The Clam Bake Murder: A Windward Bay Mystery (7 page)

I gently poured the soup back into the flask and screwed the top on. Retrieved the flick-knife from the side pocket of my rucksack. Opened it. The whispering ceased but the footsteps continued—toward, definitely toward me. I crouched low against the fallen tree, ready to spring into action should this person attack me.

It was so dark now I could barely see to the other end of the hollow, spitting distance. But the stranger had the same problem. He couldn’t see me, otherwise the rhythm of his steps would have been interrupted. Not a single pause. Then it hit me, and I felt idiotic for not having thought of it sooner. There was no point looking for Gordo’s hiding place; this
was
his hiding place! The most sheltered spot opposite the house.

“Gordo?”

Now he halted. “Who’s there?”

I flashed my torch beam at his face, and he threw a gloved hand up to shield his eyes. “Jesus!
Sylvia
—what the hell! Lower that damn thing.”

“Sit down over there, Gordo. Very slowly. No sudden moves,” I told him.

“What are you
doing
here?”

“Looking for you.”

He was wearing a heavy, too-large gray turtleneck sweater that looked as though it had been dipped in the silty shallows—with him inside it—and hadn’t had chance to dry out. His pants were caked with muck. He was badly in need of a shave, resembled a beached fisherman. Pretty much the only unsoiled thing about him was his Red Sox beanie, which I highly doubted belonged to him. He was from Kentucky.

“You got my note?” he asked, creasing his face into a puzzled scowl. “I said lower the damn flashlight.”

“I’ll be giving the orders around here.” But I did as he wished anyway—I know I’d have hated for someone to dazzle me from the darkness.

He sat cross-legged on the hard earth. “Well, you’ve found me. Whoopee-do. What next, Nancy Drew?”

“Don’t even
try
to crack wise! I should turn your sorry ass in right now. Or better yet, bury you out here. For Alice.”

“But you’re not going to do either, are you. Because you’re not convinced I killed her. You suspect there’s someone else involved.”

“I
know
there’s someone else involved.”

He tilted his head to one side. “How do you know?”

“Never mind that. I just want to know what
you
know, Gordo.”

“About what?”

“About everything. The Elysium scheme, your partner in Windward, who was also Alice’s lover, and exactly what happened the night she was murdered.” I tapped the knife blade on the rim of the flashlight. “We’re not going anywhere until I get the whole tale. You understand?”

“You’re nothing like I imagined you. The way Alice described you, I thought you’d be—”

“People change. Some have no choice but to change. You should know that, you cruel sonofabitch. You drained the light right out of her. You made her life a misery.”

He stared at the ground between us, didn’t respond.

“So you tell me the truth, right here, or I’ll bring a world of misery down on you, for what you did to Alice.”

“I didn’t kill her,” he pleaded.

“Then who did?”

“If I tell you, will you promise to let me go and not tell the police I’m in Windward?”

“No.” I paused. “But I’ll think about it. You’ll have to convince me beyond any doubt.”

He waved the notion away. “Not good enough. I
need
to be able to move about freely for the next few days. It’s critical.”

“For what? Elysium?”

He considered his reply. “Partly. But the man who killed Alice—he’s aiming to get away with it, right under everyone’s noses. He’s pinned the whole thing on
me.
I need some evidence to incriminate him
before
we go to the authorities, otherwise he’ll squirm out of it. The same way he squirmed his way into Alice’s bed. That sneaky rat bastard.”

“Who is he, Gordo? Who’s your silent partner? Who killed your wife?”

“I’ll give you his name, but it will have to be at the end, when I’ve figured out how to link him to Alice’s murder.” He took his beanie off to scratch his scalp. “I doesn’t suppose you have anything?”

“Like what?”

“Like some piece of evidence that doesn’t quite fit if I’m the killer. You were in the house for quite a while the other night. What did you find in Alice’s room?”

“Um, nothing really. Just old memorabilia.”

“You sure?”

He’d somehow turned the tables on me—
he
was interrogating
me.
That was the last straw. “Okay, I’ll not say it again. Either you explain it all right now or I march straight to Chief Mattson and take your note with me.” I flashed the torch beam in his face for emphasis.

He just leaned forward, squinted into the glare. “Then do it. Go to Mattson. Tell him what you’ve found out, then tell him
how
you found it out, where you went to get that information.” Rising to his feet, he added, “But before you do, you’ll have to kill me.”

I thought about lifting the knife into the beam and holding it there as a deterrent, but figured he’d already seen it. And I realized—this wasn’t going to end well for me unless I played along. Was he armed? I doubted it; but he was certainly desperate enough to do me harm if he felt he had to.

“So what’s your plan?” I asked. Still dazzling him with the light, to blind him, I took my cell phone out of the rucksack and put it on silent. Then I rang Billy and put the phone back, leaving it switched on. Hopefully he’d realize I was in some sort of trouble and do something police-y about it: go to my house first, see if I’d dialed by mistake, then maybe trace the call, triangulate the location of my cell.

“We’re going to your place,” he said, “and you’re going to show me what you found in Alice’s room.”

“But I didn’t find anything—”

“Bull. You’ve been working overtime putting this whole thing together. Visiting Del Brady, our house, the jetty, your deputy boyfriend, and probably talking to the other Selectmen as well: you’ve earned your Girl Scout badge and then some, Cousin Sylvia.”

“
Don’t
call me that. Not ever. You’re not related to me. You
disgust
me.”

“Be that as it may, we’re still going to your house. And I want what you found.”

I squeezed the knife handle in my fist. “And if I say no?”

“You might not leave this forest.”

I flashed the blade inside the beam. “Try it.”

“Don’t make me.”

“Don’t make me make you.” I got up slowly, swung the rucksack onto my shoulder. “You keep saying you’re innocent. So far, you’re not doing a great job of convincing me.”

He took a step toward me. “I’m warning you, Sylvia. And I’ve nothing to lose.”

“You’ve
everything
to lose. Or you wouldn’t still be here, skulking around. You’re desperate to prove your innocence. I say threatening me isn’t the way to do it.”

“What do you suggest?”

“You knucklehead. You let me investigate, and you point me in the right direction! If the real killer’s out there, he’s working against you, making sure he doesn’t get caught, only
he’s
got the advantage because no one’s looking for him. He doesn’t have to stay hidden. It’s only a matter of time before you get caught, Gordo. And if you haven’t got the evidence to exonerate you before then, you’ll never get it. Unless you give me what I need and
I
can get it. Don’t you see? If you’re innocent, I might be your only hope.”

He considered that for some time. “Then how about a compromise?”

“What sort of compromise?”

“We go to your place and plan the whole thing there. I tell you everything I know, and you tell me what you found in Alice’s room. You don’t have to show me, just tell me, and we can decide together how best to use it.”

“You’ve got a deal.”

He seemed surprised at how quickly I agreed to that, and took a few steps away. “What’s the catch?”

“Only one. You wipe your boots on the doormat before you come in.”

That offset his suspicion, and we made our way through the forest—without flashlight—to my side of town. And inside the rucksack, my cell phone would (I hoped) still be on, beckoning Billy Langdale toward the biggest arrest of his career.

Chapter Six

Windward after dark on a week day was as empty and ghostly as an eighteenth century seaside village on smuggling night. People kind of knew everyone’s business, the various stealthy visitors, the timing of their arrivals and departures. My street, located in the working class property band between the retail and business owners and the outlying affluent retirees and summer home owners, was one of the most densely packed in Windward. About a dozen large families lived there, alongside divorced fishermen, a couple of schoolteachers, and three or four single women, of whom I was the youngest. We were all mostly on speaking terms, and loaned out the odd step-ladder or bag of sugar without thinking twice. Every year, twice a year, on the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, we held a street party. They were always fun, but usually ended up more flirty and swinging than I liked. Of those fisherman, at least two had partied their way to a long-term alimony hangover after being lured by Edith Fawcett’s prom queen honey trap.

Edith lived next door but one to me. A knockout, even at forty-six, she was unfortunately prone to highs and lows, but was always friendly enough with me. Three children by three different fathers—she’d never married—tended to give her more lows than highs in those days, but Edith never let that get in the way of a good time.

When Gordo and I crept up the street past her house, she was draped all over one of her gentleman callers at the front door. She threw me a wink, as if to welcome me to the club—I shuddered at the thought—and then snogged her man goodnight. I couldn’t tell if she’d seen Gordo’s face or not. If she had, and recognized him, and my cell phone trick hadn’t worked, I could be in deep trouble with the authorities. This could be construed as harboring a fugitive, maybe even something worse.

Manuka bounded across the street to greet me, but kept his distance from Gordo, who smelled like the floor of a men’s toilets (or my egg custards, if you believed that one reviewer). At least Mr. Fugitive wiped his boots on the mat as promised. Not wanting my sofa or armchair soiled, I took him into the kitchen and told him to sit on one of the breakfast stools. Made us a pot of coffee. He asked if I could spare a snack, seeing as he hadn’t eaten anything since a hot dog in the afternoon—the cash in his wallet would last him another week or so, he reckoned. I made sure I fed Manuka first, and thought about giving Gordo his leftovers, maybe a little something to chew on from the litter tray as well...

I toasted him a couple of Pop-Tarts instead, gave him a banana. That was my limit for the scumbag who’d tried to turn my cousin into a Stepford wife.

“Okay, your turn,” I told him. “What’s the Elysium deal all about?”

“It’s the investment opportunity of a lifetime. And I mean opportunity with a capital O. Not just for me and my consortium, but for the people of Windward. You’d
all
benefit from the revenue stream it would introduce. Only your damn Select Committee seems to stonewall anything more original than offering free baggies for dog poop disposal. Folks like that can’t be reasoned with. They took a set against me last time, so I knew I had to try a different strategy, a more, shall we say, indirect one.”

“I’ve seen the brochure. The only way you’re ever getting Del Brady and Melissa Briggs to approve something like that is by major league bribery or blackmail.”

He said nothing.

“So which is it?”

“Irrelevant,” he replied. “Sure, we had to put pressure on them or they’d never have budged. But they still have a choice.”

“You’ve scared the living hell out of them. They won’t even answer their doors to me.”

“Then it’s probably worked. You see, everyone has a dirty little secret or two they don’t want the public to know about.
Especially
politicians, who’ll do anything to stay in office. I just wish I’d made this move years ago. Windward would be on its feet by now, raking in the big bucks.”

“You mean
you’d
be raking it in—you and your grubby little gnome convention.”

“Consortium.” He actually had the balls to correct me. The urge to punch him in the face was starting to take over. “But the point is,” he went on, crunching a mouthful of strawberry Pop-Tart, “is that we were all set to get this thing passed. If a certain someone had kept his hands to himself and not forced Alice to confront me that night, everything would have been fine. But she was drunk, and he was desperate for her to tell me the truth about them. I think they both knew I’d found out they were sleeping together, and that I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the deal; so Alice just came right out with it, right there in the living room. Just exploded! I’d never seen her like that. Never. She told me what a sonofabitch I’d been and the reasons why she was going to run off with...
him.
All the while she was trashing the house, and I had to just stand there and take it. Well, almost—I did swing a baseball bat at the wall in frustration. But I knew everything she was saying was true. I also knew that I loved her. I-I’d just never known how to show it, that’s all.”

“So what happened next?”

“She screamed her piece and then stormed out. And I let her. I figured if the worst that happened was she left me, maybe it was time we both moved on. I had the deal, and she’d done her part in cultivating my image as a sound financial partner.”

“You used her all those years. She was your trophy, your pretty little prop. She dazzled the big cojones while you greased their palms. I don’t think I could possibly hate you any more right now.”

He leaned back on his stool, sensing I was about to hit him. “But I didn’t kill her, Sylvia. I swear to God I didn’t.”

“But you wanted to.”

He didn’t respond, just stared at me like the coward he was.

“Then who killed her?”

Unpeeling the banana, he muttered something to himself, then took a deep breath. “He must have been standing outside the back door the whole time, listening in, waiting to intervene if things got out of hand. My suspicion is he
wanted
me to hit her, so then he’d have an excuse to kill me. He wanted me out of the way.”