Murder Takes to the Hills Read online

  We found the Ryders in the living room…along with the injured guest, whom they introduced as Mr. Williams. He looked like a grandfather direct from Central Casting: wispy white hair, pale blue eyes, a slight paunch and a sweet smile. The only sour note was his left foot: wrapped in a large towel, which I assumed contained some crushed ice.

  He seemed embarrassed by all the attention, and insisted he was not badly injured. I agreed that he probably wasn’t seriously damaged, but that it probably hurt like hell. I had experienced that type of injury a couple of times, I mentioned, and had felt as if amputation were quite possible.

  Williams gave me a smile and admitted to some pain, although he figured all anyone could do was to tape the damaged toe to the next unhurt one and try to stay off it as much as possible.

  It was the “staying off it” that bothered him most. “You see,” he explained. “I come up every spring to watch the returning birds pairing off and starting their nests, and that requires considerable walking.” He sounded so sad, Fargo had walked over to comfort him, earning himself a friendly scratch behind the ears.

  I now had my answer to the problem. “I understand, sir, and I have a suggestion.

  “There will, of course, be no charge for your stay so far, and the Ryders will happily treat you to a stay in June. And if you don’t mind, my dog Fargo and I will join you on one of your hikes—we’re bird lovers, too. And by June we should get a good laugh at the fledglings making fools of themselves learning to fly.”

  The Ryders didn’t look terribly happy, probably because by June they could be renting his room at full summer rates. But Mr. Williams, I was sure from his pleased and relieved expression, would not be filing any lawsuits, and a long free weekend seemed the least he deserved. The Ryder B&B was clean and comfortable, and served an adequate breakfast, but it was a no-frills operation. Williams probably would be staying elsewhere if his wallet were heavy.

  He gave the Ryders that sweet smile, and they both broke down and smiled back, although Mrs. Ryder’s was doubly strained. She kept looking at Fargo as if he were likely to bite her, urinate and dig a hole in the carpet at any moment.

  “Now,” I concluded, “Mr. Ryder will run you over to the clinic to get that toe taped, courtesy Pilgrim Insurance. Pilgrim is also aware of the current gasoline price of about a dollar per teaspoon, and we wouldn’t want you to be out anything for making the extra trip from home and back, so-oo...” I handed him one of the two crisp hundred dollar bills.

  “Oh, no, I can’t accept that!” He handed the bill back to me.

  “Sure you can. Otherwise, you and I could not sign this terribly official insurance form in triplicate—you know how insurance companies are.”

  He signed it. I gave him his copy and firmly handed him the money, gave the Ryders their copy and stood up. “My work is finished here. Here’s my card. Call me in June, sir, and we have a date.”

  He blushed as if I’d asked him to the prom and shook my hand about six times. I gave the Ryders a brisk nod and left, feeling righteous.

  I was also feeling thirsty and hungry, and since it was noon-ish, my thoughts turned naturally to the Wharf Rat Bar. Fargo and I would treat ourselves to lunch as reward for a job well and neatly done.

  I lucked into a parking space right up the alley from the Rat. Even in early April there was considerable traffic on Commercial Street. It was a good thing the sand dunes were part of the National Seashore, with very limited access, or I guessed people would be skiing down them in January.

  Fargo hunkered down beside the big old anchor half-buried in front of the Rat, and I arranged his leash to give him a choice of shade or sun. “Luncheon will be served shortly,” I reassured him, and went in.

  The Wharf Rat Bar never changed regardless of season. Tables and chairs were unmatched, walls were hung with lobster pots and old wooden buoys, fishnets and oars. In one dim corner stood a ship’s telegraph taken from a ferry long gone to some phantom crossing in the sky, the indicator frozen on dead slow astern…I thought it a fitting motto for the Rat. Taking a seat at the bar, I greeted Joe, the owner/bartender and added, “Thanks, Joe,” for the cold Bud he placed in front of me. “His Nibs is out front and would like a super-rare hamburger, plain, and some water. What would I like? What is Billie’s triumph du jour?”

  “A lobster salad that’s going fast. I better put your order in.” He turned for the kitchen. I didn’t argue. Anything Billie made was always good. It was talking with her that was sometimes a problem. Her conversation could be a little hard to follow.

  After serving the carefully cut-up hamburger on a plastic saucer and a bowl of water with an ice cube afloat in it, I returned inside to find my own luncheon sitting on the bar and Joe’s wife, Billie standing behind it. “This seems to be selling good and I think the tourists like it, too. I wanted your opinion on it, whether or not I put in on the regular menu. Not that they would know it. You and your Mama know good food…though she ain’t here today. How is she? It’s what they call labor intensive.”

  I took a sample bite, using the time to sort out Billie’s comments. “Mom’s fine, and this is delicious! It’s also beautifully served. I’ll have to send her by to try it. Will you have it on the menu tomorrow?”

  “For Jeanne I will. Not for the hoy old boy.”

  I thought for a minute; then I got it. Mom would be glad she was not considered one of the hoi polloi.” I smiled. Billie smiled and returned to her kitchen, a tall, spare, rather colorless woman whose food needed no makeup and no lessons in syntax.

  As I ate the salad—large chunks of tender lobster mixed with chopped black olives, celery hearts, a caper here and there, a bit of cilantro and very little mayonnaise—all put back in the shell and served with two miniature biscuits and corn muffins, I found myself relaxing after the rather hectic morning.

  Idly, I watched Joe mixing drinks, pouring beer, as he served other customers. He and Billie were a strange couple. Joe was shorter than she and muscular, as if he might have been a boxer in his youth. And he wore a little mustache across his upper lip as so many short men do. He liked the ladies, and rumor said some liked him back. But I always wondered how he escaped the eagle in the kitchen.

  Soon, I recognized a familiar greeting.

  An aroma of fried fish, onions and beer announced the arrival of Harmon, winner by an easy length of the title Town Character. He had been lunching at the large round table in the front of the Rat, sharing it with a group of part-time fishermen whom Joe had dubbed The Blues Brothers, because of their continuous chorus bewailing the quotas on fish, the paucity of fish, the incursions on their fishing grounds by foreigners and even swordfish-hunting Floridians and the outrageous cost of fuel it took to go after the fish in the first place.

  Harmon was a Blues Brother in good standing but, even more than he despised poachers, he hated drug dealers. And he saw them on every street corner every hour of the day. According to Harmon, Provincetown dealt more dope than Colombia could supply. In Harmon’s program, local fishing boats took heavy loads off mother ships far out in the Atlantic. By other accounts, private aircraft landed it boldly at our airport, and seaplanes splashed down in our harbor, with wives and children acting as covers for their true cargo. Tour buses delivered dealers by the dozen and private pleasure boats didn’t bear examination.

  It would have been a harmless obsession had Harmon merely kept these tales for his front-table confreres. Unfortunately, he insisted on reporting every new discovery to my brother, Detective Lieutenant Edward J. (Sonny) Peres of Provincetown’s finest. Sonny, although fond of Harmon, had developed many ways to dodge him, which meant that Harmon sent many of his messages to Sonny through me. I wasn’t good at dodging, and—anyway—I wouldn’t have hurt his feelings for the world. He was honest, kind, gentle and a marvelous handyman. In Ptown nowadays, one does not knowingly estrange a good handyman.

  “Hello, there, Harmon, how’s life treating you?”

  “Not bad, Alex, not bad,
but I need to get hold of Sonny, and at the police station they don’t seem to know where he is. I wondered if you did.”

  I shook my head. “No idea.” I moved my hand in a circling motion, and Joe set a beer in front of each of us. I nodded my thanks and pushed some money across the bar to cover the beers and my lunch. “Can I help you with anything?” I knew he’d ask me anyway.

  “Come to think of it,” Harmon replied, “I’m sure you can. Cassie’s a friend of yours, and I’m afraid she may be in serious danger.”

  I suddenly lost interest in the plate before me and turned rapt attention toward Harmon. Cassie Deane had been my close friend for years. She owned Outer Cape Charter Aviation—which had a fleet of one lovely, sleek twin engine Beechcraft. Cassie was CEO, pilot, mechanic, receptionist, skycap and business manager of the firm.

  The thought of Cassie in danger had me ready to go get my Belgian Browning .32 automatic out of my safe and dash to the airport.

  “Tell me, Harmon. Who’s after Cassie, and why?”

  “Druggies. Three of ’em.”

  “Oh, come on, Harmon, Cassie isn’t into drugs, never has been.”

  “I know that. It’s her plane they want, and if she won’t rent it to them, they’ll hire her to fly it and then kill her when they get there.”

  “Start at the top,” I snapped. “You’re not making sense.”

  “Okay.” He frowned, and I could almost see his mind working back to where he should start his latest drama.

  “Okay,” he repeated. “Yesterday I was at Ms. Lynn’s place, paintin’ her picket fence out in front of the house…and you know there ain’t nothing gives you more time to think about somethin’ else than painting a picket fence!”

  I laughed. I had one myself and so did my mother, and Harmon was dead right.

  He grinned at me and continued. “Well, there was three fellas come along and sat down on one of them benches the town has put up along the sidewalks here and there for the tourists to take a rest from spendin’ money on stuff they don’t need. They started talking, and I kind of half painted and half listened to what they had to say. Now, Alex, it’s going to be one of the biggest drug trades Provincetown ever seen…I kid you not!”

  I should have guessed. “Well, how about that!” I shook my head. “And just how is Cassie involved?” My worries about my friend’s safety were waning fast.

  “It seems like these big dealers ain’t satisfied with shipping drugs down to Connecticut and New York no more—these men were talking about a shipment to some little town way out near Pittsburgh! I tell you, we’ll be supplying the whole country soon. They want to rent Cassie’s plane in early May and fly themselves and what they called their ‘cargo’ out to this little town…one of the men apparently has a pilot’s license. But Cassie, she wasn’t buying. She told them she goes where the plane goes.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “She doesn’t trust a soul but herself with that plane. You can’t blame her, it’s her livelihood. And anyway, she loves it.”

  “I know, Alex, I know. Anyway, this one guy, he says he don’t want to get involved with no woman pilot: if she don’t crash them, she’ll set ’em down somewhere in Alaska. The other guy says he hears she’s a super-good pilot and shouldn’t have no trouble with a night landing in a unlit field, but if she does the flying, what do they do with her once they get there?”

  That sounded strange to me. If the charter were legitimate and Cassie had no return passengers, they’d have to get her some motel room overnight and, of course, pay for gas and time on her trip home. And what was this about an unlit field? I took a sip of my beer, lunch now pushed aside, and lit a cigarette. It was my third of the day. If I exceeded five, I’d give my wrist a good hard slap.

  Harmon drained his bottle of beer, wiped his mouth daintily on his sleeve and went on. “The fat guy says you can always just fill up her handbag with the cargo and send her home; that ought to make her happy. They all laughed at that, but the hard-to-please guy says, ‘You got to do more than that, and you know it. You can’t leave that plane in the middle of your pasture, Frank, half the town would be climbing all over it. And what about her. She’s bound to tumble to what’s up, and lots of people don’t exactly love people like us. Then we’d have to take care of her some way.’ That’s exactly what he said, Alex. And that don’t sound good to me.”

  It didn’t sound good to me either. Apparently one man was fat. One was called Frank. And that was all we knew except they were taking “cargo” to a pasture somewhere near Pittsburgh and would have to do something with the pilot after they landed. It would be virtually impossible to track them down here in town—and they might not even be staying in Ptown. Well, they had to be in contact with Cassie. Sonny could put a cop on her and find out what this cargo was.

  “Harmon, it sounds downright bad to me. I’ll chase Sonny down and have him contact you. You may remember something else they said and what they looked like or maybe the name of the town. I don’t want Cassie kidnapped or something worse. Thanks a million for being bored with your fence!”

  “Tell Sonny I’ll be at Ms. Lynn’s…painting the back fence. Thanks for the beer.”

  He patted my shoulder and left.

  I went back to my lunch, but I finished the salad, more to keep from hurting Billie’s feelings than from any great appetite.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I knew exactly where my cell phone was…for a change. Usually my phone calls were not crises and could wait until I got home or to a pay phone without causing a problem. Sonny insisted that someday a bear would be coming through the front door, and I’d be asking myself where I might have left the cell phone. I told him I would simply exit through the back door and leave the bear with the house, the bowl of porridge, the just-right bed and the cell phone if he could find it.

  Actually, I knew Sonny was right and once again promised myself to keep the damned thing in my pocket or purse, if I were carrying one, which was rare. I was pretty sure the phone was on my bedside table, and I hated to go home. It was only two o’clock. And the Orrick crew would be at full afternoon volume. I decided to see if my mom were home and start my Sonny search from there.

  Theoretically, Sonny lived with Mom…for the third time since childhood. He was now twice divorced, with only one ex-wife remarried and two kids approaching the expensive teen and then college years. So he was on a tight budget, and Mom’s midget rent included many meals. She drew the line at laundry, however. If he could drive a car, she opined, he could run a washer and dryer.

  His current girlfriend, Trish, was a smart and successful young lawyer here in town—too kind, I thought, for her own good. Fortunately, neither she nor Sonny seemed to have marriage on the mind. For which our family—and doubtless hers—gave frequent thanks. Sonny did, however, spend numerous nights at her apartment.

  Anyway, Mom might know his schedule for the day. At least I could use her phone to have Nacho at police headquarters track him down.

  As I turned into her driveway, I noticed Mom’s car in the garage, so probably she was home. And it was still home to me, too, in a way. I guess the house you were raised in is always home, no matter where you spend your adult years.

  The house today looked much as it had when I was a kid. Like most old Cape homes, it was set close to the street, with a small front lawn and the de rigueur white picket fence.

  The house itself was a cheerful yellow with maroon shutters—if it had ever been painted anything else, it was before my time. The backyard was sizeable by Provincetown standards, with several flower beds and a very small vegetable garden that grew an amazing crop. Mom said her success was due to placing the plants so close to each other, there was no room for weeds. I’ve never figured out if she were serious about that or not, but it seemed to work.

  The lady of the house was in residence, busily washing down the outdoor furniture, which had spent the winter in the basement.

  “Hello, darling!” She turned the hose away and presen
ted a damp cheek for a kiss. “I don’t know how I always seem to get more water on me than on the tables and chairs,” she grumbled.

  “It’s because you have a secret wish to return to childhood and play in the water,” I replied.

  “And just how do you know that, Dr. Freud?”

  “Becauss, I do ze same thing myself, you zilly voman.” I laughed and gave her a hug, water and all.

  At that moment Fargo felt neglected and jumped against Mom with muddy paws, and began to slurp a drink from the hose she held. “My, God,” she squealed. “It’s endemic! Get down, you beast!”

  She turned to me. “Well, dear, did you just stop by to raise havoc, or is there some other reason for this very welcome visit?”

  “Actually, I’m looking for Sonny.”

  She shook her head. “You won’t find him this afternoon unless it’s truly a matter of life and death. He and Mitch are checking auto repair garages all the way down Cape, trying to come up with the car that played hit-and-run with old Mr. Alves yesterday. It cost him a leg, you know, and all sorts of lesser injuries.”

  I shook my head. “I hadn’t even heard about it. And I was just at the Wharf Rat. What’s happening to our jungle drums? Is he going to be okay…I mean as much okay as possible?”

  “I don’t know. Last night he was critical, but stable, whatever that means. Come on in, I could use a coffee break, not to mention some dry clothes.”

  We went inside. While Mom changed clothes, I wiped Fargo down with a clean, dry rag which rapidly became no longer clean or dry. He then sat down and stared up at the canister where Mom kept his treats. I fished one out. “You don’t deserve this, but it’s easier than watching you melt away from starvation.” He accepted it graciously.

  I remembered to say thank you for the coffee, after Mom returned and we sat at the kitchen table. And I accepted the chocolate chip cookie graciously. After a sip or two of coffee and a bite or two of the cookie, I told my mother essentially what Harmon had told me.