Wicked Fix

by Sarah Graves

  Arnold shook his head. “Reuben liked uppers more, though I guess if somebody offered to fix him up with something he’d take it, no matter what it was. I had his head, I’d want to be out of it a lot too. What we’ve got left is someone who’s smart, angry, and in the right weight class to lift him up there.”

  “And there’s another thing.” The worry that had seized me the previous evening came over me again. The thing about shooting someone is, you do the deed from a distance.

  But this had been close-up work. “Whoever did it is really dangerous, Arnold. To be able to—”

  The sight of Reuben hanging there came back to me again full force and I shuddered, unable to help myself. Even a little blood can look like a lot.

  And this was a lot. “Yeah,” Arnold said reluctantly. “That, too. Like whoever done it had a whole lot more in mind than just killing him.”

  “Like the method itself was supposed to …”

  He nodded again. “Say something. I thought about it. And … look, I’m not supposed to talk about this. But the patronizing attitude on those sons of bitches …”

  The state guys, he meant. From their point of view, Arnold was about as credible a law enforcement officer as Deputy Dawg.

  And it hurt his feelings. “Guy on the breakwater, tie in his throat,” he said.

  “Right. That’s another thing I’m curious about.”

  Arnold eyed me acutely. “I’m guessing your interest isn’t on account of your still having a soft spot for your ex-husband.”

  “No. I’ve got serious financial reasons for not wanting him to stay in trouble. And Sam …”

  “Yeah. His old man. Hard on a kid. On top of which, the worse pain in the tail a fellow is, the more you feel you’ve got to go the extra mile for him, sometimes. Prove to yourself you are not bein’ a jerk yourself.”

  “Yes.” I exhaled gratefully. That part was just so hard to explain, but Arnold had put his finger on it. “But look, it’s not just me. I’ve got—”

  “A funny feeling that maybe all this isn’t over with?”

  I blinked at him, surprised.

  “Me too,” he mused. “You say somebody called Victor, told him about the body in the cemetery? Said it was Reuben dead, but Victor didn’t know who it was calling?”

  “That’s right.” A suspicion struck me. “Arnold …”

  “Because,” he said gravely, “I didn’t think so much of it at the time. Figured it was just somebody who didn’t want to get all involved in a bad business.”

  He looked up at me. “But yesterday morning right after we found our first victim, I went across the street from the seawall, into my office. Got an answering machine in there, it’s not set up to go through the dispatcher, ’case Clarissa wants to call me on any personal matter, and I’m not in the car.”

  To tell him, maybe, that the baby was coming. “And that,” he finished, “was how I found out about Reuben. Course, by now that machine’s number is common knowledge. But I didn’t recognize the voice. Hung up ’fore I could ask, too.”

  “No caller ID, I suppose?”

  “Nope. Line’s just for me, didn’t want to pay more on it.”

  “The other guy,” I said, “the one who was strangled. Is he from here? Does he have a family?”

  The victim’s name, Arnold said, was Wesley Bodine. “Weasel for short. And by inclination. That fellow was pure no-account: beat on his wife, wouldn’t support his kids, rowdy and mean when he wasn’t so drunk he could barely navigate. Worst guy in town, in fact, or anyway he was, up till Reuben came back. Not many people knew about him ’cept the guys he drank with ’cause he kept himself to himself and so did his wife, till she took the kids and went back home to her folks in New Hampshire. But I knew.”

  Arnold glanced around to check that we weren’t being eavesdropped on. “And the tie wasn’t the only thing,” he said, keeping his voice low. “In his mouth. Weasel didn’t have many teeth left but he had a few. And the medical examiner says there was a chunk of what looked like skin stuck on one of ’em.”

  It took me a moment to make sense of the implication. “Not Reuben’s.”

  Arnold nodded soberly. “That’s right. Hell of a lot of bad things were done to Reuben in his last hours. But no one bit him.”

  “So unless you think there were two other killers—besides Reuben, I mean—running around Eastport on Friday night …”

  “And I don’t,” he said firmly. “Tiny town, middle of nowhere, and two unrelated murders on one night? It’s just too damned much coincidence. No, I think whoever did Reuben also did the Weasel. Two victims, one villain.”

  “But the state cops don’t agree. They’re thinking two killers. So it doesn’t matter that Victor doesn’t have a cut hand, either.”

  Arnold’s tone was even. “That’s right. Like I say, they never wanted Victor for Weasel in the first place, so this won’t change things in that regard.”

  So much for a stroke of luck. Another odd thing struck me. “So how do you know about this skin shred, anyway? Arnold, you wouldn’t happen to be related to the medical examiner? Or …”

  In downeast Maine, everyone was related to almost everybody else. Arnold looked wise.

  “Ice fishing. He comes up winters, we go out and swap ourselves a few tall stories, drink beers. Kind of activity the college-boy investigators think is beneath ’em. You keep the information to yourself, though,” he warned. “He gets in trouble, leakin’ things to me, he won’t be telling me no more. Or comin’ up fishing no more, either.”

  “I’ll keep my lip zipped,” I promised.

  “And don’t go thinkin’ it gets your ex off the hook, either,” he repeated brusquely. “Way this’ll all happen, they’ll prosecute Victor for Reuben’s murder, you can bet on it.”

  “But …”

  “They can put a case together any way they want to, and the way they’ll do it is the way they think’ll get ’em a conviction. They’re not going drop a bird they already got in the hand, to go off hog wild lookin’ for somebody else. No sir.”

  “But common sense …” I began. Suggested, I meant, that the deaths were connected somehow.

  “Paddy Farrell says Reuben killed somebody that way before,” I told Arnold. “With a tie, I mean. That right there makes a link of some kind, doesn’t it?”

  Arnold shook his head firmly.

  “Heard the tie story myself, but be realistic. First of all, no one knows for sure it’s true, however much everyone in town is so convinced that it is. Top of which, that’s a lawyer’s job, try to get Victor out a’ this pickle with sense, common or otherwise. And it’ll happen at trial. If,” he added roughly, “it happens at all.”

  He raised a stubby finger. “And it ain’t guaranteed to work then, either. Common sense—the idea that one person killed both Weasel and Reuben, and that one person couldn’t be Victor ’cause his hand ain’t bit—that’s one thing, but evidence is another. And they’ve got good evidence against Victor for Reuben’s murder.”

  He paused, and when he spoke again his tone softened. “To them, old Weasel’s tooth is neither here nor there. But you might manage to make something of it, nosy and bone stubborn as I know you are. And something else.”

  I looked up, puzzled. “I watch, you know,” he said. “Town doings, it’s my job to know all about them. And when your ex came here, I know it put a hitch in your git-along.”

  I nodded, smiling at the phrase. It was pure Arnold. “I’d thought I was free of him. And then …”

  “And then,” Arnold agreed. “But you didn’t bad-mouth him all around town, set him up so that people here wouldn’t accept him. You didn’t take your pound of flesh.”

  But I’d wanted to. Oh, I had wanted to. And that, I suddenly realized, was why Arnold was telling me all this: a good town cop, he’d been paying attention to my behavior just as much as to anyone else’s. Based on it, he had made a decision to help me.

  As much as he could. At this point, it was
really all out of his hands. He got up. “Guess I better go check on Clarissa. Doctor says she could have that baby any damned second, which I sure do wish she would.”

  Then he grinned. “Know what they’re startin’ to call you and Ellie, hereabouts? On account of all your interest in murder and mayhem and whatnot?”

  As I’ve mentioned, it wasn’t the first time Ellie and I had nosed around into intriguing local doings. Just the first time someone in my family was intimately connected to them.

  “No, what?” Embarrassed, I swiped moisture from my face. Funny how you can take bad news and stay composed, but one kind word and the waterworks start running like the fountains of Rome.

  “The Snoop Sisters,” he said, and I burst out laughing, as he had intended. Then he went out, paying for his coffee at the register like any other citizen, leaving me to think.

  Which wasn’t exactly easy; at the moment my ideas felt more knotted-up than Molly Carpentier’s macramé. But from what I could see so far, the situation boiled down to a pair of possibilities:

  1. Two killers, one (in a prosecutor’s eyes) being Victor.

  Or more likely:

  One murderer and two victims with no link between them, except that their deaths seemed part of someone’s attempt to send a message.

  I carried my glass back to the fountain.

  “I’m so sorry for the difficulty you’ve been having,” Bailey James said kindly. “I hope it all ends up okay.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. “I do too.”

  But not just for me, I added silently as I went out. And not just for Victor, because the feeling I kept having wouldn’t stop:

  The feeling that the message was meant for all of us.

  Heddlepenny House, a private home set up as a bed-and-breakfast, was a tall Victorian structure replete with gables, porches, bay windows, and lots of elaborate carved trimmings. Turning the knob on the hand-operated bell set into the ornate front door, I gazed down Washington Street past the massive granite-block post-office building on the corner, to the water beyond.

  A little red-and-black-painted dragger bobbed jauntily on the light chop riffling the bay. Farther out, the ferry churned faithfully along its route, sun glinting off the windshields of the cars lined up on the deck, the passengers bright splotches.

  A man opened the door: handsome, fortyish, with dark hair, a deeply cleft chin, and an attractive baritone voice. “Come in,” Marcus Sondergard invited when I had introduced myself.

  Guests had the run of the place at Heddlepenny House so it was not unusual that Marcus himself had opened the door. He led me to the parlor where an older man stood gazing out the window, onto Washington Street. Heywood Sondergard, Marcus’s father, was a tall burly fellow whose grooved, good-humored face said he was in his late sixties, wearing a blue chambray shirt with pearl buttons, faded jeans, and a leather belt with a small but elaborate silver buckle. He had a luxuriously thick head of silver-white hair, pale blue eyes with bushy white eyebrows flourishing above them, and a gaze that while sympathetic was also very knowing.

  “God is merciful,” he intoned, his blue eyes darkening at the mention of Reuben. I’d explained who I was, the trouble Victor was in, and that I hoped they might help me understand it.

  “But He is also just,” he went on. “I have no doubt that young Mr. Tate is where he belongs. He chose to reap the wind,” Heywood said, “and he is sowing the whirlwind.”

  The tongue of the belt buckle was shaped like a cross with a rose vine twining up it: the rose of Sharon. “Now, Dad,” Marcus contradicted indulgently. “We don’t know that. The Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  “Hmmph,” Heywood uttered skeptically, but subsided for now.

  “Dad,” Marcus explained, “leans more toward an Old Testament interpretation than I do. An eye for an eye and all that.”

  His tone grew nostalgic. “Gosh, I grew up hearing Reuben stories.” He looked around fondly. “This was our house, once, did you know that?”

  I hadn’t. Marcus went on. “When we lived here, Reuben was the kid your parents always warned you about. Dad was a minister here, so I suppose I got a little more guidance than most local kids.”

  He glanced affectionately at the older man. “Dad was very popular,” Marcus added proudly. “Big attendance at his services on Sundays, and he was wonderful with the youngsters.”

  Marcus wasn’t only big and handsome, I noticed suddenly. He was powerfully built: thick neck, muscular shoulders, broad chest tapering to a flat, narrow middle. His forearms, under the rolled-up sleeves of his white shirt, looked as solid as mutton roasts.

  “Now, Marcus,” the older man cautioned. “You know what pride goeth before. I ran a youth group, that’s all. The boys and girls liked it because I made sure it had plenty of music. Nothing so remarkable about that.”

  “Dad’s too modest,” Marcus said. “But if he wants to hide his light under a bushel, so be it. Anyway, after Mother died the two of us were left on our own. Rattling around this house like a couple of marbles, weren’t we, Dad?”

  Heywood’s deep voice rumbled agreement. “Decided to take our ministry on the road,” he said. “So the Lord,” he added, “sent us a Winnebago, and off we went.”

  This back-and-forth explanatory banter was an act they’d honed perfectly, I realized, though to be fair I supposed that if I had to explain myself in a new town every week, I’d get pretty good at it, too. A flyer on a low table, exhorting me to hear the heavenly melodies of the Bible Belters, said they’d done a dozen shows over the past three weekends, in places ranging from a tiny logging camp in the Allagash region to an art museum in South Portland.

  “We’re looking forward to performing for the home folks,” Marcus said affably. “Would you like to see our setup? It’s all out in the Winnebago, but maybe you’d like to see that, too. Dad did all the interior on it. I’ll show you if you’d like.”

  “Marcus, you brag about me too much,” Heywood grumbled as we got up. But it was clear that he was pleased.

  For my own part, I thought Marcus wanted to talk to me alone, so I followed his lead. The Winnebago stood on a blacktop apron at the back of the house. Along a picket fence making a border between the lane and the yard, the season’s last zinnias tangled in bright profusion.

  I stood at the end of the back walk, breathing fresh air; the Sondergards were pleasant enough, but something about their mutual admiration society felt a little smothering.

  Not false, exactly. Only as if the two of them were old hands at circling the wagons and did it as a sort of knee-jerk reflex. The feeling went on bothering me, as Marcus welcomed me into the Winnebago.

  “Goodness,” I said inadequately, gazing around. “You think of these things as being sort of claustrophobic. But …”

  He led me through. The bunks were pods equipped with reading lamps, TVs, stereo headphone sets, and telephones, each snug and secret-feeling, wonderfully private. The bath was the same: all you could want tucked in so cleverly that you didn’t perceive how small the cubicle really was.

  That left space for three compact but well-furnished common areas, one set up as a sort of meeting-and-dining room. Adjacent was a galley kitchen, featuring the usual appliances as well as a calendar with the Bible Belters’ upcoming appearances marked on it, an oiled maple chopping block, and a rack holding a set of good French steel knives. “Dad fancies himself a gourmet cook,” Marcus said jovially.

  The other area, at the rear of the big vehicle, was more casual, with books, reclining chairs, a compact weight machine and an exercise bicycle—that, I realized, must be how Marcus stayed in such good shape—and the duo’s musical instruments.

  “Have to keep the vessel of the spirit in order,” Marcus remarked, seeing me notice the workout devices. “And these are the tools of our trade.”

  He waved at the keyboard synthesizer; I recognized it only because Sam wanted one. I did know what a guitar looked like, of course. And there was a banjo.

 
; At the sight of it, my fingers tingled; all the modern and bluegrass stuff they played at La Sardina had made me begin coveting one, though I hadn’t gone any further with the idea.

  “Go ahead,” Marcus invited. “I’m no Earl Scruggs, but I can play a little. Go on, pick it up, it won’t bite you.”

  He waved me to one of two practice chairs with a music stand in front of them and sat beside me.

  “Hold it like this, put your fingers there, and strum,” he instructed, so I did. “Now like this …”

  Ten minutes later he had taught me three chords, my fingertips felt as if they’d gone through a meat grinder, and I’d seen the dermatological makeup on the back of his right hand.

  “The Lord,” he opined, “has blessed you with a little bit of musical talent.”

  “A very little,” I laughed, putting down the instrument.

  I couldn’t tell what the makeup covered; it had been applied carefully. An unusual birthmark, perhaps, slightly rough. Or a gash closed with Dermabond or some similar surgical adhesive.

  Even Krazy Glue will close a wound in a pinch, I’d learned from Victor, and the makeup could be bought in the drugstore. I didn’t want to stare; if talking with Arnold hadn’t primed me to notice it, I never would have.

  But now I had. “Is this what your dad did with the kids in his youth group?” I asked. “Get them hooked on music, then slip the religion part in on the side?”

  “Something like that,” he agreed cheerfully. “But,” he added, his tone turning serious, “you didn’t come here for music lessons. Or a history of Dad’s old church-related activities.”

  “No,” I admitted, “I didn’t. I’m looking for more facts on Reuben Tate. Information that might help me find out who really killed him. Because my ex-husband didn’t.”

  His expression flickered cautiously; for all his practiced manners, the topic of Reuben made him uncomfortable. “Dad and I only got into town a few nights before Reuben died,” he said. “But I’ll help if I can.” “Did he harass you in any way, after you arrived? Ask you for money, threaten you, try to start arguments with you—did he get in your face? Or in your father’s? Did you see him at all?”