Wicked Fix (13 page)

him. Me and a few others. That was the key to it, see.

Standing up to him. Then he'd back off."

We passed through a crossroads: church, general

store with a post office, a diner, and a cluster of dwellings.

At a low wharf a battered dragger was tied, its

deck piled with lobster traps. Then we were in the

country again, finally at the entrance to a warren of

lanes lined with cottages.

"So, what was the surefire deal?" I asked again.

He turned right, left, at last down an unmarked

rut. "Bottom line was, Reuben said he going to reenact

history. You know the big Eastport fire in the late

1800s, took down most of Water Street? He said he

could make it all happen again, starting with my

place."

The thought made me cringe. His big old building

with its antique brick exterior, so gorgeously refurbished

inside and with its glorious view, wasn't only a

showpiece of old-time Eastport architecture. It was

Paddy's baby, so precious to him I sometimes thought

the design business was only an excuse for using it in a

legitimately tax-deductible way.

Meanwhile, I'd seen pictures of the Eastport fire.

They looked as if a bomb had gone off in the middle of

Water Street. It had burned right up one side and down

the other, leaving only blocks of charred devastation.

"Unless, of course, I wanted to help him with his

big plan," Paddy added grimly.

"Help him what?" At the end of the lane he pulled

to a halt and we got out. Across a short stretch of

pasture the water lay flat and motionless, at slack tide.

The silence was stunning. We walked on a grassy

path between evergreens smelling of pine sap. A dalmation

romped out of the trees at us, grinning, its pink

tongue lolling. Terence bent and fondled its ears.

"I was supposed to help blackmail your ex

husband. Scare him into thinking I knew whatever it

was that Reuben had on him--not that Reuben would

really tell me, you understand, he was too smart to give

away his game--and warn him that he ought to pay."

Overhead, a bald eagle circled lazily, just riding the

thermals and sailing so low I could see his white helmet,

shaggy-feathered white legs, and thick, curving

talons: hunting.

"Not that I would have," Paddy added. "It just

goes to show how nuts Reuben was, that he would ask

me."

We were approaching a house with a rail-fenced

garden and some mulched rose beds. "He'd tried that,

tried to bully you, back in the old days? When you

were growing up together in Eastport?"

Paddy nodded, as the dalmation loped over to me,

a frisky creature with coltlike legs. No leash, only a

fabric collar from which hung a stamped metal ID tag.

Talk about a dog's life.

"What did you tell him?" I asked. "When he came

to see you the other night?"

I was still trying to imagine Reuben with his black

leather jacket, pegged pants, and cleated boots, in that

pristine studio of Paddy's: clicking on the tiles, making

demands, and breathing tequila fumes.

Paddy would have hated it. It would have made

him angry.

Very angry. And only a few nights later, Reuben

was dead.

"I told him go to hell," Paddy replied. "He wasn't

going to burn my building. Because he knew if he did I

would find him. And then," Paddy finished flatly, "I

would kill him."

I was about to ask him if he knew the other victim,

the one found suffocated on Water Street. Reuben, it

seemed more and more to me, was a such a larger

than-life kind of a person, his death pushed the other

one to the background. And no one had yet said anything

about any connection between the victims. But I

couldn't believe there had been two unrelated murders

in Eastport on a single night.

I didn't get to ask Paddy anything, though, because

he pushed aside the evergreen branches abruptly, striding

away fropi us down the sun-dappled path toward

the house, leaving his final words hanging in the silence.

"Not that he did, of course," Terence said mildly.

He drew aside the pine boughs, inviting me to go first.

"Kill Reuben, I mean," he added, following behind.

Paddy's sketch artist lived in a small, ranch-style

cottage a hundred feet from an inlet studded with dozens

of tiny islands, granite boulders thrusting up

through the water's surface.

I wandered to the water's edge. The dog came, too,

picking his way delicately on the small stones. The

small waves reflected the sunshine glassily, as if lit from

below. A scuffling splash, followed by the swoop of the

eagle back up into his own bright element, signaled the

doom of some poor fish struggling at the ends of those

sharp talons.

"Quiet," Terence said suddenly, startling me.

He tossed a pebble into the water. "Not like back

in town. All the people, visiting from away."

Another pebble. "Paddy won't talk to me about

Reuben."

That troubled me. Just looking at those two, you

knew they talked about everything under the sun. Or

they had, but something had changed; not for the better.

"The murder ... he won't discuss it at all," Terence

said. "I'm surprised he is with you. Taxes," he

twinkled briefly, "or no taxes."

There was the Terence I remembered, funny and

kind. Almost at once, though, some deep worry returned

to his features.

"So I haven't said this to him, but ..."

He gestured out at the marine setting. It seemed to

go on forever, and for all practical purposes it did. "All

that water. So deep and cold. A cove somewhere,

weigh a body down with enough stones, or just let the

current take it. And bingo, it's gone."

"I've been wondering about that, too. No one ever

needed to know Tate was dead," I agreed. "But instead

someone took a lot of trouble displaying him. Like," I

added, "an art object."

The tide turned and larger waves began slapping

on the beach pebbles. Terence's face was thinner than I

remembered seeing it over the summer.

"Cemetery fences are supposed to keep spirits in,"

I added. "You don't suppose that was it?" Wanting to

keep him talking, I tried for a tone of casual lightness.

"Maybe someone thought Tate was demon enough

that his spirit needed to be kept imprisoned."

"Someone should have tried it when he was alive,"

Terence blurted angrily. But in the next moment he was

composed again.

"Anyway, he was tied to the outside of the gate.

People with family buried inside are glad of that much.

That's what I've heard. So if confining him was what

someone wanted they got it wrong. He's no more confined

in the spirit world than he was here on earth."

Terence picked up a stick of driftwood and threw

it; the dog raced after it, flinging himself into the water

and racing back, shaking off bright droplets.

"Why do you think he was hung there, Terence?" I

asked.

He threw the stick again. "Messages," he said

cryptically.

But I got it; it was what I'd been thinking also,

although until that moment I hadn't known it.

"Hanging him up there, showing him off ..."

Terence nodded. The dog trotted away, tired of the

game or perhaps just having had enough of the icy

water.

"I don't know why Reuben Tate was killed," Terence

went on, dropping the stick on the beach stones.

"Although," he added, "I am still not convinced that

you believe it."

The eyes in his homely face were insightful, intelligent,

and wary. "But," he said, "it occurs to me that

having all the Salmon Festival visitors in town enlarges

the suspect pool. Some of them grew up alongside Reuben,

too."

"And might have had a grudge against him," I

agreed. "An old score to settle, something to do with

the past."

"If someone was here in Eastport for only a week,"

he added reasonably, "and managed to escape suspicion

that long, once they went home the odds would go

up that they would never be caught."

His tone was mild, his expression serene, the view

of water and islands so idyllic it seemed that nothing

could go amiss in it. But when I turned to reply, I saw

that he'd begun putting small, wet beach stones into his

mouth, stuffing them in one after another.

Alarm pierced me. There was something really

wrong with him. "Terence," I said sharply, and my

tone seemed to bring him back to himself.

But not all the way. He spat the stones out slowly,

looking at me as if he could not quite remember what

he'd been doing.

Just then, Paddy's face showed at the window of

the artist's studio. "It's about time he remembered that

we're here," Terence remarked as if nothing had happened,

and turned back to the car.

His walk wasn't right. He was dragging one leg.

"Terence," I insisted as I hurried after him, "wait."

But he wouldn't, or couldn't. As I followed I could

hear him breathing in harsh laboring gusts as if he were

in sudden pain.

"If you've got that far," he advised, grating the

words out, "think about something else. Ask yourself

..." He stopped, stiffening with anguish,

"... whether Reuben Tate's body up on that cemetery

gate, displayed there like some bloody, appalling

human banner--"

He reached the cottage's rail fence, fell against it.

"Maybe Reuben's death, and the way he died, wasn't

the whole message."

Paddy rushed out, his face full of concern. Twenty

minutes later we were back on the ferry as the sun

began setting, filling the sky with red. When I asked

Terence again what the trouble was, he muttered indistinctly

something about an old back injury.

But back injuries don't make you put little stones

into your mouth. And Paddy still looked distraught, in

contrast to his cool manner to Terence earlier.

Later, when he had Terence settled on a bench

alongside the pilot house, Paddy stood with me at the

rail of the ferry as it plunged through the chop, spewing