Mallets Aforethought

by Sarah Graves

He stood up. “I’m not as smart as she is. That makes it hard for her, I guess.”

  A racehorse hitched to a plow horse; no, it probably wasn’t easy. But as Ellie had said, Jimmy did have a ticker tape across his forehead; he was telling me the truth.

  He pulled his gloves back on. “She figures she made a mistake marrying me. Going to try to make the best of it now that we have our boy. But it’s not easy being what somebody is trying to make the best of.”

  “No. No, I suppose it’s not.”

  Or eating your potato skins while you’re doing it, either, I thought as I drove away. All in all, it was a sorry little peek into someone else’s life that I could have done without, and as I headed home it only emphasized what, unhappily, I already knew: that behind the drawn curtains of the warmly lit houses I passed, anything could be happening.

  “Hey, you know George,” Sam said later at the dining room table. “He probably just thinks it’s nobody’s business where he was or what he was doing.”

  He dug into the seafood casserole, chock-full of scallops, shrimp, and other tasty morsels. “Wow, this looks great. Thanks, Will.”

  I picked a piece of crab shell from between my teeth as unnoticeably as possible. It was eight in the evening, the house was full, and we weren’t having shepherd’s pie after all because Will came back unexpectedly from his fishing trip laden with provisions for a seafood feast. And apparently he’d made other stops along the way, because you couldn’t catch oysters in Passamaquoddy Bay and you surely couldn’t hook beluga caviar.

  Clarissa Arnold took a sip of her champagne, another of Will’s contributions to the meal. “Well, if that’s it,” she replied to Sam’s theory, “he’s being a fool.”

  Clarissa looked as usual as if she’d stepped from the pages of Lawyer’s Quarterly: low black heels, straight black skirt that ended chastely at the middle of her slim knee, a silk cable-knit sweater in a dark shade of old gold, plus a cashmere jacket.

  “They’re not messing around,” she added, meaning the state people arraying themselves for George’s prosecution. “I’d say he has very little delay time before this gets bumped up to Superior Court. And at that point I won’t be able to yank him out again, like a rabbit out of a hat.”

  She looked around at us. “George needs,” she emphasized, “to speak up for himself.”

  “Does he know that?” Ellie asked. She was drinking ginger ale; me, too, in sympathy with her. “Really know it?”

  An impatient frown creased Clarissa’s forehead. “I’ve spelled it out for him in terms even a child could understand.”

  Her own little boy was still in Kennebunk with his dad and their extended family; she’d only come up for the evening to talk with Ellie, bring her up to speed.

  “If Bob were here . . .” I began.

  “No,” Clarissa said firmly. “I’m sure he’d be pleased by your faith in him, Jacobia, but it would take someone bigger than Eastport’s police chief to fix this. George doesn’t only need a character reference. He needs an alibi. And it still looks like he’s the only one who can supply it. Because—”

  “Because he’s protecting someone,” Will Bonnet cut in. “That’s it, isn’t it? George is keeping his mouth shut on account of someone else.”

  There was grit in the stuffing of the clams casino. But Will had worked so hard to prepare this dinner—even people in bad trouble needed nourishment, he insisted, and he wanted us to keep our strength up—that I ate them anyway, chewing carefully so as not to fracture any fillings.

  Ellie nodded emphatically. “George would rather choke on his own spit than betray a friend. I’ll bet you’re right, Will.”

  “But Ellie,” I objected. “That makes no sense. With the baby coming, or even without, you don’t believe he’d go to prison just so a murderer could go free, do you?”

  “No, no. Of course he wouldn’t protect the actual murderer.” She waved a toast round loaded with caviar to make her point.

  She’d said she wasn’t hungry but the stuff was so delicious she ended up eating it, and some casserole too, a little pile of crab shell and other inedibles heaped at the side of her plate.

  “But obviously George was with someone, doing something. And if that someone could get in trouble for whatever it was . . .”

  “He doesn’t want to put some other guy in the soup. So he’s waiting for the guy to speak up. But if he does, this guy maybe catches some sort of rap, himself?” Will asked thoughtfully.

  Sam took a bite of casserole, winced and extracted something into his napkin. “That sure sounds like George, all right,” he said, after having a sip of water.

  “I wish I’d been around that night,” Will went on. “If I had, we’d probably have been together. But no, I had to be in Boston on business,” he castigated himself. “Wasn’t even a big deal… hell, why did I have to pick that night?”

  “What business?” Tommy Pockets inquired interestedly, which was encouraging. He’d been silent all evening.

  “Talking to a guy about supplying fish for the restaurant,” Will replied genially.

  That again. But hey, it was his money. “And picking up the ingredients for all this while I was at it,” he went on.

  Including the imported caviar, I supposed, tiny beads of glorious subtlety that popped with a sweet-salt burst. I felt guilty eating it, knowing it cost a fortune, but I couldn’t resist. For one thing, it had no grit or shell bits in it.

  “You left Agnes alone?” Ellie asked Will. Trust her to think of this. In response, he looked properly embarrassed.

  “I shouldn’t have, probably. But the guy I needed to see was on his way out of town. And Aunt Agnes sleeps through the night. Turned out okay, but I did feel kind of bad about it.”

  “Next time ask one of us,” Ellie suggested kindly, and he agreed to.

  “Can we get back to the subject here?” Clarissa interrupted, still focused on George. “If he is protecting someone, he needs to figure out whose tail he wants caught in the door. His own or someone else’s, whose ideas of loyalty obviously don’t match his.”

  I couldn’t think of anyone whose loyalty matched George’s, except maybe all the Knights of the Round Table put together.

  Which brought me to a new thought. “There might be another possibility,” I said slowly. “Maybe he thinks we’ll straighten it out. Ellie and me.”

  Once it was out of my mouth I thought it could actually be true. “We’ve done it before,” I added a little defensively, at Clarissa’s skeptical look. “Snooped around in deaths that were, um, unexpected, and been able to figure out . . .”

  “Whodunnit?” This was news to Will, clearly. “Wow, you mean you two . . .” He looked at each of us. “Hey, I’m impressed.”

  Clarissa wasn’t. “Whatever.” She brushed the notion off. “What I’m saying is that if something else factual doesn’t come up, he’s going to trial for it.”

  “But,” Will objected strenuously, “it’s all circumstantial as it is. There’s no witness to say—”

  “Right.” She batted his remark away, too. “But they’ve got strychnine out of George’s work area and they’ve got people who heard him say he’d gladly murder Gosling if he could find a good method. And he had a motive to kill Jan also, since George thought she and Hector were in it against George’s aunt together.”

  She took a breath. “Jan was probably strangled, by the way. The knife was postmortem. Marks on her neck, not extensive but they were there according to the preliminary medical report.”

  She paused, thinking. “I’m going to have questions for all of you individually as we go on. But for now, just for my own reference, when’s the last time anyone here saw Hector Gosling?”

  Sam looked blank. “Don’t know. Not for a long time.”

  An odd expression flitted across Tommy’s face in the moment before he spoke. “Last week, maybe? At the gas station.”

  I hadn’t seen Hector at all lately but Will had. “Friday at around two,” he said
without hesitation. “I was headed out of town, he was on his way in. I might not have noticed it was even him, but he was passing some other guy on a curve, I had to pull halfway onto the shoulder.” Will grimaced. “Bat out of hell as usual, and that big ugly kisser of his hunched over the steering wheel,” he said.

  Ellie spoke reluctantly. “I haven’t seen him. But he called me. The day before we found him. Around three in the afternoon.”

  About the time George had gone off everyone’s radar. I turned to Ellie in surprise. “You didn’t tell me Hector’d called you. What did he say?”

  She bit her lip. “I didn’t want to tell anyone. And I don’t know what he wanted. When I saw it was his number on the caller ID box, I picked up the phone and put it down again. I didn’t say anything to him, and he didn’t get the chance to say anything to me. He’d already said plenty.”

  “He’d called before?” But of course he had. The foul-mouthed harangue was among Hector’s best-known conversational strategies.

  Will was already nodding agreement. “Harassing them. He’d been doing it awhile. Telling George he’d better stop talking about him or else, George told me. Not specific threats, just playing the heavy as per usual.”

  I’d been a victim of it myself once, after opposing Hector’s plan to build a cinder-block dwelling for the residents of the poor farm, and turn their current pleasant spot into high-rent condos.

  “It just wasn’t something I’d wanted to complain about,” Ellie told me in explanation. “George either. And I never connected it with . . .” Her voice broke.

  “So Hector was alive until then,” I concluded. “But it doesn’t really matter because it’s the time afterwards that George won’t talk about. And unfortunately under these circumstances saying nothing is almost as bad as confessing.”

  Clarissa’s nod was grim. “Almost. They’ll eat him alive. I’m sorry, but all they need is to get past reasonable doubt. And the doubt so far is pretty unreasonable.”

  “Unless you know him,” I said.

  “Unless you know him,” she agreed, but her tone made clear how little help she expected from that.

  She got up. “Thank you, Will, for a lovely dinner.” She had eaten almost nothing but managed to move things around on her plate so it looked as if she had.

  “Tell him I said to stop,” Ellie said suddenly.

  We all turned to her. “I mean it,” she told Clarissa. “Tell him I said I don’t care what it is. I want him to say what he was doing the other night, and who can back him up on it. And I want it now.”

  Clarissa eyed her appraisingly. “You know,” she said slowly, “that might actually work.”

  But I noticed she didn’t say she would try it. Instead, she stooped to embrace Ellie. “Anyway, I’ll let you know what happens. I will,” she repeated, “do all I can.”

  “Best to Bob and his mom.” Ellie’s smile held back a flood of tears. She would weep when she was alone.

  In the hallway Clarissa pulled on her coat while Sam and Will began clearing the plates and glasses. Ellie still sat at the dining room table with her fingers pressed to her lips.

  “You didn’t sound eager to have us poking at it,” I said to Clarissa. “I mean, in case Ellie’s ultimatum doesn’t work, why not try finding out a little more about what might be going on?”

  Clarissa didn’t look at me, pulling a pair of fake-fur-trimmed galoshes onto her feet. “What are you going to find, though? It’s what worries me about Ellie’s idea, too. Think about that while you’re digging around, Jake. I have client confidentiality to fall back on, but given your reputation around here you need to be aware that you’re almost certainly going to be called to testify.”

  “Oh.” I took a step back. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Ellie couldn’t be made to testify for the prosecution. She was George’s wife. But I had no such shield. If we found anything that incriminated George further instead of clearing him, I might have to stand up in court and say so.

  She went on. “Look, I didn’t want to say this at the table. But he was desperate, Jake. The two of them get along all right on their income, when it is just the two of them.”

  Out in the kitchen Tommy had begun questioning Will about the caviar. “. . . fish eggs?”

  Mutter of assent from Will, as I caught Clarissa’s drift. “But with the baby coming, it’s different,” I said.

  “Uh-huh. Kids’re expensive. I ought to know, most of what I earn goes to cover it. Anyway, I’m still hoping I can get him off this without incriminating him in something else. So I think I’ll hold off on Ellie’s idea for a little while.”

  Tommy’s voice again, astonished: “How much a pound?”

  Will replied, “You bet. I just read an article in the paper, some guy tried to bring in about four hundred pounds. But those fish are beluga sturgeon, endangered. The stuff’s restricted. Anyway, the article said the shipment was worth two and a half million.”

  Tommy’s amazed intake of breath was audible all the way to the hall, as was what Will said next.

  “Now let’s change the subject, okay? It’s not polite to talk about what somebody’s gift is worth,” he added gently.

  Which was what that caviar had been: Will’s gift to us. But it was the money talk that reminded me of another matter.

  “I’ll get the check to you tomorrow,” I told Clarissa. Her retainer, I meant; it was a cinch Ellie wasn’t going to be able to pay it.

  Meanwhile Tommy had cottoned onto the profit possibilities of caviar. “Man, if you could smuggle in a couple of those fish, you could raise ’em and make . . .”

  Will cut in. “Hey, wait a minute. That kind of thing will get you in big trouble. Stick to what’s realistic. And legal.”

  “Just make sure whatever you come up with doesn’t put George more behind the eight ball than he already is,” Clarissa instructed me, and seemed ready to say more. But Wade interrupted us. He came up the back steps, worry plainly visible on his face.

  “Clarissa,” he asked, “you heard anything from the jail?”

  As he spoke, her beeper whirred and she went to take the call in the phone alcove without answering him.

  Wade shrugged his jacket off. “Heard it on the scanner just now when I was coming home,” he told me. “Call for EMT service down to the county jail, code blue.”

  The scanner in Wade’s truck was always on and code blue was the highest summons level for the ambulance. Clarissa returned from the phone alcove, her expression so alarming it made my heart pump icewater.

  “What is it?” Ellie wanted to know. “I heard you talking on the phone about . . .”

  Sam and Will came too, Tommy behind them. “What’s going on?”

  Clarissa answered. “There’s been an incident. George has been injured. They’re transferring him now up to the Calais hospital. Your ex-husband’s on his way there,” she added to me.

  “You mean because Victor’s on call,” I said evenly. “At the hospital, for emergency room admissions. Not because . . .”

  Not because he’s a brain surgeon; please, I thought.

  “Someone hit George with something. Part of a bed frame, they think. Something heavy,” Clarissa said.

  “Oh, my God!” Ellie swayed. Will caught her and led her to the kitchen, helping her to a chair. I heard him talking calmly to her, his low voice a steadying rumble.

  I couldn’t believe it. “Why? Who attacked? Is George all right?”

  “I don’t know, some local guy, and he’s unconscious.” Typically, she answered my questions in the order I’d asked them. “They don’t know yet the extent of his injury. I’m going up there and if he comes to, I’ll try to get a victim statement.”

  “Won’t the county prosecutor do that?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, the D.A.’s sure going to rush up to Calais on account of maybe one jailbird cracked another one’s skull open.”

  She stopped. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Anyway, I
’ll keep you posted,” she finished, and went out.

  Something in the stars must have shone a troubled light on a lot of people that night. Will Bonnet needed to go home and get his aunt settled, so Wade, Ellie, and I drove up to the hospital.

  But after we pulled into the lot surrounding the sprawling low building and went inside, I saw Ginger Tolliver being helped painfully toward the orthopedics clinic by the woman who’d been driving the white sedan earlier at Ginger’s trailer.

  Ginger’s face was twisted in some fresh anguish, overlaying her regular misery. The health aide, or I guessed anyway that’s what she was, grabbed a wheelchair from the row of them near the entry and wheeled Ginger toward the ER treatment area. Then at the corridor leading to the pediatrics area we ran into Maria and Jimmy Condon with Porter, whose cheeks were even redder than when I’d seen him last; the little boy wept fretfully with fever.

  No one stopped to talk. All of us were too intent on our own grim errands for conversation. But I saw Jimmy give Ginger a familiar wave as if perhaps they’d met here before.

  “Busy night,” I remarked as Victor led us in.

  “Not really,” he replied. “You might be surprised how many of your friends and neighbors wind up here in the evening.” He gestured back toward the lobby as he spoke. “Pain gets worse at night, kids get sick. Condon kid’s been in a lot lately. Only place in a hundred miles for medical care at night. Anyway, here we are.”

  George’s room was the nearest to the nursing desk so he could be observed constantly. A guard stood silently by the door. Ellie gasped when she saw George, his chest rising and falling with the cycling of the respirator. Half his head had been shaved, and a thin tube emerged from a patch of adhesive tape on his scalp, connected to a monitoring device.

  And I’d been a brain surgeon’s wife long enough to know what it all meant. If the trip from the jail to the hospital had been much longer, George wouldn’t be here at all.

  Ellie gripped his hand. It didn’t grip back. “He’s sedated,” Victor explained. “He had a subdural hematoma.”

  Rough translation: after the injury George had developed a sort of blood blister on his brain.