just flickered a bit?

  He ran over to the window and looked out. There was no one there. Once again he raced down the stairs and into the yard, but whoever it was had disappeared in the black of night. He tore down the drive and across the road. Nothing moved over the marsh or along the street. It had been a hasty retreat, if whoever it was had even gone that way. Someone could just as easily have slipped between the houses and across the neighboring yards.

  Brad hoped it hadn't been Zach. Could the boy have done something like that in a moment of rage at being rejected? He didn't know Zach, he reminded himself. He could be capable of a lot of things.

  Walking back, Brad saw he'd left the front door open. He cursed himself for being so careless. It was the perfect opportunity for someone to get inside while his attention was diverted.

  He stopped in the hall and listened carefully. Nothing. Slowly, he made his way upstairs in the dark, ears and eyes alert for danger—a creaking floorboard, a moving shadow. The fallen candlestick lay on the landing. He picked it up to use as a weapon, in case he needed it.

  He crept quietly across the living room floor, careful to avoid the shards of glass that lay glinting in the moonlight. Finally, satisfied he was alone, Brad turned on the lights. The urn lay on the floor beneath the window. He picked it up and set it on a table, then looked around for the rock that had shattered the glass. Instead, he discovered a package wrapped in brown paper. He unwrapped it and found himself holding a miniature videocassette.

  The package had been weighted so it would break his window. He fished around for the other object, holding it to the light. He'd seen something like this before. In fact, he'd seen this very globe of plastic with a starfish at its center on the desk of Hayden Rosengarten. Shades of Andy Warhol!

  Brad set the globe on the windowsill and retrieved his camcorder. He patched it into the video network and inserted the tape. On the screen, a blurry image flickered to life. The camera was focused on a set of lips and what looked like a whole lot of whipped cream. No—it wasn't whipped cream, he realized. They were bubbles. Someone was sitting in a bubble bath up to his chin in suds.

  He watched as a glass was raised and lowered again. The camera zoomed out slowly as the face came to life. It was Hayden Rosengarten, looking for all the world as if he were still alive!

  Hayden reached over the side of the tub and grasped a bottle of champagne, refilling the glass. His other hand lifted a joint to his mouth and took a toke. Brad was seized with the urge to run out and scour the neighborhood again, but whoever had thrown the package through his window would be long gone. He watched the dead man drinking and smoking dope as he smirked at the camera.

  Hayden burped. "Is that for me?" he asked someone standing off-screen. "It's awfully big!" There was no response as Hayden's eyes remained focused on the other person.

  Brad caught a flicker of movement behind Rosengarten where smoked-glass tiles framed the tub. This looked like the bathroom he'd peered into from the secret closet. In the glass, he could make out the rustle of a robe like the one he'd worn on arriving at the guesthouse.

  "Oh, baby!" he heard Hayden say. "Come to Daddy. You need a spanking."

  The robe fell to the floor and a muscular shoulder moved into the frame, revealing what looked like an out-of-focus birthmark.

  The focus returned to Hayden's face. "Is that thing real?" he exclaimed. "What are you going to do—shoot me? Do you even know how to use a man's toy?"

  "Does Daddy want to die?" came a familiar-sounding voice.

  "Oh, yeah! Shoot me with your big gun! Bang-bang! I dare you!"

  Something glinted in the mirror just before the screen went black.

  He was shot in his own guesthouse! Brad realized with a shock. Someone pulled a gun on him and Rosengarten called his bluff. Whoever killed him must have dumped his body in the harbor later that evening.

  Brad rewound the tape and played it back. He waited for the robe to fall and the shoulder to reappear. He backed the tape up again and watched it in slow motion, finally freezing on the birthmark. Only it wasn't a birthmark. It was the blurry tattoo outline of a snake!

  "Would you look at that," he mumbled. "A genuine clue!"

  He backed the tape up to the last few moments of Hayden alive in the tub. The man seemed fearless as he watched the gun being trained on him. His eyes betrayed no hint of the tragedy that was about to occur. Either that or the alcohol had numbed him to the point of not caring.

  I don't know about a skilful death, thought Bradford, but I bet it was swift.

  27

  Brad put in an emergency call to Grace. The tape was still rewinding in the camera as she answered. Brad told her everything that had transpired in the last day and a half, omitting the tiny detail that he'd actually gone to talk to Big Ruby against her orders.

  Grace didn't seem surprised by any of it. "I'll check with forensics to find out if he had a blood-alcohol level consistent with half a bottle of champagne," she said. "And by the way, the bullet that killed Rosengarten?"

  Brad inserted a blank tape into a neighboring machine as he waited.

  "It was fired from a Colt .45."

  He clicked the door shut and pressed Record and Play.

  "I've seen at least two in the last week," he said, mentioning Senator Freeman's and Fred the drug dealer's. He hadn't actually seen the gun in Big Ruby's drawer, so he couldn't say for sure what it was, though Zach had thought it looked like a Colt .45. So had Nava's gun, come to think of it .

  "Assuming the tape's real," Grace said, "do you think it was one of his guests who killed him?"

  "If not, then someone made it appear to be," Brad reflected. "Whoever it was is wearing one of the robes that Ice House guests are issued on arrival."

  Hayden had said that discretion was the key to keeping his clients' trust and, as far as Brad could tell, he'd run his organization very discreetly. Except for when it came to dying.

  "What I want to know is when the murder occurred. I sat there from half past nine till nearly five in the morning and I didn't hear a thing the entire night."

  "Forensics will come up with an answer," Grace said. "But that still doesn't tell us who tossed the tape through your window."

  "It had to be someone who knew about the video camera in the bath. And that would most likely be someone who worked there."

  "That's a logical assumption," Grace said. "But then we need to ask why."

  "There'd be two reasons to send me the evidence," Brad said, watching the tapes winding simultaneously as one duplicated the other. "First, an employee might have sent it to me out of loyalty to his deceased employer hoping I'd catch the killer. Admirable. Or, second, someone may want to get the murderer out of the way for his own reasons. Very devious."

  "You said both Jeremiah Jones and Johnny K. were at the funeral. Do you think one of them killed Rosengarten and wants to pin the murder on the other?"

  "Or maybe they both killed him. They weren't exactly broken up during the ceremony."

  "Whoever sent the tape obviously knows who you are and where you're staying. Could someone have followed you home from the graveyard?"
/>   The clip finished recording. Brad stopped the machine. "I was very careful about that, but it's possible," he said, removing the original tape and inserting it into its case.

  "I want to see this tape as soon as possible," Grace said.

  "I'll see to it," Brad replied.

  "My guess is whoever sent the tape knows who knocked you out and left you on the side of the road. That was meant to look like an accident, of course. As your friend Ruby pointed out, you weren't very careful wandering around those roads at night. The real accident was that you survived."

  Brad removed the duplicate tape and replaced it in its case. He was listening carefully to Grace's words. What he was thinking, but wasn't willing to voice, was that the only people who knew where he stayed during his assignments were the people he worked for. That meant there was a third possibility: the person who found the tape was also the murderer and had sent Brad the evidence simply to throw him off track. It wouldn't be the first time an agent had been betrayed in such a fashion. He took a pen and wrote D-U-P-E on the second tape.

  "At this point, you have to assume the murderer could be anyone you've met and possibly even someone you haven't met yet. Someone is keeping track of you, that's for sure."

  Brad slid the duplicate tape into a drawer. Apart from Ruby and Cinder, no one in Provincetown knew he was actually looking into Ross's death. Cinder's involvement was an open question but, as far as he could see, Ruby had no access to the Ice House. He'd told both Zach and Perry he was in Provincetown to claim Ross's body, but that was all. Given the recent turn of events, he couldn't be sure they didn't know or at least suspect that there was more to it than that. In any case, the only other person who knew where he was staying was Zach.

  As if she'd read his mind, Grace said, "What about this boy who rescued you? That could easily have been set up. How likely was it that he happened to be cycling down the interstate after midnight? Do you know for sure you can trust him?"