P'town Murders: A Bradford Fairfax Murder Mystery

by Jeffrey Round

  Bird watching! That's cute, Brad thought. "I'm going to take a look," he said, jumping over the highway barrier and starting across the sand.

  He reached the brush and began to part it with his hands, making his way up the rise. Zach followed him to the edge.

  "There's probably poison ivy in there," Zach called out. "Or thorns. Maybe a snake or two."

  Brad yelped. He'd just encountered the thorns. The crows—seven in total—flapped away at the sound, landing in another dune nearby. He recalled a nursery rhyme that someone, possibly his mother, had taught him:

  One crow sorrow, two crows joy,

  Three crows a wedding, four crows a boy,

  Five crows silver, six crows gold,

  Seven crows a secret, never to be told.

  Just then he thought he saw a shape slip out of the trees at the far end of the dune. Or it might simply have been the shadow of a passing cloud, but he was too entangled in the brush to be sure. Seven crows a secret! he murmured, looking through the trees toward the beach where a number of men were moving about. No one appeared to be trying to get away or avoid being seen.

  "Are you okay?" he heard Zach calling.

  "Don't worry! I'm all right."

  Zach elected to go around the dune and wait on the far side. Brad soon emerged, fighting off branches and tugging at vine leaves caught in his sandals. The pathway was well trodden, so there was no telling if any of the footprints had been made in the last few minutes.

  "What did you find?" Zach asked.

  "Not much. I think the crows were fighting over breakfast."

  "Did you see anybody?"

  "Hard to say. I thought I saw someone sneaking out the far side."

  "What would anyone be doing in there?"

  "Having sex, probably. I just wanted to make sure we weren't being spied on."

  Zach looked at him skeptically.

  "First you're thrown from a moving car, and now you think someone is spying on you. Does this sort of thing happen to you regularly?"

  "It wouldn't be the first time," Brad answered, tight-lipped.

  He scanned the ground until his eyes lighted on an empty bullet cartridge. He stooped and picked it up.

  "Look at this," he said, rolling it in his palm. "Someone's been shooting around here."

  "Were you shot at too?"

  "No, but it's suspicious, don't you think?"

  "Not really," Zach said. He looked down and scuffed a plastic tampon applicator with his toe. "This is a tidal marsh. The water comes in and goes out again. That shell could have floated in from Boston or Plymouth. There's no telling where it came from, or when."

  Brad shrugged and pocketed the shell. "You never can tell."

  Zach stared at him. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

  Brad looked around where they stood on an open plain in bright morning sunlight a quarter of a mile from a beach where tourists gamboled in the waves. His story would sound absurd without the facts, yet he couldn't tell Zach more than he already knew without breaching security protocols and possibly endangering both of them.

  "Call me suspicious, all right? Can we leave it at that for now?"

  Zach eyed him again.

  "All right," he nodded. "Until you decide to tell me what's really going on. Now can we go to Tea Dance?"

  Brad smiled. "Just one more stop."

  19

  "Zach, this is Big Ruby. Ruby, this is Zach."

  Ruby peered at Zach through her rhinestone glasses and reached across the counter. "Good to meet you, little feller," she called out to Brad's amusement, since Zach towered over her.

  "Holy cool glasses!" Zach responded.

  Ruby was alone behind the counter. She regarded them critically. "I know what you're having," she said to Bradford with a sly glance at Zach. "Now this boy looks like a coconut soy frappuccino to me. Am I right?"

  Zach smiled. "Oh, yeah!"

  "Looks like the front patio's free," she said. "Better grab it while you can."

  They sat on a bench in the bright morning sun. Ruby came out and passed them each a cup, wiping her fingers on her apron.

  Zach reached into his pocket, but Ruby stopped him. "First time, you're a guest," she said.

  Zach looked perplexed. "Thanks," he said, "Because I think I just lost my wallet."

  He fished through the various pockets of his cargo pants. "It'll turn up," he said with a shrug. "It always does. I'll just have to retrace my steps over the last day and a half."

  "Well," Ruby said, beaming. "You two certainly make a handsome couple."

  Zach grinned. Brad blushed and nearly choked on his chai.

  "Thanks," Zach said, licking the foam off his lips.

  "You can always tell when two people are meant for each other," Ruby said, "because they look so right beside one another."

  Halle arrived just then from around the corner, panting hard as if she'd been running. Her shaved head glistened and the tattoos gleamed in the sun.

  She kissed Ruby. "Rue, hon, I'm sorry I'm late," she said in a husky voice.

  "That's all right, galfriend."

  Ruby winked at Brad and Zach. "See what I mean?"

  She was right. The big butch Halle and the tiny perfect cowgirl made an oddly appropriate couple.

  "This here's Halle," Ruby said. "And this is Brad and Zach."

  Halle nodded gruffly at them, as if they were aliens landed in the front yard.

  "You get in there and look after things while I talk to these boys," Ruby said.

  She watched with a contented smile as Halle turned and went into the shop.

  "That's one sweet gal, when you get to know her. She's a bit crusty on the outside, but inside she's soft and gooey as a cream puff."

  "Kind of like Brad," Zach said with a grin.

  Ruby laughed. "Where I come from, smack dab in the middle of cowpoke country, they don't make gals like her. Nothing but long-horn steers, a few coyotes, and my clan. Halle's an entire different story. She comes from Tennessee. You ever heard tell of serpent handlers?"

  "You mean the people who pick up poisonous snakes as proof of their belief in God?" Zach ventured.

  "Those are the ones, little feller," Ruby said. "It's called the Church of God with Signs Following. 'In my name they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.' Mark 16, verses 17 and 18."

  "I'm afraid my knowledge of biblical quotations is a bit lacking," Brad said.

  Ruby waved it away with her hand. "And that's the extent of mine," she said. "But Halle comes from a family of serpent handlers. When she went to church, like as not it was to watch some fool preacher pick up a handful of rattlers and shake 'em around. Couple of 'em died, as she can tell you."

  "Some died of strychnine poisoning, too," Zach added. "If you're a good Christian, you're supposed to be able to handle snakes and drink poison and it won't hurt you."

  "Gee," Bradford said. "Back home, we just had hymn sings."

  Ruby let out a whoop. "Halle lit outta there as soon as she could. Figured she should see a bit of God's green earth before she died of a snake bite—which He'd probably appreciate, seeing how He'd gone to the bother of creating her and all."

  Brad nodded to Zach. "You two have something in common," he said. "You're both Buddhists."

  "No shit!" Ruby cried, taking a good look at Zach. "I should've known. You've got the light around you, little feller. Buddhists have that special glow."

  "Are you going to hear the Dalai Lama speak next Sunday?" Zach asked.

  "You bet!" Ruby cried. "Me and Halle are taking the bus all the way to New York. I've been waiting years to hear him!"

  "I hope he won't have to cancel because of the hurricane," Zach said.

  "Nah. It'd never happen. His Holiness wouldn't book a date if the future wasn't clear enough for him to see it through."

  It was an interesting way of looking at things, Brad thought. To think you might know when to book something or hold off
for a better time. The efficiency appealed to him. Then again, maybe the Dalai Lama's real date was with the bardo, and he just didn't know it. Though I guess that's why I'm here, Brad mused, to make sure neither sleet nor hurricane nor gloomy assassin stop him from giving his speech in Central Park.

  "Have you ever been to Tibet?" Zach asked Ruby.

  "Not yet. But I'm determined to get there before I die." Ruby suddenly looked sad. "My Rinpoche cries rivers of tears every day for his country—a country we have allowed to be lost in our lifetime! I have to get there for him, because he can't ever go back."

  "I hope you do," Zach said. "It's the most amazing place I've ever been."

  Ruby nodded to a spectacular pair of tanned lesbians walking up the steps hand in hand.

  "Does your Rinpoche teach?" Zach asked.

  "Not yet. He still gets a bit tongue-tied in English. That's why I call him my 'Reluctant Rinpoche.' He used to teach years ago, and he's promised to start again. I've asked him to teach me the hundred-syllable mantra."

  "Wow! The hundred-syllable mantra—that's heavy duty," Zach said, impressed.

  "You think that's heavy duty, try being a Catholic. For my first twenty years I bought into all that, 'O lord, I'm so unworthy' shit. 'Please dunk my head in rat crap and drown me in filth so I may understand Your glory.'" Ruby shook her head. "Now who makes up that stuff, anyway? Bunch of middle-aged geezers who aren't getting laid, most likely. The Bible's full of that kind of rot. No wonder the world's in such a mess, all these old guys making up crap like that, then trying to justify it by blowing one another up."

  Brad smiled. "My family was United Church. We called it the 'Church of Anything Goes.'"

  People strolled by, calling out greetings and continuing on their way as Commercial Street came to life. Ruby sighed contentedly. "I just love this town. Sometimes I doubt even Nirvana could be better than this."

  She turned to Brad. "You know," she said. "I haven't known you long at all, but I have this feeling like we've..."

  "...known each other before?"

  "Not exactly." She laughed. "Unless you knew me as a little cow-poke out West, that is."

  "I'm from up north," Brad said. "I was never west of Chicago till a couple of years ago."

  The lesbian couple exited, joe in hand, smiling at Ruby as they went.

  "Anyway," Ruby said, "what I meant to say is, I think we've been brought together for a reason."

  "What reason?"

  She shook her head. "I'm not sure yet, but there's something going on in this little town. Something not quite right. Maybe it's to do with that."

  There was a scratching at the door. Halle came out with a small white dog jumping at her feet.

  "Need a break," she said in her gruff baritone, stepping onto the patio. She held up a joint and winked.

  "Hello, Bill," Ruby cried as the dog came shimmying and shaking and wagging its tail. After a quick once-around-the-patio, Bill jumped up on Bradford's lap.

  "That's quite an honor," Ruby said, surprised. "Bill knows people and he's very choosy about who he takes to."

  Halle lit the joint. They watched it flare up and then burn down to an orange glow. The pungent smoke wafted around the patio.

  "That dog came outta nowhere, too," Ruby said. "Showed up on our doorstep about a month ago. We thought it might've been a lost tourist dog, so we put up signs all over the Cape. No one claimed him, though, so we took him in."

  "That was nice of you," Brad said.

  "Yeah. You'd make the effort for a dog, but not a human being, huh?" Halle said as she offered Brad the joint.

  The others turned to look at her, but she seemed not to realize she'd said anything peculiar.

  "If you want to give him a treat, little feller," Ruby told Zach, "there's a bag of doggie goodies over in the drawer beside the cash register."

  Zach went in and opened the drawer. Brad watched him hesitate before placing his hand inside, gingerly removing a couple of bone-shaped treats before he closed the drawer and returned to the patio.

  He held out a bone for Bill, who leapt from Brad's lap to accept a reward for his fickleness.

  Four hours later they left Coffee Joe's, slightly stoned and highly caffeinated.

  "You know," Zach said, looking at the sun sitting slightly off to the west. "If you're truly gay in Provincetown, you would have been in one of two places this afternoon: the Boatslip for Tea Dance or the dunes for sex. I feel compelled to point out we spent the entire afternoon smoking pot with lesbians."

  "It was something, wasn't it?" Brad agreed, a silly smile on his face. "I think I learned as much about coparenting dogs and cloning weed plants as I need to know in this lifetime."

  "This lifetime? Does that mean you believe you'll have others?"

  "Not really, but I feel like I've lived three lifetimes in the past week alone." .

  Zach nodded. "It was strange to hear them talking about the Dalai Lama and Buddhism and then to open the drawer and see that big gun!"

  Brad stopped and stared at Zach. "There was a gun in the drawer?"

  "Sure, but it was probably only to scare off robbers," Zach reasoned. "Then again, Ruby's a cowgirl."

  Reaching into his pocket, Brad fingered the empty shell he'd found on the dunes earlier. "Did you happen to notice what kind?" "It looked like a Colt .45."

  "That's a very powerful gun to scare off burglars." Brad put a hand on Zach's shoulder. "This place sure isn't what it seems, is it?"

  They were in time to catch the last hour of Tea Dance before making their way back to Brad's house. They watched the sun set from the veranda, then spent the rest of the evening making love before Brad sent Zach home for the night.

  "Are you sure you don't want me to stay?" Zach asked.

  "I don't want us to get tired of each other," he said.

  "That's not likely! Well, at least not on my part."

  In fact, Brad had work to do and he didn't want Zach to know what it entailed just yet .Just yet? Why would he ever need to tell this boy anything about what he did?

  He shook his head. It was a strange notion that had got hold of him.

  20

  An hour later Brad was crouched outside the Ice House in the shadows of the belladonna hedge. A handful of purplish flowers hung over his head, their sickly scent wafting around him as he peered through the leaves.

  The curtains were thrown back, giving a clear view into the room where he'd sat among the other guests two nights earlier. It was empty now. Brad ventured a guess that the house wouldn't be open to the public that evening. That might make what he had to do a bit easier. On the other hand, without any distractions for the staff, it might make things a whole lot more difficult.

  He made his way carefully through the hedge, taking care not to let it brush his skin. He scaled the fence and landed softly in a garden bed on the other side. Nothing moved in the darkness around him. As far as he could tell, no one inside had caught sight of him, either. He skirted a patch of moonlight and peered through the window. The table was bare. There were no place settings, voluptuous flower arrangements, or expensive bottles of wine. It seemed there would be no dinner guests at the Ice House tonight.

  Security seemed lacking, as well. The lugubrious Ichabod was noticeably absent from his post and the dining room window was unlatched. Brad raised it a foot, keeping alert to sounds from within before lowering himself over the ledge.

  The floorboards had been swept clear of the fallen plaster, but the bullet holes in the ceiling still gaped angrily down. Brad slid quietly along the wall toward the stairs. He nearly fainted as he turned a corner and almost collided with Ichabod as he stalked the halls with a candlestick holder.

  "Polish the silverware, look after cook's orders, check the burglar alarms... do this-do that," Brad heard him grumbling to himself.

  Fortunately, the doorman hadn't heard Brad's footsteps. His tall, thin frame vanished down the hall and Brad slipped soundlessly up the stairway. He made his way to th
e Arctic Memorabilia Room and down the hidden passage till he was once again behind the wall of Hayden's study. It too was empty, but Brad was prepared to stay as long as it took to observe the man in private.

  He settled in and waited. Minutes turned to hours and slipped uneventfully past. By four o'clock he realized that nothing of importance was likely to occur in the house that evening. It'd been a waste of a night. Yet there would be others.

  Tired and stiff, he made his way back down the stairs and out the window. The moon was long gone as he crept through the yard and retraced his steps to his residence, keeping careful watch over his shoulder to see that no one had followed him and no cars were racing silently toward him as he trudged along.

  It was Grace who broke the news to him. Sometime during the night, while Bradford had been hiding out in his secret passageways, Hayden Rosengarten floated to shore in the Provincetown Harbor. A beachcomber found the body just after 5 a.m.

  "Bullet through the forehead at close range. We're checking on the make of gun."

  Brad was silent.

  "What are you thinking, Red?"

  "I guess I was wrong. I was sure Hayden killed Ross."

  "Doesn't mean he didn't do it. It just means that someone else killed Rosengarten in return. Maybe for the same reason, or possibly something closely related. Now tell me everything you heard and saw last night."

  He described how he'd waited in the hidden passage behind Hayden's study for hours without seeing or hearing a thing. He went over his first visit again in detail, beginning with the $5,000 admittance fee and his exotic dinner in a roomful of highly privileged gay men. He described Rosengarten's explosive temper and his abuse of the clumsy server. He also recounted the phone conversation in which someone had threatened to kill Rosengarten.

  "Now who'd want to kill a nice man like that?" Grace clucked.

  When he described Senator Freeman's shoot-out in the dining room, Grace tsk-tsked. "Those Texans," she chided. "Maybe his trigger finger slipped again a little later."

  Brad reached in the cupboard for a mug, flicking the On switch as he placed it in the automatic coffeemaker. "I already told you about the lesbian coffee joint owner who hated his guts," he said over the gurgling sounds that filled the room. "Ruby threatened to kill him if she ever got her hands on him, which probably wasn't likely..."