by Lanyon, Josh
Reluctantly, Finn nodded.
Con’s voice was very low. “You’re suggesting that someone murdered him.”
“It could have been an accident.”
Con was shaking his head. “If it was an accident, why wouldn’t that person come forward? Why go to elaborate lengths to hide the truth?”
“I don’t know.”
“If what you’re suggesting is true, I don’t believe it could have been an accident.”
Finn’s gaze met Con’s dark one. “But I don’t see why anyone would deliberately… I can’t believe that anyone would want Fitch dead.”
Con reached out and squeezed his uninjured knee; he withdrew his hand immediately. He said neutrally, “There was a side to Fitch you didn’t see—or didn’t see it until that day.”
“What are you saying?”
“Only that…for one instant in that cottage, when you walked away and Fitch was standing there laughing, I wanted him dead. I’m not the only person who ever felt that way.”
Finn straightened, unconsciously bracing himself as Con continued, “Fitch had a cruel streak. I don’t know why or what made him the way he was, but he enjoyed being rude, he enjoyed seeing people squirm, he enjoyed hurting people.”
Finn got up fast—and awkwardly, belatedly steadying himself on the chair, ignoring the pain in his injured leg. “That’s not true!”
Con rose too. “It is true. Are you telling me you never heard the way he talked to Thomas? Or Hiram? Or plenty of other people?”
“He was joking.”
“He wasn’t funny. He was cruel. You never talked to anyone that way.”
“I…”
“Don’t make excuses for him. The reason you never noticed any of that was because you were such a nice, sweet-tempered guy.”
“Oh great!” Finn’s face twisted in comical disgust. “Nice. There’s the kiss of death right there.”
“I know.” Con’s smile was crooked. “Awful, isn’t it? But you were the nicest guy I’ve ever known. And I wish to hell I had appreciated it at the time. I mean that as a compliment. Fitch was different with you, and you…didn’t see the way he was with others.”
“So you’re saying he made fun of someone and they killed him?”
“I don’t know what happened. I know that Fitch could have said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time—sometimes that’s the way it happens.”
That was the historian talking. “But if someone did all those things…packed his clothes, took the car…then it was premeditated.”
“Not necessarily.”
“If someone hid his body…”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Con said. “It’s not that big an island. So where would someone hide Fitch’s body?”
Finn sat down again. “I can’t believe we’re casually talking about this, talking about Fitch being dead. Murdered.” He rested his face in his hands. “I can’t believe it.”
Con came over to him, squatted down next to him, putting an arm around his shoulders. It took all Finn’s willpower not to lean into him.
“You might be wrong. I hope you’re wrong…but you’ve made a pretty convincing case. Now I’m wondering. More than wondering. Frankly, I think Fitch probably is dead.”
Neither said anything for a time. Finally Finn raised his head. He said wearily, “I don’t know what to do. Should we call the state police? I haven’t even talked to Uncle Tom about the possibility yet. What if I am wrong?”
Con’s gaze seemed to linger on his mouth, and for an uncomfortable moment Finn thought Con might lean forward and brush his lips against Finn’s. Instead, he drew back, rising.
“Let’s wait a bit,” he said. “Why don’t we try this: why don’t we go out to the last place we know Fitch was alive?”
Finn stared at him. “The lighthouse?”
Con nodded. “The lighthouse.”
Chapter Six
“Who is Paul?” Con asked as they took the long, meandering road that wound up to the abandoned lighthouse. “You said you and Paul went down to the marina to check when Fitch might have left the island.”
Finn, distracted by any number of unpleasant reflections, dragged his gaze away from the rise and fall of the road ahead. “Paul Ryder. He’s a friend.”
“Close friend?”
“Close enough.” Finn added, “We’re not lovers, if that’s what you mean. He came because…I needed some company. At least, I thought I did. I wasn’t sure what to expect here. Paul’s an art dealer—a pretty successful one—so his schedule is, well, he makes his own schedule.”
There was nothing to read in Con’s voice or profile. He might simply have been making polite conversation. “He must be a pretty good friend to drop everything to keep you company.”
“He’s a pretty good friend,” Finn agreed. “But I think part of the attraction was he wanted to see where Fitch grew up. They had a thing a few years back, and I don’t know if Paul ever really got over it. I mean, he’s still pretty caustic and sometimes that means there are still feelings there.”
“Yes,” Con said. “Indifference is the worst.”
Finn stared out the window at the trees, the flash of brisk blue water behind the golden wall of autumn leaves. The sun was very bright. He’d forgotten sunglasses, and he put his hand up to shield his eyes.
“All right?”
He hadn’t realized that Con was watching him so closely. “I’m okay.”
“There’s an extra pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment.”
Finn shook his head. “I hate them. I won’t wear them until I don’t have a choice.”
Con’s brows drew together.
After another mile of silence, Con’s voice jerked him out of his thoughts again. “The guy who was killed in the car accident that injured you…?”
“Tristan. Another friend,” Finn said unemotionally. “He might have been something more. We never got the chance to find out.”
After a hesitation, Con said, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
They did not talk the rest of the way. It was not a long drive, but the road was a roundabout one snaking through the hills and woods. As the road wound its way, Finn glimpsed the lighthouse through tree branches. He studied Con’s profile and thought that Con’s expression was peculiar. Remote and yet resolute. As though feeling his gaze, Con glanced at him and then—perhaps misreading Finn—slowed the Land Rover.
Finn was increasingly tense as the miles passed, but it was not the fear of another accident. In fact, he couldn’t understand his own mounting stress.
It wasn’t until the final stretch of road at last uncoiled at the top of a green hillock overlooking the ocean, and Con rolled to a stop in the sandy square beside the keeper’s dwelling, that Finn recognized what was disquieting him. He glanced at Con’s grim profile, stared at the small white brick building with the boarded windows, and all the while his heart was pounding in hard, hollow slams as though someone were kicking an empty oil drum. Suddenly he was very sure he did not want to take this any further. Very sure that he would be happier not knowing what he was about to find out.
Con opened his door, and Finn said desperately, “Con—”
Leaning back inside, Con said, “What is it?”
“I’m not feeling— Can we do this another time?”
“What’s wrong?”
Finn shook his head, but Con was already coming around the front of the Land Rover, opening the door on Finn’s side. “What is it? What’s wrong?” He slipped his arm around Finn and helped him out of the vehicle, his hands very gentle, his face concerned. “It’s your eyes again?”
“Yes. No. I’m okay,” Finn said. “Maybe a little—”
“Carsick?” Con asked. “Light-headed?”
Try afraid of you, Finn thought. Because as he stared into Con’s buccaneer eyes, he couldn’t help remembering that everything Con had told him that day indicated that Con was the person most likely to have mu
rdered Fitch—if Fitch were truly dead and not playing some cruel game.
“Jesus,” Con said, sounding alarmed as he eased Finn back against the side of the Rover. “You’re as white as the fucking stones. Do you want to— What do you want, sugar? You want to sit down or do you want to walk a little?”
Sugar. Finn could have cried at the old pet name. Why did Con have to do that? Why didn’t he call him something stupid, like “Huckleberry”? Why did he have to be so tender and…loving now? Why did he have to do any of this?
But it was Finn who had started it, not Con. It was Finn who had made the mistake of coming back here, coming back to Seal Island. He should have let well enough alone. He should have left this place and all its memories to slide into the past and sink to the bottom of his consciousness.
“Rest for a minute. You’re pushing yourself too hard.” Con was worrying aloud. “These headaches… I keep forgetting you’re only a couple of days out of the hospital. This could have waited.”
“I just need a…little air,” Finn said desperately, because he couldn’t think while Con’s hands were moving in conscious or unconscious caress on his shoulders, and Con’s face was mere inches from his own.
“You want to walk?” Con was watching him intently. “I’ll help you. Lean on me.”
He tried to slip his arm around Finn’s waist, but Finn freed himself clumsily. “In a minute. Why don’t you…why don’t you go up into the lighthouse and see…if there’s anything to see?”
“You don’t want to look for yourself?” Con’s dark eyes never left his own.
Finn shook his head.
“Are you all right if I leave you for a minute or two?”
Finn nodded tightly.
Con scrutinized him for another few seconds, clearly divided; then he said, “All right. I’ll run up and take a quick look around. The place may be locked up for all I know.”
Finn licked his dry lips, nodded again.
Con turned away and strode toward the boarded-up dwelling. Finn watched him try the door. It opened with a soprano screech of frozen hinges, and Con disappeared inside.
Finn reached into the Land Rover and grabbed his cane. He hadn’t been kidding about needing air. He felt woozy with a combination of dread and confusion. At least part of it was that irrational fear of going into that claustrophobic dark of the keeper’s dwelling, but the rest was genuine foreboding that he had started something that couldn’t be stopped.
If he forced himself to look at the situation with cold logic, Con had opportunity, means, and motive—by his own admission. And as Paul would no doubt have pointed out, Rutherford’s hatchet-faced Miss Marple was always boisterously enthusiastic about such a criminous trifecta. Con had not wanted to call the police. Con had wanted Finn to come out here alone with him. Why? So he could kill Finn too?
But…this was Con.
He was the most civilized man Finn knew; he still used the library for God’s sake. Con who drank Earl Grey tea and read fantasy and listened to Barber and wrote histories about long-ago injustices in an effort to set the score straight. Con, who had held Ripley in his arms to the very end when the old dog had to be put down. Con, who, despite his determination not to get enmeshed in a relationship, had been the gentlest and most painstaking lover Finn had known. That weekend they had gone to Union, staying at a quaint bed-and-breakfast, going to the Farnsworth Art Museum, Damariscotta Lake, the Antique Toy and Art Museum…that had been the single best weekend of Finn’s life.
It wasn’t…possible.
But what else made sense? Fitch had his faults, God knew, but the idea that someone had killed him because…because he was rude to them? Because he had been insensitive?
He got Paul’s cell phone out and began to dial the house.
“Finn, you’re closer to the edge than you realize.” A hard hand came down on Finn’s shoulder, and he nearly jumped from the rocky cliff all on his own. Lost in his own thoughts, he hadn’t heard Con’s approach, and there was no hiding his alarm as he turned, dropping the cell phone and knocking the other man’s hand away, ready to fight.
“What’s the matter with you?” Con’s expression was startled.
Finn clutched his cane with both hands, braced for whatever was coming. But it seemed that nothing was coming.
The surprise on Con’s face hardened slowly into disbelief, then anger.
“You think I killed Fitch?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “And then what? Brought you up here to murder you too?”
“What’s in the lighthouse?” Finn croaked.
“I don’t know what’s in the fucking lighthouse, because it’s too dark to see and I forgot to replace the batteries in my flashlight. What do you think is in the lighthouse? Proof that I killed your brother?”
“Did you?” Finn got out between stiff lips.
“How can you even ask me that?” Con cried, and the anguish in his voice seemed too raw to be faked. “I already told you I didn’t. I told you exactly what happened that day.”
“And you told me that you punched him and that for a minute you wanted him dead. Maybe when you hit him, he fell and hit his head—”
“If I had accidentally killed Fitch, I’d have gone to the authorities. I wouldn’t have tried to hide it.” There was contempt in Con’s voice. “I wouldn’t have spent the afternoon searching for you—which, by the way, I can prove. In part at least.”
“All right. Prove it.”
“Barnaby Purdon was fishing in Otter Cove most of the time I was waiting there after I left Fitch—alive—here.”
“That doesn’t prove anything! I only have your word that Fitch was alive when you left him. Besides, you said yourself it was too far away to know for sure who was in the lighthouse tower.”
“Well, who else could it have been?”
Finn shook his head stubbornly. “I-I don’t know. But it’s not proof, Con.”
He raked an impatient hand through his pale hair. “All right. Try this on. Estelle Minton was working in her garden when I walked up to The Birches. I think she’ll be willing to testify I wasn’t carrying a body.”
“Don’t make fun of it. For God’s sake!”
“No. You’re right,” Con said tightly. “There’s nothing funny about this. And there’s no point discussing it with you. If you think I killed your fucking brother, then go call the state police. Go do whatever the hell it is you think you need to do, Finn. But stay away from me.”
He turned and walked away to the Land Rover. He got in, started the engine, and drove away without looking back.
Finn painfully lowered himself to the ground, picked up the dropped cell phone, and dialed The Birches. He got Martha, who instructed him to invite Con to supper. He told her Con was otherwise engaged and asked for Paul.
Paul’s fluting tones answered a couple of seconds later.
“I’m at the lighthouse,” Finn told him. “Can you bring the station wagon? And can you borrow a couple of flashlights from Martha. Tell her…I don’t know. Something. Tell her I want to paint the tower or the cliffs from above and I need to get into the old building to look around.”
“Are you going to paint the tower?” asked the ever-hopeful art dealer.
“No.”
“Oh. What did you find out?” Paul demanded. “Did he admit it?”
“No, he didn’t admit anything. I don’t believe he did kill Fitch.” Finn added shortly, “I think Fitch might be playing some cruel game on all of us.”
There was a sharp silence. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. Oh, I don’t know! It’s…very hard to believe that anyone would kill Fitch. And I sure as hell don’t believe Con did.”
“What did he say that so convinced you?”
“Among other things, he told me to call the cops.”
“Oh.”
“Can you bring the car?” Finn asked wearily when the empty buzz on the line persisted.
“On my way,” Paul said and hung up.
It was about twenty minutes before the station wagon tires crunched onto the sandy shale and parked in front of the lighthouse. By then Finn was chilled through and completely depressed.
He picked himself off the ground as Paul unfolded from the station wagon and waved cheerfully.
Paul loped up, inquiring, “Is Martha a blood relation?”
“Technically she’s not any relation at all.”
“That’s good. So she can’t actually send you to bed without supper? Because those were the dire threats she was muttering when I left.”
Finn snorted.
Paul studied his face. “What’s up? Why so glum?”
Finn shook his head. “Did you bring flashlights?”
Paul held up a cautioning finger and ducked back into the car. He brought out two high-powered flashlights. “I don’t know how you’re going to get up those stairs, with that leg, though. You probably should leave it to me.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Paul shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
They opened the front door of the keeper’s cottage, flashlight beams stabbing through the darkness. Faded daylight pried through the boards nailed unevenly across the windows throwing odd bars of light here and there on the stone walls.
Plenty of light…really. Anyway, he couldn’t spend the rest of his life afraid of the dark.
“Gadzooks. It’s like a cave in here!”
Finn swallowed hard, said conversationally, “I’m amazed the place hasn’t been totally trashed.”
Paul retorted, “I think you must mean trashed in a relative sense.”
He had a point. The wooden floor and wall paneling had been pulled up and removed, and there was silver graffiti painted over one wall—a pentagram and some odd symbols—but otherwise the structure was mostly unharmed. It smelled strongly of damp and animal.
Finn’s heart was ricocheting around his rib cage in panic. It made him angry. He was not giving into this, not giving into irrational, superstitious fear. He forced his voice to stay steady, unhurried. “It’s so far from the village, there’s nothing really to tempt anyone out here but hikers and photographers.” He shone his flashlight to the black oblong at the end of the room that had once served as a kitchen. “There’s the entrance to the tower.”
