The Woodpecker Always Pecks Twice

by J. R. Ripley

  “Yeah,” he said, returning to his meal. He took a loud sip of coffee before saying, “I’ve seen it but never been in. Birds don’t do anything for me.” He paused and smiled. “Unless they’re breaded and deep-fried.”

  Lana slid my bacon sandwich special down before me. “Can I get you anything else?”

  I said no. Lana refilled a couple of customers’ drinks, then pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen. She sidled up to Gus and began whispering in his ear. His hand fell on the small of her back.

  “I had a lady on the bus yesterday,” said Neal, catching my ear. “She was really into that whole bird-watching thing.”

  “You did?” Bingo.

  He nodded, took another loud sip, and then said, “The only reason I remember is because she got herself killed.”

  I took a bite of coleslaw, figuring that, of all the food items on my plate, it was the least damaging to my health. “I heard about that.” I took my time. I didn’t want to spook him. Sometimes talking to a person and trying to get any useful information out of them was like reeling in a difficult fish. “You gave her a ride?”

  “Yep, picked her up at the stop outside the high school. Her house must be near there. I don’t usually get many folks coming out this way on a Sunday morning. Those I do get are on their way to church.”

  “But Mrs. Hammond wasn’t going to church?”

  Neal’s brow went up. “Bessie Hammond. That was her name, all right.” He wiped his full lips with his napkin. “You knew her?”

  I explained how she’d been a member of my inaugural bird-watching group.

  “That makes sense,” Neal replied. “She said she was going bird-watching.” He paused, chuckling. “And maybe a little ghost hunting as well.”

  “Ghost hunting? What did she mean by that?”

  “I have no idea. A joke, I guess. She had a big pair of binoculars around her neck. Said nobody could read a clue like her.”

  “What time was this? Do you remember?”

  “Of course, I remember. Like I told the police, Saturday and Sunday mornings I hit that stop three times.”

  “What time did you pick up Bessie Hammond?”

  “Six fifty in the a.m. On schedule.” Neal tipped his coffee mug. “I stick to my schedule. Not that I get many folks at that stop Sunday mornings. I keep telling my boss at the transportation department they ought to cut that run, but what do I know?”

  “Was Mrs. Hammond alone? Did anyone board with her?”

  “Not a soul. Who’d want to?” Neal chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t know what makes a person want to get up early on a Sunday morning and go looking at a bunch of silly birds.” He tapped the side of his skull with a fat finger. “Bird brains, if you ask me.”

  The driver looked suddenly stricken and added quickly, “I mean, no offense to you or the lady.” He hung his head, staring into his coffee mug, though I wasn’t sure if it was sudden-found remorse or unhappiness that his coffee was gone and no more was forthcoming.

  “You said you gave her a ride,” I started. “Where did you take her?”

  “The marina.”

  “And you never gave her a ride back?” I pretty much knew the answer to that question, but I wanted corroboration. The more I could learn about Bessie’s movements Sunday morning, the closer I might come to learning what had led to her death.

  “Nope.” Neal had polished off his sandwich and now attacked the remaining fries after slathering them with ketchup. “Saw her picture this morning in the Weekender.”

  “Today?” The town paper only comes out on weekends, hence its name.

  “Yep. They put out a special edition.”

  Leave it to Lance’s dad, William Jennings, to run a special edition of his newspaper to try to capitalize on the murder.

  “Nice obit. The lady would have been pleased. Well”—Neal slid off his stool, extracting a ten-dollar bill from a thick black wallet and laying it next to his ticket—“back to work.”

  I nodded thoughtfully as I bit into my bacon sandwich. I promised myself I’d only eat half and save the rest for later. Unfortunately, the bacon on white toast had other ideas and I left behind an empty plate.

  Self-control was not one of my strong suits. Leaving the diner, I walked around back to the private stairs leading to Moire’s apartment. I wanted to get Moire alone and, with Gus McKutcheon tied up in the kitchen, this was the perfect opportunity.

  Or so I thought.

  I knocked on the door. Gus answered, his lower half wrapped in a fluffy white bath towel. “Oh.” I stepped back in surprise and stumbled off the tiny landing.

  Gus reached out, caught my hand, and pulled me toward him. “Hey, there! Be careful, kitten!”

  I smelled musk as he pressed me close to his bare chest. I felt the blood rush to my cheeks and forehead. And what was with that kitten crack? Did everyone in town know what kind of pj’s I wore?

  “Who’s there?” I heard Moire call.

  “Your friend Amy!” Gus shouted. One hand tugged at the towel hanging precariously on his hip bone.

  “Oh?” Moire’s surprised voice was followed a moment later by the woman herself. “Hello, Amy.” She ran a hand through her damp hair.

  I gaped, struggling for words. “I—that is, I—”

  “Yes?” Moire belted her green fleece robe and wrapped her arm around Gus’s waist.

  Wow. Not only was Guster McKutcheon the diner’s manager, chief cook, and head bottle washer, as he liked to proclaim, he was also sleeping with the boss!

  After merely a week, no less.

  “I wanted to let you know that Paul Anderson and I are starting a new birds-and-brews event. We’ll be meeting one Tuesday a month at Brewer’s Biergarten, starting this Tuesday. I hope you can make it. Both of you.” I managed a weak smile.

  Gus and Moire looked at each other in poorly hidden amusement.

  “Uh, sure, Amy. Thanks.” Moire’s hand was on the doorknob. “Was there something else?”

  I shook my head no. There was so, so much more. But where to begin? I’m pretty sure I muttered some sort of goodbye before fleeing down the stairs.

  The next thing I knew, I was at the marina, staring at boats.

  I was drenched in embarrassment-induced sweat and part of me felt like jumping in the lake to cool off. The other part of me thought about Mary McKutcheon’s and Mr. Hammond’s bones swishing around the dark bottom of the lake somewhere.

  That part of me won. I remained on dry land. A man and a woman were clearly visible in the glass-sided control center atop the marina’s main building. Several gulls basked in the sun near the rooster weather vane at the peak of the shingled rooftop. I was about to climb the steps leading to the center when I noticed a police car roll up and park nearby.

  I ducked my head and turned left quickly. I rounded the corner and took a peek. Chief Kennedy exited the squad car. He was in uniform and making straight for the marina manager’s office on the ground floor, directly below the control center.

  Now was not the time for amateur sleuthing. At least, not directly under Jerry’s nose. Harsh sunlight beat down from the sky, bounced off the flat lake, and hit me in the eyes. Using my hand for a visor, I surveyed the rows of docks.

  I was in luck. Two men were moving about on the small orange-topped motorboat I’d seen out alone on the lake the morning of the storm. A sign that hung over the side of the boat advertised fishing expeditions and scenic tours. A phone number and web address were prominently displayed.

  My feet thumped loudly as I walked along the long, narrow dock. Gulls lifted off as I approached. Their squawks had the opposite effect of what the birds might have intended because I found the noise oddly soothing, natural.

  Normal. There wasn’t a lot of normal going around lately.

  A heavyset man with a thick black beard was folding a net on deck. He stopped when he saw me. The blue-and-white horizontal-striped shirt and baggy cargo pants made him look doubly wide. The second
man had disappeared, probably gone belowdecks.

  “Good morning!” I waved. “Catch anything?”

  The bearded man spat over his shoulder but his aim was poor and his spittle landed in the boat not the lake. He didn’t seem to mind. “See for yourself,” he said in a friendly manner. The burly man gestured toward a water-filled fiberglass holding tank built into the motorboat’s side.

  “Permission to come aboard?” I quipped. He nodded and I gingerly stepped across from the dock to the boat. The boat rocked unexpectedly toward me. I felt myself falling for the second time in the space of an hour. This time, instead of a half-naked man in a towel, it was a fleshy, calloused hand that reached out, saving me from cracking my skull against the gunwale. I pushed my hair out of my face and straightened my blouse. “Thanks. That was close.” Thank goodness I’d worn shorts and not a skirt.

  The fisherman chuckled. “My license doesn’t allow me to catch women,” he said. “Only fish.” A big-brimmed camo hat covered his head and shaded his piercing eyes.

  I’d have found those words disconcerting from most anybody else, but from him they seemed harmless. I peered into the tank. Half a dozen fish, varying in size from six inches to over a foot, swam in circles within. “Perch?” I’m not a fish person. Birds I can identify, but not fish. They all look the same to me. I imagined bus driver Neal felt that way about birds. Neal. Something he’d said—and something I’d seen before or hadn’t seen—nagged at me from a hidden corner of my mind. What was it? I squeezed my eyes shut, deep in thought, but was interrupted by the fisherman.

  He chuckled and joined me at the tank. “See the ones over here with the black spots?”

  “Yes?”

  “Those are bluegills. Them two stripey ones are crappies. The big olive-green one is a large-mouth bass.”

  “Yes, I see now.” Though how black spots led to a fish being christened a bluegill was clear as the mud surrounding the lake’s edge. I guess it was no different than a lot of birds whose names make no sense to me, like the red-bellied woodpecker that had been driving me from my sleep on recent mornings. “Did you catch anything Friday morning, Mister. . .?”

  “Captain Ethan Harrow. Call me Ethan.”

  “Amy Simms.” I shook his hand. My hand now smelled fishie and some sort of slime seemed to have taken up residence on my palm. I wiped my hand against my shorts. “So, did you catch anything Friday?”

  Ethan cocked his head. “Friday?” He rubbed his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t recall. Why?” I sensed a growing suspicion.

  I explained that I lived across the street and had been bird-watching at the time. “I’d been surprised to see anyone out on the lake during the storm.”

  “Friday.” He nodded, thoughtfully. “Yeah, I was out. How did you know it was me?”

  I explained that I had recognized his boat. “It was the orange roof,” I explained.

  Ethan seemed to take my interest at face value. “I didn’t haul much, as I recall. What I can’t eat, I sell to the Lakeside Market. I was alone that morning. No crew. No customers.”

  “Customers?”

  “Tourists. They pay me to take them fishing. Not Friday. Bad weather. I didn’t stay out long, myself.”

  I watched the little fish swimming in hopeless circles as I framed my next question, the question that mattered most. “Did you notice anything odd that morning?”

  Ethan sat back against the captain’s chair and motioned for me to sit beside him. “How do you mean, odd?”

  I scratched at my leg. I sometimes scratch when I’m nervous or restless. “I don’t know. Anything that seemed out of the ordinary?”

  Ethan shrugged and pulled a chubby cigar from a small pouch hanging beside the wheel. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Lady”—the fishing captain poked his cigar at me—“I was only looking for fish. Not to mention, there was a squall going on. It was too loud out here to hear anything less than a cannon shot.” He lit up with a gold lighter. “You mind?”

  I said I didn’t. It was his boat, after all. I already smelled of fish, so smelling like a cigar too couldn’t be much worse. “Have you ever been to the McKutcheon house?” Maybe I could work around to my subject by coming up on it from another angle.

  “That old place? I know folks are living there again. But I’ve never been up. Why?” Ethan looked over his shoulder at the house, barely visible through the trees. “What’s so special about that house?”

  “I like old houses,” I answered. “In fact, I live in one. I’m sort of a history buff. I have an interest in historic houses and their stories.”

  “Oh,” Ethan said slowly. He slid off his seat. “In that case, you ought to talk to my young assistant. He can probably tell you all about it. More than me, that’s for certain.”

  My heart quickened. Finally, I might be getting somewhere.

  The captain crossed to the hatch and yelled down. “Hey, Jean! Come on up, will you?”

  Jean?

  Jean Rabin’s head popped up from the hatch. He looked at me and smiled. “Bonjour.” He crossed to where I sat and kissed me on both cheeks. “Welcome aboard.”

  I tried to voice a reply, but my mouth had turned dry as soot. Ethan picked up a jug and poured me some water in a plastic cup, which he handed to me. I drank it down.

  “You okay?” Ethan asked. He and Jean looked at me with concern.

  “I’m fine.” I forced a smile. “I guess I don’t have my sea legs yet.”

  Ethan’s brow went up in amusement. “We’re tied up and barely moving.”

  “I don’t do so good on boats. Remind me to tell you about the time I went whale watching in Bar Harbor. I didn’t see a single whale, but I did get a good look at my shoes every time I bent over to puke!”

  Both men laughed.

  “Amy was asking me about the McKutcheon house, Jean. She’s one of them history buffs.”

  Jean flashed his teeth. “Is that so?” I detected a bit of disbelief in his speech and it wasn’t just the French accent. “You must come and visit us again, mademoiselle.”

  “Again?” asked Ethan, between puffs of his cigar that sent clouds of smoke over the bow.

  “I did see the house briefly . . .”

  Jean planted his bare feet and grabbed a coil of thick rope from the stern. He placed it in a small locker, then flipped the lid closed. “Amy is the one I was telling you about, the one who discovered the unfortunate dead woman in the forest.”

  “Is that so?” Ethan tossed his cigar over the side. Ecofriendly didn’t seem to be in his vocabulary. “Not a pretty sight, I’ll bet. Not a pretty sight at all.”

  Jean plopped himself down on an orange foam cushion on the deck and crossed his legs. Bare skin showed through where the knees had worn away or been cut to appear so at the knees. “What exactly would you like to know about the house?” He wiped his hands across his T-shirt. “I have not been long here. But I’ll tell you what I can.”

  “I hear Guster McKutcheon is using the house as a hostel. How many guests are there?”

  Jean scrunched up his lips and counted with his fingers. “Un, deux . . . I should say sept—seven. Counting me,” he said, pointing to himself. I tried to do some quick math in my head. How many people had I seen at the house? Did his number add up? And what about the body I’d seen ejected from the window? Though I was more and more beginning to think that everybody else was right and I was wrong. Maybe I could get Kim’s boyfriend, Randy, to take me to the dump. I wanted to get a look at this dressmaking dummy and see if that dummy had made a dummy out of me.

  “As for the house history,” Jean was saying, “you must ask Mr. McKutcheon himself. Perhaps you should come for a supper?”

  “Umm, well . . .”

  “Tonight?” Jean turned to Ethan. “You must come, too, sir. My way of repaying you for the job, monsieur.”

  “Yeah, why not?” Ethan said quickly. “You got any whiskey up there, or should I br
ing a bottle?”

  “I am certain we can accommodate you, Mr. Harrow, sir.”

  Much as I loathed the idea, I had no choice but to agree. Notwithstanding whether I’d seen or only imagined a man being tossed in cold blood out a second-floor window, I had seen Bessie Hammond with her neck broken out there. I did not want to be next.

  With the fisherman at the house, too, I knew I’d be safe.

  12

  “Are you kidding me?” shrieked Kim. “Half-naked?”

  I shook my head. “Half-naked and wearing only a bath towel.”

  Kim hooted. “Why do I miss all the fun?”

  I threw a sofa pillow at her. It missed and tumbled helplessly end over end across the floor until it came to a stop in the fireplace. Great, now I had a soot-covered pillow. How was I going to explain that to Mom? I dug my spine into the back of the sofa. “I was shocked. I mean, Gus had been in the diner not long before that. I saw him with my own two eyes. Canoodling with one of the waitresses, no less!”

  “It was probably nothing. I worked in a restaurant one summer. There’s a lot of harmless flirtation that goes on. Trust me.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Kim helped herself to a glass of wine from the bottle over the fridge. “I guess Moire’s in love. Good for her.”

  I pulled a face. “She thinks she’s in love, but she’s in flames.”

  Kim settled down beside me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean there’s something wrong about this guy. There’s been at least one murder out at his property.”

  “That doesn’t make it his fault.”

  “It doesn’t make it not his fault,” I argued back. “Besides, he’s a player.”

  “He can play me anytime.”

  “Would you cut that out? I’m trying to be serious here.”

  “Okay.” Kim tilted back her glass and took a swallow. “Let’s be serious for a moment. Whatever, and I mean whatever is going on between Gus McKutcheon and Moire is none”—Kim tapped my hand—“none of our business.”

  I bit down on my lower lip. “But you didn’t see the way Lana and Gus were carrying on at the diner—”