The Weekend Visitor Page 18

  I was explaining in vivid detail about the bounteous harvest I anticipated, when I noticed the regulars from the front table, led by Harmon, were gathering at the bar, looking at the TV. I looked up myself and exclaimed, "Oh! It's Amazin' Grace." It must have been a slow news day, and/or Grace must have been a bigger fish than I realized. She was getting full local cable TV coverage for her funeral, after which there would be a private interment.

  The imposing, elegant Episcopal church was packed with imposing, elegant people, all looking properly solemn and important, with the exception of the small group of Provincetown relatives. They sat together in forward pews, looking unhappy and ill at ease in their seldom worn suits and ties and obviously bought-for-the-occasion dresses and hats.

  All except Pete Santos, that is. Pete was with Jack Sanhope, and looking as if he'd just stepped from the pages of GQ in his well-tailored gray suit with a muted blue shirt, matching blue and black regimental striped tie and black wingtips. As they came down the aisle behind Richard and Lillian, Pete was close beside Jack and beside him as they knelt briefly in front of the coffin. Jack sagged a little, and Pete's arm was immediately around his shoulders. It occurred to me that maybe there was a little more love between Jack and his grandmother than either had ever vocalized. Or maybe Jack was feeling guilty, after all. The Sanhopes and Pete took their seats in the family pew and the service began.

  It was the traditional Episcopalian service, direct from the Book of Prayer with Cranmer's ever-beautiful application of our language—mercifully brief, yet eloquent, moving, comforting. The final hymn was sung and it was over. The bishop and the vicar of the cathedral led the exit, followed by the crucifer, then Richard, Lillian—looking sad and tired, Francesca, her husband and daughters and, finally, Jack, white and visibly shaken, with Pete just inches away.

  The two churchmen and the three Sanhopes stood on the steps, greeting many of the congregants. Pete, bless him, stood quietly just behind Jack. Right there, if he were needed. The TV announcer came on a few seconds later, and the newscast went on to other coverage.

  "Some send-off, wasn't it?" I turned. I had not even noticed Sonny come in.

  He ordered a Bud for himself and me, with a sniff. I looked at him sharply. Was he actually crying? No. "Are you coming down with a cold?"

  "I sure hope not." He took a swallow of beer and nodded toward the TV. "What did you think of it?"

  "Beautiful. And speaking of beautiful, did you notice Pete? That suit must have set him back a good three weeks pay."

  "Probably. I imagine Jack was glad to have him there. Jack looked pretty done in. And I'm not surprised at Pete's wardrobe. He's got high aspirations, our Pete."

  "What's he going to do? Skip over Mitch and you and Anders and take over as chief? I don't imagine even Chief Franks wears Italian silk suits and Cole-Haan shoes."

  "Oh, I don't imagine our Mr. Santos expects leading off the Memorial Day parade in dress uniform to be the high point of his year. I think his plans are to stay here another year or so. Then one of the Sanhopes—Richard, now, I guess—will lead him into a good job with some high class company in the security business, where he will keep Boston and its environs safe from terrorists." He sounded a little bitter, and I recalled a time when Sonny's own menu had read something like that.

  "Ah," I said, "I wonder when he'll change his name?"

  "The day before it's painted on his office door. Right now I think his driver's license still reads Santos."

  "Right." I raised my voice a bit. The regulars were arguing whether one was cremated in or out of one's casket. Harmon was in favor of "in," as being more "honorific to the diseased." Did it for me.

  "When does Pete leave for Lisbon?"

  "Tomorrow evening. Well, to Amsterdam, anyway."

  "Why is he going to Amsterdam to get to Lisbon?"

  "He's flying Icelandic."

  I occasionally felt that our mother had been frightened by Abbott and Costello during her pregnancies. "Icelandic what? Why?"

  "Icelandic Airways," Sonny explained. "Icelandic Airways has for years been a super cheap flight to Holland. I mean, not even half price of the biggies like Delta and British Airways."

  "How can they do that?" Somehow one thought of Icelandic travel to be in longboats with square sails.

  "For one thing, you stop in Iceland for a nice time shopping in their duty-free airport. I believe dinner is a fish sandwich and a mug of mead. And they are slow. I believe they still fly the old Ford Tri-motors, but they always get there. You never hear of them crashing."

  "You never hear of them at all."

  "Don't be condescending. Anyway, he'll spend a couple of days in Amsterdam, which I hear is not at all bad for bachelors, then go on to Madrid and finally to the cousins in Lisbon ... or somewhere around there." He pointed behind me. "There's a free table. Let's get it, and I'll buy you lunch."

  I was surprised and pleased. This was indeed a rare opportunity, and my mind leaped toward an old fashion cocktail followed by clams on the half-shell and steak or a seafood platter, but I decided that would be greedy. When the waiter came, I settled for my standard pastrami and fries, and even switched to iced tea so I wouldn't spend a groggy afternoon.

  Sonny bummed a cigarette—something new in life—and then fiddled with the ashtray and fiddled with his silverware and finally got it out. "Uh, by the way, Alex, uh, we've made an arrest in the Sanhope matter."

  I had an insane picture of Mitch and Jeanine cuffing Jack as he stood on the church steps. "Who?"

  "Well, uh, Mary Sloan." Our food came and he began to fiddle with putting various condiments on his hamburger. He was beginning to get on my nerves.

  "Why?" I asked. "You don't have any solid—"

  "Yes, we do. We have good circumstantial evidence. No crime is ever a hundred percent. There's stuff you don't know. And, uh, Chief Franks and the D.A. ordered me to pick her up."

  "Why didn't you just say so?"

  "They happen to be right, Alex. Look, the meat thermometer came back with a good thumbprint of Mary's and two fairly good partials. There were some cotton fibers in the back of her SUV that could belong to the laundry cart, although there have been some canvas tool holders in there, too. And there was a trace of blood in the back. It was so broken down by the heat, we couldn't run a DNA, but it is human blood. And it could be Grace's."

  I pointed a french fry accusingly at Sonny. "It could be. Or it could be Mary's from handling sharp tools and wires. Or Maureen's. Hell, it could even be mine. I was bleeding like crazy after helping her get her boat out of the water last fall. The fibers mean nothing. Even the fingerprints. Couldn't Mary have handled the thermometer in a store or a tag sale or something and then someone else bought it? Or couldn't someone have stolen it from Mary? Does she have one?"

  He shrugged and swallowed. "That's kind of odd. Mitch asked her about that the other day and I asked again this morning. Got the same answer. Yes, she had one, though she couldn't remember when she last used it. She thought she remembered seeing it recently . . . within the last week, when she cleaned a utensil drawer. But she couldn't come up with it. With her permission, I helped her look all over the kitchen. No meat thermometer."

  "Maybe it's in her garage."

  "Why would it be there?"

  "That's where mine is. In my garage. I meant to give it and some other stuff to the Girl Guides' jumble sale and forgot. Maybe she did, too."

  He stopped spreading mustard on his burger and gave me an expressionless stare. "That's a real possibility. We'll certainly check."

  "Really, Sonny, you are so unimaginative. All I mean is, people put things in nutty places for what seems like a good reason at the time. Then they forget."

  "I'll look around, okay?" Obviously that was the best I was going to get.

  "Okay. And you might look at Maureen for the murder while you're at it. She had access to the weapon . . . and the SUV, while Mary slept off her virus. And she certainly had no love for Grace San
hope. Can anyone place her at the Bitter End Friday night?"

  "Yeah. One of her ex-roommates and the bartender saw her— spoke with her—but both of them think it was around ten. A guy she works with thinks he saw her earlier."

  "So, it could be that Maureen saw the laundry cart at the clinic and got inspired. She folds it into the back of the SUV where it won't be readily visible. She takes Mary home and tucks her in, possibly adds a little Sominex to the Pepto and waits awhile till Mary nods off. Maureen goes to Grace's house and finds her in her usual evening pursuit of looking through her telescope." I stopped for a bite of my lunch, and Sonny picked up the tale.

  "So," he walked his fingers across the table. "She sneaks up on Grace and stabs her. Or, she confronts her, demands more money, is refused . . . and then stabs her. Then she stashes Grace in your garage and goes to the Bitter End. It works, but you have to remember, Maureen already got most of what she wanted from the Sanhopes. Sure, she didn't like any of them and probably really disliked the old lady, but why rock the boat?"

  He picked up his condiment-coated burger. "And don't forget, Mary has had a beef with that family literally since the day she was born. Add to that, she hates the way Grace has treated Maureen. She also has a history of violence against Grace. Nope, I think Maureen is just a green herring."

  "Red herring."

  "Green," he repeated. "She's Irish, get it?"

  I changed the subject to the elusive rattle in Cindy's car.

  I was in the office, matting some prints to fulfill an order from a gallery up in Eastham, when Fargo scrambled to his feet and trotted toward the back door. Cindy was home. "I'm in the office!" I called.

  She came in and I gave her a nice hug, and was headed for a kiss when she pushed me away.

  "My God, Alex! Have you been mucking out stables? You smell like Hercules after that Augean thing."

  I frowned. "Now, come on! I spread a little stuff on the tomatoes early this morning. Anyway, it's dehydrated and deodorized. Aren't you exaggerating just . . . oh." I suddenly recalled all the sniffles and references to my garden.

  "Oh, what?" she asked.

  "Nothing."

  Chapter 28

  We hit the beach bright and early, Fargo and I. The air and the water were deceptively calm, and I was betting on a brisk northeast wind as soon as the sun was fully up. An afternoon rain shower might also be on the agenda. I hoped so. The entire backyard smelled humidly of cow manure. A breeze and some rain might cure that and also cure Cindy of referring to me as Hercules.

  Fargo ran ahead, nose to the sand, tracking some imaginary sea monster to its imaginary lair. I sat down on a good-sized tree, washed above the mean high tide line in a storm some months back. I spotted a tiny crab claw in the sand and picked it up. Gently, I turned the perfect little ivory and pink shell in my fingers. That was one that rejoined the food chain without ever reaching maturity. Nature was not sentimental.

  That made me think of Amazin' Grace. Certainly she'd had good long innings. No one could say she'd been cut down in her youth, although I hadn't seen any signs of her faltering. Thoughts of Grace took me to thoughts of Mary, probably awake by now and wondering how in God's name she'd ever ended up in a jail cell. Guilty or not.

  I thought of Mary's upbringing. Raised by a grandmother who was a widow, uneducated, poor and probably never really happy in her new country. And Mary's mother. Again, an uneducated, naive woman who would have liked a large and boisterous family, but who literally worked herself to death as a waitress to support herself and her only child. It could not have been a very happy household, although I had heard no undertones of violence as Mary had recounted it to me.

  Indeed, Mary's mother and grandmother had meekly accepted the little support the Sanhopes had so ungraciously supplied. Even when Mary had learned the truth upon her mother's death, she hadn't gone running to a lawyer seeking redress. And when Mary had sought out the Sanhopes in later years, it had been an attempt to join a family, not to hit them up for money ... or just hit them, period.

  I placed the small crab claw carefully on the bark of the tree and lit a cigarette. Fargo stopped by to check on me, sniffed the claw and looked at me quizzically. Was that pitiful shard the best treasure I could find on this wide beach? I hoped he would not be inspired to bring me a nice dead fish. I patted his bottom and he took that as invitation to lie beside me for a while.

  Yes, Mary had attacked Grace, and rather viciously. But she had not attacked for herself, but for Maureen and what she judged, erroneously I thought, to be Maureen's distress over having to give up her baby. I had no doubt Maureen would have married Jack in a heartbeat, and for several reasons that made good sense to her. But marry Mary, de jure or de facto, and raise a child with her? I thought not. She was nowhere near ready to settle down to that life yet, if she ever would be.

  Marry a good-looking young man with endless money, at least in the future, and an entree to upper class social life—yes. A forty-year-old, rather dull woman who climbed phone poles—no. I thought Maureen made a much better choice as a killer than Mary. I just couldn't prove it.

  Mary's fingerprints on that damn skewer! That was the real rub. No, not a skewer ... a meat thermometer. Why had I thought skewer?

  And then I knew.

  Suddenly I heard a man's voice near us. "I thought you couldn't have dogs on the beach."

  A woman answered him. "It's always the same. Some people pay no attention to the law!"

  Oops! We had lingered too long. The daily beach party of tourists was beginning, and we had become a pumpkin and a large black rat. I snapped Fargo's leash on his collar and we scampered for the car.

  Catching my breath after our trot to the car (Fargo seemed to require no such recovery), my first reaction was to phone Sonny. My second was to recall that my cell phone was at home, either on the bureau or in the hamper in the pocket of yesterday's shirt. It was probably as well. My thoughts were scattered. I negotiated the early traffic, reached home and we went in to find Cindy long gone. She had left us a note: Dearest early birds—Remember, tonight we have dinner with Vance and Charles & go to the Art Ctr. for the string quartet concert. Sorry, Fargo, no doggies on this trip. Love, C.

  I groaned. Poor Fargo, indeed! A little string quartet went a long way with me. It was quite magical, really, after ten minutes it turned into a dentist's drill. And I supposed I'd have to dress. Maybe I'd wear my derby. Maybe I wouldn't. New Orleans was still a sort of tender subject. "Oh, hell!" I said aloud. "You are so lucky, Fargo!"

  He answered me by collapsing next to his food bowl and nudging it weakly. "Oh, stop it, you're overacting." But I washed his dish, filled it and gave him fresh water and nuked a cup of leftover coffee for me. Was he really manipulative?

  Finally settled at the kitchen table, I mentally backtracked to the day I had first visited Mary and Maureen to begin investigating her then-presumed rape. I remembered the iced tea and petit fours set out on the tables, and the colorful array of books added to the normally dull-shaded manuals in the bookcase.

  I had commented on the new books, and Mary told me she had just bought a bunch that the library was selling, since people rarely checked them out anymore, and the library needed the space. Maureen, she had added, was a mystery buff, so Mary had simply bought a collection of all the English mysteries the librarian could fit into two plastic bags. I had asked Maureen if she were enjoying them.

  She said she had just started one by Ngaio Marsh and would let me know. I was certain the book she had shown me was Death of a Peer. I had read a lot of Marsh as a teenager and was pretty sure I remembered the plot.

  A crotchety, rich old English lord had no children, so the family mansion and money would go to his younger brother upon his death, but for now it was all his. The younger brother was forty-ish, with a wife and I believe four kids ranging from around twenty down to maybe twelve. They all seemed like airheads and couldn't manage to live within the income the wife had inherited. They were always "b
orrowing" from the old lord. On this occasion they had invited him and his wife to dinner to "borrow" again because they were being evicted from their flat.

  The lord refused and stormed out, saying he would meet his wife downstairs at their car. Everyone heard the creaky old elevator descend. The lord's wife finally got into her coat and rang for the elevator to come up for her. She and some of the younger family members stood in the hall and it creaked back up, still holding the lord. He had been stabbed in the eye with a meat skewer and died shortly thereafter. Younger brother was now Lord Whoozit. . . and very rich. Funny, I couldn't remember who had killed the old guy.

  I sipped my rapidly cooling coffee and lit cigarette three. My limit of five per day looked doubtful. I might make it, I told myself, if I didn't have to listen to a string quartet.

  If I had the right book and the right plot in mind, I certainly had fine inspiration for Maureen. And the book should be covered with her fingerprints. I wasn't the least concerned that Mary might have read it. She never read anything that wasn't technical.

  For once, my not having my cell phone in the car had been a blessing. It would be better not to call Sonny until I was sure I was thinking of the right book and the correct plot. Ordinarily, if I wanted information on a book, I'd just go to the library. But it was the library that had gotten rid of it in the first place. Now what? I hated to drive all the way to Hyannis, and while they might locate a title for me over the phone, I doubted they would scan through it to get the plot. . . that's if they still had a copy. What was next? Boston? The British Museum? As my Aunt Mae would say, "Oh, fudge!" That's not what I was saying.

  Adding to my irritation, the phone picked that moment to ring. Sighing, I answered. "Hello?"

  "Hi, Alex, it's Jeanine down at the station. I need to ask you a big favor."

  I managed not to scream. "Well, sure Jeanine. If I can I will."

  "Well, as you know, we're short-handed as hell down here. Sonny's even out investigating a traffic mishap. Anyway, poor Mary Sloan needs some things from home, and I know I'll never get a lunch break today to get them for her, and Trish is in court all day today. I wondered if you possibly could pick them up?"