Wicked Fix

by Sarah Graves

  He turned toward me, smelling of soap and fresh air. Sam wasn’t home; he had left a message to say he was staying the night with Tommy Daigle.

  “That,” I managed from the tiny part of my brain that could still form a coherent thought, “was pretty much the whole idea.”

  The next day was Salmon Sunday, so long awaited and now so absolutely upon us. Clouds loomed on the western horizon, heaped up dark and ominous like clenched fists, but moved no closer as the sun rose red over the Canadian islands.

  “It can rain all it wants, but later,” Ellie said worriedly around noon, peering out my kitchen window.

  The town was packed with people and more were arriving by the minute: parked along the curbs, pulled onto lawns, crowding along the sidewalks pushing strollers and lugging backpacks, and gazing enviously at the lovely old white clapboard houses they passed.

  Personally, I felt there was a big patch of clapboard that somebody was more than welcome to; the carpenters had come and dropped off the estimate for replacing all that siding and some framing beneath it. They would go over the unhappy news with me later, they said, after the festival was over. Now, the backyard was littered with the siding they’d torn off, to peer underneath it, and the envelope they’d left lay on the kitchen table like an unexploded bomb. I didn’t even want to open it.

  By contrast, Ellie was a sight for sore eyes in a pale yellow T-shirt, a turquoise jumper, white sandals, and a necklace of tiny turquoise lumps. Her red hair was tied back with a white grosgrain ribbon, and she was wearing the small emerald earrings George had given her when they got married.

  “You look,” I told her sincerely, “absolutely stunning.”

  She turned hopefully to me. “Do you think so? I wanted to make a good impression on the visitors.”

  “The only way you could make a better impression would be by handing out hundred-dollar bills,” I said.

  Outside, Tommy’s jalopy rumbled into the driveway. The boys thundered in, grabbed oatmeal cookies and glasses of milk, and galumphed upstairs. Wade and George had already gone down to the park to set up the barbecues and start marinating the salmon.

  Ellie checked her clipboard. “Plates, cups, napkins, ice,” she recited. “Lemons. Oh, gosh, I forgot about tartar sauce.”

  “Who’s going to glop up that salmon with tartar sauce?” I asked, but only rhetorically; as the mother of a teenaged boy, I know there’s no accounting for tastes. “Never mind, I’ll go get a gallon of mayonnaise and a jar of pickle relish. Will that do?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking around a little wildly. “It’s like putting on,” she said, “a military campaign.”

  “Napoleon would be proud of you. Now get out of here. Just the sight of you is making me nervous, and if I get distracted I’m likely to mix that relish into sour cream by mistake.”

  She looked anxious, then laughed, sounding a little short of breath. It was touching, really, to see her get nervous; she was so calm ordinarily, you felt like checking to make certain that she actually had a blood pressure.

  Watching her go, I was pierced again by the thought of how much I really didn’t want to leave Eastport. But then I had to start doing something about that tartar sauce. So I sent the boys to the IGA, but when they got back—

  —dashing in, depositing the enormous jars of pickles since the store had run out of relish, and hurrying away again as it had suddenly occurred to them that there would be girls at the festival, actual out-of-town girls whom they did not already know, so Tommy wanted to wash and wax the jalopy—

  —it turned out that running the pickles through the blender reduced them to green goo. I had to chop them individually and mix them into the mayonnaise with a spoon. By the time I was done, my hands smelling infernally of pickle juice, it was time to leave.

  The carnival atmosphere on Water Street was palpable: craft booths, cotton candy, strolling musicians, kids on skateboards. In the park behind the library the barbecue grills were fired up and the scent of wood-smoke mingled with the tang of the marinade simmering. The striped tents over the long lunch tables from the grade school looked festive, people were unloading trays of food from the backs of pickup trucks, and everyone seemed happy.

  The sky was still bright, though it was now getting on for three o’clock; the supper began at four. So even though a sly little breeze had sprung up, riffling in the napkins and setting the scalloped edges of the tent canvases fluttering, I was happy too. Eyeing the storm clouds still keeping their distance like animals who are not sure whether to attack, I thought we might yet squeak by in the weather department.

  I set the tartar sauce with the rest of the condiments on the front table near the coffee urns. Mike Carpentier lugged over yet another jug of lemonade and one of iced tea. Sneaking a glass of tea, I tasted fresh mint, and enough sugar and caffeine to power a jet engine, as Mike and Molly began setting the plastic jugs into an ice-filled barrel. They must have been preparing for this for half a year, I realized, saving the jugs for this occasion.

  A couple of men were pitching horseshoes behind the freshly painted bandstand where the two Sondergards, Heywood and Marcus, were setting up their instruments. Then somebody rang the big brass bell that used to be the Eastport fire alarm, and the crowd surged:

  Local politicians donned aprons and took their places in the serving line, smiling determinedly even as a strengthening breeze sent barbecue smoke swirling into their faces. The Sondergards broke into a rousing version of “I’ll Fly Away” while the food workers began serving salmon fillets as fast as they could spatula them off the hot grates; next came baked potatoes, boiled sweet corn, and blueberry biscuits.

  It was going just like clockwork despite a couple of rain spatters: threatening at first but then slackening as if taking pity on us. “So far, so fine,” Ellie said, appearing behind me.

  I’d been watching Sam and Tommy exchange Morse-code messages with a pair of penlights. They seemed to be commenting covertly on a group of young women from out of town.

  “You’ve done beautifully,” I told her, waving at the crowded tables under the tents. “They’re all having a high old time.”

  Bob Arnold strolled the lawn casually, a smile on his face and professional watchfulness in his eyes. I went up to him.

  “Where’s Clarissa?”

  At the sound of her name he smiled helplessly as he always did when she was mentioned; petite and darkly pretty, Clarissa as a lawyer was hard as nails—she’d been a big-time criminal prosecutor before she came to Eastport—but she had a soft spot the size of Montana for Arnold, and he adored her.

  “At home, with her feet up. Says she feels like the Goodyear blimp. Week late, now, but the doctor says just be patient…. I hope she’s gonna be all right.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “First babies are late sometimes.” Across the lawn, people who’d grown up in the area and then moved away were signing the Old Timers’ book, leaving addresses and phone numbers: a bright idea of Ellie’s for next year’s fund-raising.

  Bob brightened. “Yeah, huh?” He glanced at his squad car, pulled up onto the lawn behind the bandstand. “I think I’ll go call her.”

  “You do that,” I laughed, hoping Clarissa had the portable phone by her side; Bob would be calling her every fifteen minutes for the rest of the afternoon, I could tell.

  Then I saw Willow Prettymore in one of the food tents, her hair piled today in a gleaming chignon. With her were the apelike man I’d seen the night before and a pair of young teenaged children: identical blond twins, one boy, one girl.

  Together they looked like a political poster extolling the virtues of the good old-fashioned nuclear family, except that when the father of the family walked, his knuckles practically brushed the ground. Willow caught me eyeing her, got up, and stalked from the table coldly.

  Just then the Sondergards flew into an old Dillard tune called “Biggest Whatever,” the subject of which was—

  “… forty feet high, had a gleam in i
ts eye, and a big purple patch on its craw …”

  It was, naturally, the biggest whatever that anybody ever saw; Marcus sang the story of the creature in his fine, accurate baritone, managing not to break into laughter. And Heywood …

  Well, Heywood Sondergard rocked. White hair flying, blue eyes flashing, in the chambray shirt with the pearl buttons and the belt with the silver rose-of-Sharon buckle on it, he played that old guitar as if he had been born to do it.

  Which, I realized belatedly, he had. Heywood was a natural showman. “Oh,” I said faintly, and Ellie nodded.

  “None of us kids in his youth group cared much about the Bible stories,” she said reminiscently. “But we liked the music. He had that same belt back then, with the rose-and-cross buckle. Funny the things you remember.”

  I looked around. “Where’d Willow go?”

  Leaving Ellie to dish out seconds of the potatoes and sweet corn, I scanned the crowd as I moved away from the tent toward the bandstand. Marcus left Heywood to take a solo, came down from the platform, and headed for the drinks, wiping his forehead.

  I kept looking: no Willow. Nearby, I heard one of the girls Sam and Tommy had been scoping out—close-up, they were older than I had thought—telling Sam about a boat-design job that she wanted at a firm in Newport, Rhode Island.

  She was very pretty, with dark eyes and glossy chestnut hair. And she wore the kind of clothes Sam likes to see on girls: tailored jeans, navy cableknit sweater with a small red collar peeping out at the top like a little danger flag, plain leather shoes on her small feet.

  “Of course,” she was saying loftily to him as I approached, “I’ll have to finish college first. You can’t get anywhere good in the boat-design business without a degree, and maybe even a master’s degree. I’m also majoring in engineering.”

  Sam’s face fell. Then I saw his brain kick in. His shoulders squared, and he tipped his head seriously at her.

  They hadn’t noticed my approach. “Where,” he asked the girl, “are you getting these degrees? In nautical design, and fine art, and engineering? And how much does it cost?”

  Hey, you can listen to your parents all you want. But if you really want the scoop on something, ask some kid your own age.

  On the other hand, I’d have sent him to canine obedience school if I’d thought it would make him happy. Another spatter of rain fell chillingly, pattering on the tent roofs. I left Sam to plan his future on the advice of a perfect stranger, squinted around for Willow again, spotted her blond hair for an instant, then lost her once more as someone else came up behind me.

  It was Terence Oscard, dressed in a white knit polo shirt, tan slacks, and deck shoes. A white cardigan was tied by its sleeves around his shoulders. He wore the clothes well, but the look on his face didn’t match the casual outfit. Also, he was carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper and addressed in Magic Marker, which struck me as odd: it was prepared for mailing but there were no post-office hours on Sunday.

  “Jacobia, can we talk for a minute?” He paused, then rushed on urgently. “I don’t care what Paddy thinks of this, or how mad he gets. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

  We sat on the library steps, looking out over the street. There was a clown juggling oranges, a magician producing quarters from behind children’s ears. Mike Carpentier went by with Molly, the child looking coltishly pre-teen in shorts and a T-shirt but still carrying a rag doll. Then Terence was speaking, and what he said sent all other thoughts out of my head.

  “Reuben didn’t just threaten Paddy the other night. He tried to kill him. Put his hands right around his throat, Paddy had to fight him off. And I know how stupid this sounds, but it seems to me that Reuben’s still trying.”

  I looked hard at him. He was pale, and even thinner than I’d last seen him. The Ace bandage he’d worn a few days earlier was gone, replaced by a smaller, less dramatic-looking wrap of gauze.

  “Terence. Believe me, if someone’s trying to hurt Paddy, it isn’t Reuben. I saw him in that cemetery and I can guarantee it.”

  He shook his head impatiently. “I know he’s dead. But don’t you feel that he’s still around, somehow? I mean, we talk about him. Telling old stories. Recalling things he did. Being glad he’s gone. And it’s unhealthy. It’s like the old saying, do you remember? Speak of the devil …”

  “And,” I finished, “the devil appears.” A chill prickled foolishly across the back of my neck. “But that wouldn’t account for any actual physical attempts on Paddy.”

  Terence sighed. “You know that open circular stairway he insisted on, when he designed the loft?”

  I knew it. I’d been in the upstairs living space: parties and so on. The stairs were an invitation to vertigo or worse.

  Terence went on. “How I fell was, someone had left a bunch of thread tangled across the top riser. This,” he lifted his taped left hand, “is nothing. I could have broken my neck.”

  “There’s fabric all over the studio,” I objected. “Couldn’t it have blown there, or gotten dragged there, somehow?”

  He frowned. “I don’t think so. He’s neat as a pin when he’s working. But that’s not all. The other night I went out for a walk. When I came in, all the gas burners on the stove had been turned on. It’s not an electronic model, either, you have to light it with a match. The place was reeking with gas.”

  “Well. That is more straightforward. You can turn on one by accident, or absent-mindedly. But not all four. Or not normally, anyway.”

  Delicately, I did not suggest that Terence might be a little absent-minded lately, himself. But he got the drift.

  “Any health problems that I may be having do not bear upon the problem we are discussing,” he said, his arm tightening on the parcel he had tucked under it.

  I might have believed him, but he slurred a couple of words as he said this, and didn’t seem to notice. There was beer, and probably some hip flasks, too, among the festival attendees. But Terence wouldn’t have touched any.

  I wanted to ask him to unwrap that bandage, let me see the hand. Then I could be certain he wasn’t just shining me on, or at least not in that department; that he hadn’t wounded himself on one of Weasel Bodine’s few remaining teeth, for instance, perhaps in an effort to protect Paddy. Because it had occurred to me that one reason for killing the hapless Weasel might be that he had seen Reuben’s murder. And if Paddy was involved …

  But the medical examiner’s report on Weasel still wasn’t out. And as a result, the promise I’d made to Bob Arnold to keep mum when it came to any information about that skin shred was still in force.

  “Anything more?” I asked. “Other attempts on either of you, suspicious events? And …”

  A new possibility occurred to me. “Where’s Paddy now?”

  If Paddy and Terence really were on the outs, and Paddy wanted to get rid of Terence, not just break up with him …

  “He’s eating his salmon and having an argument with Clinch Brockway,” Terence replied. “Paddy thinks he ought to be able to put a balcony on the back of his building, and Clinch says it’ll be an eyesore on that historical structure.”

  Terence managed a laugh. “Actually, I don’t think Paddy really even wants a balcony. But he loves an argument. More than he likes grilled salmon, even. He’ll be there awhile.”

  Across the street, some little girls had gotten a box of sparklers from somewhere and were trying to light them. I kept an eye on the girls, none of whom could have been more than seven or so, as they enjoyed the forbidden activity.

  “Have you,” I asked Terence, “told Bob Arnold about this?”

  He shook his head emphatically. “Paddy would have a fit. He says—can you believe this?—he says none of it happened. He’s convinced it was all my imagination … or so he says.”

  Great. Now I could worry about that. Was it live, or was it Memorex, as recorded by Terence’s perhaps unreliable mental processes? But who would want to kill Paddy or Terence?

  “I don
’t know,” Terence admitted slowly when I asked him. “But I’ve been thinking. Two fellows got murdered. I’ve been thinking of how it could have happened. I mean, exactly how.”

  Me too. If someone killed the Weasel first, for instance, that ruled out the Weasel’s possibly having witnessed Reuben Tate’s death. Which meant there would have to be another motive for …

  Across the street, the girls looked up guiltily as a woman’s voice called from the tent area. Still carrying the sparklers, they scampered across the library lawn, up the hill, and out of sight.

  “… Play with those things, you do it where I can see you,” the woman’s voice scolded. “Go right over there by that fence and stay there, where there’s nothing to catch fire.”

  Terence frowned, distracted. “What kind of a name is that, anyway? Weasel … sounds like a cartoon character.”

  I looked at him sharply. His face had slackened.

  Then he snapped back, just as a small commotion came from behind the library. Puzzled, I got up, then identified the sound: the little girls. They were screaming, but not just to hear the sound of their own voices. Kids will do that. But these little girls meant it. I ran, Terence behind me.

  The tables were still crowded, the folks who’d been last in line just starting on their dinners, others finishing desserts or coffee. The girls gathered by a low fence dividing the park from a private yard. Around them lay a few burned sparklers, powdery with gray chemical ash.

  Lashed to the fence, its cloth belly slashed and its button eyes torn off, a paring knife protruding from its cloth body, was Molly Carpentier’s rag doll. One of its little black cloth shoes lay in the grass beneath it.

  Molly stood staring. “I put her down,” the child said softly, her eyes huge. “Just for a minute …”

  Mike Carpentier seized his daughter’s shoulders, turned the child, and gave her a little shove toward the tents. “Go and sit down. I’ll get her. Go on, now.” Slowly, the child obeyed.

  “This is what happens.” Mike said angrily. “Little savages. This is why,” he yanked the rag doll from its bindings, “I have to keep her away from them. Or she’ll end up just like them.”