Gypsy Sins

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  During the return journey to Compton, McGuire’s stomach reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since early morning. He stopped at a tourist restaurant set well back from the highway where he ate watery clam chowder and stale crackers, looking out at the traffic and feeling himself growing smaller and more detached from the world.

  “You don’t like people much, do you?” his first wife said to McGuire soon after they were married.

  “It’s not that I don’t like them,” McGuire replied. “It’s just that they always disappoint me.”

  “Including me?” she asked. “Did I disappoint you?”

  “Less than others,” he said.

  And she had smiled with satisfaction.

  He had lied, of course. She had disappointed him every bit as much as others. Perhaps more, for in the beginning he held such high standards for her and for their marriage. As someone who was often disappointed in his own qualities, McGuire searched for perfection in those close to him, as though mere proximity to higher standards of behaviour would be sufficient. If he could not achieve excellence within himself, he would benefit from its presence in those around him. Those who loved him and cared for him.

  McGuire’s two wives, his several coworkers and his few close friends were always aware of the high expectations he held for himself, his friends and his lovers. So they were not surprised when he grew morose and distant in response to their failure to measure up to his standards. Or his even deeper withdrawal when he failed to measure up to his own.

  No quality was more vital to McGuire’s measure of himself and others than his sense of correct behaviour, of consistent morality under any conditions and in the face of any challenge, and it was essentially the reason he chose a career in police work, which offered a means of thrusting his immutable ethics on a world dedicated to embracing change and discarding values. Unable to afford a college education after high school, he considered a law degree out of the question. Which in retrospect was a benefit, McGuire decided, since lawyers seemed more intent on circumventing moral outrages than correcting them. His career as a police officer provided a reasonable income, a fixed code of standards and an opportunity to apply his convictions rather than merely discuss them.

  For over twenty years and through two failed marriages, it had.

  Two failed marriages. McGuire still had difficulty believing they were part of his history. What does it say about a man when the landscape of his life is blemished by such wreckage? That he cannot maintain the level of his own convictions? That he chooses his mates foolishly? That he is simply more human than he strives to be? McGuire did not know.

  Settling within him over the past few days had been the realization that he had failed to achieve his greatest ambition, his highest expectation and his most wistful obsession from earliest years, an awareness that it was now forever out of reach, yet he was doomed to pursue it for the remainder of his life.

  McGuire’s dream, spawned in adolescence, had been nothing less than to become part of a great resounding lifelong romance with a woman who would fill all the crevices in his being, someone whose brilliance would illuminate his dark side and banish his demons with the shining of her presence and her undemanding love for him.

  Pondering the loss, alone in the restaurant, he sank into the periodic introspection that often enveloped him in his solitary life on Green Turtle Cay.

  He was a frightening few years from fifty. “At fifty, you’re two-thirds dead,” someone told him once.

  There would be no great lifelong romance. No constant illumination of his darkest side.

  No Barbara.

  For she had been the latest in his expectations. Like others, she had failed him. As he expected her to.

  He pulled himself out of his self-pity with the sheer force of effort, like scaling the walls of a canyon or rising from deep water to fill his lungs with air.

  Then he rose, tossed a few crumpled bills on the counter and strode into the quickly cooling afternoon.

  The sun’s rays were knifing at a sharp angle through the nearly bare branches of the trees when he arrived back at the Leedale house late that afternoon. Although the sky was clear there was a menace, almost a tangible threat, in the air.

  It’s the wind, McGuire realized as he emerged stiffly from behind the wheel of the car. The east wind, arriving on shore from the ocean. An east wind is bad news, he recalled, although the friendly aroma of hardwood smoke, wafting back from the chimney of the Leedale house, tickled his nostrils.

  A dull ache in his lower back protested both his effort at getting out of the car and the change in weather, and the wound in his shoulder began to throb. His body was becoming a barometer with age; once responsive to a mere glance from an attractive woman, it now seemed to be stimulated most easily by changes in temperature and barometric pressure. The awareness of it plunged McGuire into an even deeper depression.

  He knocked twice on the front door of the Leedale house. Hearing no response, he turned the knob and pressed his weight against the door. To his surprise, it swung aside to reveal June Leedale seated in the red wooden rocker in front of the fireplace, a glass of sherry in one raised hand.

  She turned to face him and, though she smiled at the sight of him, her cheeks were traced with tears. “How nice to see you,” she said, the tremor in her voice giving the lie to her words. “Sorry I didn’t feel like getting up.”

  McGuire returned the smile with as much sincerity as he could muster. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I’m feeling melancholy,” she replied. “And a little lonely. Parker is at one of his service club meetings tonight. He said he would join us later. We could have dinner together, you and me. I have no idea what to make so you’ll have to take pot luck. . . .” She swung her head quickly back at the fire again and raised a hand to her eyes.

  McGuire crossed the room and stood watching her until she removed her hand and looked up at him.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted. “Will you have some sherry? Or something stronger perhaps? There’s some Scotch and brandy and I don’t know what all, over in the cabinet.” Her hand swung out in the direction of the bookshelf across the room. “Help yourself. How’s your wound? Are you all healed, where that terrible thing happened? My God, what’s it like to be shot? I get upset just thinking about it.”

  McGuire remained watching her in silence, a sad and imploring expression in his eyes.

  June Leedale laughed nervously. “Is something wrong? Did I say something out of place? I’m always doing that. Parker is always telling me I’m saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. If I did, I’m sorry.” She looked down at her lap. “I’m sorry.”

  “I won’t be here for dinner,” McGuire said. “But I want you both to know, you and your husband, that I appreciate your hospitality.”

  “I haven’t been back,” she said, the tears coursing down her cheeks.

  “Where?”

  “You know where. The place you followed me to that day. I haven’t been back. It’s hard not to go.” A hand flew to her eyes again. “God, it’s so hard.”

  “I know.” McGuire stood waiting.

  “No, you don’t. You don’t know the pain.”

  “You’re right. But I know why it hurts to stay away.”

  She raised her head to look into his eyes.

  McGuire sat down again. “I know David Elwood was your son. I know you gave him up for adoption. And I know who the father is.”

  He waited for her to explode, to release her anger at him for daring to intrude himself into her personal tragedy, as David Elwood’s adoptive mother had done little more than an hour ago.

  But she did not. Instead, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and smiled. “I guess you’re as good a detective as Bob Morton said you were.” She raised the glass of sherry to her lips and held it there, speaki
ng into it. “Of course, none of this is anybody’s business but mine, is it? Why would you even . . . perform your dirty little investigation on something that happened in the past and has nothing to do with you?”

  “It has a lot to do with me,” McGuire said.

  She drained the glass and set it aside. She avoided his eyes.

  “Look, I never intended to stick my nose in anybody’s business,” McGuire said. “Especially yours, since you’ve tried to be so helpful to me. Mrs. Leedale—”

  “June.” She tilted her head and forced a smile.

  “June.” He closed his eyes, took a breath, and went on. “June, I followed you partly because your husband thinks you’re having an affair. . . .”

  She erupted in ironic laughter, her voice dry as dead leaves clattering on the coattails of a wind.

  “Parker doesn’t think it’s amusing,” McGuire said.

  “Well, I do.” She reached for the cut-glass decanter on the table next to her. “Maybe I should have hired you to follow Parker. ’Stead of the other way ’round.”

  McGuire waited while she poured herself another glass of sherry.

  “He’s not at a service club meeting,” June Leedale said. “He’s having dinner somewhere down the Cape where he won’t be easily recognized. With Laura. Our receptionist. I believe you met her. Pretty little sleaze, isn’t she? Or maybe they’re having drinks in some quiet bar on the highway. Or maybe they’re already back at her apartment in Orleans. Fucking.” She looked up at McGuire, the brimful glass held steadily in her hand. “Do you suppose that’s what they’re doing right now? Fucking?”

  McGuire rubbed his eyes and stood up. “Look, I’ve overstayed my welcome. And I’ve got problems of my own—”

  “How do you know who my son’s father is?” she asked abruptly. Her voice was firm and deeper in tone. The revelation about her husband, her brutal description of his activities, had tapped a reservoir of strength and anger.

  “I needed to know where he was one night. Or, more accurately, where he was not.”

  “Why should that concern you?” She raised the glass to her lips and tilted her head back.

  “Because it might lead to whoever shot me last week. The same person who burned down Cora’s house.”

  “That has nothing to do . . .” Her face began to crumble. She bit her bottom lip, breathed in deeply and began again. “That has nothing to do with . . . with the death of my son.”

  “No,” McGuire agreed. “Only the birth.”

  She raised her eyes to meet his and her breathing became more shallow, her chest rising and falling in short quick bursts.

  “Your maiden name is Ryder, isn’t it?” McGuire asked gently. “June Ryder? You lived on Sea View Avenue. Born on the third day of the tenth month, nineteen forty-six. Who was Roy Hindmarsh? A relative? Your uncle? Your mother’s brother maybe?”

  She turned away, avoiding his eyes. “He was a wonderful man,” she said in a choked voice. “Uncle Roy was a wonderful man.”

  McGuire began to speak, then changed his mind and sat in the chair next to her, waiting for her to continue.

  “He made me think all police officers were heroes of one kind or another,” June Leedale said. “People we should honor and respect. And I always have. When Cora spoke of you, long before I met you, when she said you were so successful in your work in Boston, I knew I would like you. I wanted to get to know you. Because you and Uncle Roy, you’re so much alike.”

  “I’ll bet you were his favourite,” McGuire said gently. “I’ll bet he thought you were a treasure.”

  She lowered her head to her hand. “Uncle Roy never had children,” she said. “I was his princess. That’s what he called me. His princess. He spoiled me rotten, my parents always said. Any time I did something wrong, something they didn’t agree with, they would blame Roy for spoiling me.”

  “What happened when he learned where you were that night?”

  “He didn’t believe . . . didn’t believe the person who told him. Then, when I said it was true, he was crushed.” Her expression was dull and her voice flat. “It was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. Telling him where I was, who I was with. Even . . . even what we did. He demanded to know everything, every little detail, even though it hurt him and . . . and embarrassed me terribly. He made me promise that if I told him everything, every detail, he wouldn’t tell my parents. And he didn’t. He kept his part of the bargain. My parents never knew. Not right away. Later on they . . .” She wiped her eyes with her hand. “Later they learned a little bit. But not all. And even the little they learned almost killed them. My mother especially.” She looked up at McGuire.

  “They thought Sonny Tate wasn’t good enough for you.”

  She smiled, her cheeks wet with tears. “Especially Uncle Roy. He thought nobody was good enough for me. Except maybe Terry Godwin. Roy didn’t . . . he didn’t believe in sex before marriage. Hardly anybody did back then. He was outraged. He thought I behaved like a tramp for being with Sonny.” Her eyes flew to McGuire’s and her voice grew lighter, almost hopeful. “Have you seen Sonny?”

  McGuire nodded.

  “How is he?”

  “He’s dying.”

  June Leedale stared at McGuire, her expression urging him to continue.

  “He has AIDS. He got it in prison. He had a rough time there. Now he’s in a hospice in Providence. He’s being well cared for. Almost runs the place.”

  “Oh, my God. Poor, poor Sonny. He didn’t deserve that.” A smile flashed across her face and was gone. “He almost runs the place? He’s dying and he’s still running things?” She almost smiled again. “That’s Sonny. He’d take charge even while saying he didn’t want to. People just naturally follow Sonny. Parker, Mike, Blake, me. You never saw anyone like him. My God, he was so sexy. So appealing. The other girls at school, my friends, they all found him fascinating but there’s such a social clique in this town. And back then, back thirty years ago in high school, it was even more so. Sonny, he didn’t really belong here. Wrong side of the tracks and all of that. But he had more . . .” She breathed deeply, gaining strength to continue. “He had so much more going for him than anyone else. So much more style and intelligence and humour.”

  “He was with you the night Cynthia Sanders died.” She nodded. “I couldn’t believe it. I was walking down by the lighthouse that night by myself. The night of the beach party. The first weekend after graduation.” She looked up, almost coyly, at McGuire. “Guess who was supposed to take me to the party, the one that Parker and Mike and the others organized on the sandbar?”

  McGuire shrugged.

  “Your cousin. Terry Godwin. He promised he would. And then, late that day, he said he had to go somewhere. With his mother. He said he might meet me at the party later but not to count on it. I knew it was a lie. I cried and felt sorry for myself, and then I walked down to the lighthouse. The party had already started, out on the sandbar. They had guitars and a bonfire and everyone was singing and dancing and there I was, watching it, all alone. And then, walking by himself toward me, came Sonny Tate. He sat with me. They hadn’t invited Sonny but he was going to go anyway, pretend he was welcome. He said he could play the role if they expected him to. Sonny said we all keep changing roles. He said when we’re not participating, we’re watching. And when we’re not watching, we’re participating. Sonny talked like that. Even when he was eighteen years old, he talked like that.”

  She told McGuire how Sonny Tate offered her a drink from a bottle of whiskey hidden in his jacket, how the whiskey warmed her with its power and smoothness, how they talked and began to kiss, and how they walked down the wooden steps from the bluff to the beach in the soft summer night, meaning to join the party but neither really wanting to. They found an old discarded blanket near the foot of the stairs and they climbed halfway up the bluff and spread it on a small plateau
among the shrubs where they could see the sky above them and hear the sounds all around them, the murmur of waves against the shore, the shouts and laughter from the party on the sandbar, even the music from radios in cars parked at the edge of the bluff above their heads.

  “I remember so clearly,” she said, “lying there among the shrubbery, hearing more people arrive, talking and laughing as they passed just a few feet away from us. Mike Gilroy and some others. Mike was so drunk when he got there. And we could hear the music drift back to us from the sandbar, the guitars and the singing. Other people’s music, I suppose. But it became ours. Music in the night, coming from far away. It was beautiful. Romantic.”

  McGuire remembered Barbara with him in the Bahamas. Lovers on a blanket, stars overhead. The music of the ocean. So much time passes, yet so little of life changes.

  “I was . . .” she said. “It was my first time. A seventeen-year-old virgin. Hard to imagine these days, isn’t it? But I was.”

  “Sonny left a few days later,” McGuire said.

  She nodded. “He sent me a letter from Boston. Saying how happy he was to have known me. But not saying he loved me. Or making any promises. Sonny never lied. Sonny never made promises. Or commitments.”

  “And you learned you were pregnant.”

  Another nod. “I missed a period. I was sick to my stomach every morning. I knew.”

  “Your uncle, Hindmarsh—”

  “Uncle Roy.”

  “When you told him where you were that night . . .”

  “We were together all night long, Sonny and me. We spent the night together. It was almost dawn when Sonny walked me home.”

  “. . . it placed Sonny Tate far away from Cynthia Sanders’s house.”

  “Sonny didn’t murder that woman. Or even strike her. He was incapable of anything like that.”

  “You gave the baby up for adoption. Did you know the Elwoods?”

  She raised her fingertips to her cheeks and began stroking her face up and down with both hands. As though applying a skin cream. Or erasing a blemish. “No. I had no idea what happened to my son after he was born. I saw him once, signed some papers and he was gone.”