After Celia joined them and they walked back down the beach, M’Gann was again back in his shell. Celia was most friendly. Doyle refused her invitation to lunch. When he glanced back, they were going into the house. She was holding the screen door for the colonel.
Doyle walked slowly back toward his cottage. I might have something to tell you one of these days, Colonel, he thought. I might have a message for you. I’m beginning to see a pattern in things. I might even know why she was killed.
At two o’clock he drove by the Mack and turned in at the Larkin Boat Yard and Marina at the end of Front Street. He had remembered it as a place of clutter and corrosion, with sun-drab, sagging structures and docks, a general air of aimlessness.
But now white posts marked the entrance to a graveled parking area beside a small white office building. There were half a dozen cars in the lot in addition to the familiar jeep and a freshly painted pickup with the Larkin name on the door. When he got out of the car he could hear the busy chatter of office equipment and, farther away, the high whine of a wood saw and the roar of a motor under test. As he walked toward the office he could see three wide solid docks built out into the bay, with a T and bright gas pumps at the outer end of the nearest one. He could see a big covered work shed with the open side facing the bay, heavy ways and cradles, some warehouse structures, a covered boat-storage area with an aluminum roof that was blinding in the sunlight.
When he went into the office Betty was typing and a woman in her middle years was operating an adding machine. The interior was clean and bright and efficient looking.
Betty smiled with obvious pleasure, got up quickly and introduced him to the other woman, a Mrs. West, and then took him on a guided tour. Today she wore a dark red blouse and a red-and-white-striped skirt. The unruly hair, in all its streaks and shades of umber, toffee and cream, had been pulled back into a rebellious pony tail.
“This is certainly a different place from the one I remember.”
“It’s been a lot of work, Alex, building it up. And the bank still owns a pretty good hunk of it. But we’re doing a good business. Got a total of fifteen on the payroll. We do good work and we get a lot of word-of-mouth advertising among boat people. That’s the best kind. We can yank stuff out of the water up to seventy feet long. There’s Buddy. I guess he’s a lot bigger than when you left.”
They walked toward a man who had his back turned to them while he scraped at the hull of a small twin-screw cruiser. He was a huge brown man with corn yellow hair worn a quarter of an inch long. He was well over six feet tall. He wore greasy shorts and sneakers. There was hair on his back and shoulders, bleached silvery white by the sun. His calves were like oaken kegs. He was wide and solid from top to bottom, like a tree.
When Betty spoke he turned. He had a brute jaw and small, gray, smoldering eyes under a solid ridge of brow. He could have played a villain part in a Viking movie.
“Glad to see you again, Alex,” he said as they shook hands. Just as Alex was considering falling to his knees and howling like a dog, Buddy released his grip. “Hear Donnie welcomed you home.”
“In a big way.”
“We’ll keep him off your back. He goes too damn far lately.”
Alex suddenly realized that this prehistoric mammoth was ill at ease, actually quite shy. It amused him.
“I just remembered a phone call I should make,” Betty said. “Why don’t you show Alex around, Buddy, and introduce him to John Geer. When you’ve had the rest of the tour, Alex, you come back to the office and you can take me down the road and buy me a beer.”
When Betty was out of sight, Buddy said, “This place wouldn’t run right without her. I can’t handle that office stuff. It drives me nuts. Come meet our partner, John Geer.”
John Geer was working on a marine engine. He was grime to the elbows, a shambling man with a remote resemblance to Gary Cooper, but with brown eyes too close together and a pendulous lower lip.
Buddy showed him around the shop area. Alex could sense the man’s devotion to good materials and fine workmanship. He showed him the warehouse. As they turned away from the warehouse Alex saw a trim little Thistle on a yellow trailer under a shed roof. The mast was stepped and lashed. He could see the name. The Lady Bird.
“Betty’s?” he said.
“Her pet. She can really make it get up there and fly. And she’ll take it out in the worst weather you ever saw.”
“She’s quite a gal, Buddy.”
Buddy propped one foot on the trailer tire, lit a cigarette and shook the match. “She likes you, Alex.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“I… I don’t want you should upset her.”
“I know the score, Buddy. I got it from her. I’ve got no intention of upsetting her.”
“I had to say it.”
“I know.”
“Well, I guess there isn’t much else around here to see.”
“That skiff there, Buddy. Wasn’t that your father’s?” He gestured toward a small skiff, pointed at both ends, with a center engine hatch and a horizontal wheel. The paint was fresh and it was up on stubby saw horses.
“That was his. We talk about putting a new engine in it and unloading it. But we never seem to get around to it.”
“I want to ask you something, Buddy. You’re a little older than Betty, so you might be able to remember more clearly than she could. I haven’t asked her. I don’t even want you to try to ask me why I’m asking such a question. When you were little, your father used to take Jenna on picnics all alone, didn’t he?”
“In that same skiff. All the time.”
“And Sunday was Jenna’s day, wasn’t it?”
“He spoiled her rotten, Alex. The way she turned out, it was his fault.”
“Did he take her to a special place?”
“On the picnics? I don’t think so.”
“Can you remember anything about there being a special place?”
Buddy glared back into the past, motionless for long seconds. “There was a place. It’s been a long time. Twenty years. Sure, she used to tease us about it. It was a big secret, she said. She wasn’t supposed to tell.”
“Can you remember anything she said about it?”
“No. All I can remember is that she used to make up all kinds of stuff. Why are you…” Buddy stopped suddenly and looked beyond Alex with an expression of surprise, almost of consternation, and said, as though speaking to himself, “That’s where he could have hid the money.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking.”
Buddy looked directly at him, his face changing, growing hard and skeptical. “That’s what you’ve been thinking, is it? Just who the hell are you, Doyle? What’s this big fat interest in where the money is? What are all these questions?”
“Now wait a minute.”
“Wait for what? I don’t know where you came from. You show up here and sweet-talk Betty. Tell her you never stole a dime. She believes you. You get her to tell me you’re such a nice guy.”
“I didn’t get her to tell you a thing, Larkin.”
“What do I know about you? Maybe you’ve been in the can for years. You were one of Jenna’s boy friends. You’d hear about the murder. The newspapers brought up how the old man’s money was never found when they covered the murder. Tried to tie it in somehow, but it wouldn’t hold together. How do I know how much Jenna told you and how much you remember? Now you come down here sucking around, asking questions. The hell with you, Doyle.”
“Use your head, Buddy. If that was what I was after, why would I give it away talking to you this way?”
“I think you’re a clever guy, Doyle. I think you’re down here on the make for something. Maybe Donnie does too and that’s why he whipped your skull for you.”
“Do you want to find out who killed Jenna?”
“Sure, but…”
“Then we should put our heads together and try to figure out if it was tied in with the money your father hid.”
<
br /> “But why should you give a damn who killed Jenna?”
Doyle was momentarily trapped. He could not give his actual reason. And he couldn’t think of any other convincing reason.
“You’re just meddling,” Buddy said. “So get off the place. Keep away from Betty. We can handle our own problems.” And he pushed Doyle roughly.
And that push ignited a white flare in the back of the skull of Alex Doyle. He had been physically humiliated by Donnie Capp. He had been conscious of the public disapproval of his return. The emotional tensions and frustrations exploded into a hard overhand right that smacked the shelf of Buddy Larkin’s jaw, knocked his mouth open, glazed his eyes, caused him to take two steps back and sit down heavily.
There was no one to see them in that sheltered area near the warehouse. The noise of the marine engine being test-run by Geer obscured any sounds of combat. After a moment of inert surprise, Buddy bounded up with disconcerting agility and lunged toward Doyle, chin on his chest, big fists held low. Doyle ducked and slipped two powerful hooks, looking for a chance to land solidly. Before he had his chance, a solid smash on the chest knocked him backward into the skiff. As Buddy reached for him, he scrambled out the far side and came around the stern. They met there. Doyle got in one solid blow and, without transition, found himself on hands and knees, shaking his head. He got up and, after a moment of blackout, found himself on his back. He wobbled to his feet and swung blindly at the vague shape moving toward him. His fist blazed with pain and with the effort of the blow, he knocked himself sprawling. He got up onto one knee. Buddy Larkin was sitting eight feet away. They stared at each other, sobbing for air. As Buddy got up, Doyle got up and raised his fists.
Buddy stared at him. “Knock it off. Can I whip you?”
“Yes, I guess you can,” Doyle said in a remote, rusty voice.
“But you’ll keep trying?”
“As long as I can keep getting up.”
“Stubborn bastard,” Buddy said glumly. He walked over to a hose faucet, bent over, caught water in his cupped hands and sloshed his face thoroughly. When he was through, Doyle knelt by the faucet and stuck his head under the stream.
“Am I marked?” Buddy asked.
“Just a lump on your jaw.” Buddy touched the place and winced.
Doyle worked the fingers of his right hand. The knuckles were puffy. Buddy said, “You look okay.”
“My mouth is cut on the inside.”
They sat on a saw horse, still breathing more deeply than normal.
“Damn fool,” Buddy said.
“I don’t like to be pushed.”
“All right. You don’t like to be pushed. I’ll make a note of it. To get back to the old man. He was always going off by himself. He’d come back from a business trip and almost the first thing, he’d be off in the skiff. He was such a secretive kind of guy. He must have had some place he’d go. Hell, he’d never go there direct. But he’d always head south down the bay, not that that will do us much good. Give me one of those cigarettes.”
Doyle lit it for him. He felt sourly amused. The suspicion was gone. Buddy Larkin had made up his mind about him in his own special way. Possibly it was a better way than logic. In Larkin’s book a man who kept getting up could be trusted.
“Here’s something that might fit, Buddy,” he said. “See what you think. The night Jenna was killed, she spent some time talking to old Lucas Pennyweather, and they were going to go out the next day in his boat. That’s one of the things that started me thinking. She wouldn’t have been nice to him unless she wanted something. You know that as well or better than I do. So maybe she wanted his help in finding the place where her father used to take her. Maybe she could remember enough so there was a good chance of Lucas finding the place she described.”
Buddy nodded. “She wouldn’t have been able to find it herself. She never had much interest in the water. And you know as well as I do what it’s like down there in all those mangrove islands. God, there must be twenty thousand little islands. If she could remember a little, and anybody could help her, it would be old Lucas.”
“And Lucas left shortly after she was killed.”
He shook his head slowly. “Not Lucas, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not that old man. He didn’t know his daughter was finally coming after him. She’d been threatening to for a long time. He came around to say good-by. A decent old guy, Alex.”
“So then he didn’t know what she was driving at—I mean if we’ve been making good guesses.”
“Lucas was smart as hell about water and weather and fish and children. But he wasn’t too bright about people. People like Jenna. He’d take everybody at face value. And you know how he liked to talk. She would never have said anything about money.”
“You’re right. Just ask him to take her to the places where her father used to take her. For old times’ sake.”
Buddy kicked the trailer tire. “All this is fine, Alex, but it leaves something up in the air. How come Jenna gets that idea all of a sudden?”
“I don’t know. As you said, it was a long time ago. Twenty years. Maybe something reminded her. And she started thinking.”
“But even if she was right, the money is still there. And she is dead, so even if Lucas wasn’t gone, it wouldn’t be possible to find it.”
“Unless, Buddy, she described the place where she wanted to be taken especially. All she could remember of it. And Lucas said he thought he could find it, and promised to take her there.”
“Then we ought to check with Lucas.”
“It would be the only way. You’ve got the shore line of the keys and the shore line of the mainland, and then all those islands, Buddy. It would take years and years to cover the area, even if you had some idea of what you were looking for. You couldn’t even look for a place that was kept cleared of brush because it’s been nine years since your father made his last trip.”
Buddy suddenly grinned in a mirthless way. “If you want any more proof, I’ve thought of something else. He kept that rod and the tackle box in his office. I went through that stuff after he died. A fair-sized tackle box, with just a couple of lures in it. Damn near empty. I looked around but I couldn’t find the rest of the stuff I thought he must have carried in it. And I didn’t think anything much about it until now. He liked cash deals. So he’d come back from selling off land with the cash, and he’d transfer it from his brief case to that tackle box, and tell somebody to get the skiff ready. And then he’d take off. Hell, when the big treasure hunt was on after he died, I thought he could have hidden the stuff somewhere down the bay. I guess everybody thought of that. But we just never thought of there being some specific place that he went to that somebody else might know about. We didn’t remember about Jenna when she was little and was willing to go on picnics with him.”
“Betty told me about Sunday being Jenna’s day. I didn’t think about there being a special place until Arnie Blassit told me about Jenna being nice to Lucas the night she was killed.”
Buddy stared curiously at Alex. “It’s the sort of thing the family should have figured out. Not an outsider. Funny you should have come up with a thing like this.”
“I’ve had some practice adding bits and pieces of information together, trying to come up with some kind of pattern. I can tell you about it some time. But right now, we ought to get hold of Lucas. Do you know his address?”
“It’s probably at the post office. Or if it isn’t, Arnie Blassit would know it.”
“Buddy, there’s the chance that if we’re right, and we get Lucas down here and find the place, it may be gone. If somebody overheard them talking, Jenna and Lucas, and figured they could find it themselves…”
“Then that would be the person who killed Jenna.”
Alex made a slow ceremony of lighting a cigarette. He said quietly, “Has anybody thought of Donnie Capp?”
Buddy stared at him blankly. “Donnie?”
“Is there something sacred about him, for God’s
sake? Look at the facts. He was at the Mack. He sat with Jenna and Lucas during the tail end of their conversation. He patrolled the beach road often enough so it wouldn’t mean anything if his car was seen out there. He’s put on a hell of an act about finding out who did it. And he’s been damned insistent about nobody prying into the case.”
“Yes, but…”
“Try this for size, Buddy. He heard enough to know that Lucas could take him to some spot Jenna had described. He talked to Lucas after Jenna left the table. And it’s possible that Jenna, drunk, wasn’t as subtle as she thought she was being. So he left and waited for her, thinking about the money. Maybe he tried to make some kind of deal with her. She wanted no part of Donnie Capp. And so he killed her. And then he had it made. All he had to do was wait until it all died down, wait a month or so, and then get Lucas to take him to the place Jenna had described. Secretly. And it would have been no trick for him to kill Lucas, sink his body in a hole and leave his boat adrift. You know what people would have said. Then all he would have had to do was wait a little longer, think up some logical reason for quitting, and take off with the money. But he didn’t count on Lucas’s daughter coming after him and taking him away so suddenly. That left him in a bad spot. He couldn’t go bring Lucas back without attracting a lot of unwelcome attention. And it made the murder of Jenna meaningless. I think he’s under a hell of a strain. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s getting damned erratic. The way he worked me over is maybe an evidence of strain. Take it out on somebody, anybody.”
“Donnie Capp,” Buddy said softly. “On the job twenty-four hours a day, and he’s never tried to graft a dime.”
“But this is a lot more than a dime.”
“Now here is a funny thing,” Buddy said slowly. “Donnie has hunted all his life. He never gave a damn for fishing. About Christmas he came in and he bought himself a little twelve-foot aluminum boat and a big rebuilt outboard. Betty made him a good price, I remember. And we tried to tell him that motor was too big to troll good, but he said he didn’t have much time and he’d rather run fast to where he was going, even if it did troll a little rough. And I tell you that most of the winter old Donnie was the fishingest man you’d ever want to see. He took a lot of kidding about it on account of he just never could come back in with much of anything. And finally Roy Lawlor got tired of trying to get hold of Donnie and not being able to get him, so he clamped down some. He still goes out a lot but not so often. Keeps the boat over there the other side of Bay Street, tied up at Garner’s Bait Dock. You see him scoot out under the bridge every so often, with that big hat on him. He must sleep in that hat.”
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