Wreck the Halls (27 page)

“Conducive,” I finished for her. “To romance, or anything else.”

The glare of the yard lights turned her apricot-colored hair purplish. “Right.” She closed the door.

Music blaring from inside followed us all the way out to the car. “That was useless,” I told Ellie, pulling back onto Route 190. “And,” it hit me suddenly, “we forgot to call about Bob Arnold.”

“I didn't forget.” Ellie's voice was thoughtful.

“What, then?”

“Willetta looks awful,” she said, seeming to change the subject.

Icy fog thickened the twilight, making the road surface slick and treacherous. “Can you blame her? First she gets her heart broken, then she's terrorized by that son of a bitch. Not to say she isn't a fairly sizable pain in the neck herself, but—”

“She's a pharmacy technician, isn't she? At the hospital.”

“Yes.” We came into town. “Although the job doesn't entail anything really technical, I gather. She delivers medications to the nursing stations. But what does that… Oh.”

“A pharmacy technician who hangs out at Duddy's
where pharmacy is a sideline.” Her voice remained even. “An unofficial, unsanctioned, but still well-known—”

“Ellie, a hospital pharmacy has better security than Fort Knox.” I turned onto Key Street. Peter Christie had looked laden with at least an evening's worth of fancy foodstuffs and I wanted to charge that cell phone before I forgot it, again. “So if you're thinking maybe she pilfered medications to sell out there, or something…”

“I’m not. It's just an interesting coincidence, that's all.”

She didn't sound as if she thought it was a coincidence. But I knew better than to press her into rushing her thought process. Ellie's mind is like one of those machines they use to polish gemstones. You put in raw material, it rattles around in there, and later out comes something perfect, smooth, and correct.

The difference is that when Ellie does it she doesn't make noise. Or want you to, either, so I didn't as the two of us went into my old house.

Then I made noise.

Victor was in
my kitchen, engaged in three activities so uncharacteristic of him, I knew something was up. First, he was making coffee; ordinarily, he feels it should appear before him as if by magic. Also, he was smiling.

And humming a tune. All bad signs. “Victor, what is this—”

“I straightened out the problem with Sam's package.” He pushed the button on the coffee machine; it began burbling, a musical sound that didn't quite cover the other sound, emanating from near my ankle.

“What we still need to know,” Ellie said, “is why Faye Anne—”

“Doesn't remember,” I finished, not wanting to look down. But I did when it started nuzzling, its purring as loud
as the engine on one of those fishing boats in the harbor. “Victor…”

Because junk was one thing, but this was beyond junk.

Way beyond. “If we explain that—” Ellie said.

It was a cross-eyed, apple-headed Siamese cat with a kink in its tail, extra toes on its paws, and a smile on its face. A settled smile, like it was planning to stay.

“—we've got a shot,” Ellie finished. “Because whoever arranged that has to be the one who—”

“It's for the mouse,” Victor said innocently, gesturing at the animal. “Sam says you have one.”

Victor had been trying to get rid of this feline since the moment it had showed up at his house uninvited three months earlier. He claimed it followed him around with a look in its eye.

Which I understood; you live with Victor long enough, you'll have a look in your eye, too: a look that says you're about to run screaming into the night.

“Victor, just because you don't want a cat doesn't mean/want a…”

Monday put her head into the room. Cat? her look said. And then: Cat!!!

What followed put all thoughts of homicide out of my mind, except of course for thoughts of murdering my ex-husband. “So did you talk to her yet?” he demanded as Monday circled the dining-room table for the hundredth time.

The cat had already timed to the millisecond how long it took the dog to complete a trip, so as to stay out of reach while maintaining the highest possible levels of canine frenzy.

“Yes.” I reported the result.

Victor looked crestfallen for a moment. But then: “Well, will you try again?”

I ignored this. “Victor, I don't want…”

Cat food or dishes, I listed mentally; cat toys or cat litter. Or—at a particularly loud thump-and-tumble from the front hall—animal tranquilizers. Then came sudden silence, even more unnerving than the sounds of mayhem. I looked at Ellie, returning from the phone alcove.

“Bob's the same,” she reported, peering around. “No change in his condition.” Which wasn't good. “What made them stop?”

We tiptoed into the parlor where due to the completeness of the silence that had fallen, I expected animal corpses. Instead, Monday and the cat sat shoulder to shoulder. The two of them were staring at the parlor chair like cops staking out a hideout.

Slowly the dog lay down on the carpet in front of the chair, crossing her paws and gazing fixedly at the target premises. After a moment the cat followed suit, gazing likewise. “Oh,” Ellie said. “That's kind of cute.”

“Sure,” I replied sourly. “And pretty soon, the mouse'll be curled up with them. We can start a cartoon show.” I paused.

But it had to be said. “Ellie, has it occurred to you that we might not be able to do it? Help Faye Anne?”

Wade came in and headed upstairs; the shower went on. From the music coming out of his room I knew Sam was at home, too. Pretty soon it would be time to start dinner.

“Yes,” Ellie said with a heavy sigh, “it has.”

It had been in the air all afternoon: the growing sense that whatever was eluding us might stay elusive.

“Why'd you come here?” she asked suddenly. “To Eastport, I mean. Pick up and move here, start a new life… why'd you do it?”

But she didn't wait for a reply. “For a geographic cure, that's why. To start all over, to be a new person in a new place. And so Sam could. But I can't. Oh, I could have a life somewhere else, I suppose. But it wouldn't be my life.”

I understood: The respect of the women whose husbands
had been on that boat was no accident; Ellie had earned it. By, among other things, not quitting when the going got tough.

But if she did quit, she'd have to live with that, too. For Ellie there would be no geographic cure; she was an Eastport girl born and bred, and what she did here counted.

“Nothing we've learned proves much,” I said slowly. “Seems like just about everyone hated Merle and in the suggesting-an-alternative-suspect department it's as bad as if no one did.”

Which, I didn't have to tell her, was the department we'd gotten to. Because actually proving someone other than Faye Anne had killed Merle was starting to look hopeless. Still:

“Jake, what you told Joy and Willetta was absolutely true,” Ellie replied. “It's not just Merle, it's Kenty and Bob, too. We know they're part of this. And who knows who else will be, before it's over?”

She looked down at the dog and cat. “At least when those two go on a rampage, everyone knows it's happening.”

A burst of sleet rattled the parlor windows, subsided. “And now,” my friend finished discouragedly, “the weather's getting lousy, besides. But listen, you've done enough, you don't have to…”

The day after I moved into the house on Key Street, the van not yet arrived and the old place feeling so empty I thought Sam and I might drown in it, Ellie showed up with a plate of cookies. Ribbon in her hair, pale green eyes like a pair of searchlights, their gaze from behind her glasses so penetrating I’d felt as if my X ray was being taken.

And as the enormity of what I’d done—an antique house! on an island!’ in Maine!—began sinking in, I’d felt also that I was being thrown a life ring by someone who knew how.

“Look,” I suggested, “there's still time to get out to Melinda's before it starts really blowing.”

The heavy weather, forecast to veer out over Nova Scotia, wouldn't be much. But it would be enough to make us want to stay indoors, later.

She brightened. “Just talk to her? Once more? Because…”

I nodded. This was the other thing that had been in the air: our shared sense that the attack on Bob Arnold had been a kind of climax, like a burst of energy in an electrical storm.

But the relative calm that came after didn't mean the storm was over. Only that it was gathering its forces for another, more violent onslaught. A second sleet shower clattered like pebbles against the window.

“Let's get it over with,” I said, not expecting any result.

Oh, would it were so.

“Can't you see
she knows nothing about this?” Peter demanded, a glass of red wine in one hand and a lobster puff in the other.

It struck me that his little house on Prince Street offered none of the luxuries of Melinda's well-furnished abode. Here, the blazing gas fireplace, thick rugs, plushly cushioned sofas, and plenty of food and drink made the winter outside seem far away.

I ignored his bullying tone. “Listen, Melinda, this is serious.” I stood over her, not caring if I seemed bullying, too. “Three different women from California have as good as told us they're scared to death of Peter. Before he left to come here, they'd all complained to the cops about him.”

Melinda said nothing while Peter backpedaled a moment, long enough for me to see his surprise that I knew this. But he recovered swiftly:

“Did they tell you they all knew each other? That I’d
dated one of them and after I broke up with her, in retaliation she got two more of her friends to complain, too?”

“Oh, really?” I turned to him, letting him see that I didn't believe him for an instant. “Any particular reason she decided to make it a stalking complaint? Or was that just out of the blue?”

He flushed, swallowed some wine.

“Pretty serious charge,” I went on, deciding that since this was probably our last run at him, it was going to be a good one. “But three different young women got it into their heads to make it against you, even though they could be in serious trouble if it turned out to be false.”

Melinda's new computer stood on the desk in a corner. “And now,” I went on, “all three are denying anything happened at all. I don't suppose you've got anything to do with that, either? You're such a computer buff, I imagine you could do a lot with, say, a barrage of e-mail to one or all of them?”

His brief startled look said I was on the money again. Peter was good-looking, personable, and skilled enough with computers to make at least a modest living—and a welcome for himself at least at first—wherever he went. But he had a screw loose and the more he lied to me, the more I seemed to hear it rattling around up there, in his handsome head.

“Come on, Melinda, talk to us,” I urged. “We don't think you chopped Merle in pieces, or attacked Bob Arnold. Bob caught someone who wasn't supposed to be here. Whoever it was, panicked. We're sure you had nothing to do with it.”

This wasn't quite true. But if she felt confident that I didn't suspect her of anything, she might be likelier to confide, too.

“Damn it, she doesn't know anything,” Peter repeated. “Why are you badgering her, when I told you…”

Clearly, when Peter told you something, you were meant
to listen up. That I hadn't was just frustrating the living hell out of him.

And he was annoying the living hell out of me. “Don't raise your voice to me, you slick little son of a bitch.”

At this, he actually tried puffing his chest out. “Oh, yeah. You and your nosy friend, here—”

He waved what was meant to be a contemptuous hand at Ellie, but the lobster puff sort of blunted the effect.

“—are just a couple of small-town busybodies, that's all.”

Well, that put the frosting on it. While he was popping the lobster puff into his mouth, I gathered up my attitude-adjustment ammunition. He swallowed; I fired.

“Tax audit,” I declared, and watched his throat move as the lobster puff went halfway down and stuck.

“Self-employed, aren't you, Peter? Lots of opportunities for all kinds of fudging, especially if you get paid in cash. Did you know,” I added, “that for a couple of years I worked on contract for the IRS?”

He gulped more wine, watching me carefully over the rim of the glass, now. I’d hit a nerve.

“I’ve still got friends, there,” I went on. “Ones who could take every tax return you've ever filed apart so fast, you'd be hearing the cell door slam before you ever even knew what hit you.”

I stepped nearer to him. “So unless you've always, always declared every cent of your income, and never padded a single one of your expenses by so much as a dime, you should shut up.”

He gulped again, signaling his agreement with this suggestion. I turned, privately congratulating myself on my newfound skill as a liar; I’ve had a lot of jobs, but the IRS doesn't outsource snoop work.

“Now, damn it,” I began to Melinda, “let's discuss the silly idea of your not knowing anything about anything that's gone on. And—”

But there I stopped, as a new voice came from behind me.

“She does.” A familiar voice; it sounded at least as fed up as I felt.

Ben Devine stood there, tall, bearded, and blue-jeaned, with a gaze like a cutting torch. “She knows. But she's a good sister. And she promised not to tell.”

His glance raked Peter Christie, who seemed to shrink farther into himself under Devine's scorn. More there, I thought, than a brother disapproving of his sister's romantic choice.

If indeed that was what Peter was, and not something darker.

Melinda spoke up quaveringly. “Ben, you don't have to—”

His look instantly silenced her. It wasn't a harsh look, but a commanding one. I saw them suddenly as two sides of the same coin: Melinda shifting with every breeze of event or emotion, Ben unwavering. A man who would do a job and finish it, however unpleasant. A meat cutter, who knew how to take apart a moose or a deer. Or a man. The air was electric with invisible lines of force and emotion as Ben spoke again.

Quietly: “Yes, I do have to tell, Melinda. These two aren't ever going to leave you alone, if I don't.”