“Do you have any idea where he might be? Did he mention going away somewhere?”
“I don’t know where he is. I assumed it had something to do with the thing he found. I miss him,” he said.
I fished around in my purse and came up with a business card. I peeled off a sticky mint and an errant hair that had attached themselves to it and handed the card to Inky.
“Call me if you hear anything.”
“I will. Say, I’m not busy. Want a tattoo? I’ll give you a discount since we’re practically family and all.”
“I’ll think about it, Inky.”
“You do that. Bye-bye!” He waved as I exited the store with a merry tinkling of the door chimes.
I retraced my steps toward home. The aroma of the Express-o Bean, though, pulled me in like a tractor beam and I was powerless to resist. “Large cappuccino, extra shot of espresso, shot of vanilla, shot of caramel, extra foam.”
“For here or to go?” The barista was a tiny waif I hadn’t seen before, most likely a student from the community college in Canton or Watertown, with blue hair worn super short in back and long over one heavily lined eye.
I considered. “To go.”
“Comin’ up,” she said. I’d expected her to be surly, but in fact she was quite friendly. The girl performed some kind of magic gestures and produced a good-sized paper cup with a travel lid and a small cardboard sleeve to serve as a handhold.
“Taste it,” she urged.
I slurped some up through the little hole in the top. It was exceptional. “Perfect.” I smiled at her.
“Three fifty.” She smiled back.
I handed her a twenty. She rang it in and reached into the register for change. I glanced down and saw the tip cup on the counter—“TIPS NEEDED TO BUY BOOKS FOR CLARKSON NEXT SEMESTER—PLEASE HELP. THANKS! VANESSA.”
“Are you Vanessa?” I asked.
“Sure am.” I had to stop judging people by how they looked. A very high math SAT score was required to get into Clarkson University. I was impressed.
I dropped the change from the twenty into her cup. I remembered all too well what it had been like to be poor and on scholarship. If she was working here for the summer instead of tanning on her daddy’s boat, she needed the money.
“Good luck at Clarkson, Vanessa. Come see me at the Bonaparte House if you want to wait tables next summer. I’ve got a full staff right now, but I’ll put you on full-time next summer. You’ll make a lot more in tips than you will here, though you can keep this job in the mornings if you can handle both.”
“Wow, thanks.” She beamed.
I carried my steaming cup back outside and headed up the gentle hill on LeRay Street toward Riverfront Park. The park was on the site of one of the huge wooden hotels that had dotted the coast at the turn of the century, every one of which had burned to the ground despite being located right on the water.
I climbed the steps to the pavilion and exited on the other side, passed a few rusty metal trays on poles with grates that served as barbecue grills, sidestepped a few protruding rocks, and plunked myself and my purse down on a bench on a granite bluff overlooking the river. The late-afternoon sun was nearly blinding as it reflected off the surface of the water. I didn’t have a lot of time before I had to get back to the restaurant for the lunch rush.
I tasted the coffee. Delicious. A snowy white seagull bobbed up to me looking for food, but I had regrettably forgotten to buy a muffin. “Sorry, fella,” I said to him. I considered giving him the linty mint I’d found in my purse earlier, but decided it might choke him. Better hungry than dead.
I replayed my conversation with Inky as I watched a sailboat go by. I’d have to think about my becoming part of a polygamous multi-gender harem later. His story corroborated what Liza had told me. Having raised a teenager, my truth-o-meter was pretty sensitive. I was fairly sure Inky wasn’t lying. He didn’t seem to know anything about whatever business Spiro was mixed up in, only that something had to be “taken care of.” He apparently believed that Spiro had found something at the house and that it was valuable. “Hidden in plain sight” wasn’t much of a clue, but it was all I had to go on. Maybe it was time to take a look around the house again.
And what was the name of that group of farmers Liza had told me about—the SOBs? Or was it SODs? I’d have to see what I could find out about them as well. They didn’t sound like nice people. I would give the state police the information and let them follow up when they got around to calling me. But it would kill Sophie if it came out that Spiro was involved in an organization like that.
A hand touched my shoulder, jerking me out of my thoughts. A little coffee slopped out of the cup and onto my lap. Fortunately the liquid had cooled and I was only damp, not burned.
“Hi, Georgie.”
I turned but the hand stayed put, giving my shoulder a little caress in the process.
“Oh, hi, Keith.”
“Sorry if I startled you. I saw you leave the Bean and I thought I’d come up and see how you’re doing. Oh, you spilled some coffee—was that my fault?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”
“I have some extra napkins.” He sat down next to me and pulled some out of his pocket. Briefly I wondered whether he would attempt some dabbing at the coffee in my lap, but he merely handed the wad to me.
I accepted the napkins and proceeded to blot.
“So, are you okay? It was sure a shock to find Big Dom. I’m so sorry you had to see him like that.”
“Do the police know what happened yet?”
“Word on the street is that he was murdered.”
“Murdered?” I had wanted to believe it was an accident. I couldn’t recall a murder, ever, in all the time I’d lived here. Well, there was that time that Louise Brodie brained her husband, Duane, with a slow cooker full of butternut squash because he blew off her mother’s Thanksgiving dinner to go deer hunting. But murder changed everything.
“Why would anyone want to murder Big Dom?” He was no doubt involved in some kind of shady dealings, but I’d never heard anything worse than that he was skimming money off the business, which I think everybody did. Except me.
“The rumor is that it’s the Watertown mob, but that’s always the first assumption when there’s an Italian guy involved. For once, Rick seems to be keeping the investigation confidential.”
“How did you find out?”
“I saw Sherry this morning at the diner and she told me the coroner is calling it murder.” Sherry Harper was a nurse and had probably been called in to assist the medical examiner before he took the body back to Watertown for the autopsy. Our little hospital wasn’t equipped for forensics. “The ME told her that his initial impression was that Dom was hit over the head with a blunt instrument, then died of a gunshot wound before he was dumped in the water. That’s why he was floating when we found him—he didn’t take water into his lungs because he wasn’t breathing.”
I shivered as the picture of his floating corpse, that ugly welt impressed on his head, popped back into my brain. Keith put his arm around me. “It’s gonna be okay, honey.”
I looked up at him and he smiled down at me, our faces close. The breeze was lifting his blond hair and I could see that, unlike Big Dom and his Trumpish comb-over, Keith was genetically blessed with the hairline of a boy. A little stubble on his chin and jaw showed he either hadn’t shaved yet this morning or had a fast-growing beard. His eyes were soft and his lips were slightly parted.
He’s going to kiss me, I thought, momentarily panicked but a bit thrilled at the same time. It had been a long time since anyone had kissed me. Why not Keith? He was my friend. I could trust him. He was a great-looking guy. If he wants to kiss me, I’ll let him, I decided. I could do a whole lot worse. A laker glided by in the distance, and let out a blast of its horn. What if you can do better? a little voi
ce in my mind piped up. According to Liza, Keith was in love with me. We were sitting on a park bench in full view of anybody who happened to walk or boat by. In light of recent rumors about us, somehow this didn’t seem like a good idea. I might have a crumbling, sham marriage and be about to be thrown out of my home and job, but I wasn’t ready for this. I wriggled out of his embrace and stood up, walking over to the nearby trash can to dispose of the damp handful of napkins and empty coffee cup I was still holding.
“I should be getting back to the restaurant,” I said.
“Bye, Georgie.” He was smiling but it seemed a bit forced. Was he disappointed about the thwarted smooch?
“Bye, Keith.” I started toward the pavilion, then turned back as I remembered something I’d wanted to ask him before being distracted.
“Keith, any idea why the Coast Guard would be investigating Big Dom’s murder?”
“The Coast Guard?” His face clouded. “That’s the state police’s jurisdiction.”
“Some Coast Guard guy came around earlier asking me some questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Just about what we saw, that sort of thing. He wasn’t there long. He didn’t call you?”
“No.”
“Well, I imagine he will.”
“What was his name? I know quite a few of the guys at the station.”
“Jack, uh . . . Captain Jack somebody, you know, like the Billy Joel song? Or those Johnny Depp movies? I have his card back at the restaurant somewhere.”
“I don’t think I know any Jack stationed here. Do me a favor and look for that card, will you? I’m interested to find out what this is all about.”
“I’ll call you if I find it. Bye again, Keith.”
“Bye again, honey.” He grinned.
* * *
The restaurant was bustling when I returned. Sophie was in her usual cushioned chair, feet outstretched on a footstool, right by the cash register. Dolly chopped away at a mound of carrots destined for either the salad or tonight’s vegetable side. Russ, the long tail of his dark hair swinging across the AC/DC logo on his T-shirt, emerged from the walk-in cooler carrying a box of lettuce to be cleaned and shredded.
“One of them white envelopes got shoved under the kitchen door a while ago,” Dolly said. “I looked out the window but whoever left it was gone by the time I got there. It’s on your desk.”
My heart rose up in my throat. Sophie perked up and turned toward me expectantly. “Just an invoice from one of the suppliers,” I offered. This seemed to satisfy Sophie, but she continued to watch me. Damn, but she could make me uncomfortable, and I hadn’t even done anything to deserve it. Except almost kiss somebody, and that didn’t count.
I passed through the hallway and into my office. There was the white envelope glaring up at me. I decided to avoid it for now by listening to the answering machine, which was flashing red. A couple of people had called in for reservations and the ghost hunters were asking when they could meet with me to film the “reveal” of their findings. I called them back first and told them to come in anytime. I’d pull the pocket doors on one of the dining rooms and they could do the filming there without being too disruptive to business in the other two rooms. Although, now that I considered it, the customers would flock in if they knew that a television show was being filmed only a few yards away. Well, after the filming, I’d open the doors so everybody could get a peek at the cast and crew.
I booted up my laptop and opened my e-mail. No surprises here, thank goodness, just the promised note from Cal saying that today was her day off and she was going boating with Sakis, the boy she’d been seeing, and then going back to his family’s home for dinner. I sent her back a quick reply again telling her to be careful and that I hoped she’d had fun, since with the time delay her day’s activities had already happened.
I pulled up Sophie’s bank account information on the screen, and printed it off. Sophie had given me access to the accounts when Spiro proved to have no aptitude for monitoring them. I reviewed the statement again. Yes, twenty-three thousand dollars had been withdrawn from Spiro and Sophie’s joint money market account late last week.
I steeled myself and opened the white envelope. Inside was a sheet of the same yellowed paper with the blocky letters. What was it with this guy? Or girl, I amended, just to be PC. One e-mail or one letter would have been sufficient.
I STILL HAVE HIM. FIND IT AND BRING IT TOMOROW NITE TO THE DEVIL’S OVEN. PUT IT IN THE BASKIT HANGING INSIDE THE DOOR. COME ALONE. DON’T TELL ANYONE OR I WILL KILL HIM.
My stomach clenched. Kill him? Suddenly, my theory that this was a joke seemed naïve and stupid. And what was “it”? If he, whoever he was, had Spiro, then he must have the money already, so it couldn’t be that. And the writer of these notes had never actually said he was holding Spiro, as opposed to someone else. The only other thing I could think of was the so-called treasure that Spiro had supposedly found. How the hell was I supposed to bring it when I didn’t even know what it was, not to mention where? And I didn’t have a boat, so how would I get to an island out in the middle of the river if I couldn’t tell anybody? The Bay was no longer insulated from murder—Big Dom had been killed just a couple of days ago. A lump of panic rose up and choked me. Could there be a connection?
I looked through the piles one more time and found the card after a minute or two. Underneath a raised seal, “Jack Conway, Cpt” was embossed in blue letters. “United States Coast Guard” and a phone number completed the information. Looked legitimate enough. But according to Keith, the Coast Guard wouldn’t have any reason or jurisdiction to be investigating Big Dom. Now that I thought about it, the guy hadn’t been wearing a uniform, either. Anybody could get business cards printed up, or make them at home on the computer. I fingered the edge of the card and thought.
The intercom buzzed. It was Sophie. “Those ghost guys are here.”
I took another deep breath. “I’m on my way.”
I led the crew in through the kitchen door. They followed me with their sound equipment, some large portable lighting fixtures, and several cameras. I directed them to the front dining room, which was empty because we’d seated all the customers in the other two rooms. I didn’t think anybody would mind waiting for a seat tonight. We moved a table in front of the fireplace. Napoleon stared down at us from his portrait, hand stuck in the front of his coat. The crew set up a laptop and some microphones on the table underneath the emperor and attached all kinds of cords and wires.
In a surprisingly short time, they had finished. A woman came toward me wielding a hairbrush and a makeup tray. I hoped I looked presentable.
We sat down, Jerry and Gary on one side of the table and me on the other. I willed my racing heart to slow down.
“We’re on in five, four, three, two, and action!”
SEVEN
“We’ve finished our investigation here at the Bonaparte House in Bonaparte Bay, New York,” Jerry said, turning toward me. “Now, your husband claims that he has lived here every spring and summer for his whole life and that he has had many instances of hearing noises that seem to come from behind walls. He has also felt like he was being watched. And there are reports of staff people here at the restaurant having similar experiences.”
Gary continued. “We set up our equipment and spent most of the night to see if we could document any paranormal activity. You yourself have never had any experiences, right?”
“Right.”
“First off, I can tell you that this is a very unusual house, from an architectural point of view,” Gary said. “As you know, and as our audience can see from our exterior shots, the house is octagonal with two stories, a basement, and a very large cupola on top, all connected by this magnificent circular staircase.” The camera panned over to the center of the building.
“Yes.” I nodded. “My understanding is that there w
ere a lot of octagonal houses built in the nineteenth century. The design was supposed to give more usable space for the amount of building materials, though it made for some odd-shaped rooms. Because of improved air circulation, it was supposed to promote health and well-being.”
Jerry nodded. “We’ve done some research. You are correct about the Orson Fowler architectural movement. However, this house predates Orson Fowler by several decades. It might have been an unacknowledged inspiration to him, although there is no record that he ever ventured this far north into New York State. This was not one of his houses. The Fowler houses were built of wood or masonry.”
Gary took over. “The Bonaparte House is built of solid limestone blocks. We often find increased paranormal activity in areas where limestone is present, but we don’t know why. The building materials, together with the odd interior construction and staircase, give this house some interesting acoustics, which might account for the noises. There was, however, a tradition of octagonal buildings in Europe at the time, and since this house was built by Europeans, that is likely the source of the architecture.”
If this was true, I was going to have to update the house’s history on the menu inserts again. Come to think of it, I’d never verified any of that information.
“I’d like to show you what we found,” Jerry said.
“Okay, I guess I’m ready.” Was it possible they had found something? I wouldn’t say I was a disbeliever, exactly, but any “proof” of paranormal activity would have to be pretty compelling to convince me.
“First, we set up cameras in various places all over the house and restaurant. Here is some of the footage we took.” Gary pointed to the laptop screen. “This is taken right here in the main dining room. If you’ll watch, you’ll see some orb movement, which takes place just about where we are sitting.”
“Orb movement?” I watched the screen and saw small white circles dancing around in front of the fireplace and around Napoleon’s head.
“Orbs are balls of light that sometimes appear, either to the naked eye or just in photographs, in places with paranormal activity,” Jerry piped in. “They are spherical concentrations of energy, without any sort of consciousness or intent. They can also be dust illuminated by our lights and cameras.”
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