Plum Island (52 page)

“That’s what I’ve been telling you.” I asked her, “Where does Stevens live?”

“Connecticut. New London. There’s a government ferry from New London to Plum.”

“Give me his address and phone number.”

She found it in her notes and started to write it out, but I said, “I have a photographic memory. Just tell me.”

She looked at me, again with an expression of slight dis-belief. Why doesn’t anyone take me seriously? In any case, she told
me Paul Stevens’ address and phone number, which I tucked away in a crevice of my brain. I stood and said, “Let’s take a walk.”

W
e went out back and walked down to the water. She said, “This is very nice.”

“I’m beginning to appreciate it.” I picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across the water. It made three skims before it
sank.

Beth found a nice skimmer, cocked her arm, and let loose, throwing her whole body into the motion. The stone did four hits
before it sank.

I said, “Hey, nice arm.”

“I pitch. Homicide softball team.” She took another stone and threw it at the piling at the end of the pier. It missed the
piling by inches and she tried again.

I watched her chucking stones at the piling. What had turned me on, still turned me on. It was her looks, for sure— but also
her aloofness. I love it when they’re aloof. I think. Anyway, I was fairly sure that finding Emma in the house had embarrassed
her and annoyed her. More important, she was surprised at how she felt, and maybe what she felt was competition. I said, “I
missed your company. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

She glanced at me between throws and said, “Then you’re absolutely going to love me, because this will probably be the last
time you’ll ever see me.”

“Don’t forget the party tomorrow.”

She ignored that and said, “If I suspected one person out of all the people we spoke to, it would be Paul Stevens.”

“Why?”

She aimed a stone at the piling again and this time hit it. She said to me, “I called him at Plum Island yesterday, and they
said he was out. I pressed and they said he was home sick. I called his home, but no one answered.” She added, “Another disappearing
Plum Islander.”

We walked along the stony shore.

I, too, was not satisfied with Mr. Stevens’ last performance. He
was
a possible murder suspect. As I said, I could very well be wrong about Fredric Tobin, or it could be that Tobin was in cahoots
with Stevens, or it could be neither. I had thought that when I had the motive, I’d have the murderer. But the motive had
turned out to be money, and when the motive is money, the suspects are everybody and anybody.

We walked east along the shore, past my neighbors’ houses. The tide was coming in and the water lapped over the stones. Beth
had her hands tucked in the side pockets of her jacket, and she walked with her head down as if in deep thought. Every now
and then, she’d kick at a stone or sea-shell. She saw a small starfish stranded on the beach, bent down, picked it up, and
threw it back into the bay.

We walked in silence for a while longer, then she said, “Regarding Dr. Zollner, we had a pleasant chat on the phone.”

“Why don’t you call him in?”

“I would, but he’s in Washington. He was summoned to give a statement to the FBI, the Department of Agriculture, and others.
Then, he’s on a traveling schedule—South America, England, a lot of other places that need his expertise.” She said, “They’re
keeping him out of my reach.”

“Get a subpoena.”

She didn’t reply.

I asked, “Are you getting interference from Washington?”

She replied, “Not me, personally. But people I work for are…. You know how it is when your calls are not returned, things
you ask for take too long, meetings you want are put off.”

“I worked a case like that once.” I advised her, “Politicians and bureaucrats will run you around until they figure out if
you can help them or hurt them.”

She asked me, “What are they really afraid of, and what are they covering up?”

“Politicians are afraid of anything they don’t understand, and they don’t understand anything. Just keep working the case.”

She nodded.

I said, “You’ve done a very good job.”

“Thanks.” We turned around and began walking back to my house.

Beth, I reflected, seemed to enjoy the paperwork, the details, the little building blocks that made up the case. There were
detectives who believed that you could solve a case by working with the known elements of forensics, ballistics, and so forth.
Sometimes, that was true. In this case, however, the answers started coming out of left field, and you had to be there to
catch them.

Beth said, “The lab has done a complete job on the Gordons’ two vehicles and their boat. All fingerprints were theirs, except
mine, yours, and Max’s on the boat. Also, on the deck of the boat, they found something strange.”

“Yes?”

“Two things. First, soil, which we know about. But also they found small, very small, slivers of wood that were decayed, rotted.
Not driftwood. There was no salt in the wood. This was buried wood, still showing some soil.” She looked at me. “Any ideas?”

“Let me think about it.”

“Okay.”

Beth continued, “I contacted the county sheriff, a fellow named Will Parker, regarding pistol permits he’s issued in Southold
Township.”

“Good.”

“I also checked with the county pistol license section, and I have a computer printout that shows that there are 1,224 pistol
permits issued by the sheriff and by the county to residents of Southold Township.”

“So, out of the twenty-some thousand residents of this township, we have about twelve hundred registered pistol license holders.
That’s a big number, a lot of people to call on, but not an impossible task.”

“Well,” Beth informed me, “the irony is that when the subject was plague, no task was impossible. But we’re no longer pledging
the whole police budget to solve this case.”

“The Gordons are important to
me
. Their murder is important to me.”

“I know that. And to me. I’m just explaining reality.”

“Why don’t I call your boss so I can explain reality to
him
?”

“Let it go, John. I’ll take care of it.”

“All right.” In truth, while the county PD was turning down the flame on this one, the Feds were secretly working very hard
looking for the wrong type of perp. But that wasn’t my problem. I asked, “Is Mr. Tobin on the pistol license list?”

“Actually, yes. I scanned the list and pulled a few names I knew. Tobin was one.”

“Who else?”

“Well, Max.” She added, “He has an off-duty .45.”

“There’s your perp,” I said, half jokingly. I asked her, “What does Tobin pack?”

She glanced at me and said, “Two pieces—a 9mm Browning and a Colt .45 automatic.”

“My goodness. Is he afraid of grape rustlers?”

“I suppose he carries cash or something. You don’t need a lot of reasons to get a pistol permit in this township if you’re
tight with the sheriff and the chief.”

“Interesting.” Concealed weapons were closely regulated in New York State, but there were places where it was a wee bit easier
to get a permit. Anyway, having two pistols didn’t make F. Tobin a killer, but it was suggestive of certain personality types.
Freddie, I thought, fit into the mild-mannered type who, as Emma suggested, was not physically or verbally violent, but who
would put a bullet through your head if he felt in the least bit threatened by you.

As we approached my piece of the shoreline, Beth stopped and turned toward the water. She stood there, looking at the bay—a
classical pose, I thought, like some oil painting titled,
Woman Gazes at the Sea.
I wondered if Beth Penrose was a spontaneous skinny-dipper, and decided she was definitely not the type.

Beth asked me, “Why does Fredric Tobin interest you?”

“I told you … well, it turns out he was closer to the Gordons than even I realized.”

“So what?”

“I don’t know. Please continue.”

She glanced at me again, then turned from the bay and continued walking. She said, “Okay. Next, we searched the wetlands to
the north of the Gordons’ house, and found a place where a boat may have been dragged into the bul-rushes.”

“Really? Good work.”

“Thank you.” She said, “It’s quite possible someone came that way in a shallow draft craft. High tide Monday was at 7:02
P.M.
, so at about 5:30, it was near high, and there was almost two feet of water in the wetlands beside the Gordon house. You
could pole a shallow-draft boat in through the reeds, and no one would see you on the boat.”

“Very good. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Because you’re spending time thinking of wiseass remarks.”

“I actually don’t think about them.”

She continued, “I’m not saying for certain that a boat was in those reeds, though it appears there was. There are recently
broken bulrushes.” She added, “The muck shows no signs of compression, but we’ve had eight tides since the murder, and that
may have erased any marks in the mud.”

I nodded. “Boy, this is not like a Manhattan homicide. I mean, bulrushes, wetlands, muck, tides, big deep bays with bullets
at the bottom. This is like Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.”

“You see what I mean? You’re a total wiseass.”

“Sorry—”

“Okay, I spoke to Max on the phone, and he’s very annoyed at you for putting Fredric Tobin through the wringer.”

“Fuck Max.”

She said, “I have smoothed things over for you with Max.”

“Thank you so much.”

She asked me, “Did you learn anything from Fredric Tobin?”

“Did I ever. Leaf spread. Maceration of the skins with the juice in the barrels. What else … ?”

“Should I interview him?”

I thought a moment, then replied, “Yes, you should.”

“Are you going to give me any clues about why I should interview him?”

“I will. But not right now. You should, however, forget drugs, bugs, vaccines, and anything to do with the Gordons’ work.”

She stayed silent for a really long time as we walked. Finally, she asked, “Are you certain?”

“I kid you not.” Get it?

“Then
what
is the motive? Tell me.”

“I think I’m getting your goat a little.” Get it?

She looked at me, sort of funny, then asked, “Romance? Sex? Jealousy?”

“Nope.”

“The Wiley land?”

“That’s part of it.”

She seemed deep in thought.

We were back at my uncle’s property now, and we stopped near the dock. We sort of faced one another, both of us with our hands
in our jacket pockets. I was trying to figure out how I felt about this woman in light of Emma, and Beth was trying to figure
out who killed the Gordons. It occurred to me that maybe after the case was solved, then we’d all have to resolve how we felt,
and who we felt it for.

Beth said, “Pick a rock and give it your best shot.”

“Is this a contest?”

“Of course.”

“What’s the prize?”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re not going to win.”

“Well, aren’t we a little overconfident?” I found a really great skimmer—round, flat on the bottom, and concave on the top—a
perfect airfoil. I wound up like it was the final pitch of a three-and-two count and let loose. The rock hit, skipped, hit,
skipped, hit, skipped, hit, skipped, and sank. Wow. “Four,” I said, just in case she wasn’t counting.

She’d already found her skimmer—round, a little bigger than mine, and concave on both sides. That’s another theory. She took
off her jacket and handed it to me. She hefted the stone in her hand like she was considering braining me with it, then, probably
psyched up at the mental image of my head bobbing out there on the water, she let loose.

The stone hit and skipped four times and would have sunk, but it caught a small ripple wave and went airborne one more time
before disappearing.

Beth wiped her hands and took her jacket from me.

“Very good,” I said.

“You lose,” she said. She put her jacket back on and said, “Tell me what you know.”

“You’re such a great detective, I’ll just give you the clues, and you can figure it out. Okay, listen up—the rented house
on the water with the speedboat, the acre of Wiley land, the Peconic Historical Society, the history of Plum Island and surrounding
islands, the lost week in England … what else … the numbers 44106818 … what else?”

“Paul Stevens?”

“Possibly.”

“Fredric Tobin?”

“Possibly.”

“How does he fit? Suspect? Witness?”

“Well, Mr. Tobin and his winery may be dead broke. Or so I heard. So he may be a desperate man. And desperate men do desperate
things.”

Beth replied, “I’ll check out his financials. Meanwhile, thanks for the great clues.”

I replied, “It’s all there, kid. Look for a common denominator, a thread that runs through those clues.”

She didn’t like this game and said, “I have to go. I’ll tell Max you solved the case, and he should give you a call.” She
started back across the lawn toward the house. I followed.