by Dana Cameron
“Well, don’t channel too much. I’ll get Bucky out of the house and then we’ll have at least lunchtime until she gets fed up with her date and calls for a ride back.”
“So that was your plan. Not bad, Fielding,” he said, nodding approbation. He has this way of raising one eyebrow that is very sexy. It made me glad of my decision.
“Just looking for a little advance warning, is all. Can you make it that long?”
“Yeah, but don’t push it. Or rather, you can push it far enough to pick up some mud-pie ice cream at Krazy Kones on the way back.”
“You got it.” I bent over to kiss him.
“I’m ready,” Bucky called out from upstairs.
Brian sighed and picked up a hammer. “I can’t wait until all the kids are out of the house.”
After admonishing Bucky to call if she didn’t like the guy, to stick to public places, and to not take any crap from anyone—all of which was met with a resounding “Haven’t you got better things to do?”—I stopped by the ice cream place to pick up the requested quart. On the way back, about a mile down the road and up a slight rise, I saw that a closedup restaurant, which for three months had had the parking lot full of contractors’ trucks, was now showing signs of being completed. A new sign was hanging over the door: LAWTON YACHT CLUB AND TIKI BAR. Smaller letters beneath that announced WATER VIEWS FROM OUR DECK.
Since we were about two miles from Lawton’s minuscule marina and nowhere near the river or other body of water, I felt compelled to pull over and check it out. The sign was made of richly carved wood with gold leaf that suggested yacht clubbiness, but the rest of the name was odd enough to make me think that this could be something quite different.
As I got out of the car, I noticed a young woman squatting in the doorway, sweeping something into a dustpan. A smell of fruit left too long in the sun and the whizzing of a few interested flies informed me before I saw that she was cleaning up a squashed apple. There were several stains on the ground already, which suggested this was not the first time she’d had to perform this duty.
She looked up at me, squinting against the sun. “Grand opening’s not until tonight.”
“Oh, thanks, I just was curious about what was going in here, that’s all.”
She straightened up. “It’s a bar.”
“Yes, well, I got that much. Good name.”
“You can come in and look around if you want.”
“Sure—oh, wait, I can’t.” I hooked a thumb back toward the car. “I’ve got ice cream melting.”
“We’ve got a freezer.”
Whatever she lacked in loquacity, she made up for in hair; she was about five two but her hair streamed down almost to her knees. She was very finely boned, and I had to wonder whether the hair didn’t actually compose most of her weight. It was something to see, however, a glossy raven sheet that almost looked like a cape on her.
“Okay, thanks.” I got the ice cream from the car and handed it to my hostess, who put it into a small refrigerator behind the bar. “I’m Emma.”
“Raylene.”
I looked around the room. In addition to the bar, which stretched halfway down the room in mirrored Victorian splendor, there were about ten dark wooden tables. The walls were painted a dusky blue that built in a relaxing twilight; there were a few framed pictures and mirrors, but nothing that stood out enough to jar. Big windows and low interior lights. It was all ornate enough to proclaim a status above an ordinary grill or fried fish joint, but casual enough to warn the onlooker that there was no stuffiness to be found here. A beautiful staircase, a wooden relic from some other building, I felt sure, led upstairs.
“Dinner’s down here, every night but Monday. Drinks and snacks upstairs and at the bar all the time.”
“It’s gorgeous.” She saw me hesitate, so I added, “I guess I was expecting something more…I don’t know. Grass huts or anchors or something, to judge from the sign out front.”
“Upstairs. Come on.”
I followed Raylene up the wooden staircase to a doorway at one end of a hallway. A velvet rope and stanchions blocked off the rest of the hall. “Out here.”
“What are the other rooms?” I nodded at the rest of the doors that lined the hallway.
“We live here.”
“We?”
“Me and my old man.” She stopped to announce his name reverently, almost as if I should have heard of it. “Erik the Red.”
She didn’t explain whether the “red” referred to his hair, the state of his bank account, his politics, or a sunburn, so I shrugged and followed her. On the deck patio, there were several things that immediately caught my eye. There was in fact a bar with a grass roof over it, and about fifteen different kinds of rum, two optics, and an array of ceramic coconuts, tikis, and other paraphernalia for exotic drinks. There were two of the most hideous mock-Hawaiian velvet paintings I had ever seen hanging behind the bar. They probably dated to between 1955 and 1965, and depicted women wearing nothing but grass skirts and exotic flowers in their hair. I was pleased to see another, in equally poor taste, over the doorway we’d come in. This was of a strapping youth, wearing a colorful loincloth that was two sizes too small, astride a surfboard that seemed to be, well, either a wish, a promise, or an extension of something else. If you’re going to be tacky, at least be non–gender-specific about it.
On one end of the deck was a telescope and an apple crate turned upside down. Raylene watched silently as I climbed up onto the crate and peered through glass. It was trained on the Lawton marina, which was reduced to HO scale in the eyepiece. Aha, the water view. At the other end of the deck was another crate, this one half-full of bruised apples. It was directly over the spot where I’d first seen Raylene sweeping. I asked her about this crate.
“Erik hates apples,” Raylene offered, but it left me as much in the dark as before. She turned to go back downstairs. “Come back sometime.” She handed me a couple of coupons that said FIRST TIMER. “First two drinks are on us.”
“Wow, great, thanks. We will.” I followed her back downstairs and got my ice cream. “I didn’t know there was going to be a bar in here. I suppose I missed the advertising or something.”
“We didn’t advertise.”
“Oh?” I found myself being as economical with my words as she was.
“Won’t need to. People talk.” She shrugged, as if she didn’t much mind one way or the other.
“You know, I’ve got an idea.” I told her about Brian’s upcoming birthday and asked a couple of questions.
Her slow smile lit up her face like Christmas lights. “No problem. I’ll keep a table for you.”
An hour and a half later, Brian and I were eating semimelted mud pie in bed.
“Hot sex and cold ice cream,” he said. “A good combination.”
“I actually prefer them this way, in sequence, but I’ll try anything once,” I offered, licking the back of my spoon. “Stop hogging the carton.”
Brian passed the carton back to me, and just then, the phone rang. “I’ll give you three guesses as to who that is,” I said, around a mouthful of ice cream. I gave Brian the carton back and he handed me the phone. “Better ice cream interruptus than some other alternatives I could imagine, though.”
I hit the TALK button. “Hey, Bucky. How’s it going? What do you mean, how did I know it was you? It was sisterly intuition, what else?”
“Her impeccable timing,” Brian muttered. I poked him in the arm and he grinned, pulled on his robe, and went into the bathroom. He took the rest of the ice cream with him, but I guess he’d earned it.
“I’ll be down to pick you up in about forty minutes. Well, go to the bookstore or something. I need to shower, that’s why. I was helping Brian with the housework. Yes, that is what we call it these days. Sit tight, I’ll be there soon.”
After a quick shower, a kiss, and a nibble, I hit the road for town. The bright sun that had scorched the morning was vanishing behind thick clouds, illuminating
their edges until it was finally completely hidden. It smelled a bit like rain and the wind picked up as I parked in the last open spot in the lot on Main. I hustled down toward Water Street and the Book Bin, where I’d told Bucky to meet me.
For some reason, it has always struck me that it is easier to envision the past in a place that is cloudy rather than sunny, in winter rather than summer, and by night rather than day. Maybe it’s because the amount of visual stimulation is lessened, the shadows are longer, sound is muffled by snow, and with one good squint, a crowd of modern tourists can be transformed into a generic throng, from any time at all. The fact that so much of the downtown still maintained cobblestone sidewalks and brick paving in places helped. The buildings didn’t hurt either, as there were still a lot of early-nineteenth-century structures, even some eighteenth-century architecture left; warehouses and shop fronts were now restaurants and shop fronts, ranging in style from the plainer symmetrical patterns of the earliest part of the eighteenth century, to the more ornate columns and wooden trim of the later part of the century, all the way through the eclectic and fantastic revivals of the Victorian era. On the water side of the street, there were vendors of hot dogs, ice cream, and handmade jewelry hoping to attract the tourists who’d come down to look at the sailboats as they skirted Sheep’s Head Island or go on a whale-watching tour or were getting off the tour buses for a fifteen minute pee-and-scenery break. The salty air was intoxicating and it seemed that, for just a minute, everyone else was also caught up in their own reflections about the sea, the past, the lure of Stone Harbor.
A large woman in flamingo pink shorts and a turquoise top and matching baseball cap and fanny pack walked past me with her sunburned brood; no amount of squinting could transform her into period garb. “I suppose we could find a museum. If we had to. There’s one over in Boxham. It’s going to rain and we’ve been to all the souvenir stores here. At least we’d be dry,” she concluded reluctantly.
“There would be a gift shop, too,” reminded her friend, in canary yellow.
“I suppose. C’ mon, kids, we’re going to a museum,” she called. Moans and whining followed. “Clam up, it’s good for you.”
I fled into the Book Bin and nodded at the owner, Alice. She was even taller than I was, just shy of six feet, and had wiry black hair caught up in a knot on the back of her head. She wore, as she always did, baggy cotton trousers in a vibrant blue pattern, a loose crinkly maroon shirt with a drawstring neck, and Birkenstocks. She had a silver pendant around her neck, a curled-up cat on a leather thong.
“Gonna rain soon,” I said.
“That’s always a help. It drives them in, and sometimes they even buy something.”
I picked my way past the recent best-sellers and the local interest section to find Bucky at the nonfiction shelves, checking out a collection of essays on natural history. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“So how’d it go?”
She shrugged, but it wasn’t a happy shrug. “There’ll be no second date.”
“Any particular reason?”
“He was boring.”
“You said Joel was boring. You thought a landscaper would be more of a thrill than a software engineer?”
She shrugged and I decided that I didn’t really want to know what kind of thrills Bucky had been shopping for. Phil was, as Bucky had pointed out to Brian, young and tanned and extremely well-muscled.
“All he talked about was mulch and how much money he makes and going to the gym. And the great parties he and his friends have, where they drink lots of beer and do shots and get hangovers the next day. Oh yes, and how they go looking for hot women.”
“Charming.”
“And tactically stupid, particularly if you are telling this to someone who asked you out.”
“Well, at least you gave it a try.”
“Grand consolation. I’ve decided I’m off the whole male species.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. Are you about done?”
“I’m just going to decide about this one. Give me a minute?”
“Sure. I’ll be over in the history section.”
She waved at me, already back into her book, and I strolled around for a moment. Because Alice kept a small section of used books dedicated to the town’s history, I headed over there and was surprised to see Bray Chandler in deep discussion with a dark-haired woman of about forty or so, their heads close together.
“Bray, how are you?” Even as the words were out of my mouth, I realized my mistake. They hadn’t been talking but caressing each other passionately.
Bray turned dark red as he recognized me. “Uh, not bad, Emma.” He pointedly didn’t introduce me to his companion, but that didn’t faze her in the least.
“This another one of yours, Bray?” she asked, giving me the once-over. Her glance was as frosty as her words.
“Uh, this is Emma Fielding. She’s an, uh, archaeologist—”
But his friend was having none of it. “Sure, Bray. And I’m Mary Queen of Scots. Save it for your wife.”
And with that, she turned on her heel and marched out of the store. Bray followed, after glaring at me venomously. “Mind your own damn business,” he said to me over his shoulder.
I only said hello, I thought, and gave his back the rude, two-fingered salute I learned in England. Alice caught me doing it, and raised her eyebrows, but then repeated it herself as Bray slammed the book he’d been looking at on the counter right in front of her before following the other woman out of the store.
“What was all that about?” I asked, walking toward the counter.
“Apparently Bray’s peccadilloes are starting to pile up and I think Miss Thing thought you were the competition.”
I thought of his unkempt appearance and petulant personality and wrinkled my nose. “Trust me when I say absolutely not. Besides, he’s married.”
“Oh, yes, he is. Doesn’t slow him much down, though.”
Bucky joined us, putting her selection down on the counter. “Well, he must have solid gold boxer shorts, because I can’t see anything else attractive about him.”
Alice shrugged. “Never mind boxer shorts. Before I even considered sleeping with him, he’d have to have a solid gold—”
“What was he was looking at?” I asked hurriedly. I picked up the book, a used copy of a history of Stone Harbor by Reverend Joseph Tapley. “Are you saving this for him?”
“I thought of you, after I put it on the shelf, but Bray grabbed it before I could put it behind the counter. You want it?”
“You bet!”
“Let me get that.” Bucky checked out the penciled price on the flyleaf. “This will about cover my computerized pilfering.”
“Bucky, I shouldn’t have—”
She nodded. “And I shouldn’t have either. I got it, Em.”
“You got your Binge Card?” Alice asked me. “I can stamp it for you and give your sister the discount.”
“Great, thanks.” I handed my Book Bin Book Binge card to her and she stamped two more little books onto the already crowded space. Only three more spaces, and I’d get ten bucks off my next purchase, but I had to keep reminding myself it wasn’t like that ten bucks was free. Even if I kept Alice in rent every time I walked in there, I was still surprised that people only wanted money for books. Not body parts or firstborns or souls. Just money. It always seemed like a steal to me.
Detective Bader called later that afternoon. Brian handed me the phone, his lips tight, but he didn’t say anything. And Bader wasn’t just calling to tell me when I could get back to work.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about something we found.”
I could feel my heart begin to pound. “Something near Aden’s body?”
Brian scowled and went back to his work. There was a long silence from the other end of the line.
“I can answer anything you like,” I said as neutrally as I could, “but it might be possible that I could help you a whole lot more i
f you tell me what you’re looking for.”
There was another brief pause before Bader reached his decision, and when he began to speak, I let my breath out as quietly as I could, not even aware I had been holding it.
“It was homicide.” Detective Bader’s voice was gruff, as if it was a compromise for giving me this information. “Aden Fiske was shot twice through the head, once at the base at close range, then another in the left temple, very close to the head to judge by the tattooing, the powder marks I could see on his neck. It was a smaller-caliber weapon than that used in Justin Fisher’s death. No brass was recovered, but it was definitely a different weapon than that used in the Fisher case.”
“Really.” I mulled that over. It seemed the two cases must be connected, somehow, but this made it more difficult.
“It was very cleanly done; perhaps he went willingly with his killer, perhaps he was unaware that anyone was behind him. There was no sign of a struggle, no defensive wounds, no disturbance to indicate a fight. We think that he was shot just about where you found him, sometime late yesterday, then loosely rolled up in the tarp. You saw for yourself that the killer didn’t take great pains to conceal the presence of the body. I think your tarp was just an afterthought for the killer, though I don’t know why he bothered.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If he was going to dump the body, there was no need for the tarp; he would have brought something. If the killer was sending someone a message, there would be no need for concealment.”
“Sending someone a message?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, and I realized he wasn’t talking about bread and butter notes on floral stationery. More than that, I wondered whether he was thinking that they were directing that message toward me.
“It has some of the characteristics of a contract killing, but there are problems. Like the attempt to hide the body—why bother? That’s unusual. The casings being cleaned up. Someone didn’t really know what they were doing.”
“But you think it was someone different than Justin’s killer?”