A Charmed Place

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  A local minister, the Reverend Peter Tolley of Christ-at- Woodbine Church, has filed civil charges on behalf of his congregation against Dr. Clive Joyce, a self-proclaimed spiritualist who is alleged to have defrauded members of the church in a deception known as "billet-reading,'' in which the performer purports to divine the contents of a note in a sealed envelope.

  Joyce, it is claimed, waived his usual admission fee in favor of a voluntary collection by members of the congregation. At least one parishioner, an elderly widow, is alleged to have donated £50 at the

  And that was all. There was a photograph—part of a photograph—of a man standing with what looked like adoring fans. Dr. Clive, the caption read; the Joyce part of the name was cut away.

  Hawke went back to the face in the photo. No doubt about it: Dr. Clive Joyce, the guy with the movie-star looks, was none other than Geoffrey Woodbine a quarter-century earlier. The face, with its dark wavy hair and square jaw, was easily recognizable. Movie-star types were like that.

  If he needed a clincher, Hawke found it as he turned the page, looking for the rest of the article. Edward Timmons's long-sought address book was wedged there, no doubt forgotten by him in his own excitement at making the Joyce-Woodbine connection.

  Hawke turned to the "W" page in the address book. The last entry there was for "Geoffrey Woodbine, aka Clive Joyce." It included the Institute's address, business phone, and fax number. Edward Timmons was nothing if not methodical.

  Trying to mask his excitement, Hawke turned to Norah. "Does your phone work?"

  "It's the one thing that does," she said, pointing to one in the hall. "We never lost service at this end. Who on earth do you plan to call?"

  "Too long to go into," he said, walking straight to the hall. He tried to remember Detective Bailey's home phone, blew it on the first try and got it right on the second. It was late, after ten. The wrong number had been very annoyed; Bailey was not.

  Hawke brought him up to speed on the discoveries in the album and the threatening note to Joyce—not a woman at all; Maddie would be ecstatic to learn it—that he'd found in Edward Timmons's computer.

  The detective heard him out and said, "Okay—who the hell is Woodbine?"

  Hawke told him what he'd learned about the director at the fundraiser, then said, "He's not on your list of motorists who were ticketed that day in New Bedford? He's got to be!"

  "No way. I've memorized the names. Although—wait a minute. There was a car registered to a company in Brookline. Uhh, lemme see, I got the list right here—yeah. BIRP. Which you're saying could be—"

  "Brookline Institute of Research and Parapsychology."

  "Hold it; let me write that down. Great. Now tell me why this guy was in Timmons's family album."

  "Pure serendipity," Hawke said. "If someone had clipped the article on Ed Timmons properly, we wouldn't have had this scrap of information. But they wanted to keep the clipping square, maybe to allow the paper's name to show. Obviously the Clive Joyce story with its Woodbine dateline had sunk into Ed Timmons's subconscious over the years."

  "I've had that kind of thing happen to me," the detective agreed.

  "When Timmons found out through his son-in-law that a guy named Woodbine was doing psychic research, it must have rung a bell. Timmons was a physicist, after all. He'd look at parapsychology with a jaundiced eye in the best of times—and he knew, from the article still attached to his own, that this guy was a con to boot."

  "And when Timmons found out that Woodbine was interested in his granddaughter, he naturally would've gone ballistic," said the detective, building on Hawke's theory. "Timmons would've threatened to expose him. Woodbine-Joyce couldn't have that; he's the director of a big deal research institute—well, you got your motive right there. Hint of scandal, the funding dries right up. Was there a photo?"

  "Not a great one. But he's a striking man; the photo's good enough. Besides, Timmons could have done a little research on his own. It wouldn't take much to finger Woodbine as Joyce. Match the accent, match the age, match the subject interest, and Bob's your uncle."

  "What?"

  "It's a British expression; I have no idea what it means," Hawke said with a laugh. He was ecstatic. This was it, the break they'd been looking for. Serendipity, hell. This was destiny.

  Hawke said, "When do you want all this stuff?"

  "The sooner the better. We have software that can recover files that have been deleted; maybe there's something else useful on the backup disk."

  "I'll bring everything first thing in the morning."

  "Good. And we'll bring this guy in for questioning second thing in the morning."

  "You got it."

  Hawke hung up, his adrenaline flowing now. If he could nail Woodbine, justice would be served on more levels than one. He'd vindicate himself with Maddie and with her family, and, oh, by the way, Michael Regan's a kook, hanging around with a fraud psychic. No judge in the land would let him have custody.

  He tried not to think of whether or not Tracey's heart would be broken in the bargain. He knew that Maddie was the infinitely better parent; you didn't have to be one to know one. King Solomon would consider this a no-brainer.

  He came back into the gathering room and scooped up the album, then turned to leave.

  "What is going on?" Norah asked, barring his exit with outspread arms.

  "You've helped solve a crime and you've saved my life, that's what. Norah, I'm forever in your debt. Thank you for the shower. Thank you for the wine. Thank you for the phone. And thanks for not—you're a doll."

  He kissed her cheek, ducked under her arm and left her in her cavernous room of white. Grateful that he'd brought his Jeep, he threw it in gear and made his way back from the bright lights of Norah's neighborhood to the dark streets of town. He wanted desperately to pound on Maddie's door and tell her what he'd discovered, but it seemed the more prudent thing to get the investigation off and running first.

  But as he drove down Water Street past Cranberry Lane, something made him pull over. He parked his Jeep at a cockeyed angle a little off the road, and approached Rosedale on foot. He had no intention of letting Maddie know he was there; he simply wanted to be as close to her as he could get, if only for this one exultant moment.

  Cranberry Lane was cleaned up but still pitch-black, and he had to pick his way slowly down it. Eventually his eyes adjusted to the dark and he was able to see that the downed maple had been cut up and cleared away from Maddie's drive. So had her crushed Taurus. She had a new car there now, a Voyager that was maybe a rental. The plywood had been pried from the south side of the cottage, and an oil lamp burned on a low flame in one of the opened windows.

  It was all very quiet, all very quaint. He thought of Maddie, sleeping upstairs, and his heart settled down to a reassured, steady thump. He gazed up at her bedroom window in the tiny dormer and whispered, "Please hurry up, Maddie. Don't wait until I'm an old man."

  And then he left.

  Chapter 32

  Tracey stepped over her girlfriends' sleeping forms, tiptoed over to her purse, lifted out her cell phone, and sneaked down the hall to the guest bathroom. The grandfather clock on the downstairs landing tolled seven times as she punched in her father's phone number. She didn't dare wait any longer; what if he went out for breakfast?

  The voice that answered didn't sound like her father's at all. It was sleepy—well, that wasn't surprising—but it sounded funny, like a snarl.

  "Dad?" she said, because she really wasn't sure.

  "Yeah, what."

  "Dad? It's me, Tracey," she whispered, confused.

  "What do you want?" he asked in a growly voice.

  Really, it didn't sound like him at all. It made her favor all the harder to ask. "Dad, I know you're s'posed to pick me up at lunchtime, but, like, could you come get me sooner? Like ... now?''

  "Now? What the hell for?"

  She swallowed hard. "Well, I was thinking ... I was up all night, just thinking, and ... like ..." Sh
e sighed, unable to phrase her request in a way that wouldn't hurt her father's feelings. "I want to go home," she said plaintively.

  "I'll bring you home later. That was our plan."

  "No, I don't mean home to your place, Daddy. I mean home ... to Mom. Home home."

  Her father said nothing. Nothing at all. She sighed, distressed that she had ended up offending him after all, and after she had tried so hard not to. "I kind of miss Mom, Dad, you know? And I don't care if there's no electricity in Rosedale. I really don't, even if you do tease me about being spoiled. I can take showers at Aunt Norah's. I thought you could take me to Rosedale now, before there's a lot of traffic. That would be pretty easy, wouldn't it? Dad?"

  Her father didn't even think about it. "No!"

  It felt as if he had slapped her in the face. Her cheeks burned from the answer. She felt all hot and upset inside. "Dad, why not?" she said, stunned.

  "Absolutely not, God damn it! We made a deal!"

  "But it was only temporary! Dad, I want to go home!" she said. Her voice sounded much too high and loud; someone was bound to hear her. With an effort, she made herself calm down to a whisper. "Dad, please."

  "You heard me, Tracey. We stay with the plan. Go back to sleep."

  Over her protests he hung up, leaving her pleading with empty air. Tracey began to punch in his number again, but she knew her father well enough to know that he must be in the grip of one of his vicious headaches. Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe he just didn't want her to go back home because down deep he hated her mother for what she'd done with Mr. Hawke. She never should have told her father about that. Now she was trapped, and it was her own fault.

  She held the phone next to her breast and rocked back and forth as she sat on the side of the tub. What could she do? What could she do? Tears sprang up, the way they always did lately. She brushed them away, determined to act like a grown-up. What would a grown-up do?

  Dial 411. It came to her in a flash of determination. When the operator answered, she said, "The number for Yellow Cab, please?"

  ****

  Hawke arrived at the station in Millwood, one of the jumble of small towns that arced around Boston, not long after Bailey's shift began.

  The detective offered him coffee, and Hawke, sleepy after a sleepless night, took him up on it. He leaned on a wall and sipped while Bailey studied the clipping and photo.

  "Yeah, that's him, all right," Bailey said, laying the clipping in its plastic sheet protector flat in front of him. "We've got a request out to the village or hamlet or whatever it is of Woodbine in England for a police report, and Scotland Yard as well. I want to know just how far this guy had been willing to go when he defrauded little old ladies."

  "Had been?"

  Bailey's round face sagged. "You heard me right," he said glumly. "Woodbine was murdered last night. A little before you found this, in fact," he added, tapping the plastic sheet with his middle finger. "Maybe you can find some humor in the timing. I sure as hell can't."

  Neither could Hawke; he turned and slammed his hand against the wall, spilling his coffee in his anger. "I don't believe it! Shit! I don't believe it!"

  "Hey, hey, cool it! How do you think I feel? You don't have anything at stake here."

  "Yeah, right," said Hawke, bitter in his irony. "How did it happen? Where?"

  Bailey filled Hawke in with what he'd learned so far. "There was a brief struggle in the office—nothing long or violent, which is surprising because Woodbine looked to be pretty fit for his age—and there was some kind of penny-ante payoff involved. Or maybe another 'church' collection: they found an envelope stuffed with small bills."

  In the same dejected voice, he said, "There are prints everywhere; they're running them against the staff's now. But there was no gun. The gun might have belonged to Woodbine. Apparently he owned one. And his hand showed bruising, maybe from being slammed in the desk drawer. Trying to get a gun out? They're searching the area for one now. And—this is all strictly off the record, you got that?—the shooter left his watch behind, unless Woodbine was wearin' one on each wrist when he got popped."

  The detective plunked his elbows on his desk, bent his head down, and ran his hands through what was left of his hair. "This is such a pisser," he mumbled. "We'll get this guy—whoever did it was a hack—but that doesn't help my case any. My only hope is that the bullets match up between the two victims. 'Course, even if they match, we have to allow that the gun could belong to the shooter. Or that he got his hands on Woodbine's gun a while ago and shot Timmons first with it. We'll probably never know."

  "I don't suppose Woodbine left behind a full confession or anything," Hawke said dryly.

  "No. But look on the bright side," Bailey said, dragging his hands over his face. He smiled grimly and said, "You yourself have a damned good alibi. Me."

  Hawke said wryly, "I appreciate the vote of confidence. Okay. Well ... you need me for anything more?''

  Still staring at the clipping, the detective shook his head in silence.

  Sighing, Hawke got up to leave. "Keep in touch. I'll do the same."

  "Yeah. Thanks anyway."

  "Sure," Hawke said, giving the detective a tired thumbs- up.

  He returned to his Jeep a different man than he'd left it. Much, maybe all, of his enthusiasm was gone. What was he going to tell Maddie? Gee, we think we had your dad's murderer, but he slipped through our fingers and got himself killed, so now we'll never know? That ought to impress the family, all right.

  Bailey had ticked off the possible gun scenarios with depressing thoroughness. There were too damn many of them. The only way to prove that it was Woodbine who shot Edward Timmons was to come up with yet new evidence. They could feel reasonably sure—maybe very sure—that he was guilty. But would the family be satisfied with that? Would they see that a crude sort of justice had been done? Hawke couldn't say. All he knew was that he sure as hell wasn't happy.

  He considered stopping for breakfast somewhere on the road, but the morning was getting on, and he was anxious to get back. For better or worse, Maddie had to be told. He was surprised at the depth of his reluctance to tell her. Something was sitting uneasily at the pit of his stomach. Whether it was too much coffee or a sense of foreboding was hard for him to say.

  He kept coming back to Michael Regan. When all was said and done, Maddie's ex-husband was the obvious link between Woodbine and the Timmons family. He could be an innocent, deluded pawn of Woodbine's—or he could be more implicated than that.

  The fact that Michael had made no secret of his involvement with Woodbine made it seem as if he had nothing to hide. On the other hand, he apparently had come into some money. Supposedly it was an inheritance. Maddie had infrequent contact with his family, so she hadn't been able to say for sure that it was; all she had was Tracey's version of her father's version of events. That was too many removes for Hawke's taste.

  But an envelope of small bills not amounting to much—that didn't fit in with either a blackmail or a bribery scenario. If Michael's "inheritance" was a fat first payment from Woodbine, then what was the piddly church-sized one of twenties all about?

  Where Michael was concerned, Hawke didn't trust his own instincts at all. He had too deep a grudge against the man for having married Maddie. Still ... he didn't like the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  He rolled down Route 495 with relative ease, then became more and more frustrated as traffic slowed on 25. What was it with Massachusetts? Was there nowhere to go on a weekend but the Cape? He turned on the radio and searched for a news station, curious to know whether the murder had made it to the airwaves yet.

  Ten minutes later, he had his answer.

  "The murder of Geoffrey Woodbine, director of the Brookline Institute of Research and Parapsychology and a prominent lecturer on the international circuit, was discovered late last night by firefighters responding to an alarm there," a newscaster intoned. "Dr. Woodbine is believed to have been shot in his office at about nine o'c
lock last night. Police confirm that they are seeking a possible suspect for questioning."

  A possible suspect. The adrenaline that had drained so completely from Hawke came back like a raging river. He had to call Bailey, but where was a phone? He kept driving, sometimes forced to a crawl, looking for either an exit or a phone booth. Why the devil hadn't he thought to recharge his cell phone before the electricity went out? Because he was roofing a lighthouse, that's why.

  Finally—an exit. He pulled off the highway and pulled in the first gas station he came to.

  Bailey, fortunately, was at his desk and up to speed on developments. "Michael Regan," he answered without being asked the question.

  Hawke wasn't at all surprised.

  "The facility is apparently involved in government work," Bailey explained. "They have a security clearance, so everyone who works there is photographed and fingerprinted, including the subjects in their research. Identifying the prints was almost too easy. Like I said: the guy's a hack. The watch, which a lab assistant recognized, was just frosting on the cake."

  "Have you picked him up yet?"

  "They're doing it now. I can tell you this: he's planning to skip the country with Tracey this afternoon. He's charged two tickets to Paris in their names to his Visa. Worse case, they'll be apprehended at the gate. He's not going anywhere. Not with her, and not without her,'' the detective said grimly.

  "You'll traumatize the girl," Hawke said, bothered by the scene that was playing out so vividly in his mind.

  "Yeah, I'm aware. But there's not much we can do about it, and it may not come to that."

  "If it does, I'll bring Maddie to Logan. Maddie should be there, so give me the flight information. If I don't hear from you by—damn! I don't have a phone. All right. I'll be at Rosedale, either inside or out of the house. If you don't pick him up at his condo, send someone from the Sandy Point station to me at Rosedale, and I'll get Maddie up to Logan. Make sure you give me enough time."

  "Okay. Wait there to hear from us. And pray this goes right."