“Anyway, in the spring of our last year of high school—we were all in the same graduating class, Sonny, Blake, Parker, Terry and me—Sonny got himself fixed up with an older woman. She was twenty-eight and she lived out on Nickerson’s Neck—you know where that is?”
McGuire said he didn’t.
“North of here, juts out into Crow’s Pond. That’s where the big money lives, next to the golf club.” He jabbed a thumb at Blake Stevenson. “Blake’s out near there, proving he’s richer than the rest of us, right?”
Blake Stevenson shrugged his shoulders and continued staring into his drink.
Gilroy lowered his voice again. “Seems funny to call a twenty-eight-year-old woman ‘older’ at our age. But she sure as hell was when we were all seventeen, eighteen. She was a widow. She’d married some rich guy and he got himself killed in a car crash out west the year before. Lived alone in a big house in Harbour Cove on Nickerson’s Neck. She advertised for somebody to do yard work and Sonny answered.”
“Had him in the sack with her, second time he was over,” Parker Leedale said.
“You know that for a fact?” McGuire asked.
Everyone said he knew it for a fact. “Sonny wouldn’t brag, mind you,” Gilroy continued. “But it was pretty clear she was teaching him things even Sonny Tate hadn’t learned in the back seat of a Chevy.”
“She had a red Chrysler convertible, brand new,” Parker Leedale added. “Jesus, what a car!”
“She’d loan it to Sonny on weekends,” Mike Gilroy said. “Came into town once and picked a bunch of us up. We took off for Hyannis, just to drive around, look at girls.”
“He was always careful to fill the tank with gas afterwards,” Parker Leedale added. “Gotta be fair to Cyn, he’d say.”
“Who?” McGuire frowned.
“Cynthia. Cynthia Sanders.” Mike Gilroy was staring down into his glass again. “Good-looking woman. Jesus, she was a beauty.”
“So what was she doing hanging around with a kid, what, seventeen, eighteen years old?” McGuire said.
“Who knows?” Gilroy shrugged. “Besides, like we’ve been telling you, Sonny was no ordinary kid. This guy was special, McGuire.”
“He was a fucking hero,” Leedale said, almost with resentment. “More than Terry Godwin was to a lot of us.”
“That’s true, that’s true.” Gilroy nodded his head at McGuire as though trying to convince the other man. “And this woman, Cynthia Sanders, she had lots of older guys from the country club trying to get into her pants.”
“Sonny told me she went to dinner with one of them one night and when she came home she ditched the older guy at the front door and met Sonny out on the patio, got it on with him right there,” Leedale said. “Her date’s still backing his Lincoln out of the driveway and she’s already got Sonny’s fly open. Christ!”
McGuire caught the eye of the waiter and held his empty bottle in the air, signaling for another. “Who else?” he asked the others. “I’m buying.”
“I’ll have another,” Leedale said.
Gilroy resumed his story. “Anyway, here’s what happened—or what we think happened—
the weekend after we graduated. Everybody in the graduating class was planning parties. Parker and me and a bunch of others organized a clambake on Nauset Beach—you know where that is?”
“Below the lighthouse,” McGuire replied.
“Yeah, under the bluffs where the sandbar’s maybe a hundred feet offshore,” Gilroy nodded. “There were about thirty kids coming. We all got barrels of beer and clams, piles of driftwood for the fire. . . . All of it illegal, of course, but that was going to be the fun of it. If the Coast Guard showed up, we’d swim across this shallow channel to the sandbar and take off. They never would’ve found us.”
“I got the beer, you showed up later with a barrel of clams,” Leedale recalled. “Shorty Hargrove was there, Lizzie what’s-her-name, whole bunch of us.”
“You still owe me for the clams,” Gilroy smiled.
“Bullshit,” Leedale said in mock anger. “Where’d you go to get ’em, Portland for Christ’s sake?”
“Jesus, I got blasted that night,” Gilroy said. He smiled with embarrassment. “Woke up in the morning on the sandbar, heaving my guts out with the tide coming in. That’s what woke me up, the water rising around me, getting me wet. . . .”
“You were drunker’n two skunks when you finally arrived with the clams,” Parker Leedale sneered. “Hell, you couldn’t even carry the barrel down from the bluff. Me ’n’ Jimmy Rae, we had to climb up and carry ’em down to the sandbar for you.”
“I spent the evening with Terry,” Blake Stevenson interrupted. “At his house. Just a quiet night. We had a wonderful time. Cora was a delightful woman back then, when Terry was still alive.”
“So what happened?” McGuire asked Gilroy impatiently.
“We had a good time but Sonny never showed.” It was Parker Leedale, eager to pick up the thread of the story. “He never came. Mike and I, we saw him the next day, asked him where he’d been. He said he’d had a date that night and he winked at us.”
“So we figured he spent the night at Cynthia’s,” Mike Gilroy said. “We didn’t ask, you know?”
“Especially when they found her body,” Parker Leedale added with excessive drama.
McGuire turned to look at him.
“She was in bed, buck naked. That’s what we heard, all over town the next day,” Leedale whispered. “The telephone cord was tied or tangled or some damn thing around her neck.”
“But she wasn’t strangled,” Gilroy added. “At least, that’s not what killed her. She’d choked on her own vomit.”
“She was pretty drunk, I’d heard.” It was Leedale again.
“One of her older boyfriends had come around to see her that day,” Mike Gilroy said. “The front door was open, all the lights were on. He called, went upstairs and found her.”
“Where was the car?” McGuire asked.
“In the garage. Untouched.” It was Gilroy, picking up the story again.
“It was all in the papers,” Parker Leedale added.
“And did they talk to your friend Sonny?” McGuire asked.
“Sure,” Gilroy said. “All her neighbours had seen him around.”
“What happened?”
Gilroy shrugged. “Nothing. They interviewed him once, the day after the body was discovered. Never talked to him again. Held an inquest and the coroner said he suspected foul play by person or persons unknown, something like that. She might have been strangled or she might have just fallen out of bed, dead drunk, got tangled in the telephone cord, started to throw up. . . .” He shrugged again.
“Now that’s a bullshit verdict if you ever heard one, right, McGuire?” Leedale said. “‘Suspected foul play by a person or persons unknown?’”
McGuire nodded absently. The waiter arrived with a bottle of Molson’s for McGuire and another draft beer for Leedale. McGuire began to dig in his pocket for money but Blake Stevenson shook his head and paid the waiter, telling him to keep the change.
“Here’s the clincher,” Leedale added, bringing his face closer to McGuire. “The next day, the very next day after the cops talk to Sonny Tate, he’s gone. Out of here. Headed for Boston where he gets a job with some ad agency. Then, couple of years later, he’s down in New York, a big shot on Madison Avenue, partner in some hot outfit down there. Never comes back here except for his mother’s funeral, stuff like that.”
“Doesn’t mean much,” McGuire said.
“He did time,” Gilroy said, staring at McGuire.
“Who?” McGuire asked. The beer was cold, inviting. “Who did?”
“Sonny,” Gilroy said, his tone serious, somewhere between shock and dismay. “Heard he did three years in a federal prison in Florida. Got out a few years ago.”
>
“What was the charge?”
“Narcotics. He started his own advertising agency in New York. Did well for a few years, then went broke. I heard his partners screwed him but who knows? Anyway, he made some contacts in the drug racket and wound up in Lauderdale where he lived on a yacht for years, bringing grass and coke in from South America. The feds finally caught up with him.”
“So, what do you think?” Parker Leedale demanded, nudging McGuire with an elbow.
“About what?”
“About Sonny. Did he get away with murder or didn’t he? Doesn’t it sound like it to you?”
“Even if he did,” Mike Gilroy said, spreading his hands palms up and sitting back in the booth, “what does it matter now?”
“Exactly,” Blake Stevenson said. “Besides, no one has heard from Sonny Tate in years.”
“What’d Cora know?” Leedale asked. “About the murder? What’d she tell you about it? She left a letter for you or something?”
“Something like that,” McGuire said. He set his beer aside, half finished.
Mike Gilroy looked at his watch. “Wow, check the time,” he said, and he stood and stretched his arms above his head. “Don’t know about you guys but I’ve got work tomorrow.”
They rode back to the Leedale home in silence, Mike Gilroy driving, McGuire in the front passenger seat, Parker Leedale and Blake Stevenson in the rear. Ahead of them, on Miner’s Lane, the lights of the Leedale house glowed softly in the darkness. A woman’s figure was silhouetted in one window. As the car pulled in the driveway, it moved quickly aside.
“You okay?” Mike Gilroy asked Stevenson as the overweight man extruded his bulk from the rear of the Volvo.
“I’m okay,” Stevenson replied. “I’ll get Ellie to drive.”
Bunny Gilroy, who had been waiting impatiently at the window, emerged from the house, slipping into a light topcoat as she approached the car. “You guys have fun?” she asked.
“An excellent time,” Blake Stevenson replied in his booming voice. “Solved many of the world’s more pressing problems.”
“Hey,” Gilroy smiled after McGuire thanked him for the lift, “we could be all wet, you know. About Sonny Tate, I mean.” He grinned widely and spread his arms in a gesture of doubt. “A hundred guys, one of her neighbours maybe, could’ve done her in. Or maybe it really was an accident and the local cops just bungled it. They weren’t exactly brain surgeons back then. Besides, after thirty years, who cares?”
“What happened to him?” McGuire asked, pausing in the open door of the car. “Anybody know where he is now?”
“Who? Sonny?” It was Parker Leedale, standing next to McGuire and swaying from side to side. “I heard he’s living in Boston. Up on Beacon Hill. Son of a bitch always landed on his feet.”
McGuire held the door of the Volvo open for Bunny Gilroy, who slid in next to her husband, bid McGuire a brief “Bye!” and began chattering to Mike Gilroy as he backed the car onto Mill Pond Road.
As Gilroy’s Volvo pulled away, Leedale gripped McGuire’s elbow. “Hey, Blake,” he called to Stevenson, who was about to enter the front door of the Leedale home. “Tell June I want to show McGuire here something in Cora’s house, okay? I’ll be over in a few minutes. And I’ll give you a call later in the week.”
Stevenson stood silently on the walk, his hands in his pockets, and watched the two men cross the road to the darkened house.
“Show me? What do you need to show me?” McGuire asked as Leedale walked beside him, his head lowered.
“It’s, uh, the security system Cora had installed,” Leedale replied. He stumbled once, steadied himself against McGuire and said, “Shit, I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“Not in the house,” McGuire ordered.
Leedale stood, swaying from side to side, his head back, as McGuire reached the front door. “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m all right now.”
McGuire grunted, twisted the key in the lock and stepped through the doorway. Leedale walked directly past him, crossed the living room and slumped in a Queen Anne chair.
After switching on the lights, McGuire strode to the fireplace, leaned against it and stared at Leedale, who was resting his head on one hand, the other draped over the arm of the chair. “What’s on your mind?” McGuire demanded.
When Leedale looked up at McGuire, his face had grown ashen and his eyes were beginning to flood with tears. “Did . . .” Leedale began, then turned away. “You ever do any, uh . . .” Leedale hesitated, then looked down to discover something engrossing about his fingernails. “You ever do any, what do you call it? Tailing? Like private detective work?”
“Some.”
“You interested? In doing some while you’re here? I’ll pay you. . . .”
“No, I’m not interested.” McGuire pushed away from the fireplace and walked toward the front door. “Look, Parker,” he said, passing the Queen Anne chair, “I’ve had a long day, one beer too many, and I’m—”
“I think my wife’s having an affair.” Leedale blurted the words like a man suddenly being sick to his stomach and surprising himself.
McGuire paused and looked back at Leedale, who was staring into the empty fireplace. “Why,” McGuire asked, speaking each word slowly and distinctly, “in the hell are you telling me this?”
“You think I can tell those guys?” Leedale replied almost angrily, waving his arm in the direction of Main Street. “You think I can admit to my friends that my wife is screwing some other man?”
“Do you know that for sure?”
Leedale’s cheeks were wet with tears. “Yes. No. I think so. She . . . she disappears some afternoons and I caught her in a lie once and . . . and I . . . I figure she’s spending time in a motel room somewhere. . . . Shit, McGuire, we’ve been married twenty-five, no, twenty-six years. Twenty-six years, no kids, she can’t have kids, all she’s got is the house, she even works with me nearly every goddamn day. Woman like that, maybe she needs some excitement. . . .”
“I still don’t know why you’re talking to me about this.”
Leedale turned to stare at McGuire, his mood now belligerent. “You were a homicide cop, right? There’s nothing can shock you anymore, right? So I can trust you. To me it’s a tragedy. To you it’s just another day’s dirty work. Look, all I’m asking is, you find out if it’s true, what it’s all about and I’ll pay you for your time. And you’re gone. You’re not staying around here, living in this house, are you? You’ll sell it, pocket the money, right?”
“Probably.”
“Sure you will. Then you’ll be back in the Bahamas or wherever the hell it is you live. How the hell can I get somebody in town, any P.I. on the Cape, to follow June? They all know me. I’m a lawyer, for Christ’s sake. I deal with them all the time. For the rest of my life, they’ll see me as some jerk whose wife was . . .” Parker Leedale shook his head and closed his eyes.
McGuire turned his back on Leedale, shoved his hands in his pockets, breathed deeply and twisted to study the stricken man again. “Look, Parker,” he explained, softening his voice. “Every married man I ever knew suspected his wife of cheating on him at least once in his life, if only to persuade himself that she was still attractive to other guys. And you know what? Most of the time, when all the clues are there, they’re wrong. Trust me on that. If she’s dropping clues, it’s probably not happening. I don’t think you need a detective. Maybe all you need is a closer relationship with your wife. You ever thought about that?”
Leedale stared at McGuire in angry silence for a moment before bolting from the chair. “Sure,” he snapped, stumbled once and steadied himself against a wall. “Nothin’ to it. Forget what I said. I’m just a little drunk, that’s all. See . . .” He paused, his hand on the knob of the front door. “See you around.”
Leedale wrenched open the door and slammed it shut, hard enough to rattle Cora�
�s display of nineteenth-century cranberry glass in the Chippendale cabinet.
Goodnight, jerk, McGuire said silently as he walked through the house switching off lights.
McGuire had seen the quiet panic in June Leedale’s eyes earlier in the day, had recognized sadness and panic in her every gesture. If she wasn’t being unfaithful, McGuire decided, she was giving one hell of a convincing performance.
Chapter Twelve
The morning arrived brilliant with sunshine and noisy with birds squabbling in the thick evergreens at the rear of the house. Both combined to wake McGuire sooner than he might have chosen. He rose, showered, dressed and went outside where he sat on the porch of the house, sipped at a cup of instant coffee and listened to his instincts vibrate.
More than any other faculty, McGuire depended upon intuition to guide him. Ollie Schantz once explained the success of their partnership to a senior police official by saying, “I think and he feels. I can’t do what he does, he can’t do what I do.”
McGuire began by reviewing what he knew for certain.
Cora dies quietly. Too quietly, according to the instincts of Dr. Hayward. McGuire trusted Hayward and his instincts, which were supported by a lab test on Cora’s blood and a missing prescription container.
And there was more.
Cora keeps a newspaper clipping of a thirty-year-old murder which may not have been a murder at all.
Then she invites three friends of her dead son, all of them familiar with the murder, to her memorial service. One of the wives may be having an affair. So what? Life in suburbia.
McGuire stood up, stretched and returned to the house for the property survey Hannaford had requested.
Nothing fit. Time to start poking around with a sharp stick again.
Driving into town, he thought momentarily of Barbara. Where she was. Why she hadn’t called.
“Nothing yet?” McGuire leaned on the counter at the Compton police station and watched Bob Morton sip black coffee from a heavy earthenware mug.
“Nope.” Morton set the cup on the top of a gray metal file cabinet. “No time. Two traffic accidents last night, one a DWI, plus a break-in out near the pond. Getting the paperwork done on those.”
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