Hell Bent (18 page)

He nodded. “I work here every day except Sunday. I own the place.”

“I’m wondering if Gus Shaw came in, made a purchase.”

“Not that I remember.”

“You have records, right?”

“Sure. Every bottle that goes out of here has to be recorded. If they pay with a credit card, we got their name, too. But—”

“Check for me, would you?”

“Look, Mr.”—he glanced at the card I’d given him—”Mr. Coyne. Lawyer or whatever, I don’t see why I should let you look at my business records.”

“I don’t want to look at them,” I said. “I want you to look at them.”

He shrugged. “Why?”

“You’d be doing Gus’s family a great kindness.”

“It makes a difference if he was in here buying booze?”

“To the family it does, yes.”

Mike shook his head. “I don’t know …”

“I just want to know if he bought a pint of Early Times
bourbon. It would’ve been sometime around noon on Friday, a week ago yesterday.”

“You said you were a lawyer, right?”

I nodded.

“So say I did sell him a pint of Early Times,” he said. “Would I be liable or something? For what he did to himself, I mean?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“You’re not trying to get me in trouble here?”

“I’m just trying to learn the truth,” I said. “Hoping you can help.”

“I was brought up not to trust lawyers, you know what I mean?” He looked at me for a moment, then shrugged. “Ah, what the hell. It’ll just take a minute. It’s all on the computer.”

Mike’s computer was next to his cash register. He pecked at some keys and frowned at the screen and made some notes on a yellow legal pad, and a few minutes later he looked up at me. “I sold two pints of Early Times that day,” he said. “One at two thirty-five in the afternoon, the other at five past six. Both cash. I’m sorry. I don’t remember who bought them. It might’ve been Mr. Shaw, I don’t know. I got another clerk, came on at noon that day, and we’ve got three of us here from five to closing on Fridays. We sell a lot of beer on Fridays, you know? Gotta keep the coolers stocked and the customers happy.”

The times were off. Two thirty and six o’clock didn’t fit with what I knew of Gus’s activities that day. Jemma said that he walked out of the camera store around noon. I guessed that if he bought a bottle that day, it would’ve been right after that, on his way home, not two and a half hours later. And he was at his apartment writing his e-mail to Claudia before six, when the second bottle was sold.

On the other hand, if somebody could place Gus at Patriot
Spirits in Concord center at six o’clock that day, it would call all of the forensic evidence and inferences into question.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d do me a favor,” I said to Mike. “Check with those other two guys, ask them if they remember seeing Gus Shaw that day. Big guy, red beard, missing his right hand. Bought a pint of Early Times.”

“He should be easy to remember,” said Mike.

“I appreciate it. You’ve got my card. Give me a call anytime. It’s for a good cause.”

I held out my hand to him, and he shook it. “Joey’ll be in this afternoon. The other one, Danny, I’ll give him a call. I’ll get ahold of you if we come up with something.”

I stepped out onto the sidewalk. The sun was bright, and it was warming the late-October air and setting fire to the orange and scarlet foliage on the big maples and oaks that lined the village green. Another gorgeous autumn day in Concord, Massachusetts, and judging by the traffic on Main Street and the clusters of camera-toting folks strolling on the sidewalks and milling around on the green, it was peak tourist season.

I headed for my car, which I’d left in the big municipal lot off Main. I thought of calling Alex, just to say hello, tell her I was glad she was spending the weekend at my house even if we were doing different things in different places much of the time. She had some research to do at the Boston Public Library, and she wanted to walk around the South End and get a flavor of the neighborhoods where a couple of her fictional characters lived. We’d agreed to meet back at my house around suppertime.

It all felt familiar and comfortable. Weekends together, but going our own ways, doing our own things. Our old habit from seven years ago, and we’d slipped right back into it.

I decided not to call Alex. All I wanted to tell her was that
sleeping with her was a lot of fun and I looked forward to doing it again.

Gordon Cahill, the best PI in Boston, once told me that when he wanted to talk to somebody, he never made an appointment or called ahead of time. “If they’ve got something to hide,” he said, “you’re just giving them time to find a place to hide it.”

I was driving down Monument Street to the old colonial where Herb and Beth Croyden, Gus Shaw’s erstwhile landlords, lived. It was a little after noon, and maybe I’d catch them having lunch. I’d be interrupting, and I’d apologize, but if they invited me to join them, I wouldn’t refuse, no matter how insincere their invitation might be.

It wasn’t that I suspected the Croydens of anything. At this point, I didn’t suspect anybody of anything, which was just another way of suspecting everybody of everything.

A gravel driveway led up to a barn beside the house. I guessed the house had been standing right there on the morning of April 19, 1775, when the Minutemen repelled the British lobsterbacks at the rude bridge, which was less than a mile down the street. Now, after two centuries of floods, the third or fourth replica of the bridge spanned the Concord River in the same place as the original, and the statue of the Minuteman with his plow and his musket stood guard over it.

The Croyden house looked authentically colonial to me. It had three giant square chimneys—one in the middle and one on each end—a granite foundation, an oaken front door, many small panes in the windows, and shutters that looked sturdy enough to repel arrows, if not musket balls. It would take the outstretched arms of two full-grown men to embrace the trunks of the twin maple trees that framed the front walk.

The barn looked like it might have been standing there for over two hundred years, too. The carriage house where Gus had lived was not visible behind the thick screen of hemlocks beyond the house.

I pulled up beside a green Range Rover in front of the barn. When I turned off the ignition and opened the car door, I heard the roar of an engine coming from beyond the house, and when I stepped out, a lawn tractor came chugging around the corner. Herb Croyden, wearing bib overalls and a gray sweatshirt, was driving, and his golden retriever—Gracie was her name, I remembered—was bounding along beside him.

Herb waved, disengaged the blades of the machine, drove over to where I was standing, and turned off his tractor.

Gracie came to me and dropped a slimy tennis ball at my feet. I picked it up and threw it across the lawn. She went galloping after it.

“She won’t let you alone now,” said Herb. “You’ve made a friend for life, I’m afraid. She’ll want to play ball with you all afternoon.” He got off his mower and held out his hand. “Mr. Coyne, right?”

I shook his hand. “Yes. We met the night Gus …”

He nodded. “Of course. I remember. It’s good to see you. You haven’t met Beth, have you? My wife?”

“No. I’d like to.”

“She’s around back planting bulbs,” he said. “I let her do all the bending and kneeling in our family. I drive the machines.”

Gracie came back with her tennis ball. She pushed her nose against my leg. When I reached for the ball, she scampered away, then turned to face me, crouched on her front legs, her butt up in the air and her tail swishing back and forth, challenging me to catch her.

“I’m telling you,” said Herb. “Ignore her now or you’re sunk. Come on. This way.”

He led me around to the back of the house. It looked as if the Croydens’ main hobby was tending to their grounds. The lawns and shrubs grew lush and green, and the gardens were freshly mulched and neatly edged and rioting with autumn blooms.

Beth Croyden was kneeling alongside a kidney-shaped garden in the middle of the lawn. It featured a birdbath and some kind of miniature weeping fruit tree. When Herb spoke to her, she turned and looked at us, and I saw that she was quite a bit younger than her husband. Early forties, I guessed. Herb was pushing sixty. Beth’s baggy work pants and sweatshirt did little to hide her trim body.

“This is Mr. Coyne,” said Herb. “He was Gus’s lawyer. I mentioned meeting him the other night, remember?”

Beth Croyden smiled and pushed herself to her feet, and when she came over to where we were standing, I saw that she was tall—taller than Herb by half a head—and she carried herself with the gangly grace of someone who’d been raised with horses and hounds.

She tugged off her gardening gloves and held out her hand to me. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Coyne.” There was something southern and honeyed in her voice. She had turned my last name into a multisyllable word.

We shook. Her grip was firm and her hand was hard and muscular. “I’m sorry to intrude,” I said.

“You’re not intruding,” she said. “How about something to drink? Beer? Coffee?”

“Coffee would be great,” I said.

“I’ll bring it out,” she said. “Why don’t you boys sit at the patio.”

She turned and went into the house. Herb gestured to a round glass-topped table on a fieldstone patio off the back of the house. We went over and sat down. Gracie followed us. She dropped her tennis ball at my feet, then sat there looking expectantly at me.

“Sorry,” I told her.

Gracie’s expression didn’t change. Henry knew the meaning of the word “sorry.” Whenever I said it to him, his ears drooped and he slinked over to a corner, curled up with his back to me, and sulked. Apparently Gracie’s vocabulary was more limited.

“So what brings you around?” said Herb. “It’s about Gus, of course. Terrible thing. We’re both devastated.”

I nodded. “I wanted to get your take—yours and your wife’s—on what happened, and I was hoping I could take a look at his apartment.”

“Sure, no problem. You can see the place. They took away the police tape a few days ago.” He frowned. “I thought it was a suicide, though. Didn’t the police make that official? What is there to talk about?”

I waved my hand vaguely. “There are still some legal loose ends.”

“Ah,” he said. “And you being his lawyer …”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

At that moment, Beth Croyden came out. She was carrying a tray that held a big stainless-steel carafe, three coffee mugs, some spoons and napkins, and containers of sweetener and cream. Herb leaped up, took the tray from her, and put it on the table.

Beth poured coffee into the three mugs. Then she sat down. “What have I missed?” she said.

“Mr. Coyne was just saying that he’s tying up some loose ends about what happened to Gus,” Herb said.

She cocked her head and looked at me. She had big green eyes with just the hint of smile lines at the corners. “What sort of loose ends, Mr. Coyne?”

“Legal things,” I said. “Details.”

Beth smiled. “Legal bullshit, huh?”

“Sure,” I said. “I was trying to be polite.”

“Oh,” she said, “don’t worry about that. We’re pretty informal around here. Right, dear?” She reached over and gave Herb’s hand a squeeze.

He grinned. “Excessively informal sometimes.”

“The police were here, you know,” said Beth. “Asked us a lot of questions.”

“I assumed they did,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind if I should happen to ask you some of the same questions.”

“No, that’s okay,” said Herb. “We want to help any way we can.”

“So what do you want to know, Mr. Coyne?” said Beth. “How can we help you straighten out your legal details?”

“I’m wondering if either of you was home on that Friday between five in the afternoon and eleven at night?”

“At the time Gus … when it happened, you mean,” said Beth.

I nodded.

They looked at each other, then Herb said, “I had a golf match and then stayed for dinner at the club, as I always do on Fridays. It was dark when I got home. What time was it? Do you remember, dear?”

Beth looked up at the sky. “It was after nine, I’d say. You told me you had a couple of drinks and played a few hands of gin rummy after dinner.” She turned to me. “Since he retired, Herb’s become quite the country clubber.”

“You were here when Herb got home, then,” I said to Beth.

“I volunteer over at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln on
Tuesdays and Fridays. I knew my husband would be late, so I had supper with a friend. I probably got home around seven thirty or eight o’clock.”

“Did either of you notice whether Gus had company that day?”

“We tried to make it a point not to notice things like that,” said Herb. “Gus took his privacy very seriously, and we respected that.”

I nodded. “But if a car drove in or out …”

“Sure,” he said. “It would go right past our house. Unless we were in the bedroom or watching TV in the family room, which are on the back side of the house, we’d most likely notice.”

“And you noticed nobody that evening?”

Beth and Herb both shook their heads.

“What if somebody were on foot?” I said.

“I suppose we might not see them,” said Beth, “especially if it was after dark. We might hear a car, but unless we happened to be looking out the window …”

“Why are you asking this?” said Herb. “Do you think somebody else was there when Gus … when he did what he did?”

“It’s just one of those loose ends,” I said.

“A witness,” Beth said to Herb. “He’s looking for a witness.”

“Well,” said Herb, “I thought the police already arrived at their verdict.”

“I’m wondering about other times, too,” I said. “Cars coming or going, people who might’ve visited Gus at his apartment.”

“He had visitors,” Beth said. “Not often, but occasionally.”

“Do you know who they were?”

Beth and Herb exchanged glances, then they both shrugged.

“It would be better,” I said, “if you told me. Gus’s privacy is a moot point now.”

“I understand,” said Herb. “But still …”

Beth touched Herb’s wrist. “It can’t do any harm.” She turned to me. “There was that woman he worked with. She came by now and then.”