by Anne Canadeo
She looked up to find Richard, staring at her.
“Oh . . . sorry. The way the lights just went on . . . it surprised me. Someone must have pulled the main switch.”
He laughed, a flash of annoyance in his eyes quickly melting. “It’s a timer. I set it up for Aunt Edie. We have them all over the house. Don’t you?”
Lucy shook her head. Though she aspired to being a do-it-yourself type and sometimes painted rooms, or rewired a lamp, that was about the extent of her repertoire. Matt was pathetically unmechanical and happy to hire professionals.
“You should get some. Scares away the burglars if you’re out,” he added.
“We have dogs. That’s their job,” she said.
He shrugged. “Oh sure. Dogs work, too.”
Lucy thanked him for the tip and ambled off, more mindful of her cup, which was now practically empty. She took one last sip and tossed it in a trash bin. At the play structure, the party was going strong. The children had not slowed down one bit since their arrival. If anything, nightfall had heightened the excitement of racing around the tunnels and tubes. They were probably excited about the fireworks show, too, Lucy thought.
She soon spotted Dara, who made Lucy chase her a while.
When Lucy finally caught her—after pretending for at least five minutes that Dara was too fast—Dara squealed and begged to play a few more minutes.
“You’re not thirsty and hungry and tired yet? We got you a burger and chips for dinner,” Lucy said temptingly. “And a sour pickle,” she added, sure that one of Dara’s favorites would do the trick.
Dara cocked her head, making an adorable face. “Five minutes?” she held up her fingers.
“All right. I’ll wait.”
Lucy stepped back to wait out beyond the fray. She quickly realized she was not alone and turned to see Dale Gordon sitting on a tree stump. He was sipping from a cup of beer and Lucy had a feeling it wasn’t his first or even his second.
She knew he was only sixteen. Not legal drinking age in Massachusetts, that was for sure. But she did suspect a lot of teenagers here were enjoying the free-flowing brew. No one seemed to be watching that.
“Hey, Dale. How are you? Try the food yet? It’s really good.”
Just sayin’ . . . if you don’t want to fall down flat on your face when you stand up, Lucy added silently.
“I can wait till the line dies down. There’s plenty.”
She nodded and smiled. “Right. There’s definitely plenty of everything.”
She sighed and watched the children, not sure what else to say. “These kids never run out of energy do they?”
“Nope. Just play, play, play. I’d give anything to be that age again.”
Lucy felt knocked back with surprise at his tone, so sad and sincere. So young to be wishing he could turn back the years. Wasn’t this the age that kids ached to be older, and start out on their own?
Not longing to be children again.
But he wasn’t the typical teenage boy, from the typical family. He had his reasons for these wishes.
“I’m sorry about your brother. I don’t think I ever told you that,” she said quietly. She glanced at him. “I’m sure it’s been very hard for you. For everyone in your family.”
He stared at her, his eyes hard as stones for a moment. Then he laughed, a short, sharp sound, while he stared at the ground. “Oh yeah, it’s been rough. My freaking brother Kyle screwed us all up. Because he was screwed up. It’s like a game of dominoes or something. One tips over and the rest fall. They can’t help it. Just gravity. You can’t help gravity. You know? It just . . . pulls you down.”
He shook his head. He was drunk. He didn’t know what he was saying, she realized. Just rambling. She worried he might get sick.
She walked over to him and touched his arm. “Are you okay? You look like you feel sick.”
“I’m fine, man. Just leave me alone.” He shrugged her touch away. “Stop with these questions, okay? I’m totally . . . fine.”
He closed his eyes, his head swaying from side to side. She thought he might throw up, and quickly stepped back.
“You don’t get it. Do you? Miss Lucy-goosey-question-asker?” Dale mumbled with his eyes closed, head hanging down on his chest. “Kyle did that to himself. He did it. Stupid, junked-up idiot. I told him to stop. I told him . . .” He opened his eyes a moment and stared at her, his expression bleak. Desperate. Then he covered his face with his hands, his shoulders heaving. Lucy knew he was crying. A terrible, heart-wrenching sound. She didn’t know what to do.
She looked around frantically and spotted Matt, on the other side of the play set. He must have been wondering what had happened to them. She waved and he quickly walked over.
“Dale is sick. He drank too much. Will you stay with him a minute? I’ll find his father.”
“Sure.” Matt leaned over and touched Dale’s shoulder. “Hey, man. What’s going on? Want to go up to the house and crash somewhere?”
For a moment, Dale looked like he was going to shake Matt off, too, but finally he sat up and forced himself to focus. He nodded and allowed Matt to help him stand.
Lucy was still there, watching.
“Please don’t tell my father,” he said, finding her gaze again. “Please?”
Lucy nodded. “Okay.”
As long he went inside and lay down a while, she thought it would be all right not to tell on him. His parents would find him soon enough and figure out what had happened.
She was tired of getting involved in other people’s business. Especially the Gordon family’s.
The fireworks show viewed from the cliff behind Edie’s house was stunning. The party crowd oohed and aahed with each burst of light and the children jumped up and down with excitement.
Lucy could never recall being so close to the display or feeling the explosions just overhead.
Dara fell asleep soon after, her cheek pressed to Matt’s shoulder as he carried her to the truck.
As Lucy fell asleep that night herself, it wasn’t the vision of fireworks that lingered in her head. It was the sight of Dale Gordon, drunk and mumbling about his brother. Not just the sight, but his words. Words that suggested to her Kyle did not die of a brain hemorrhage. At least, not one without cause.
It sounded as if Kyle had died of a drug overdose. And his younger brother, Dale, was left alone with their parents, to pick up the pieces of their shattered family.
* * *
The day after Edie’s party, Charles invited Lucy and Matt for an afternoon on his sailboat, Indigo, even though Maggie warned that the waters were more crowded on July Fourth weekend than the Massachusetts Turnpike.
“We’ll go out fairly late, after two or three o’clock,” Maggie said. “The tide should be up. We can sail an hour or two, then drop anchor and have a bite of dinner and watch the sunset. You can swim if you feel restless,” she added, knowing how quickly Lucy felt cramped in small spaces.
“My, my . . . you’re a regular old salt, now, aren’t you?” Lucy laughed at the way Maggie was slinging around the sailing slang.
“I’m salty . . . but you can skip the other adjective,” she teased back.
The sailing trip turned out to be a good idea. It was a hot day, too hot to stay on the beach for very long. She and Matt took Dara for a few hours in the morning and then drove her to a friend’s house where she’d been invited for a sleepover.
Out on the water a few hours later, the air was much cooler. Lucy felt relaxed, lying on a cushion with a cold drink in hand as the canvas snapped in the breeze and the long wooden boat skimmed along the blue and white waves.
Maggie was surprisingly adept at pulling in ropes and letting them out, explaining she needed to “trim the sails” or “pull in the sheets,” and shouting things like “Coming about!”
She hopped around the deck barefoot, like a seabird, balancing on the edge of the boat as she followed Charles’s instructions to the letter.
Once the boat
was under way, they both returned to the small cushioned area in the stern and Charles rested one hand on the wheel to keep their progress steady.
“Maggie’s a natural-born sailor,” he announced.
“Clearly,” Lucy said in agreement. “It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her take orders from anyone, Charles. You’ve revealed another hidden part of her personality there, too.”
Maggie made a face at her but patted Charles’s broad shoulders for a moment as she reached around him to grab her knitting bag. “Don’t listen to her, dear. I don’t think of it as taking orders . . . just doing my part.”
“We work together. We’re a team,” he said, with the cautious smile of a man who hoped he sounded politically correct and nonsexist.
“This is a beautiful boat, Charles. How long have you owned it?” Matt had bought a small, rather rickety Sunfish at a garage sale the previous summer. She knew he had ambitions to step up to a real sailboat at some point. Then again, there was the “unhandy” problem, and she did think you needed to be a bit better with tools and such to keep a boat. If you didn’t want to sink.
“Not very long,” Charles replied. “I was lucky to find her. I got a nice deal. Indigo is a real classic. All wood. Come on, I’ll show you around,” he said, quickly warming to the topic.
Maggie was left in charge of steering. “See, I don’t just take orders. I’m given important responsibilities.”
“Quickly promoted, too,” Lucy remarked. “Who knows what’s next.”
Maggie gave her a look. She may have been in charge of steering but that didn’t prevent her from knitting. “How did you like Edie’s party? Quite a bash. I felt happy for the Gordons. They look as if they’ve come out from under a cloud.”
“I thought so, too,” Lucy said. “Nora and Richard, at least. I’m not so sure about Dale.”
Maggie looked up at her. “Why do you say that?”
“I found him sitting alone behind the play set. Just as it had gotten dark. He was very drunk. He could barely stand up.”
“Oh, dear . . .” Maggie shook her head. “High school boys and random beer kegs. He probably doesn’t know how to pace himself yet. Everyone knows teenagers experiment with alcohol. Not that I think it’s a great idea,” she added. “But it is a fact.”
“I know. But it wasn’t just that. He started talking about his brother, Kyle. And about his family. And crying at one point.”
Maggie stopped knitting and looked over at her. “That does sound bad. What did he say?”
Lucy took a breath. This was the hard part. “It was incoherent at first. Just saying Kyle was a screwup. An idiot.”
“He said that?” Maggie seemed shocked that Dale would say such things about his older brother who had passed away. Lucy had felt the same. At first.
“Then he said something like ‘My freaking brother Kyle screwed us all up. Because he was screwed up. It’s like a game of dominoes or something. One tips over and the rest fall.’ ” Lucy repeated from memory. “I guess he was talking about his family. Saying his family is falling apart.”
Maggie nodded. “Yes, I think so. But that does seem true. He’s been through a lot. Even beyond his brother’s death. Which was such a terrible shock.”
“He said Kyle didn’t die of a brain hemorrhage, Maggie. Like the family told everyone. It seemed to me he was trying to say that Kyle was taking drugs and had an overdose.”
Maggie stared at her, her face going as pale as the canvas sails. “Are you sure?”
Lucy nodded. “He called him a ‘junked-up idiot’ and said ‘he did that to himself.’ And a lot of other things I can’t remember now.” Lucy took a breath. “I know you may not believe me. Especially since he was drunk and not even speaking clearly. But I know what I heard,” she said sadly. “I don’t think I’ve made a mistake interpreting.”
“I believe you,” Maggie said. “Can you imagine carrying that secret? The pressure for him? For all of them. I don’t even think Edie knows this.”
“I don’t think so, either. Kyle may have had hemorrhaged during an overdose and the physical complication was noted as his cause of death. So that’s how the family was able to cover it up.”
“Yes, perhaps it happened that way.” She glanced back at Lucy. “I wonder if Nora talked about this in her sessions with Cassandra. Believing that she was speaking to Kyle.”
“I wondered that also. Then I was thinking about Jimmy. How he may have sold Kyle the drugs. Didn’t Edie say Kyle worked at the theater at one time?”
Maggie blinked, thinking back. “I think she did say that, you’re right. It’s very likely. And if so, it gives both Richard and Nora a logical reason to have killed Jimmy Hubbard.”
Charles and Matt had toured the lower cabin, opening and closing all the cabinets, and peering into all the nooks and crannies, which were many.
They had then climbed up and gone out to the pointy front part of the boat, which Maggie called the bow, and stood out there talking for quite a while. But they were suddenly coming back.
Lucy met Maggie’s glance. “Here they come. I don’t think we should talk about this now.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Maggie said. She picked up her knitting and tugged the yarn up and over a needle, quickly stitching.
Lucy gazed out at the water. The sun was low on the horizon and a flock of gulls circled, diving for their dinner in blue-green waves that were touched now with golden light.
There was certainly more to say about the connection between Jimmy Hubbard and the Gordons. But not now.
Chapter Twelve
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, at the shop,” Lucy said to Maggie as the two couples parted at the marina. “You’re going to show me how to finish the tote bag . . . remember?”
Maggie looked confused at first, then quickly nodded. “Oh, right. Come anytime. I’ll be there.”
Of course Maggie knew Lucy wanted to talk more about Dale Gordon and Jimmy Hubbard’s murder.
The next morning, Lucy pedaled steadily toward the village, flying down the last big hill. She barely noticed the incline, or the hollow in the pit of her stomach as her bike picked up speed. She steered into the driveway in a spray of gravel and jumped off, then headed straight for the porch, where Maggie was waiting for her.
“I was expecting you. Where’s your knitting bag? Don’t they sell one for cyclists?”
Lucy scoffed as she pulled off her helmet and loosened her hair. “You know I only said that because Charles was there.”
“I know. And I hate being sneaky around him.”
“All you have to do is listen. Is that all right?”
Maggie shrugged. “I guess so. In for a penny, in for a pound. And I have been thinking about what you said last night. About Jimmy.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too. I have a good guess about what happened.” Lucy was not happy about her conclusions. But the pieces had come together for her. And the picture they created felt true.
“Well, go on,” Maggie prompted. She was knitting and listening. Lucy knew she did some of her best thinking in that pose.
“Richard and Nora both had good reason to kill Jimmy, if they had discovered he supplied the drugs that killed their son. But only Richard had the strength and easy access, late at night, in this neighborhood. Edie is always saying how he helps her close up and is in that alley, putting out trash and locking up. Then he goes back to his shop and keeps working on his rush orders.”
“That does make sense.”
“Jimmy knew Richard. He would have opened the door, not knowing that Richard realized the connection. Especially if Richard acted pleasant and neighborly. He’s definitely good at that. Maybe he claimed that he’d just come by to warn Jimmy that the light at the back door was out.”
“The light he’d broken,” Maggie added.
“That’s right. He’s a very handy fellow. He thinks of these things. So he gets inside the theater, stabs Jimmy, and makes it look like a ro
bbery. Then he locks the door behind him and goes back to his shop.”
“And cleans himself up. There must have been some blood.”
“Or he wore something to protect his clothing and threw that away,” Lucy suggested.
“But what about his alibi? He said he was working in the shop and the tenants nearby, in the apartments above the stores, confirmed that,” Maggie recalled.
“I was thinking about that, too. But I learned something last night. There are gadgets you can buy to make lights go on at a certain time. Or off. Timers. In fact, Richard explained that to me. He’d set some up for Edie, in her backyard.”
“There’s an ironic touch,” Maggie noted. “But go on. Sorry to interrupt.”
“Maybe he left the lights on in the shop and had some power tools attached to timers? So it only sounded as if someone was working. They only had to run on and off a little while. Half an hour, maybe even less. Before he could sneak back.”
“That’s brilliant, Lucy. You could be right.” Maggie sat up and put her knitting aside, her dark eyes bright.
“What about Cassandra?” she asked after a moment. “How does her murder fit in? Or was that entirely unrelated, do you think?”
Lucy shrugged. “It could be unrelated. But what if Nora suspected, or even knew, that Richard had avenged their son? What if she talked about that in a session with Cassandra? Believing she was talking to Kyle’s spirit?”
Maggie sat back again, her expression somber. “I see. Yes, it could have happened like that. Cassandra must have thought she’d hit the jackpot. She would blackmail the Gordons, don’t you think?”
“Oh, I think so. But she wouldn’t have said anything to Nora. Nora still believed in her powers. Cassandra would have threatened Richard. Now she really had a sword to hold over his head.”
“Oh dear . . . I think you’re right. But wait.” Maggie shook her head, her brown curls shaking. “Richard had an alibi for that night, too. Didn’t he?”
“In his shop again. According to Edie,” Lucy recalled. “But maybe the lights were on, and the murderer was not home?”
