by Lee Harris
It hadn’t occurred to me. “Would an arsonist stay around while the fire’s burning?”
“He might, but it’s too late to stop the ferry if he took off. There was one that left right after we saw the smoke. It’s already landed. So much for keeping everyone on the island.”
“You really think it’s arson?”
“You’d expect a fire chief to obey the safety rules better than anyone else.”
“Maybe he was smoking in bed.”
“I think I’ll find the local cop tomorrow morning and talk to him. Just to make him aware.”
“You know what I think I’ll do? I’ll walk over to the group house and talk to Tina. If she hasn’t gotten on a ferry back to the mainland.”
“Good idea. I’ll baby-sit.”
—
There were lights on all over the house when I got there. I went up the ramp and knocked on the open door. No one heard me. I leaned inside and called, “Hello.”
A girl in bare feet, shorts, and a big T-shirt came out of the back of the house. “Hi.”
“Hi. I’m Chris.”
“From the big house on the dune.”
“Right. Is Tina here?”
“I think she’s upstairs.”
“Can I talk to her?”
She went to the stairs and called, “Tina? You up there?”
A young man in bathing trunks walked by and gave me a smile.
The girl who had called upstairs came back. “She’s there. It’s the room at the front of the house.”
I went upstairs and knocked on the door.
“Yeah?”
I opened the door and went in. Tina was sitting on an old easy chair painting her nails a shade of brown. “I’m Chris from the house across the street.”
“Yeah. Hi.”
“I wanted to ask you about the fire.”
“What about it?”
“Were you in the house when the fire started?”
She looked confused. “No. Why?”
“When I saw you, it looked as though you were coming out of the house.”
“You saw me? Where?”
“In front of Chief Buckley’s house.”
“You must have me confused with someone else.” She dipped her brush in the small bottle, wiped it carefully on the side, and started another nail, keeping her eyes on her task.
“I saw you, Tina. You were walking away from the burning house. You had a fireman’s coat over you. I asked you if you were all right.”
“Sorry,” she said, looking up from her work. “I just don’t remember. I was walking on the beach this afternoon. I saw the smoke but I didn’t go to the fire. I hate crowds.”
I turned around and left the room.
—
“She’s a good liar,” I said to Jack, after I told him what had happened.
“So you’re sure it was Tina you saw.”
“Right down to her diamond earrings. I called her by name when she looked at me. She’s cleaned herself up and changed her clothes and made up a story. It doesn’t mean she’s an arsonist but I bet she knows something about that fire.”
“You know her last name?”
“If I heard it, I don’t remember it.”
“We’ll get it in the morning. Let’s turn in.”
4
We were having our breakfast the next morning when there was a knock on the kitchen door. Jack got up to open it and Marti Jorgensen came in.
“Have you heard the news?” she asked.
“You mean about the fire?” I said. “Jack told me Chief Buckley died.”
“He was murdered.”
“Wow,” I said, feeling a shiver. “Join us for a cup of coffee.” I pulled out a chair and got another mug.
“Then it was arson,” Jack said.
“I don’t know about arson. He has a bullet in him. That’s murder.” She leaned over and called to Eddie. “What’s a nice little boy doing on the floor? Come and sit on Marti’s lap.”
Eddie gave her a big smile and allowed himself to be lifted.
“There we go. What a sweetheart you are.” She turned to me. “If you feel like dropping him off, Chris, I wouldn’t mind looking after him for a couple of hours. He’s just the age I like.”
“Thank you. Maybe I’ll take advantage of your offer. Marti, when we were over the other night, Al was telling tales about Chief Buckley and you seemed very uncomfortable about what he was saying.”
“It’s just that I hate to gossip.” She smoothed Eddie’s curls with loving fingers. “Al carried a grudge against Ken, a personal thing. I don’t want to go into it. I’m sure he was right in what he was saying. Ken was known to be a ladies’ man. To be honest, it was more than that. I don’t know why Eve stayed with him. I don’t know how their winters were—we only saw each other in the summer—but he earned his reputation. He had girlfriends. I even know who some of them were.”
“So, lots of suspects,” Jack said.
“Don’t be silly,” Marti said with a smile. “It probably wasn’t any more important to the women than it was to Ken. Something to do in the summer, that’s all. Certainly nothing to kill over.”
“Is his wife on the island?” I asked.
“I don’t really know but I would guess so. She’s always involved in the Labor Day Party.”
“Do you happen to know who this summer’s girlfriend was?”
She looked embarrassed. “I don’t. I don’t even know if there was one. You could talk to Al.”
“Marti, do you know the group in the house across the street from you?”
“I wish I didn’t. I could kill the Kleins for renting out their house to those people. This used to be such a nice family town. I hate seeing all the big old houses given over to people who don’t take care of them. Not to mention the noise.”
“Do you know any of the people in that house?”
“We say ‘hello’ and I ask them politely to keep their garbage in the cans. That’s about it. I think ten of them rented the house together.”
“Are they all couples?”
“I wouldn’t know. Sometimes they’re couples at the beginning of the summer and not at the end. Or they’re different couples by Labor Day. Why do you ask?”
“I thought I saw one of them at the fire.”
“Al said everyone in Blue Harbor was at the fire. Except me. I get too upset.”
Eddie was playing with Marti’s beads but she didn’t seem to mind. She whispered to him and he giggled.
“Would you mind if I talked to Al?”
“Not at all. He’d probably love the chance to tell what he knows. Are you planning to write about this?”
“No. I’m just interested.”
“Talk to Chief La Coste. He knows everything that’s happened in Blue Harbor for the last sixty years.”
“He invited us over for today. Did I tell you that, Jack? Maybe that’s a good place to start.”
“And leave this honey with me. You’ll be doing me a favor.”
—
I promised Marti I would take up her baby-sitting offer in the next day or so. Jack decided to visit the police station while I looked in on the chief. When Eddie got tired later in the morning, I put him in the stroller and by the time we were halfway down the block, he had fallen asleep. I had looked up Chief La Coste in the little phone book, as small a phone book as I had ever seen, and found the number of his house. North Avenue was one block from the bay, the bay being on the north side of the island. We turned east and walked a couple of blocks till we found it. Almost hidden behind thick pines and willows, it was an old house, weathered gray, with black shutters that appeared to be real. They could be shut to cover the windows but they were all fastened in an open position today. I went up the ramp and knocked on the front door.
“Well, glad to see you, Chris. Come right in.” The chief was expansive, helping me over the threshold with the stroller. “Little feller seems to be sleeping. We can go sit out back, and he can ge
t his fresh air and we’ll have a glass of lemonade.”
“Can I help you with anything, Chief?”
“No, no. Just make yourself comfortable. People tell me I’m old so they come and do nice things for me they wouldn’t’ve thought to do when I was young and lazy. Like making sure I’ve got lemonade. Comes fresh every morning.”
We went through the small house and out the back door and sat on the weathered deck. I poured the lemonade into brightly painted plastic glasses and passed one to the chief. Eddie slept in a shady corner while we talked.
“I guess you heard about the tragedy,” the chief said, holding his glass between his palms to cool them. The day was already warm and muggy, except for the breeze.
“We went over to Chief Buckley’s house when we saw the smoke.”
“You and everybody else. That was some crowd. They did a good job, the three fire departments. Saved a lot of the house. Too bad Ken died. A man half my age dies, I feel for him.”
“Did you know it was murder?” I asked.
“Heard this morning. Can’t imagine who would want to kill Ken Buckley.”
“Maybe he made someone angry,” I suggested. I wasn’t sure whether to talk about what we had learned from Marti. If Chief La Coste didn’t know about the philandering, I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.
The chief laughed. “He made a lot of people angry. Don’t mean they’re gonna kill him. Nowadays everybody thinks of guns first. You can settle your grievances by talking. Talking’ll take you a long way.”
“It probably wasn’t a robbery,” I said.
“Nah. We don’t have much of that here. We all leave our doors open. Of course, with the groups that come out now, you never can tell.”
“No one seems to have a good word for the groups.”
“Except those that rent their houses to them. Get a lotta income from that. Course, you have to clean up after them and make repairs. It’s not all profit.”
“You must know all the homeowners, Chief. You’ve been out here a long time.”
“Over sixty years. Me and my wife built this house with our own four hands. Almost lost it in the hurricane of thirty-eight. That was something, I can tell you. Every other house you could see was lost. In the summer of thirty-nine they had to rebuild the whole town.”
“Except this house.”
“Right. Except this house.” He took a drink of his lemonade and stared off. “And I remember the other disaster, the biggest fire they ever had on Fire Island, right here in Blue Harbor, ’bout fifteen, sixteen years ago. Nothing left of that house except the chimney.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“They were lucky. Lost everything except their lives. Nothin’ left to pack up. They got on the ferry and never came back.”
“And the chimney?”
“Stood there a coupla years till someone bought the property and put up a new house.”
“You have quite a memory,” I said.
“Yup. My brain’s in better shape than any other organ in my body. I remember everything. I remember folks that came and went; folks that stayed for thirty, forty years; little babies that grew up here and then built themselves houses for their own families. And I know where all the bodies are buried.” He smiled and it struck me that his teeth might be his own. They were uneven, off-color, with gaps between them, hardly what you’d pay for from a professional.
“I suppose it’s easy to bring a gun onto the island.”
“No metal detectors that I know of at the ferry dock. Bring anything on board you can carry.”
“When did the Buckleys first come to Blue Harbor?”
“Let’s see. If I remember right, they rented a house the first couple of summers, kind of a dumpy old house on the other side of town. Then the May fields’ house went on the market and they bought it right away.”
“Is that the house that just burned?”
“That’s the one. Nice house. Three bedrooms upstairs. Mine here’s all on one floor. They got a nice kitchen that they fixed up themselves. Nice big deck. Not as big a house as Max’s, but a real comfortable house to live in.”
I looked over at Eddie, who was sleeping peacefully.
“Nice little boy you’ve got there,” the old man said.
“Thank you. I’m a former nun and sometimes I’m still surprised to find myself a wife and mother.”
“Maybe that’s why you’ve got such nice manners,” Chief La Coste said. “We raised three of our own.”
“How many years have you lived out here all year round?”
“Quite a while now. Must be twenty years anyway. Long as you’ve got heat and light and a place to buy food, it’s a great place to live.”
“Do you have any idea who might have killed Ken Buckley?”
“Well, I don’t know. For myself, I thought he was a wonderful human being. But it could have been an unhappy wife, an unhappy mistress.” He looked over at me. “Oh, yes, I know about his love life. Aren’t too many folks on the island who don’t.”
“Maybe an unhappy husband,” I suggested.
“Could be that, too. You see, it could be almost anybody. You helping the police find the killer?”
“I’m just helping myself. I’m curious. I saw Ken Buckley at the party on the beach not long before we saw smoke. That means he went home when the party was just getting going. I wonder if someone was waiting for him there with the gun.”
“You know what he was wearing when he was killed?”
“Shorts, I think.” I tried to remember what he had looked like on the beach, and all I could see was the pink T-shirt of the firehouse.
The chief laughed. “He was buck naked when they found him.”
I thought again of Tina. Had he gone home for a tryst with a girl half his age? “Tell me, Chief, do firemen usually keep their jackets at home?”
“You mean the turnout gear, the big, heavy coats with the yellow safety stripes? Those are kept at the firehouse with the helmets and boots.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Come on, girl. Let me in on it. You’re asking these questions because you saw something.”
“I saw someone leaving Chief Buckley’s house with a fireman’s jacket over her—I mean the turnout coat.” I told him the story. He listened very attentively till I had finished.
“I see why you’re so interested. Does sound like she knows a thing or two. What house did you say she was living in?”
“The Kleins’.”
“The Kleins’. Over there.” He nodded as though fixing the location. “Kleins’ve owned that house a long time. Their kids got married but they weren’t ready to sell yet. So they started renting last year. You know what that does to the population? Instead of two nice, quiet people, you got ten noisy ones. And it’s happening all over Blue Harbor.”
His interest was obviously in the town, not the murder, but I tried to bring him back. “My husband, Jack, is talking to the police this morning. He thinks they should question her before she leaves Fire Island.”
“Sounds like a good idea. You wanna know if she was Ken’s girlfriend? Could be. He liked ’em young. So what’s your theory? She meets him at his house with a gun, shoots him, and runs away with his turnout coat over her?”
“Maybe.”
“And you recognized her, so there goes her alibi of walking on the beach. I’ll give you my opinion. I don’t think she did it, whoever she is. Ken was nice to his girlfriends.”
“But he never left his wife for any of them.”
“Never left her. That’s the truth.”
Eddie was starting to stir. I got up and walked over to the stroller. He whimpered a little.
“I think it’s time to go. Let me wash up.”
“There’s no washing up to do.” He gave me a smile. “I’ve got a nice little girl comes in here in the afternoon, washes my dishes and gets my supper together. Now, is it worth getting old, or what?”
“It’s certainly worth i
t, and you seem to have more fun at your age than a lot of people do when they’re much younger.”
“That’s just what I say, young lady.”
5
We waited till Eddie had eaten his lunch and gone for his afternoon nap before we sat down for our own lunch and a talk.
“It’s not exactly a police department,” Jack said, emphasizing the last word. “It’s one part-time cop who spends the rest of his life running the restaurant at the bay. Before he came here he was a cop in a small mid-west town.”
“That’s an interesting combination of careers.”
“I was kinda thinking I might like it myself,” Jack said with a grin. “The truth is, he’s little more than a security guard with the title of chief and a permit to carry a gun, but he doesn’t carry it. And he doesn’t have a radio car because there aren’t any cars. There also doesn’t seem to be much crime. He brought in the county people for this.”
“Did you tell him about Tina?”
“Right off the bat. The cop called the owners of the house, people named Klein, I think. They had no problem with our searching the house but they’re not living there so their permission wouldn’t stand up in court. We walked over and talked to the people there, including Tina Frisch. She’s pretty young, Chris. I’d guess less than twenty-five.”
“I know. Chief La Coste said Ken Buckley liked them young.”
“Well, everyone there agreed to let us search their rooms and we did.”
“But?”
“Nothing. No fireman’s coat for sure. I went over Tina’s room myself. It wasn’t there.”
“And the coat closet?”
“Not much in it. It’s summer. No one had brought a coat. There were some umbrellas and a couple of beach chairs, but that was about it.”
“She must have gotten rid of it. Did either of you question her?”
“The cop did. His name’s Curt Springer, nice guy, seems capable. He sat down with her in the dining room and I sat in the kitchen and listened. He didn’t get anything out of her. This trip, she’s been here about as long as we have and she’s going home at the end of the week. She works in New York in a law office and she’s been coming out alternate weekends. That’s how they manage to have ten renters. Half the group came out for the Fourth of July, the other half for Labor Day.”