by Sarah Graves
“Turn that thing off, will you?” He held one hand up, squinted at me through his fingers. “I’ve got a killer headache.”
“Very funny.” I scanned the ground around his feet with the flashlight, then aimed it at his pants pockets. He’d changed clothes, but the dry ones he had on now were all smutched with moss and soil, his shoes and hands grubby.
“I don’t have any weapons on me,” he said, understanding my scrutiny. “And I didn’t do anything to that woman. I didn’t even see her after we left the restaurant’s dining room.”
Lyon Street was a short, tree-lined dead-ender about halfway between downtown and Dog Island, a detour on my way home after finally driving Bella to hers. It had been late by the time we got settled after the upsetting evening, and she’d insisted on being right to hand, as she put it, in case we wanted anything.
All I wanted was a straight answer, such as for instance to the question of whether or not Ann had really had the old book.
She could have been lying. A couple of drinks had perhaps fueled a malicious desire to put the screws to me.
To get back at me, maybe, for not caving in to her demand for the thing in the first place. Or she could’ve been telling the truth.
Her house was a white cottage with a wraparound porch and a lot of overgrown forsythia bushes mostly shielding it from the street. The porch light was on and a lamp burned low in the front-hall window.
“So what are you doing here?” I asked DiMaio. As I drove by, a tiny white penlight beam had flitted intermittently behind the bushes; not enough, probably, to alert any neighbors.
But it had alerted me. No answer from DiMaio, and anyway I knew. He wanted the book, too.
I took a step closer. Right now Bob Arnold was still busy filling out paperwork on Eastport’s second unnatural death in one day—a modern record for us—and the state cops were probably already in their motel rooms, watching the late-night rebroadcast of SportsCenter on ESPN.
Yeah, blatant stereotyping; guilty as charged. And what the heck, maybe I was wrong. Maybe they were listening to opera.
Either way, I was alone out here. DiMaio took a jackknife out and unfolded a blade big enough to gut an elk with.
“Hey, hey,” I objected as he approached the window screen with it. So much for no weapons. I wondered what he thought might qualify as one, an AK-47? “Don’t do that.”
Because I wanted in there as well, and I didn’t want a lot of break-in evidence left behind. I moved in alongside him, hoping whoever had put modern aluminum storm windows on this old house was just as cheap and careless as whoever had installed mine.
“Hold this,” I ordered, handing him the flashlight and craning my neck to examine the window edge. Bingo; the gap I wanted was there between the screen and the frame.
I put my hand out for the knife. “Have you got a pry tool on that?”
Scowling, he folded the elk-eviscerator away and pulled out another gadget, like a Swiss Army knife only larger.
Much larger. Whatever else I might have to say about Dave DiMaio —such as for instance that maybe he was a murderer—he came well-equipped.
Which, I reflected as I struggled with the aluminum screen, could be a good thing or a very bad one depending on how the next few minutes turned out. The window’s lower ledge was about chest-high on me, so I had to work with my arms extended fully upward; ouch.
But the tool on the gadget was just right for my purposes. I shoved it in between the screen’s edge and the frame. “Hold the flashlight steady. If anyone comes, switch it off.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, his voice heavy with strained patience. “I’ve done this kind of thing before.”
“Somehow that information doesn’t comfort me.” I slid the blade up and down. Right along here somewhere should be a . . .
“Got it.” The screen’s metal edge flexed and so did the frame it was fitted into, due to both being made of a substance just slightly stiffer than your average cardboard.
The tablike trigger that held the screen in its channel moved when I twisted the blade near it. But the screen didn’t pop loose. “Wait here a minute,” I told DiMaio.
Back at Wade’s truck, I groped around in the darkness under the front seat until I found the short iron pry bar he kept there. Returning to the house, I kept the bar’s curved end in my hand with the shaft parallel to my arm until I got past the hedge. Just in case anyone did happen to glance out a neighboring window, I didn’t need to be seen carrying forced-entry equipment.
Prying the screen out with the pry bar bent it, but I didn’t care. “Okay, give me a . . .”
But he was already down on one knee in the classic proposing-marriage pose, the other knee forming a step.
Or a trap. If I stepped on his knee to get myself up to the window and through it, he’d have time to do something to me. On the other hand, the look of frustration on his face when I showed up—not to mention the dirt on his clothes—told me he’d been here awhile, trying to get in.
No surprise there, either. Ann had been a single woman living alone, so she’d been careful about security. The big Block lock I’d glimpsed on the front door, for instance, screamed Don’t bother at burglars or other intruders.
Or anyway she was as careful as a person could be and still have those crappy screen windows. She probably hadn’t known they were so flimsy.
What it all added up to was that if he wanted to get in, Dave needed me to get in first. Then I could open a door for him from inside.
All this went through my head in a fraction of a second while he crouched there with one knee out, waiting for me to step onto it. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll need a little bit of a running start.”
He frowned questioningly. “To get me up there enough so I can haul myself through,” I explained. “I don’t have enough upper-body strength to . . .”
I waved at the window ledge, just high enough to make what I was saying believable. “Get ready,” I said. “Just brace yourself a little and I’ll do it on the count of three, okay? One . . .”
On two, I took a running step forward onto his knee, grabbed the window ledge, and pulled hard on it while pushing off with my foot. The change in plan startled him enough so I was able to vault over and inside before anything untoward happened.
Such as him grabbing my ankle and then having another knife. Or the gun . . . Quickly, however, I stopped worrying about that and started worrying about my landing.
Luckily, no sharp-edged furniture happened to be in my way. No rug, though, either. Wincing, I got up from the hardwood floor.
“You all right?” he whispered outside.
Like he cared. “Uh-huh. Pass me the screen.”
He handed it in. I slid it back into its channels, hammering with my fist on the bent part. But all it had to do now was look good, not work well, so I didn’t waste much time on it.
“Go to the back door,” I said, and the penlight moved away as I felt around for a lamp and switched it on.
The room it illuminated was an office, a very nice one. Tiled fireplace with a green ceramic woodstove fitted into it, wooden file cabinets, an oak desk with a cushioned swivel chair.
On the desk stood a computer hard drive and a sleek, black screen. Bookshelves lined the room. But my book wasn’t in any of them. I yanked the desk drawers out fast, one after another; no.
A manila envelope was in the wastebasket: addressed to Ann, no return address, and the size was right. But I couldn’t read the postmark and DiMaio was already knocking impatiently.
In the kitchen my nose wrinkled at smells of rancid milk, old coffee grounds, a sour dish rag. Bella would’ve had a field day, here. DiMaio knocked again, harder this time; I moved to the back door. But then I paused, noticing a phone on the wall.
Its buttons were lit, and when I checked, it had a dial tone, too. Which meant that on his way around the house, DiMaio hadn’t cut the wires. So I could call Bob Arnold, then let DiMaio in.
Or I could alert no
one, stay, and perhaps learn more about what if anything was in here. So let’s see: bail out or find out?
“Hey,” DiMaio said urgently. “Where are you?” He rattled the doorknob.
“Coming.” Crossing the darkened kitchen I put a hand out, searching for a table or countertop to balance and locate myself. But instead my fingers found something that was soft, skinlike, and I jerked back, gasping.
She’d left the book right out on the table. Swiftly I grabbed it, stuffed it into the back of my pants, and dropped my shirttail over it.
The door rattled again, harder. When I opened it, DiMaio came in looking angry.
“You know, if you’d stop being so pigheaded and listen, you’d realize . . .”
“What?” I demanded. “That maybe you poisoned Jason Riverton and pushed Ann Talbert?”
“Don’t be stupid. I nearly drowned trying to save her.”
“Maybe so. But right now as far as I’m concerned it’s a good bet that either Merle killed Jason . . . or you did.”
“Right, and then I typed my own initials—” Suddenly the kitchen’s fluorescent overhead light went on, startling us both.
“What in the world are you two doing here?”
It was Ellie, with a house key in her hand.
“Where’d you get that?” I asked, and she made a you-should-have- brought-me-along, shouldn’t-you? face at me.
“Bob Arnold sent me. Ann’s body’s at the hospital in Calais and they want to know, is there a next of kin they can notify?”
DiMaio looked disgusted at the appearance of yet more company on what he’d clearly hoped would be a solo visit. “And you just happen to have a key to her house because . . . ?”
“I didn’t. Bob did. Ann went to Florida last winter. She gave him one while she was gone. It’s been in his office ever since.” Her tone turned businesslike. “So now that we’re here, let’s get to it, shall we? Probably there’s a desk somewhere.”
“With an address book, maybe,” I agreed, wanting to stay off the subject of anything else with pages in it.
Such as the ones stuffed in my pants. But DiMaio didn’t move. “Listen, you two, this may be just a game to you, but—”
Ellie turned. “You mean like the one you’re playing? You act like you’re harmless. And we’re supposed to believe it because . . . why was that, again?”
She rushed on, beginning to sound angry. “Oh, I remember now. Because you say so. While you lie and snoop, sneak around and tell tall tales about—”
“But it’s all . . .” Dave tried interrupting her. But no dice.
“You, who blew into town one minute and two people were dead the next! Not counting the first one in Orono,” she added, raking him with her eyes.
That was Ellie: the iron hand in the gingham glove. “Does he have weapons?” she asked me. “Because if he does have any we should take them, and if not . . .”
She turned back to DiMaio. “Then maybe he should just sit down and shut up.”
“You’ve got it all wrong,” he protested. “I keep telling you I didn’t take the gun. Or do any of the other things you seem to think I did.”
He looked down at his hands. “And . . . keep quiet about Horace, all right? Just . . . you don’t know anything about him.”
He paused, getting control of his voice. Then: “Horace was the best friend I ever had. I was a skinny, dumb kid with acne, horn-rims, and a drinking problem. All I cared about was bottles and books.”
He took a shuddery breath. “Horace taught me and other kids like me that the things we were interested in were valuable. And that so were we. He taught us that books, even the weird, unusual books everyone else said we were wasting our time on—that they were about something. And he encouraged us to get out there and find out for ourselves what it was. He gave us—he gave me—the whole world. But I never thanked him. I thought—” His voice broke. “I thought there would be time.”
“Only there wasn’t, was there?” another voice asked.
The woman who appeared in the kitchen doorway was in her early twenties, slender and deeply tanned with long blonde hair curving smoothly to her shoulders.
“And who,” she added unpleasantly, staring at DiMaio, “did that work out just fine for, I wonder?”
She wore a blue crew-neck sweater and tan slacks with soft-looking tan leather sandals on otherwise bare feet. “Hello, Dave. Long time, no see.”
She laughed softly. “Never, actually.” It was the woman who’d been driving the red Miata.
“Nice story,” she added, not sympathetically. “I’m Liane Myers,” she said. “Horace Robotham’s daughter.”
DiMaio’s mouth dropped open. “And I’m here to give this jerk a run for his money. Literally,” she finished.
“I don’t intend to make any trouble for you,” Liane Myers declared the next morning in my kitchen; yeah, right.
“Fine kettle of fish,” Bella had fumed when I told her the story. Well, except for the part about getting back the old book.
Which was now up on the third floor of my house under a floorboard; a nailed-down floorboard, the hiding place disguised with old nails and a newly applied coating of workroom grime.
Because maybe DiMaio had been telling the truth and maybe he hadn’t. But the last person who’d gabbed about having that book was lying in a morgue room and I didn’t want to become her next-drawer neighbor.
“Seems to me we should put a drawbridge on the causeway,” Bella had grumbled as I looked through the mail: bills, several more bills, and to top it all off a couple of bills. The final envelope was full of coupons, none of which were for anything we ever bought.
“We should just make folks state their business before we ever even let ’em onto the island,” declared Bella.
Now Liane Myers stole uneasy peeks at my dour housekeeper.
I’d told Liane where my house was the night before and instructed her to be here by eight at the latest, or I’d add her to the list of topics I intended to discuss with Bob Arnold.
And apparently she hadn’t wanted that. “I’m glad to know you don’t mean to cause me problems,” I told the young blonde woman. “Although I don’t quite see how you could.”
Translation: Don’t get too full of yourself, missy. Because the idea that some pretty young twit in a sports car could come around here and upset my applecart was—well, maybe when I was still married to my ex-husband, she could have.
But not anymore. “But I’m confused about why you are here,” I added. “None of us has even met your father, and—”
She turned her pale-blue gaze on me. Today she wore a white linen blouse, tan woven-silk pants, and a cashmere cardigan. On her feet were a pair of patent-leather slides with grosgrain bows on them. In other words, she looked like a million bucks, as she had the night before.
Just a different million bucks. “I’m not the only one you’re confused about,” she said. “Other people might think my dad was a great guy. But to me, he was a first-class jerk.”
Her eyes narrowed with remembered pain. “I wrote to him as a kid. He never answered one of my letters. I finally gave up.”
She straightened her shoulders. “But that’s old news. The point now is he had a will and I’m not in it. But he is. That schemer, Dave DiMaio.”
“Really,” Bella commented, looking over from the sink.
Suddenly Liane seemed to realize who Bella was and what she was doing here. Spurred by this brainstorm, she shot my housekeeper one of those snotty little Why am I talking in front of the help? looks, about as subtle as a punch in the nose.
Bella deflected it with a casual twitch, as if she’d found something unpleasant on her sleeve. Then she summed up Liane’s difficulty neatly:
“So your father had money but he didn’t leave a penny of it to you. He left it to—”
“That little DiMaio geek,” Liane agreed venomously, turning back to me.
“As for my dad’s partner”—she put a mean twist on the word�
�“he’s already got money. That Lang Cabell person. A couple of old aunts of his, that he ran off to as soon as my dad died?”
Liane sniffed enviously. “I did a little research on them. They’re dripping with it, and at their age what else do they have to spend it on but him? Meanwhile,” she added, “I haven’t got a dime. My husband—”
No wedding ring. She saw me looking. “He passed away. After a long, courageous battle with gambling and skirt-chasing.”
She smoothed her hair back. “So when I found out what Dad’s will says, I decided to make sure DiMaio knows he’s not getting anything. To start with, I went to visit that so-called college of his, and do you know what that place is like?”
“No,” I said, “why don’t you tell me?” Because even annoying people can be informative, and she was proving it in spades.
“Well,” she replied, gratified at my interest. “It’s just a bunch of old brownstone dormitories plus weird wooden houses, so narrow they all look like they’re only one-room wide. All kind of leaning together. Or at you. It’s creepy!”
“Do tell,” I murmured as Bella left the room.
“And the students. Pale and skinny. Wispy beards and hollow eyes. All carrying ratty old books around like they were in love with them,” Liane added scornfully.
She got up. “Anyway, I asked around there and finally found someone in the grungy old office that he shares. He’d left a map on his desk, with Eastport circled on it. So I came here, too.”
“You’re contesting Horace’s will, then? With a lawsuit?”
“I sure am,” she declared as if daring me to do something about it. “Unless DiMaio gives up his claim.”
Which depending on how much money we were talking about, Dave actually might. As I knew very well from my days as money-manager to the rich and filthy, fighting it out in court over the terms of a will was expensive, and prevailing was anything but a given. You could lose plenty, trying to win.
But Liane Myers must’ve known that, too. In fact, I got the impression she was counting on it.
“He wouldn’t listen last night,” she said. “But he’s going to. Because I’m going to make him.”