by Jack Lynch
“What kind of fruit?”
“I don’t care. Whatever looks good. But we have to have a balanced meal, you know.”
When I got back outside with a couple of apples, she was drinking one of the Heinekens with her long legs up on the dashboard.
“This is the life,” she told me with a slight burp as I drove out of the parking lot and headed for the lake. She gave me directions. We went up the road across the lake from the Cornell home. She knew a family from Sacramento who came up for a couple of weeks each summer to a place they had at the upper end of the lake.
“They have a rowboat we can use.”
“You want a picnic in a rowboat?”
“No, silly. We can go out to the island. That’s where we can have the picnic.”
She said it was a favorite spot of hers, the island I’d seen from the dock and boathouse at the Cornell place. We transferred stuff from the car to the rowboat and I took up the oars, while Angel trailed first one hand and then her feet off the stern of the little boat into the water, with her eyes closed, her head tossed back and a grin on her face.
“This is so great,” she told me.
I grunted and pulled at the oars.
“Not too often I have a fella to do it with.”
I let the oars rest a moment. “What?”
She pulled in her feet and swung around to face me. “I’m not exactly what you might have heard,” she told me. “I have a certain reputation that came about because of some dumb things that happened a couple of years ago. But this town doesn’t give a person a second chance. That’s why I can’t wait to get away.”
“But I thought every man in town was clamoring after you.”
“That’s the reputation I have. I can’t do anything about it, so I just try to live with it and even play the role from time to time for the amusement of everybody around. Frankly, it isn’t a whole lot of fun, and there are people with a lot looser shoes than mine living around here.”
I couldn’t say for sure whether I’d ever heard that term before, but I had a good idea what she meant. “Now you’re beginning to sound like just another screwed-up, unhappy kid.”
“Yes, and I’m through talking about that. Give me another beer, will you?”
I pulled in the oars and reached around to get a beer out of the ice chest in the front of the boat. I handed it to her and went back to work. I maintained a leisurely pace. It had been a while since I’d rowed a boat, and the muscles involved weren’t exercised that much on a regular basis. It took me about twenty minutes to get around to the far side of the island to where she wanted us to go. The island was about the length of a couple of football fields and maybe half that wide. It had some of the same towering pine trees as on the shore and several grassy open areas.
I beached the boat on a stretch of shore that was more mud than sand, but it was a shallow shelf that made the landing easy. Angel carried the blanket and towel and I lugged the ice chest and groceries to an open area about fifty feet in from the shore.
“We seem to be the only ones around,” I mentioned, putting things down next to the blanket.
“That’s why I like it,” she told me. “Nobody comes out here until the summertime, when kids visiting row out and have beer busts and things. It’s a nice place for private talks.”
“And we’re going to have one of those, right? I mean a private talk.”
“I’m hungry, aren’t you?”
So instead of the talk I wanted she fixed sandwiches and we ate and drank beer. Conversation languished. She seemed to be getting a little morose. After she’d eaten and drunk another beer, she sat brooding out over the lake. Finally she shrugged and turned to me.
“You ever go skinny-dipping?”
“I used to, when I was your age. It’s been a while.”
She grunted and stared back at the lake some more, then got to her feet. “I’m getting vulgar on beer. Time for a swim.”
She picked up the towel and walked down to the water. I did the smart thing and sat tight. She tossed the towel over the edge of the rowboat then pinned up her hair. I might have been old enough to be her father, but nobody was holding a gun to my head and telling me I had to look the other way while she was doing what she was doing, and she didn’t seem to mind, so I didn’t. With her hair in place she stepped out of her shorts and untied the bandanna halter. Those were the only two items of clothing she’d been wearing. She looked over her shoulder to watch me watching her, then gave a little smile and walked out into the water and began to swim. She circled around some and floated on her back and swam and floated and then swam some more. She was as graceful in the water as she was on land, and for a quick, surprising moment I felt a sharp sorrow at the wasted life she must have been living. She was still a little girl in some ways, but with that awful, unfair reputation small towns can hang on a person to warp a lifetime. I hoped she would be strong enough and smart enough to shrug it off once she got away from there.
The moment passed. I had enough to worry about as it was. I took off my shirt, opened a Dos Equis and stretched out in the sun to once again go over the things I’d heard and seen since coming to Claireborn. It was a smart move on my part, because after a few minutes I remembered something that had bothered me the day before up in lawyer Wilstock’s office. A nagging, unresolved question.
I didn’t hear the girl leave the water, but a moment later she plopped down across from me with the towel held carelessly around herself and began to talk.
“The problem with Buddy Bancetti is that he’s a retard who considers Aggie Leland some sort of goddess figure.”
I raised my head and blinked at her. She was dabbing at the edges of her hair with the towel.
“He thinks if Aggie finds out he spent any time with another girl, she’d put a curse on him that would make him sterile and go blind or come down with a case of shingles or some other hideous thing.”
“I didn’t know anybody knew Buddy Bancetti and how he felt about things all that well.”
“I know because in some ways we’re even a little bit alike. But he can’t handle it because there’s always been somebody to wipe his nose and pat his head and make a fuss over him. He’s basically a wimp and always will be until he has to face up to things on his own. That’s one of the reasons it’s kind of a shame you’re up here. If he had to sit in that jail until his teeth began to rot, maybe he’d finally figure out he had to do something on his own for a change. It’s what all the rest of us have had to do.”
I sat up and listened carefully, pulling my shirt back on. Angel had a bitter edge to her voice. I might as well not have been there. She threw the towel to one side and stood to pull on her shorts and tie the bandanna into a halter again. She looked like she was close to tears.
“It’s just so goddam unfair,” she said quietly.
She lapsed into silence while she unpinned her hair and fluffed it out then sat back on the blanket.
“Do you like him?” I asked.
“Oh—what’s ‘like’? I did like him, one time. We talked and things. But then…I don’t know, a lot of things got all mixed up. Anyway, he could be the last man between here and the moon now, and I’d walk away from him.”
I picked up a stick and did some doodling on the ground. “Were you with him the day J. D. Cornell was killed?”
“No. But I know where he was.”
“Where’s that?”
She tilted an empty Heineken bottle to her mouth, then made a face and looked away. “Here. On the island.”
“Was he alone?”
“Nope.”
“Why hasn’t the person he was with come forward and given him an alibi?”
“I don’t know,” she told me, going into the cooler for another beer. This time she opened a Dos Equis. “I think that’s one of the reasons I’m telling you about it. I think there’s something—evil going on around here. I don’t know. It frightens me, but I couldn’t think of anything to do about it before now. B
ut you cut kind of a neat little swath through town yesterday. I mean especially last night, behind the…” She snickered. “Behind the roadhouse. That’s why I decided this morning to tell you. On impulse, sort of.”
I wondered how she knew about the fight in the parking lot the night before, but I didn’t want to interrupt her. She put the beer aside and picked up one of the apples and began to munch on it. She was staring at the ground in front of her. I waited a few moments to see if she wanted to add a little more without my prodding. But she seemed satisfied with what little she’d told me.
“Was there more than one person he was with?”
“No.”
“A man or a woman? Or a boy or a girl?”
“A sort of girl-woman, I guess you could say.”
“It wasn’t Aggie, surely.”
She snorted, “No.”
I didn’t know if she was enjoying the give and take of making me play a guessing game or if she was sincerely reluctant to tell me more. If that was the case, the wrong question could end the whole thing.
“Angel, do you know if the two of them were out here at the time Cornell was being wiped out?”
“No, because I’m not sure just when that happened. But probably they were. They were out here for quite a while.”
“But if you weren’t the one with him, how do you know this?”
“I saw them. I was going to come out here myself that day. I have to do that sometimes. Just get away from the town and the people and everyone. Only the boat was gone. And I recognized a car parked back over by where I showed you where to park. I was curious. So I drove on around the end of the lake to a spot just over there,” she told me, gesturing to the mainland across from us. “I waited around for a while. Heck, I didn’t have anything better to do. Then they came down to the water and took a swim, like I did. The girl had on a swimsuit. Buddy was wearing just his shorts.”
Angel put the apple aside and picked up the beer again. “They spent a while playing in the water and swimming and all, then they started to come back out. But at the edge of the water they hesitated. The girl was standing very close to him. Then they kissed.”
Angel blinked and wiped at something alongside her nose. “After they kissed they just stood there, the girl with her arms around Buddy’s neck, and…Oh, you know, she was sort of rubbing up against him. Then they turned and started walking ashore, holding hands. But just before they went out of view a funny thing happened. The girl turned and looked across the lake, right toward where I was. She stared like that for a minute, as if she might have seen me, then the two of them continued on and—I don’t know what happened after that. I got back in my car and drove into town.”
“Did you continue on around the lake past the Cornell place?”
“No. I went back the way I’d come.”
We sat in silence for a few more moments.
“After you heard about the Cornell killing, after Buddy was arrested, didn’t you tell anybody what you’d seen?”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to tell anybody about. I just barely decided to tell you. Seems to me it was for the girl with him to tell somebody. And since she hasn’t after all this time…” She shook her head. “I’m just kind of uneasy about it all.”
“Couldn’t you tell your sister?”
She shook her head again. And when she looked up at me her eyes were glistening. “It was my sister with Buddy Bancetti that day.”
TWELVE
I stood up and walked down to the edge of the lake and looked across the water. My mind was doing snap rolls and loop-the-loops. By the time I went back to the blanket, Angel had regained her composure.
“That’s quite a story,” I told her, sitting back down and going into the cooler for another beer. “I can see why you didn’t want to tell anybody. That would be sort of tough.”
“You said it. I mean, if it looked like they were really going to put Buddy on trial for murder, I’d tell someone. But I’d have to have it out with Elizabeth first.”
I gave her another few seconds. “You realize the implications of this, I guess. Buddy’s wallet and undershorts being found at the murder scene…”
“I sure do. Why do you think I’m so nervous about things? What am I doing, living in the same house as a murderer?”
“I doubt it. I met your sister last night, out at Kelsey’s, before the incident in the parking lot. Only…” I studied her for a moment. She looked up and her gaze didn’t waver.
“Only what?”
“When she learned who I was, she told me your story about approaching me at the ball game yesterday…”
“I never told her about seeing you yesterday. I don’t—I don’t tell her much of anything these days. Not since that afternoon I saw her with Buddy.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t. Thinking back on it, the conversation she recounted was sort of a funny girl-to-girl sort of thing. Not the sort of conversation you’d have with somebody you thought might be covering up something to do with the Cornell murder. Not unless the two of you had thrashed it out already and knew where each other stood.”
She gave me a tough little smile. “No thrashing out. No girl talk. She asked me that evening, after I’d seen her with Buddy, how I’d spent the day. Very offhandedly. I told her I’d driven up to Tahoe with some of the kids. I thought she bought it, but now I don’t know. I think I’ll come right out and say it. I’ve told you everything else, God knows. I think I’m scared.”
She was absently tapping the beer bottle on the ground. She looked scared, and I believed her story.
“Your sister told me she doesn’t have much of a social life, what with working two jobs and looking after you and all.”
“She doesn’t look after me all that much. And the two jobs don’t have anything to do with it, either. She’s got a boyfriend. She’s just not interested in anybody else. Only the boyfriend’s married, so she is very discreet.”
I didn’t like the way things were falling into place. “You’re sure about that?”
“Yes. She told me so. Before all this other business happened.”
“Did she tell you who the boyfriend was?”
“No.”
“Do you know?”
She shook her head.
“I would think that sort of thing would be a little hard to keep quiet in a town like this.”
She nodded. “It is. But like I said, she’s very discreet. And he must be too. I doubt if they see each other anywhere around town here. Somebody would have seen them, sooner or later. And it’s been going on for a while.”
“How long?”
The girl shrugged. “Months, at least. If I knew who it was, I could guess better. I thought about being sneaky. Following her around on weekends and things. But I decided that would be gross. She has her own life to lead. Now I’m not so sure.”
“Does she stay out all night sometimes?”
“Not often, but sometimes. That’s how you can tell she isn’t losing a whole lot of sleep over whatever I might be doing.” She took a drink of the beer and stared across at me with a look on her face that told me everything she felt about her lousy life and the crushing sensation she felt to do with her sister and Buddy Bancetti and the Cornell killing.
“I guess you know I’ll be pursuing this.”
“I guess I do,” she said quietly. “I guess that’s why I told you. It’s sure time somebody found out what was going on.”
I weighed a couple of things in my mind and made a quick decision. I started putting stuff back into bags. “Angel, I want you to do something for me. I know I’m not in a position to give orders to you, but it’s important and it’s necessary.”
“Okay. I’ve trusted you this far. What is it?”
“I’m going to row you back over and then drive you into town where you can pick up your car. Then I want you to drive on down to where your mother lives and stay there until I get word to you. If you need money I’ll give it to y
ou. But I don’t want you going home. I don’t want you telling anybody where you’re going. At least that’s what I want you to do if that part of the story your sister told me is true. That your mother remarried and is living down in the valley.”
“It’s true.”
“Good. You’ll have to think up a story to tell your mother. And in the event your sister phones down asking about you, could you get your mother to agree to tell Liz you’re not there?”
“I guess. But hey, you don’t think my sister would do anything…”
“I don’t know about your sister. It’s your sister’s boyfriend who worries me. Now help me pack up.”
We carried things down to the rowboat. I stood a moment scanning the distant shoreline. I heard a chainsaw start up in the distance but I didn’t see anybody. When things were stowed away Angel got into the boat. I shoved off and began to row back around the island.
Angel kept her thoughts pretty much to herself until we were on the other side of the lake making our way toward the house where she’d borrowed the boat.
“Do you think I might be in some kind of danger?”
“Probably not,” I told her with a little more confidence than I felt. “But if you’re away from here for a little while, it’ll be one less thing I have to worry about.”
She grunted and lapsed into silence again. I didn’t think she was convinced. No more than I was. The girl could be in very real danger, if her sister’s boyfriend was Cornell’s killer and if he knew that Angel was spending time with me. And after Angel’s performance back when she dropped off her car, the whole town must know she was spending time with me. Of course, there was another reason I wanted Angel away from town for a while. Her sister was going to be in for some very rough questioning at the hands of myself or Sergeant Findley or both of us. I didn’t want Angel feeling a sudden compassion or regret and be changing the story she’d told me.
I pulled oars and mused about Buddy’s dalliance with Angel’s sister back on the island. It certainly explained why the boy couldn’t bring himself to tell anybody where he’d been the afternoon of the killing. He might be the only lad in the world so painfully shy and guilt-ridden that he’d rather sit in jail than let Aggie or anybody else know he’d spent the afternoon with another woman.