“Where was he hit?” Merry asked.
“Left arm. Bullet went in and out, took a nick of bone with it. If the poor fool weren’t so skittish around blood, he’d have walked here, maybe. He’ll be fine.” Rebecca’s head came up, and her eyes were angry. “What I want to know is, how are folks supposed to sleep nights when you cops can’t keep ’em safe, hey? Enough to make even me pack a gun.”
Merry went past her into the ER’s examining bays.
She found Peter, naked to the waist under a white sheet, staring at the acoustic tiles of the ceiling. The yellow fluorescence of the room was not kind to his face, which had turned gray under his tan. The skin seemed to have shrunk over the jutting bone of his nose and the planes of his forehead, throwing his skull into sharp relief. His light eyes were not so much unfocused as too focused, Merry thought, as if the tiles mattered to the exclusion of everything. He seemed oblivious to her presence at the foot of the gurney.
The doctor bending over Peter’s left shoulder ignored her as well. His fine, long-fingered hands were engaged in pressing white adhesive tape onto the ends of a bandage that encircled Peter’s deltoid muscle.
“Hey, Peter,” Merry said, unconsciously using his first name, something she had never done.
He lifted his head slightly, a gleam of welcome flashing for an instant across his face. The doctor straightened up and nodded to the nurse positioned at Peter’s head. She smiled cheerfully down at him as though he were a child and said, “Just a short roll, Mr. Mason, to your room, and then we’ll give you something to sleep.”
“You’re keeping him here tonight?” Merry said to the doctor. She felt oddly relieved.
“Normally I’d send him home. But he’s lost a bit of blood. Wouldn’t want him fainting again.” He studied her an instant and said, “You the girlfriend?”
Merry flushed, felt annoyed because she did, and pulled out her badge a trifle belligerently. The doctor’s face cleared and he said, “Detective Folger. A Clarence Strangerfield, from your station, wants you to call him.”
“Thanks. Listen, is Mason able to talk?”
“I think so. Nurse?”
The woman turned in the act of rotating the gurney toward the hallway’s swinging doors and looked inquiringly at the doctor.
“Hold up a minute. Ms. Folger? I mean—Detective?”
Merry went to Peter’s side and flashed him a quick smile. She restrained an impulse, surprising in the extreme, to smooth his forehead. She noticed again how deeply set his gray eyes were, how the jutting brow gave his face the look of a hawk. “Did you see anything?”
He frowned. “Not enough. A woman and the flash of a gun. No face. Just a coat and hat.”
“But you thought it was a woman.”
His eyes flicked upward and held her own. “I thought it was you,” he said.
Chapter 17
“What have you got for me, Clarence?”
“Looks like a nine-millimetah, prob’ly from a Browning,” Clarence said. After an hour of combing the grass, he had just managed to retrieve the casing under a pine tree some thirty feet from where Peter had fallen. Now he was crouched near the barn’s double doors, holding a bit of wood between thumb and forefinger. The slug had entered the barn door, and Nathaniel Coffin was busy extracting what remained of it. Clarence pulled the plastic bag that contained the casing out of his evidence case and offered it to Merry. “No prints on the casing—the fellah was wearin’ gloves, ah believe. Nice set of footprints ovah there, howevah. Nice set. Not that you can see them at the moment.”
Another of Clarence’s team was pouring plaster of paris into a wooden frame set over the prints, near a clump of pines just beyond the far side of the house. Merry picked her way carefully to the spot, hating to disturb the grass and hoping that Clarence had studied it. She crouched down. Under the floodlights the crime scene unit had rigged up, dew glittered on every blade of freshly mown stubble. She reached for her half-glasses and allowed herself an instant to inhale the comforting scent of wet earth. Then she studied the ground. Slight indentations showed where the shooter’s heel and toe had sunk into the sandy soil as he waited for Peter to walk toward the barn, leave the dog, and walk back into firing range.
Merry’s eyes narrowed. Peter might be right. The prints—narrow and long, with a pointed toe and shallow heel—suggested a woman’s shoe rather than a man’s. Something turned in the back of Merry’s brain. What did the print remind her of? She shook her head and closed her eyes, concentrating. Boots. Low-slung, cuffed suede boots worn with skinny jeans.
“Ah’ve only found the one casing. No sign of the weapon, eithah.”
“Clarence, I want you to send somebody up into the barn loft.”
“Thaht Woman got the dahg, Marradith.”
Thaht Woman was Rebecca. Clarence had borne the brunt of her tongue.
“It’s not the dog I’m thinking of. Find out what’s missing from the gun rack.”
Clarence turned and shouted for Coffin. He came at a trot. Clarence sent him to the loft.
Merry hunkered on her heels in the grass, trying not to touch the ground surrounding the prints. “I almost forgot. Mason’s bag is in the back of the car.”
“So now yahr haulin’ his luggage?”
“Not Peter’s, Rusty’s. Howie Seitz found it washed up on the beach at Siasconset.”
Clarence rolled his eyes. “Ah’m thaht wahrn out, Marradith, I wish he’d thrown it back into the surf.”
“There’s papers, a passport, some clothes and stuff in the bag. You’ll want to take a look at all of it.”
Clarence’s bulk loomed over her. “And they call this the off-season.” He snorted. “If the bag washed up at ’Sconset, Marradith, ah’ve got a good idea where it went into the watah.”
“You do?”
“Ayah. And thaht means somebody screwed up.”
“It does?”
“Carhse it does,” he said impatiently. “Yah don’t think they wanted it found, do yah? They consigned it for burial to the deep, and that’s wharh it was intended to stay. The ocean’s a hahndy place to dump evidence, but it doesn’t always behave prop’rly.” He looked at her with pity. “Yah don’t sail, do yah?”
Merry shook her head.
“No college geology, eithah?” Clarence summoned his patience. “Most of ’Sconset beach owes its existence to the teeth of the Atlantic gnawin’ on the south shore—it’s been shoving sand left and right for years, dumpin’ it on Smith Point to the west and on ’Sconset to the east. If something washed up there, it was prob’ly thrown in the watah somewhere below Surfside. It looks as though things should drift out to sea around there, but they don’t do it directly.”
“Surfside,” Merry said thoughtfully. “Not exactly near the scene of the crime, but not very far away, either.”
“It was done with a cah, remembah,” Clarence said gently. “With a cah, yah can get the evidence wherever yah want it, and fast.”
“The car, again. Whose car?” Merry said with exasperation.
There was a delicate silence. Clarence was aware that one car, at least, had a damaged fender; and he was itching to go over that car for fibers and other forensic samples, but Merry wouldn’t permit him to invade Mayling Stern’s garage without a warrant—and serving a warrant without enough evidence to charge her might only startle her into flight. For now, they had paid one of Clarence’s numerous ’Sconset cousins to keep an eye on the garage, with strict instructions to report immediately if the car was moved or the garage was the site of inordinate activity. Thus far he had witnessed frequent comings and goings on the part of the house cook, usually in pursuit of armloads of groceries, bouquets of flowers, and The New York Times; but she drove a battered station wagon, and never remained in the garage longer than was necessary to start or park the car. Clarence’s cousin Aubr
ey said the Stern woman must be keeping a low profile; she hadn’t poked her head around the front of the house in days.
“Shahrt of doin’ a house-to-house search, I doubt yah’ll find it,” Clarence said.
“Thanks, Clare,” said Merry shortly. “I hadn’t realized that.” She looked down at the prints. “I guess you’ve got an idea about these, too.”
“Ayeh. The gunman is standing half hidden under the tree here, and he watches Mason leave with the dahg and walk tawrd the bahn. He waits till the dahg’s shut up and Mason is walkin’ tawrd him, and then he shoots. He doesn’t know Mason’s going to faint when he sees blood, so he thinks the guy’s dead when he crumples to the ground. He takes off.”
Merry nodded. Then she shook her head. “It’s all wrong.”
Clarence waited.
“I came over here a couple of days ago and the dog came around the house, heading for the barn, like the Hound of the Baskervilles. He all but lunged for my throat. Tonight, the dog trots to the barn without a peep. Rebecca says so. It was the dog’s barking after the shots were fired that caused her to come running.”
“Which means no one was here when Mason walked to the bahn?”
“Possibly, but I doubt it. It’s more likely that the dog didn’t bark because it recognized the shooter’s scent. He or she—I’m betting on she—stood here, sure that neither the dog nor anyone else would disturb her. She knows Rafe goes into town most evenings and the dog gets locked in the loft at night. Even if the dog decided to pick up on her existence, she’s a friend, right? So she greets the dog and skips the shooting this time around. But if Ney gives her a miss—this is the one time of day she’s got a clear shot at Peter Mason without Rafe coming at a run. She knows the routines of the place, Clarence. Just as she knew a few days ago that the bog would be flooded for the first time in months.”
She stopped. Clarence was silent. Merry stood up creakily and pulled off her glasses, fumbling for the pocket of her coat as she stared toward the spot where Peter Mason had fallen. “Another thing. Look closely at the marks on the grass. She ran over toward the body, stood there an instant, and then veered back into the moors. Why? Why walk up to Peter and then leave without firing another shot? She must have seen that he wasn’t dead. Why not kill him while he was passed out? Doesn’t make sense, Clare.”
“Maybe Thaht Woman scared her off,” he said.
“Maybe. For lack of a better answer—”
A long shadow, grotesque under the stark lighting, advanced across the dew toward them. Coffin was done with the loft.
“No pistol on the rack, sir, no handgun of any kind, for that matter,” he said. “Just a rifle—not that that’s unusual for a farm—and it’s registered.”
“Thanks,” Clarence said. “Yah dusted the rack faw fingerprints?”
“You won’t find anything,” Merry said sourly. “We’re not dealing with a bonehead. Inexperienced, perhaps. Stupid, no. Coffin, there’s a soggy piece of luggage staining the backseat of my car. Haul it out and take it to the station with you. Everything in there should be tagged as evidence in Rusty Mason’s murder.”
When he had trotted back toward the front door of the saltbox, she looked at Clarence. The crime scene chief was down on his hands and knees, studying the faint marks leading from the clear set of prints to the body. “Ayeh. I missed it, Detective,” he said regretfully. “My sincere apologies.”
“They’re pretty faint,” she said absently. “Forget it. Listen, Clare—there was a pistol on that rack the last time I saw it.”
“What type?”
“Oh, it was a Browning. Nine-millimeter. In fact, it was the weapon used tonight, I’m sure of it. The killer knew what he—or she—was dealing with. She knew where to find the gun. She must have entered the loft tonight after Rafe left. She took the Browning and waited for Peter to wrap up his evening. Pretty cool stuff.”
“Why do you think it was a woman?” Clarence heaved himself to his feet and brushed off his knees. “The prints are narrah. But they’re still within a fair range of shoe size—it could be a flaht oxford type with a slight heel and a pointed toe, or a kid’s bucks, faw instance. Or cowboy boots—like the ones that Rafe da Silva wahrs when he’s paintin’ the town red.”
He peered warily at Merry from under his brows, as though he expected her to take a swing at him.
“What’re you saying, Clarence?”
“I’m just wonderin’ why Rafe’s always fah from home when the trouble hits, that’s all.” He stomped off toward his forensics team without waiting for her reply.
The greengage was closing down for the evening when Merry walked in. A few diners were still sitting at two tables near the Federal-style mantelpiece, where the last embers of an early-fall fire fell quietly into ash. The honey-colored wood floors and muted bayberry walls, hung with framed prints of whaling ships, gave the room intimacy and peace. The restaurant looked like a sure thing, Merry thought—a tribute to Tess’s will and instinct, a measure of her canny perseverance. There was an air of bravery about the Greengage nonetheless: financing this first year could not have been easy. The reconstruction of the rooms alone represented a capital outlay Tess Starbuck must still be struggling to recoup. And what would the winter, and its loss of tourist revenue, mean for her and Will? Merry hardened her heart, and looked around for Rafe.
He was in the bar, an inviting room adjacent to the dining area where local fisherman—Dan’s old friends—held pride of place. They were pulled up to tables near a second fire, legs stretched out in front of them, heavy boots quickly taking the shine from the recently sanded and refinished floors. Merry recognized a group of three men who sat with Rafe, arms carelessly draped across the backs of their wives’ chairs, and understood with a shock why he spent so much time at the Greengage: these were his people, the friends of a lifetime, kids who’d gone to school with him and her brother, Billy. A world his father had cut out from under him when he threw him off the da Silva boat.
The group turned to look at her as she stood in the doorway, and abruptly fell silent. Rafe thrust himself back from the table and stood up, his chair scraping across the floor harshly in the quiet. “Hey, Merry,” he said.
Merry nodded toward the table of inquiring faces and wished for a heart that beat less fast. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
Rafe glanced at his buddies. “Sure. Sure. Everybody was taking off, anyway.” He slid past the gathered chairs and shoved his hands in his jeans, rocking slightly on the heels of his dress boots. Clarence was right. They weren’t far off the prints in the Mason Farms front yard.
The assembled fishermen eased out of their seats and threw on light jackets, clapping Rafe on the back as they passed him, the women reaching on tiptoe to peck his cheek. Rafe belonged. Merry felt curiously relieved as she watched the unconscious display of brotherhood, and knew that her anxiety for Rafe was broader than she admitted; she was concerned about the fabric of his life, not just that part of it that might have included her.
He motioned her toward a chair. She shook her head. “I stopped by to tell you Peter’s in Cottage Hospital. Somebody took a potshot at him tonight.”
Rafe slammed his palm down on the table and shoved a chair over on its side. Conversation at the last table of diners in the neighboring room ceased abruptly. After an agonizingly speechless instant, he bent to pick up the chair and looked at her. “He okay?”
“Just nicked. Left biceps.” She almost reached out a hand to Rafe and stopped herself just in time. “The doc kept him there overnight anyway. Seems he faints at the sight of blood.”
Rafe slumped against the edge of the table. “I knew they were after Pete, not his brother. Why the hell didn’t I stick close to him?”
“So you’d have an ironclad alibi, maybe?” Merry said quietly. She steeled herself for his reaction.
“I’m gonna i
gnore that asinine remark,” he said.
Sometimes she hated this job. “Where were you about an hour ago?”
“Here.”
“And half a dozen people can back you up. Okay. Where was Tess?”
That brought him around to face her. “Why would it matter?”
“Please answer the question, Rafe.”
“She was in the kitchen cooking. Same as she is every night.”
“Who’s the chief waiter around here?”
Rafe nodded toward the outer room. “Sammy. Sammy and Regina. Sometimes Will fills in as busboy, but not tonight. Had homework.”
Merry turned on her heel and walked into the dining room, seeing the man who had to be Sammy almost immediately. He wore a crisp white shirt and black jeans. He was propped against the far wall, a napkin in his hand, alert to the whim of the last diners.
“You’re Sammy?” Merry said.
“I am. How can I help you?”
“Detective Folger, Nantucket police. About when would you say the last food order went back to the kitchen?”
His eyes flicked from the badge to her face. “Geez, it was a while ago. These guys have been sitting here all night, talking and drinking single-malts. But they were the last table I sat. Must have sent the order back around nine.”
“And you brought it to the table when?”
He shut his eyes and wrinkled his face, seeing the meals in his mind’s eye. “The pork loin took a little while, and so did the bluefish in parchment. Tess held up the scampi. Say, nine twenty-five, maybe.”
“Who’s normally staffing the kitchen?”
“Tess. She runs the place herself. During the summer she had Otis Carmichael helping her—sous-chef, she called him—but he just comes in on weekends now. Weeknights she handles it alone, and Regina and I help her assemble the plates. It’s still kind of a shoestring place—that’s why we’ve only got twenty tables.”
Death in the Off-Season Page 16
