Our Fathers (Conner Beach Crime Series)

by John Chabot

  "What time?" asked Christy.

  "Now, just a minute," said Annabelle, but now everyone was looking at her, and the looks ranged from, 'Oh, come on Mom!' to 'Aren't you being a bit unreasonable?' She felt, not for the first time, outnumbered. "Well, I suppose."

  The door opened. Everything stopped as Robert came in, Alex just behind him. He stood stiffly, almost rigidly, holding himself together. His face was still pale. Harry noticed that his fists were clenched. He searched the faces staring at him and asked, "Well?"

  "Robert, are you all right?" Annabelle took a step toward him, then stopped as he said, "I'll be all right. Whatever it is, I can handle it." He paused and, when no one said anything, asked, "So what was in the will?"

  Wes Stoneman answered him. "A hundred thousand to you, the beach house to your sister, the rest to be split between you."

  Robert seemed surprised. His sister said, "I had no idea he had so much money. I thought he might be hard up, and had come back to . . . well, you know."

  "He left nothing to his nieces and nephew, then?"

  "No," said Annabelle. "Oh, a game, that's all. A quest or something."

  "A quest?"

  "Something they're supposed to find. Mr. Eason is going to help them." This brought her back to where she was when Robert had come in. She looked at Terry, hesitating. "Mr. Eason, I hope you won't take this the wrong way. My brother apparently found you trustworthy but, well quite frankly, I don't know you."

  "Oh, Mother, please!" from Christie.

  "I'm sorry, but I am your mother. I'm the one who's responsible. If I'm going to put my children in the care of someone, I want to know something about him." She looked apologetically at Terry, saying, "I'm sure you understand, Mr. Eason."

  "Yes, I do. But I don't know what I can say." How, he wondered, did these things happen to him? It was the kind of thing he would expect if Kelly were around.

  Ben was giving his stricken look, Christy rolling her eyes in disbelief, and Annabelle was getting her heels dug in. It was Diane who found the answer. "What if Alex comes along? You know him. He's big enough to protect them from any child molesters."

  "Diane, you know perfectly well I meant no such thing." She actually managed to look shocked.

  "Well, then? After all, the instructions say no hunting unless we're all together."

  "I suppose that would be all right." Then to Terry, "I hope you don't misunderstand."

  "Not at all. I think my mother would have said the same thing."

  "What time then?" asked Ben.

  Terry said, "I promised myself a dinner out this evening. I'm tired of my own cooking. Since it says to start at the beach, suppose we meet at my place after dinner."

  "Not too late," said Annabelle.

  "No, I'll make it early. Eight o'clock all right?"

  As they were leaving the building, Harry stopped Terry, waiting for the others to be out of hearing. Then he asked, "Eating alone?"

  "Yes, unfortunately."

  "I'm on my own tonight, too. Would you care for company?"

  Terry was surprised, but had eaten alone too often. "Sure. Can you recommend someplace?"

  "Sailors. It's on the pier just down from where you're staying."

  "The coffee shop?"

  "On the floor above it. It's a nice place, good food, looks out over the ocean. You'll like it. Oh, and if you wouldn't mind, bring along that envelope."

  "Lieutenant Chervenic."

  "Harry, it's Mickie. How'd it go?"

  "Interesting. I'll fill you in when I see you. Any luck yet?"

  "Nothing. We're almost finished with these buildings. It's slow. The trouble is, he may not have used his own name. And we don't have a picture to show. I was thinking. Do you suppose we could get Diane Carlsberg to draw one?"

  "Mickie, we buried the guy this morning."

  "I mean from memory. Her boyfriend said she could sketch us after we'd left. Why not her uncle?"

  "Maybe. She only saw him once, nearly two weeks ago."

  "But she said she wanted to paint him. I'll bet she studied his face, and with an artist's memory for shape—it's worth a try."

  "Yes, okay. But you'd better be the one to ask her. She and I didn't hit it off that well. Just find out where that money went."

  CHAPTER 18

  One of the best things about Sailors, apart from the food, is that there are no fishnets strung on the walls, no brass binnacle by the cash register, and no windows made to look like portholes. The decor is clean, simple and a little elegant. The only things nautical about it are the menu and the fact that the best tables are along a row of windows overlooking the surf and the pier. Lights from the pier show the green, milky froth of water as it builds and crashes on the sand.

  It has a reputation that goes beyond Connor Beach, usually drawing a crowd even in the off season. Harry was glad they were there early enough to get a table on the beach side. More than once he had waited in line just to get inside. Harry ordered a Beck's and Terry decided to splurge with a half bottle of wine.

  As they were ordering dinner, a woman was shown in and offered a table. She smiled at the hostess, asking if she might sit closer to the center of the room. She chose a table and settled in, her back to them, just two tables away. Harry had his back to the entrance, so he hadn't seen her come in.

  Conversation stayed light and general until they were well into their dinners. Then Harry brought the talk back to the dead man. "I wish I had known Matt Carlsberg."

  "I wish I had known him better. I have this feeling of incompleteness when I think of him. It's like something got cut off before it should have been."

  "Yes. It's a pity he killed himself like that."

  Terry stopped with his fork in midair, staring at Chervenic. "What makes you think he killed himself?"

  "Don't you?"

  "No, I don't."

  Harry cut another chunk of grilled tuna, continuing to talk between bites. "Well, look at the facts. There are things you may not know. In the first place, he was terminally ill—cancer. And he knew it. He was supposed to go back to Boston for treatment, but instead he came down here and made out a will. And he left a note. It was hand-written and signed. And it wasn't the kind of note you might assume was a suicide note if you looked at it in just the right way. It was very clear. No, there's no doubt he planned it."

  He stopped, and Terry started eating again. "I still don't buy it."

  "Why not?"

  "Because . . . All right, he may have planned it. If he was really that sick, sure. But he'd never have done it that way."

  "I've seen people who've killed themselves in stranger ways."

  "Makes no difference. His neatness wasn't just a fetish. He worked at it. Can you really imagine a man like that stabbing himself and spewing blood all over the room? And on the desk? That desk was the one physical thing he had that he cared about." He paused, thinking of something. "Wait a minute. You once asked me about that Indian knife on the desk. Is that what killed him?"

  Harry regarded him over the rim of his beer, then nodded.

  "Then I know it's all bull. Nobody would use that. It wasn't a knife, it was a joke, and he knew it. No. No way!"

  Harry finished the last bite. He leaned back and said, "Well, I suppose you could be right. Especially when you consider he was stabbed twice with that joke. And then you add in the pain pills in the medicine cabinet. I think the estimate was that he could have died about two-and-a-half times using those. And it would be clean and painless that way. And neat."

  "So, you don't think it was suicide."

  "No. Not really. I kind of see him going out on the beach one night with those pills and a bottle of booze. Maybe some Drambuie—he seemed to be partial to that. He would sit there by the ocean, pop the pills and sip on the bottle until he couldn't hold it any longer. That sound about right?"

  "Yeah. It would be something like that." He could easily imagine Matt Carlsberg saying goodbye to the world, alone, on a dark, wintr
y beach. He would want to feel the sea breeze on his face, see the moon rising, hear that most ancient sound of the surf. To be amid the elemental things, to be surrounded by darkness and to sink into it softly.

  "But he didn't get the chance," said Harry. "Somebody got in a hurry, so he died in pain, before he was ready."

  "So why were you trying to convince me it was suicide?"

  "Just wanted to see if you liked the idea. I've been trying to pitch that story to everyone concerned, but for one reason or another, nobody wants it."

  "So I'm a suspect?"

  "Why should you be left out? You could have done it."

  "I was with Kelly."

  "Can she swear you didn't leave after she was asleep?"

  He remembered waking and hearing the sounds of the party. And watching her sleep. "I guess not."

  "Can you swear she didn't leave? Can anyone swear you didn't do it together?" He put up his hand to halt the protest. "That's the way this one is. Everyone gives me an alibi, but most of them won't hold up."

  "Would you gentlemen care for coffee?" The waiter was clearing away the dishes. "Could I interest you in desert?"

  They both said yes to coffee, no to desert, although Harry was sorely tempted. He had only recently discovered the sinful pleasure of French Silk pie, and was sure that someone back in the Sailors kitchen had made a pact with the devil to get the recipe.

  With coffee in front of them, Harry said, "I've got a question. This morning, at the cemetery, I saw you watching the others. You seemed to be studying them."

  "Was I?"

  "I thought maybe you were trying to figure out which of them could have done it."

  "No. Do you think it was one of them?"

  "That's my secret. Is this yours?"

  Terry stirred cream into his coffee. "It's not a secret. It's just a habit. From writing, you get into watching people. How they look when they're thinking, how they hold themselves when they're angry. In one of Somerset Maugham's novels, he told about a man—a painter or a writer, I don't remember which—who spoke about sitting at his wife's deathbed. They had been married a long time, he loved her very much. He knew she was close to death. He was devastated at the thought of losing her. Then, as he sat there holding her hand, he was horrified to realize that a part of his mind—the artist or the writer—was watching, remembering how she looked, the way she breathed, the color of her skin, the little details that would help to make a scene more realistic."

  "Sounds a bit ghoulish."

  "It is. It's amazing, isn't it, how the mind can divide itself up and do different things all at once. As if there's more than one person in there."

  "So part of you was observing the mourners."

  "I don't think there were any mourners there. They were there because they had to be. The brother was the only one who seemed shook at all, and that was because he was sick. And his daughter. She was worried about him. The others seemed to be thinking about something else, probably what they would do when they got away, what the will would say, what they would have for lunch."

  "You're guessing."

  "Sure. But they weren't thinking about the funeral. I'd bet on it. I started wondering what was going through the minister's mind. And what about you? Were you thinking about the dead?"

  "I didn't know him."

  "Who did? That's just it. How many times had they seen him since he was a kid just out of school? I probably knew him as well as they did."

  "I guess that's true. But you were wrong about there being no mourners. I think there was one person who knew him very well."

  "Who?"

  Harry changed the subject by asking, "Did you bring the envelope?"

  Terry took it from his inside jacket pocket. Before handing it over, he asked, "This isn't just idle curiosity, is it?"

  "No, it isn't."

  It didn't seem there would be any more explanation than that, so Terry handed it to him. Harry opened the envelope and took out a single sheet of paper. He unfolded it, read it, then read it again. Finally, he took out his notebook and copied it word for word. When he was finished, he handed it back, saying, "Looks like you people are going to have some fun."

  Terry read it and frowned. He didn't bother reading it a second time. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "Quests aren't supposed to be easy. What are you going to do about this? What are your plans?"

  "I don't have a plan. I don't see that we can do much with this tonight. I guess I'll just give each of them a copy. Then we can meet sometime tomorrow and see if anyone has any ideas."

  Harry said nothing, but sat looking at the lighted pier stretching into the darkness. Finally he said, "Listen, I'd like you to do something for me." He took the discarded envelope and wrote briefly on the back. "Here's a couple of phone numbers. You'll be able to get me at one of them, or at least get a message to me. Whatever you're going to do, let me know ahead if you can. Will you do that?"

  "All right." Terry was puzzled. "What has this to do with . . .?"

  "I'm not sure yet. A gut hunch. Just let me know whenever the group is going to get together. Oh, and watch yourself."

  The woman two tables behind Harry got up to leave. She was older than Terry, but had a calm, poised air of assurance. Tall and tanned. Good features. Even the streak of gray was attractive. He wondered idly what she was doing in a place like Connor Beach, in winter, alone. He could picture her in Cancun, maybe, or Barcelona or Bermuda, any of the sunny places he had never been.

  Their eyes met. She smiled slightly, then turned away. He watched her walk away, saw the unexaggerated, slightly sinuous swing of her hips that reminded him of someone. She carried an evening bag in her left hand. As she went, she turned her hand outward in that particular way he had seen before. Without meaning to, Terry said, "That's her!"

  "Who?" Harry had no idea what he was talking about.

  "That woman. She's just leaving. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think she's the one we saw on the beach—the one Matt was watching."

  She reached the end of the room, then turned toward the front. Harry saw her in profile. She no longer wore a hat, and the dress was different, but he knew it was the same woman. He got two bills out of his wallet, threw them on the table, saying, "Take care of the tab, will you? I don't want to lose her again."

  By the time he got outside, she was gone. But how could she be? He had been right behind her. There was a parking lot between the street and entrance. He saw two cars pulling in, but none were leaving. Besides, she couldn't have got that far before he came through the door.

  He looked around quickly, then noticed the wooden walkway that went around the side of the building, out to the pier. He followed it and saw her ahead of him.

  It was dark and quiet walking back to the house, and this gave Terry opportunity to think. Or rather, to wonder. He didn't have enough information to do much constructive thinking. So he wondered why Chervenic was so interested in the instructions Matt had left. Did he really think there might be something there that would point him to a murderer? If so, he must have been pretty disappointed. With that came another thought that he didn't like at all. If Chervenic thought all this was important, then maybe the murderer would, too. His mind backed away from that. Being Master of the Hunt was one thing—he didn't need jokers thrown into the game. Maybe it would be better to call it off until the murderer was caught.

  The murderer, he thought. As if it were a different species. The Murderer. Stay off the streets until the escaped gorilla has been recaptured, or the bear is back in his cage. But this murderer is a member of a family, goes to work or to school, has friends, eats breakfast, catches colds, shops at Christmas. Just like me.

  He wondered who the woman was. By the time he had paid the bill and left the restaurant, there had been no sign of either her or Chervenic. Thinking back on it, he didn't see how he could have been sure it was the woman on the beach. Something familiar in her walk, the way she held her bag. And even if she was the s
ame woman, so what? Even Matt had seemed unsure about her. It may have been just as he said, she reminded him of someone. He could see Chervenic stopping this innocent sophisticate, and being coldly told where to put it. After all, why shouldn't she walk on the beach? Was that illegal now?

  He was picturing it as he went up the stairs onto the little front porch. He had left no lights on, so as he went through the door he reached to his right for the switch. As he did, he heard a small, brushing sound to his left. He started to turn, but something hard slammed into his head and shoulder. A sharp pain ran down his arm. Then he was on the floor, confused, wondering how he'd got there. He didn't remember falling. Someone was with him, pulling at his jacket. He tried to yell, but only let out a grunt. Hands were fumbling at his chest. He reached out blindly, trying to grab whomever it was. His hand closed on something thin and hard, but not human. Footsteps hurried down the steps.

  He tried to move. It hurt, so he lay still, wondering what to do. Thoughts started, then stopped, cut off by questions that didn't quite form, swirling into confusion. The only thing that occurred to him was to sleep. Sleep seemed like a wonderful idea. If only he slept, things would be better.

  She stopped, put her hands on the rough, wooden rail and looked down for a moment at the swirling, lighted water. The breeze was steady off the ocean. She turned her face into it, her head back, breathing it in deeply. She didn't move when Harry walked up and stood beside her. Without even glancing at him she said, "I love the smell of the sea. Especially at night."

  "Yes. Nothing like salt air."

  "Actually, it's iodine."

  "What?"

  "Iodine. There's a lot of iodine in seawater. That's what we smell. At least, that's what I was told. Salt doesn't have a smell." She turned to him, asking, "Are you Lieutenant Chervenic?"

  "That's right." Who was going to ask the questions here?

  "I thought you were. I read about you in the papers."

  "And you're Maria Rhyne."

  Her eyes widened. "My God, I haven't heard that name in a long time. I used to be her—somewhere in a previous existence. Since then, I've been married twice, divorced once, widowed once."