Gypsy Sins

by John Lawrence Reynolds

“When I learn more about Sonny Tate,” McGuire said evenly, “and Cynthia Sanders.”

  “Cynthia Sanders?” Ellie Stevenson repeated McGuire’s words, her eyes wide.

  “The woman who died, graduation weekend,” Mike Gilroy replied. He studied McGuire. “What does that have to do with selling your house?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t,” McGuire said. “It has to do with someone murdering Cora.”

  “Cora?” June Leedale asked. She lowered her fork. “You think Cora was murdered?” The others stared back at McGuire in silence.

  “Ivan Hayward does.” McGuire sat back and folded his arms across his chest. “That’s why he was curious about her medication. If someone tampered with her capsules, if they substituted something that would slow her heart instead of stimulating it, she’d die.”

  “You know that for sure?” Blake Stevenson asked.

  McGuire looked at each face in turn. “I have some facts,” he said. “And some assumptions.”

  “Bob Morton working with you on this?” Mike Gilroy asked.

  McGuire shook his head. “It’s all unofficial. But I’ve made some links between Cora and the Sanders woman,” he lied. “And I’ve learned the details of her death.”

  Ellie Stevenson threw back her head and laughed. “Jesus, you really are a gumshoe, aren’t you?” She looked at the others. “Isn’t that what they call these guys? Flatfoots, dicks, all that Humphrey Bogart crap?”

  “Details?” June Leedale asked McGuire. Her voice smaller than ever, she seemed to have been holding her breath. “How? What is there to learn? That all happened thirty years ago.”

  “Cora had something,” McGuire responded. “In her house.”

  Another explosion of laughter from Ellie Stevenson. “Holy shit. Cora did it, right? I always knew that bitch had something to hide.”

  “Ellie!” June Leedale was annoyed.

  “Well, she’d never have anything to do with us,” Ellie protested. “Especially him.” She angled her head at her husband, who sat with his elbows on the table and his hands clasped in front of him.

  “Cora could be a little strange.” Parker Leedale pushed himself from the table, a look of concern on his face.

  “There may be nothing to it,” McGuire said, shrugging. “Right now I’m trying to pick up all I can about Sonny Tate.”

  “Sonny Tate?” Ellie Stevenson leaned across the table to June Leedale. “Remember him? God, he was a hunk. Wonder what he looks like now? Probably fat and bald like chubby cheeks here,” and she laughed and reached a hand to touch the arm of her husband, who sat watching McGuire, stone-faced.

  “If you think Sonny Tate murdered that woman,” Mike Gilroy said, “and that somebody also murdered your aunt and there’s a connection between the two, does that mean Sonny’s back in town? That he killed Cora?”

  “A possibility,” McGuire nodded.

  June Leedale rose abruptly. “I don’t like this kind of talk,” she said, lifting her plate from the table. “This is about two women . . . two women being murdered, and I don’t think it’s amusing at all.”

  McGuire watched her leave the dining room and enter the kitchen. From his chair at the end of the table: he was the only one who could see her set her plate on the counter and lean against the refrigerator, her back to the dining room.

  “Who’s for dessert?” Ellie Stevenson asked. “Maybe some Grand Marnier over ice cream?”

  “Hell of an idea,” Mike Gilroy said. He rose from the table. “I’ll give Bunny another call.”

  “The ball game’s on in a few minutes,” Blake Stevenson said. “Let’s have our dessert and coffee in the family room.”

  “Sure, do your male bonding crap,” his wife said as her husband and Parker Leedale left the room.

  McGuire looked back to the kitchen, but June Leedale had left. He heard her quick footsteps climbing the stairs.

  “The line’s busy,” Gilroy said when he returned from the telephone. “It means she’s home anyway. Guess I’ll head over there. If she’s talking to her mother, she’ll be on the phone for hours.” He extended his hand to McGuire. “Good luck finding out whatever happened to Cora.” He shook his head. “I can’t imagine anybody wanting to hurt her, though.”

  “Unless they had reason to,” McGuire added, and Gilroy shrugged. McGuire turned to Ellie Stevenson. “Thanks for dinner,” he said.

  “What the hell, everybody’s leaving?” Ellie said, annoyed. “I just made ten cups of coffee. Stay for a coffee at least, McGuire,” she pleaded. “You don’t have to join the jocks in the family room. Go into the library and I’ll bring it to you there. It’s through the living room.” She sidled next to him. “I want to talk to you about something,” she said.

  The library was paneled in dark walnut and furnished with brass-studded green leather chairs and matching sofa. Crystal decanters stood among leather-bound books on floor-to-ceiling shelves. Heavy brocaded draperies framed two windows facing the door. McGuire inspected the books on the shelves and the antique engravings on the walls before settling in one of the leather chairs. Almost immediately, Ellie Stevenson entered with coffee.

  “You want some cognac with that?” she asked, setting the tray on a table next to McGuire’s chair.

  McGuire said he didn’t.

  “Well, I’m having some.” She chose a decanter from the shelf, splashed some into a small snifter, took a long swallow and sat on an arm of the sofa, looking at McGuire.

  McGuire sampled the coffee, avoiding Ellie’s eyes. He disliked the woman and made no effort to disguise the fact, but her manner with him was warm and coy, almost awkwardly seductive.

  “June’s tidying up for me in the kitchen,” she said. “The jocks are into the vintage port back there, Parker and Blake. Especially Blake. Fat old fart can’t stay away from the stuff.”

  “How long have you two been married?” McGuire asked. As long as she was intruding upon his solitude, he might as well learn something about her.

  “Twenty-three fucking years,” she replied. “But not necessarily vice versa,” and she erupted in laughter at her own joke.

  “How did you meet?”

  “High school. We dated some. Then I married a guy I met in college. A jerk from Yarmouth. Boring little shit. A bank manager, if you can believe it. That lasted a few years and I told him to get lost. Stevenson showed up and I jumped ship to him. He was making a decent salary, acting like Mr. Success. Impressed the hell out of me at first. Just like he’s trying to impress you.” She sampled her drink. “You married?”

  McGuire shook his head. “Why?” he asked.

  She shrugged her shoulders and slid from the arm of the sofa onto the cushion. “Just wondering. Guy like you is kind of mysterious, interesting. Not like those dull turds in the other room.” She toyed with her hair and grinned at McGuire. “Hell, aren’t you gonna ask me?” she said.

  “Ask you what?”

  “About twenty-three fucking years. And not vice versa.”

  McGuire shook his head.

  “He’s impotent.” She raised her glass for another long swallow of cognac. “Stupid son of a bitch hasn’t got it up for five years.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “But will he get help? The hell he will. I’ll say, for Christ’s sake, do something about it, and he just looks away. Or down at his fat fucking stomach. Or blames it on his pills, all that shit he takes for blood pressure, his heartburn medicine, his tranquilizers. Asshole’s got an ego like an elephant’s got ears. Can’t stand the idea of confessing to anybody that he’s not perfect. Not even a shrink.”

  “So why are you still married?” McGuire asked. His tranquilizers, McGuire thought. Like the ones that killed Cora?

  “I dunno.” She became almost pensive, staring away beyond the tree line where the darkness was deepest. “Too much of a lazy shit to change, I guess.” A sho
rt laugh. “Besides, how else could I live like this on a teacher’s salary?”

  She remained lost in thought and McGuire stole a look at her profile, seeing the young girl that still shone through when the older woman permitted it: the quick smile, the darting eyes and most of all the energy which had once been a vibrancy for life and now served only to fuel a strange and abiding anger.

  She rose out of her reverie like a diver ascending from the calm of deep tropical waters, returning to a stormy surface. “What the hell,” she said, on the brink of laughter once again, “sex isn’t that hard to get, right? Guy like you must know all about that.” She cackled in peals of laughter as though she had just made, or heard, an intensely amusing comment.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me,” he said.

  “How long are you planning to stay around here?”

  “No idea. Until I find some answers, settle some things.”

  “I have two spare class periods every Friday afternoon.”

  McGuire blinked at her. “I don’t think . . .” he began.

  “Do you know I’ve never been in that house you’re living in, Cora’s house? Never. The old broad had something against us, Blake and me.”

  “Are you looking for an invitation?”

  “Yeah. Maybe some Friday afternoon.” She coiled her hair in her fingers, smiling, and her tongue emerged from one corner, sliding back and forth, in and out.

  “Is that all you wanted to tell me?”

  Her mood darkened. She looked away into the far corner of the room, drained her glass, set it aside and drew her teeth over her bottom lip several times. When she spoke, she avoided McGuire’s eyes. “Don’t believe any of that stuff Blake and Parker might tell you about Sonny Tate,” she said. “Christ, every time they get a few drinks in them, the two of them and Mike, somebody brings up the Sanders woman.”

  McGuire waited for her to continue.

  The telephone rang and she looked absently at the closed door. “Let fat-ass get it,” she slurred.

  “What about Sonny Tate?” McGuire asked.

  “He didn’t kill her,” Ellie Stevenson said. “No matter what those guys say. I knew him. I knew him better than they did. If you catch my drift.”

  “Who do you think did it?”

  She shrugged. “I got some ideas. Don’t know for sure. Don’t give a shit either. But it wasn’t Sonny. He was a little wild, sure. And he liked the girls, the girls liked him. But he couldn’t hurt anybody like that. Not intentionally.”

  Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall.

  She leaned toward McGuire. “You know what I think? I think it was your asshole cousin, Terry. Mister know it all, mister everything. I’ve heard things over the years, little bits here and there. That’s who I think did it. Terry Godwin.”

  “Ellie?” The voice of Blake Stevenson sounded on the other side of the door. “You in there?”

  “Yeah, I’m in here.”

  The door opened and the moon face of her husband peered in. “That was Mike,” Blake said. “Bunny’s home. She was out shopping for appliances for their new kitchen or something.”

  “Yeah, or something,” and Ellie laughed sarcastically.

  “They may be over later,” her husband said. “You all right, Joe?”

  McGuire set his coffee cup aside and rose from the chair. “I was just leaving.”

  “Yeah, he was on his way,” Ellie said, glancing at McGuire as though he had said something that amused her.

  “You’re not joining us for the game?” Blake asked.

  McGuire shook his head and walked past both of them, Blake with his forehead creased in a quizzical expression, Ellie smirking at a secret thought. Passing through the kitchen, Ellie and Blake trailing him, McGuire said goodbye to June Leedale who sat at the table staring out at the night. She nodded absently. At the door, Blake Stevenson thanked him for coming, then excused himself as Parker Leedale shouted from somewhere beyond the dining room, “Blake, you gotta come see this!”

  “If you think Terry murdered that woman,” McGuire asked Ellie when her husband left, “who do you think killed Cora?”

  “Nobody,” Ellie replied. “I think she died from old bitch’s disease.” She shrugged her shoulders and laughed in her dry sarcastic manner. “Too bad you’ve got a problem with aggressive women, Romeo,” she said to McGuire’s back, and closed the door.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The fog hung over the shoreline like a scrim separating the land from the sea. McGuire crept the car along Oyster Pond Road, pausing at each intersection to peer out at road signs. He located Hannaford’s Real Estate and turned left onto Old Queen Anne Road. Away from the shore, the air grew clear, but where Old Queen Anne Road meandered close to the sea again, he encountered banks of fog across the road, massive gun-metal clouds that brooded in the lights of his car.

  After about a mile, he slowed for a line of cars leading into a fog bank ahead of him. Flares sputtered on the shoulder of the road and lights flashed red, blue and yellow. He inched around an ambulance, two towing vehicles, a Compton Police cruiser, a tangle of three cars and a mangled pickup truck. A young police officer was directing traffic past the accident site and McGuire noticed Bob Morton, his head down and a notebook in his hand, walking toward the cruiser.

  McGuire lowered his window and called Morton’s name. The officer glanced up, leaned forward with his eyes narrowed and burst into a smile at the sight of McGuire.

  “You got a bad one here?” McGuire asked when Morton arrived at his car.

  “Couple of bumped heads, broken nose. Nothing serious but they called me out anyway.” He stepped back to wave the driver following McGuire around the demolished cars and emergency vehicles, then returned to McGuire’s window. “What brings you out here on such a lousy night?”

  “Had dinner with Blake Stevenson,” McGuire said. “Just heading back.”

  Morton nodded. “Bit of a pompous bastard, isn’t he? Stevenson, I mean.”

  McGuire had a thought. “You going back to the station from here?”

  “Long enough to finish this report, then home,” Morton replied.

  “I want to look at another file—”

  “Oh, boy,” Morton interrupted. He straightened, looked around, and shook his head. “I don’t know. . . .”

  “Where’s the file you showed me today? The one on the Sanders murder?”

  “Locked it in my desk. First thing tomorrow, I’m putting it back downstairs.”

  “Let me look at it again. While you’re filling out this report.”

  “Okay,” Morton agreed. “I’ll be another ten, fifteen minutes here. That’s all you want, right?”

  “Almost.” A horn sounded behind McGuire and he slipped the car in drive. “I want to see if you’ve got anything on my cousin, Terry Godwin.”

  It was almost half an hour before Morton appeared at the police station where McGuire had long since finished reading the staff notices on the bulletin board and scanning a two-day-old copy of the Cape Cod News. A police officer who appeared too young to handle any responsibility more demanding than a paper route sat at the switchboard dividing his time between answering telephone calls and watching the World Series on a portable television set.

  Morton entered the station at a brisk walk and motioned McGuire to follow him around the counter. The officer on the switchboard handed Morton a small sheaf of messages, none apparently urgent.

  In his office, Morton unlocked a desk drawer, withdrew the Sanders file and tossed it on his desk. “What else you looking for?” he asked.

  “Anything on Terry Godwin,” McGuire said. “He was my cousin. Lived on Miner’s Lane in the house I’m in now.”

  “Where’s he now?” Morton swiveled in his chair and switched on his computer.

  “He died in sixty-seven.”

  Morton turn
ed back to McGuire, his eyes wide. “Well, hell, nothing in our computer files goes back that far. We’re only good to 1980.”

  “So where would it be?”

  “Downstairs.” He gestured at the file in McGuire’s hand. “Same place I got that.”

  “How long will it take you to dig it up?”

  Morton rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Come on, man. I was supposed to stay home tonight and watch the World Series. I get called out because some jerk in a pickup figures he can do sixty through a fog bank, I haven’t eaten yet, I find out my team is down five runs in the sixth inning and now you want me to dig up some twenty-five-year-old crap out of the basement?”

  McGuire stared at him in silence.

  “Okay, okay,” Morton said, holding both hands up as though stopping traffic. “If you want it, it’s gotta be important. But do I really have to get it now? I’ll be half an hour writing up this accident as it is. Come by tomorrow and I’ll have it before lunch for you. How’s that?”

  “Sure.” McGuire gave Morton a smile. “I’m fishing a bit. Might not be anything to it.”

  “Atta boy.” Morton flashed a smile. “Get you a coffee?”

  McGuire said no, but he wanted to scan the Sanders file once again. He sat in Morton’s office, reading again the report of Cynthia Sanders’s thirty-year-old death, finding nothing new.

  McGuire had left the house on Miner’s Lane without extinguishing the lights. It shone like a beacon in the darkness, each window on the ground floor lit from within, the second story in darkness.

  At the front door McGuire fumbled for the key, found it and entered the cozy warmth that recalled memories of his aunt. Once again he regretted not having visited her in the last years of her life. He walked from room to room through the first floor, switching off lights and pausing in the kitchen long enough to savor a drink of orange juice. Then he darkened the kitchen and climbed the stairs.

  Reaching the second floor he turned to enter Cora’s bedroom, then hesitated before striding to the room at the end of the hall, the one facing the small woody grove in back of the house. Terry’s room.