Gypsy Sins

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  He prowled through the kitchen, pondered making instant coffee and quickly discarded the idea. The pantry was stocked with Cora’s baking needs and several open boxes of cereal.

  Returning upstairs, he showered—the soap was peach-coloured and smelled of tangerines—before dressing again and leaving the house to walk along the gravel shoulder of Miner’s Lane toward the centre of town, in search of food and people.

  By the time he reached the small grassy park where Miner’s Lane sprawled into Mill Pond Road, McGuire wished he had brought a sweater. His jacket was too light to counter the chill of the breeze drifting in from the sea. He pressed his arms tightly against his body, plunged his hands in his pockets and quickened his pace.

  We played baseball over there, Terry and me, McGuire reminded himself at the sight of the park. When I was twelve, maybe thirteen years old. When Terry was the local golden boy and I was the poor kid with crooked teeth from Worcester.

  At Main Street he paused, looked up and down the roadway and finally turned left toward a promising glow of light spilling onto the sidewalk through a large leaded glass window. Raised gold lettering on a battered wooden sign above the door announced The Town House Lounge and Café, and as McGuire entered he sidestepped two young couples emerging from the warmth of the bar, arms linked and laughing together.

  Inside, the Town House managed to create an ambience often attempted but rarely achieved anywhere except on Cape Cod. The bar was U-shaped, the open side ending at a large barn board wall which displayed an oversized television set beaming the fourth game of the World Series. The colonial-styled bar stools (“Ersatz!” he heard Cora spit with glee) were constructed of scarred pine with low backs and red leather cushions. Pine booths lined one wall; the other wall held a narrow counter where customers stood, one foot on a brass rail, and sipped draft beer. At the rear of the bar a raised platform was divided into thirds, separating three dart boards mounted on the wall.

  The room was busy but not crowded. There were games at each of the dart boards, their progress heralded by eruptions of cheers and moans from the players who stood with their backs to the bar.

  McGuire grew immediately relaxed and comfortable. He had haunted bars similar to this one throughout Boston during his twenty years as a police officer and homicide detective. They often served as a second home, a refuge, a contact with people on a social, nonworking level.

  It was good to be almost back.

  After choosing a stool halfway down the bar on the left side, he ordered a bottle of Molson’s and a bowl of chowder from the potbellied and bearded bartender. As he ate he absorbed the sights and sounds of others laughing and chatting among themselves, local residents at ease among familiar faces and common memories. He felt a temptation to call Barbara again, to say things that were always difficult for him to say to anyone.

  But he shook off the idea, ordered another Molson’s, nursed it through three dull innings of baseball, paid his bill and walked back to Cora’s house, his shoulders hunched, his hands in his pockets, forcing himself to think only of a good night’s rest.

  Tomorrow, like the remaining days of his life, would play itself out.

  Chapter Nine

  “Try ’er again.”

  McGuire turned the key of Cora’s Saab, its starter motor powered by jumper cables attached to the battery of an ancient Dodge truck with “Compton Auto Service” painted on the door in fading white script.

  “Okay, forget it.” The mechanic emerged from under the Saab’s hood, wiping his hands on a greasy towel. “You got some serious problems here. Probably the fuel pump. She’s not getting any gas.”

  He leaned on the passenger door and spoke through the open window at McGuire, an unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “When’s the last time this thing was running?”

  McGuire said he had no idea.

  “I bet she’s been a year anyway,” the mechanic said, patting the pockets of his coveralls, searching for matches. “Battery probably won’t hold a charge either. You want me to order a new fuel pump?” A white oval enclosing the name Bert was stitched to the coveralls over the man’s heart.

  McGuire pulled the keys from the ignition and stepped out of the car. Through the open door, the rays of the morning sun cleaved the interior of the garage, shining out of another achingly blue sky. “Might as well,” he replied. “The car’s not much good without it.”

  “How many miles has she got?” Bert had found his matches. He was small and wiry with tired, heavily lidded eyes and a day’s growth of graying beard.

  “Less than forty thousand.”

  “She’s worth fixin’ then.”

  The two men walked out of the garage to the side garden where the mechanic lit his cigarette, drew an apparently exhilarating deep breath and exhaled, looking up at the sky with apparent approval. “So, you want me to order a battery for her?”

  McGuire nodded. “Once it’s running, I plan to sell it.”

  “Yeah?” Bert looked back at the car with greater appreciation. “Let me know. I might have a buyer for it. What’re you askin’?”

  “Whatever the fair value is.”

  “Take a day or two for the pump to come in. From Boston.” Boston, his tone suggested, was on the far side of the universe.

  “I’ll be here.” Bert turned to climb into his truck. “Any idea where I can rent a car?” McGuire asked.

  “Sure. I got loaners at the shop. Rent you one if you don’t mind somethin’ with a few dents and scrapes. What d’you need?”

  “Anything that runs and I can charge to a credit card. How about a ride downtown?”

  Parker Leedale’s office was on the second floor of a daffodil-yellow frame building, above a gift shop called Calico & Ginger. A gilt-painted carved wooden sign, the only form of street advertising apparently permitted in Compton, was suspended from a black wrought-iron bracket over a weathered oak door on the side of the building. Hirons & Leedale, Attorneys-at-Law, the sign proclaimed.

  The carpeted steps creaked beneath McGuire’s weight as he climbed the stairs to a surprisingly modern and airy reception room illuminated by two large skylights. The floors were wide-plank pine buffed by years of footsteps and paste wax, and the walls were covered in a hunter green fabric with a scattered pattern of wild flowers in yellow, white and pink.

  “Good morning!”

  The voice, high and happy like wind chimes, startled McGuire and he turned to see a small woman in her late twenties wearing a black sweater and tweed skirt enter the reception area from a supply room, a stack of file folders in her hand. She was barely five feet tall, McGuire estimated, with the near-excess of energy and joy that many small, attractive women display. Her eyes were large and deep brown, her hair thick and black, shaped in soft waves to frame her face.

  “Isn’t this another perfect day we’re having?” she smiled as she crossed the room to the scarred pine harvest table that served as a reception desk.

  McGuire agreed it was a nice day.

  “You must be the gentleman for the reading of the Godwin will,” the woman said, setting the folders on a corner of her desk. “I’ll tell Mr. Leedale you’re here.”

  She tapped gently on the door behind her desk and opened it just far enough to lean inside and speak to someone, balancing on her forward foot by stretching one leg behind her.

  It was, McGuire noted, a very attractive leg.

  The door opened wider and, to McGuire’s surprise, June Leedale emerged.

  “Hello,” she said without enthusiasm. She wore a cotton top and denim skirt and very little makeup, and her eyes seemed to have withdrawn deeper into the darkness beneath them. “Did you sleep well?” she asked.

  McGuire told her he had.

  “Would you like some coffee?” June Leedale asked.

  “Sounds good,” McGuire said.

  “How do you take it?�
�� asked the receptionist, leaping to her feet.

  “Black will be fine.”

  “And one for me please, Laura,” June Leedale called as the younger woman disappeared into the stock room again.

  “Parker . . . my husband . . . will be ready in just a few minutes,” June Leedale said. She settled herself on a flowered-print sofa against the wall. “He asked me to, um . . .” A smile appeared and vanished in the same instant, like a blink. “To keep you company while he gets things prepared.” She wrapped one hand in the other, and they moved together as though comforting themselves. “We’re . . . I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”

  McGuire shrugged and smiled. “Nothing else to do.”

  Her eyes were red-rimmed and there was a downward cast to her mouth. “We saw . . . Did Bert get the car running? We saw his truck pull up as we left and . . .” She shrugged. “We assumed it would be for Cora’s car.”

  “It’ll take a couple of days,” McGuire answered.

  Laura clicked across the floor in suede pumps, a white porcelain mug in each hand, her eyes on their contents. “There, didn’t spill a drop,” she beamed, handing one to McGuire and the other to June Leedale. “Whoops, there’s the phone.”

  The coffee was hot and strong.

  “Thank you for visiting us yesterday after the service,” June Leedale said to McGuire over the lip of her cup.

  McGuire nodded. Looking back at her, her knees tightly together, her legs crossed at the ankles, her posture stiff and upright, he could not recall seeing a sadder woman in a very long time. It was more than the temporary sadness of a day when nothing goes right, or the melancholia that floods the mind with the realization of time and opportunity lost. More even than the tragic anger of Barbara when he first met her, a woman abandoned and alone. June Leedale bore her sorrow like a physical weight, a burden that pinned her dreams to the ground, forbidding them to take flight.

  “I appreciated the hospitality yesterday,” McGuire said.

  “You didn’t enjoy very much of it.” Another quick smile, distant lightning across a dark sky.

  “I was a little tired.”

  The door behind the receptionist’s desk opened without warning and Parker Leedale stood in the opening, looking curiously from McGuire to his wife and back again.

  “I guess we’re ready,” June Leedale said, rising abruptly.

  McGuire rose to follow her past the receptionist, who was reciting a series of legal phrases into the telephone receiver from an open file on her desk. Crossing in front of Parker Leedale he noticed the lawyer, as he closed the office door, cast a warm smile at the receptionist.

  “Is everything clear to you?” Parker Leedale asked, looking up after reciting the details of Cora Godwin’s will aloud in a flat voice. He pulled at his mustache as he spoke, then dropped his hand from his upper lip to the desktop where it joined the other, palm down. He waited for McGuire to speak.

  “Who’s Hirons?” McGuire asked.

  “What?” Parker Leedale blinked.

  “The sign outside says Hirons & Leedale. You’re the only lawyer I see here. Where’s the other guy?” McGuire stretched his legs out in front of him and clasped his hands behind his head.

  Parker Leedale shrugged and looked at his wife seated in a corner chair, her pencil poised over a pad of lined yellow paper. He grinned when she looked up, as if to say, isn’t this guy a jerk?

  “My grandfather, Wyndham Leedale, founded this practice with a man named Harrison Hirons just after the First World War,” Parker Leedale said. “Both families go back six or seven generations in Massachusetts. This is the oldest continuously operated law practice in the mid-Cape area.”

  “What happened to Hirons?” McGuire asked.

  “My father bought the practice when Hirons’s son chose not to practice law.”

  “Smart man,” McGuire said.

  Parker Leedale smiled in agreement until he noticed his wife suppressing a grin and he realized that McGuire had referred to Hirons’s shiftless son and not Parker’s father. He drew in a deep breath and leaned forward. “Anyway, do you understand the terms of the will?” he asked coldly.

  “Sure.” McGuire looked out the window at the blue sky as he spoke. “You and I are co-executors. All of Cora’s liquid assets are left to the American Civil Liberties Union. All of her real estate and possessions are left to me to dispose of as I see fit. Simple.”

  “What do you plan to do with them?”

  “Sell ’em.”

  “Good.”

  “You recommend a real estate agent for me?” McGuire asked.

  “In my role as co-executor, it’s my duty to be involved in such a decision,” Leedale replied.

  “Okay.” McGuire stood, placed his palms down on Leedale’s desk and leaned toward the lawyer who sat back almost involuntarily in his swivel chair. Like his expression, McGuire’s voice had darkened and dropped by a full octave. “Why don’t you give me the name of some buddy of yours in the real estate business who will sell the house in the shortest possible time.”

  Parker Leedale blinked. “At the best possible price?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But as co-executor . . .”

  “As sole heir, I can dispose of the property for any amount I want,” McGuire said. He was tired of Leedale’s small-town pretense of power and authority. “You interested in buying it?”

  The lawyer shook his head. “Clearly a conflict of interest,” he began.

  “Then give me an agent’s name.” McGuire straightened and glanced at June Leedale, who was watching him intently. “One of your Rotary Club friends, I don’t care.”

  “Cora thought you might want to keep the house,” June Leedale said in her thin voice. “I think . . . Well, I think she hoped you would. Retain it in the family, kind of.”

  McGuire smiled warmly at her, a sharp contrast in his mood. “I’m sure she did. But Cora also valued honesty above everything else. And I’d be dishonest if I decided to stay here.”

  “Sam Hannaford.” Parker Leedale had scribbled an address and telephone number on a sheet of paper while his wife spoke, and he handed it across to McGuire. “Has an office on Old Queen Anne Road, over near Pleasant Bay Estates. Know where that is?”

  McGuire shook his head.

  “He’ll come out to see you if you give him a call. Sam knows the real estate market around here as well as anybody.”

  McGuire took the paper from the lawyer and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Thanks for your help.” He stood, nodded at Parker Leedale and smiled at June.

  “You like to get together some time?” Parker Leedale asked, forcing a warmer tone into his voice. “While you’re still here, waiting to sell the property? Feel free to wander over for a drink maybe. Mike and Blake and I are going to the Town House tonight for clams and beer while we watch the ball game. You’re welcome to join us.”

  “I’ll let you know,” McGuire said, opening the office door.

  “Bye-bye,” the receptionist chirped as McGuire passed her desk.

  “You’re due in court this afternoon,” McGuire heard June Leedale say to her husband just before closing the door behind him, and Parker Leedale replying angrily, “I know, I know, damn it!”

  The rental car was a five-year-old sedan that pulled to the right and the engine hesitated, as though pondering the matter, whenever McGuire stepped on the gas. The mechanic assured McGuire it was reliable and safe but asked as an afterthought: “How far you goin’ with her?”

  “Just local,” McGuire replied.

  The other man nodded with approval. “Need a map? Takes a while to learn some of these back roads.” He tossed a Tourist Guide to Mid-Cape Motoring through the window, withdrew a Marlboro from his coveralls and stood staring off in the distance as McGuire guided the car onto Main Street in the direction of the Compton po
lice station.

  “Takes a while to get to know these people, don’t it?”

  Bob Morton was leaning back in his chair, his polished black shoes resting in an open drawer of his metal desk, a half-eaten iced doughnut in one hand. McGuire was seated across from him, his arms folded loosely across his chest.

  “See,” Morton continued. He paused to swallow a mouthful of doughnut and reach for his coffee. “See, I’ve been here a little over a year and people think I’m just passing through. I mean, I get out and introduce myself, show up at town meetings. My wife’s on the PTA already, kids are in school, I’ve got a mortgage I’ll still be paying when I’m a grandpa, but it don’t matter to these people. I’m still new, I’ll always be new. If my great-grandchildren are still living here when I’m gone, maybe by then they’ll figure the Mortons are gonna hang around after all.”

  He took a long swallow of coffee.

  “Way I see it, these people are basically snobs. Figure they’re living on the best part of the Cape, and they may be right. Trouble is, they tend to look down on people living anywhere else. Talk about somebody lives five, ten miles on either side of town, it’s like they’re on Mars. Also, when you get so many families tracing their roots back a hundred years or so, they get a trifle clannish. Tend to trust each other, protect each other. Way I heard it, your aunt was different, which is maybe why she wasn’t so popular.”

  Morton shrugged his shoulders.

  “Don’t bother me too much. I can handle it. Still enough newcomers around like Doc Hayward . . .” He laughed. “Hell, Hayward’s been here near forty years and he’s still a newcomer. See what I mean?”

  “What’ve you done about my aunt’s death?” McGuire asked.

  “Done?” Morton swung his feet to the floor. “Not much to do. Called the PA in Orleans yesterday afternoon. Told him what I had, mentioned Hayward’s blood test, the missing prescription, all of that. He thought it was a joke, opening a murder file on that little bit of info. Damned near wet his pants laughing at me.”