Murder Came Second (15 page)

Is he gay? Who knows? He turned down this reporter’s dinner invitation because he was “too busy.” Did he possibly think I was asking for a date? But he wasn’t too busy to have a drink that afternoon with our endearing young Horatio, whose sexual orientation is so well-known so intimately to so many. Maybe this was Detective Lieutenant Edward (Sonny, what else?) Peres’s “busy-ness”?

Oh, Sonny was going to love this! His buddies would be teasing him for the next ten years! I read on to see what else Terese had to offer.

I asked Sonny about crime in Ptown. His reply was, “We try to keep our town safe for everyone.” I pinpointed Provincetown’s drug problem, and he answered, “What drug problem?” Really!

Actually, Provincetown has a horrendous drug problem. Nearly every day, the so-called fishing fleet leaves the docks to rendezvous with mother ships over the horizon. They then bring the drugs ashore where they are transshipped across New England and New York. And sales are made locally in broad daylight on most any street corner.”

I laughed aloud. Terese had swallowed Harmon’s determined belief in mother ships hovering offshore to load up various fishing vessels with drugs. Our hardworking fishermen were likely to lynch her, if Sonny didn’t beat ’em to it. He’d really love the crack about drug sales on every street corner! I had a feeling Ms. Segal might be un-embedded and headed home very shortly. And possibly on the end of Sonny’s highly polished boot. I went back to the article.

And who is the lone warrior in an attempt to slow this flood of narcotics? He is a so-called, pseudo undercover agent of the Ptown police, a true diamond in the rough who drifts around town doing odd jobs and picking up information wherever he can, with little or no assistance. He is, for instance, now posing as a groundskeeper for the inn where Paul Carlucci, the stars of the troupe and I are staying. Harmon Killingsly is his name, and even his casual conversation leaves no doubt where his interests lie. I suppose he assumes a theatrical group might provide a ready market for these busy drug dealers, though I’ve seen little evidence of it.

Harmon may be the simple rustic, but he’s all that Ptown has.

More next week from Provincetown. Where Terese Segal sees all.

I laid the magazine down in disbelief. Terese had swallowed my off-the-cuff spiel and Harmon’s ramblings hook, line and sinker and put a spin on them that wouldn’t have occurred to me by the next millennium.

In one medium-length article, she had managed to infuriate various shopkeepers, restaurateurs, innkeepers, the fishermen, the entire police department and doubtless the board of selectmen. And that didn’t count the people connected with the play! Only Carlucci had come out well, and unless his entire endeavor here was beyond my small town comprehension, he was teetering on the edge of a resounding disaster with or without Terese’s help.

This called for a beer. I looked at the fridge and decided the Wharf Rat was a better choice. “Let’s saddle up, Fargo. I feel the need for companionship. I do believe we may be under attack by foreigners.” Ever faithful, ever ready to go, he waited and grinned and wiggled by the back door until I got his leash, and we were off.

The Rat was still busy with late-lunching tourists, but there were a good number of locals at the bar, and the front table had every seat filled with a group of fishermen, a few local workmen and a tight-lipped Harmon. Conversation at the table was low-pitched and solemn. I waved as I passed, but I don’t think they even noticed me.

Looking around for a table for myself, I didn’t see one, but I did spot a table for two, occupied by my mother and Noel. I walked over to say hello and accidentally nudged a couple of shopping bags tucked under the table.

“Presents for my kids,” Noel explained. “Jeanne was nice enough to help me pick them out. Now all I have to do is mail them.”

“I think I’ve got an empty carton at home that’s just about the right size to hold them,” Mom said.

Noel made a circle with thumb and forefinger and smiled. “Alex, shall we try to find an extra chair? We can make some room here.”

“No, no, finish your lunch in peace. People would be tripping over me in the aisle. Enjoy your meal. Talk to you later, Mom.” I leaned and gave her a peck on the cheek. She smiled and gave my head a pat, and returned to her clam cakes. Well, at least Noel was gentleman enough to buy her lunch after she drove him and his groceries home and then helped him shop. At least I assumed he was buying.

I found a seat at the bar next to a man whose name escaped me. I thought he owned a small shop downtown. As I sat down and Joe set a Bud in front of me, the man pushed his half-filled lunch plate and coffee mug toward Joe.

“Nothing wrong with Billie’s food, Joe, but that damn magazine article’s give me heartburn. Sayin’ the town’s fulla dope and junk souvenirs and bad food. How many people you think read that thing?”

Joe shrugged. I swallowed a sip of beer and answered for him. “Not enough to cause us grief unless it goes on for another issue or two.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” the man disagreed. “It makes us all sound like a bunch of drug lords and rip-off artists, and stuff like that, it spreads.”

“I’ll be surprised if there’s a second one like it,” I said in an effort to placate. “I imagine there will be a bunch of phone calls to the
A-List
from the Town Manager and the Coast Guard and the Massachusetts Board of Tourism. Maybe even a Senator or two. I think Terese’s next article will be pure whipped topping.”

“She oughtn’t be allowed to write a next article at all,” the man grumbled, sliding off the barstool and turning toward the door. “She should be stopped. Maybe some of us should get together and just see to that.”

Joe flashed a sour grin and leaned toward me to speak softly. “Don’s upset. Some tourists in his shop this morning were laughing about the
A-List
and calling his so-called merchandise ‘junk.’ Of course, it
is
junk!”

I laughed. “Hurts worse when it’s true, huh?”

“Alex, I’m awful worried.” I turned to see Harmon now seated beside me.

“What’s wrong, Harmon?”

“That damned woman, that’s what’s wrong. Here I thought she was just a nice lady, up here to write stories about them acting people, and look what she’s gone and done!” I thought he might cry. And I felt very guilty. I certainly hadn’t helped matters with my clever remarks to Terese.

Signaling Joe for a beer for Harmon, I patted his hand. “I don’t think there’s any great harm done. Most people have sense enough to take magazine articles like that with a big grain of salt.”

“I’m afraid Sonny’s gonna be real mad at me, Alex, but I never—I
never—
told that damn red-headed snake I was a cop. She was all sweet and worried about drugs in town, and I told her how I kind of kept an eye on things. Just trying to make her feel safer. You understand?”

Sadly, I understood only too well how a well-meaning, innocent Harmon and a conniving, spinmeister Terese had produced a believable wicked fairy tale that would make perfect sense to anyone who didn’t know Ptown.

“Well.” His face tightened with an anger I had never seen him show before. “She’s done made fools of all of us, even Sonny. It don’t matter about me so much, but Sonny, he’s an important man in this town. People look up to him like he’s a rolled model, and that bitch ain’t got no right to make him look bad. We can’t let that go on!”

I pushed the bottle in front of him. “Sonny won’t be mad. He understands that kind of person, and he knows you wouldn’t lie about being on the force. Don’t worry. It’s not a big thing. Here, Harmon, have your beer and tell me how Tom and Geraldine are coming along.”

At least I hoped it wasn’t a big thing. Too many people feeling like Don and Harmon would not be good—for themselves or the town. Maybe not for Terese either. I hoped the Governor of Massachusetts would draft a firm letter to her editor.

Chapter 13

I had to admit that Terese Segal and the
A-List
had certainly made an impression on the town. By the next day, I think everyone over the age of six had read the damn piece, and everyone had a grumble. From Aunt Mae to the mailman, I heard the chorus:
She must be stopped.

It began to sound like one of those weird movies where the entire village unites and burns the evilly possessed woman at the stake, while the police force studiously looks the other way. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a lynch mob proceeding up my street with grim, silent determination. The only thing that really bothered me about that scenario was my niggling desire to join it.

And the merry band next door was anything but. Only Carlucci seemed to be on good terms with Terese. The others all seemed to speak in whispers among themselves, except for Nick, who spent most of his time closed in the garage, probably with a cross and a bulb of garlic.

She had them all scared, and after a day or so, they began to take it out on each other. Hamlet, while sunning in the backyard, was joined by Polonius, with some complaint about Hamlet’s “trampling, absolutely stomping on my lines, and I will not have it!”

Hamlet stood, I presumed to cash in on his height advantage over Polonius, and insisted he was merely “answering briskly, as any young college man would reply to some old trout droning on about what to do or not to do once you get to college.”

Polonius simpered. “
Young college man?
You’d better put some dye on the sideburns, then. The gray is showing.”

“It’s nothing, but I’ll take care of it. Many people start to gray in their twenties.”

“Twenties! You’re thirty-five if you’re a day.”

Hamlet then literally stamped his foot and screamed, “Am not!”

I had taken my laptop out to the picnic table, assuming that Fargo and I would enjoy a little fresh air while I completed some reports that were rapidly approaching the overdue mark. It seemed I had made a mistake. I might as well have brought out the little TV and watched soaps. Although I didn’t need to watch one on TV. I felt I was living in one.

I looked over at the now empty yard and tried again to finish the reports. I was about halfway through the second one when I jumped at the sound of the back screen door crashing open across the way as Nick Peters stormed through it, and crashing again as Ophelia came out hard on his heels.

“It’s bad enough I have to share a bathroom with the likes of you under any circumstances, but you make it impossible! The maids clean it every morning, and by noon it’s a mess again. Get up there and clean up your stuff and wash that tub! I want to take a bath later.”

“So take it.” He walked on toward the garage.

Ophelia grabbed his shirt and spun him around. “I am going over to Jake’s to work on my solo. I will be back in an hour. If that bathroom isn’t clean, I’m going to take all your smelly, icky clothing and soggy towels and put them on the sidewalk with a big sign saying, ‘Plague! Nick Peters’s filthy clothes. Beware of lice!’” She released her hold and walked away.

“In your dreams!” he called after her. “You wouldn’t dare.” But I noticed that as soon as Ophelia was out of sight, Nick walked back to the house.

I gave up and returned to mine, but not before I had been treated to a small tiff between Noel and Elaine. Elaine complained that when she ran to the Duke in one of their many love scenes, he caught her the wrong way and hurt her back. He replied in an ultra-patient tone that if she would merely lean into him rather than collapsing into his arms, he wouldn’t have to support her so tightly—to the point of wrenching his own shoulders.

At that point Hamlet sat up in a deck chair he had placed beneath a small shade tree. “You know, Elaine, if you would pace yourself to end up with your weight on your right foot, then when you turn to the left to embrace Noel, your balance would be better and—”

Elaine’s head snapped around almost audibly. “What did you study in that so-called acting school, ballroom dancing?”

Placatingly, Noel intervened, “Actually, Elaine, he may have something. We could try it.”