by Sarah Graves
Minus the corpse, of course. I set the podium up, then stood behind it sweating and quaking. I hated public speaking. At least in the old days when I summoned people for a money meeting, they came because they figured I’d know what I was talking about.
This time it was more like “what’s that madwoman up to now?” And I still wasn’t sure of the answer. All I really knew was that coming clean about my own past could give me the credibility I needed when I began describing Walter Henderson’s.
Beyond the barn’s high windows, clouds raced hectically across a full moon, its brilliance reflecting in the stars I kept seeing every time I moved my head. Standing a few feet away from me, Bob Arnold wore a freshly pressed uniform complete with his sidearm, baton, cuffs, and all the other cop gear he always kept on his utility belt.
“Hope you know what you’re doing, Jacobia,” he said, eyeing me skeptically. His tone made it clear he was here to keep order when this ridiculous shindig went to hell as it was bound to do.
“Um, yeah,” I answered faintly, my heart hammering so hard it felt as if one of Ann Radham’s boomier kettle drums was being played inside my chest. Then Henderson came in looking irritated and aggrieved, and that stiffened my backbone.
The son of a bitch. Minutes after I returned home from the cabin he’d been on the phone wanting to know what I meant by inviting people to his place without even asking his permission.
“Just what the card says,” I’d replied. Each invitation was headed, in Bella’s harsh chicken scratching, A Revelation.
“I’ll reveal who killed Cory tonight,” I’d told Henderson blithely. “Or don’t you want to know?”
Apparently he at least wanted to look as if he did, since here we all were. Wearing a black turtleneck, a cream-colored cardigan, and flannel slacks, he flipped the rest of the barn’s lights on, revealing the interior in all its fresh pine splendor.
Gardeners’ tools, lawn tractors, spacious stalls and feed bins for more animals as yet unpurchased spread out around us like an elaborate retail display dedicated to supplying a trust-fund-financed gentleman farmer with plenty of new toys.
“Might as well have the right atmosphere,” he remarked as the fluorescent tubes blazed, “for shedding light on the topic.”
His tone was pure sarcasm, meant to convey that he was only humoring me out of patience and the goodness of his heart. My own retort would’ve touched on the scarcity of those commodities; his true intention was to make a public fool of me and get rid of me forever.
Ellie approached me. “Everyone’s here.”
My heart’s tempo notched up another couple of beats. With Bella’s help we’d set up folding chairs to accommodate the invited audience; besides Bob Arnold, Ellie, and Bella there were Henderson, his golden-girl daughter Jennifer, Ann Radham the self-described hipster-sidekick musician, and Cory’s mother Henny Trow with her frizzy hair, lean face, and pale complexion.
Henny looked better than when I’d seen her—less devastated, more composed. According to Bella she’d already begun clearing out her house, getting ready to move back to Boston for good. But watching her take her place now, I couldn’t help remembering that bit of blue fabric that had first given me an inkling of possible murder.
Feeling my gaze, she glanced briefly at me, then touched the corner of her eye with a tissue. I wondered who she was trying to convince—me or herself?
Behind her stood Wade, George Valentine, and my father; like a stand-up comedian trying out a new act, I’d wanted to look out and spot at least a few friendly faces. Wade caught my eye, gave me a nod of encouragement and the ghost of a kiss.
Friendly for now. Last came Sam, clean-shaven and showered, in clean clothes and with his curly hair combed. He was shaky and sick looking, his complexion the color of pistachio ice cream, but he was obviously sober. That he’d come at all felt almost unbearably poignant to me.
“Hey, Jake,” Bob Arnold called, tapping at his wristwatch. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Right,” I said. “I’ll just be a minute.” Nervously I tried marshaling my thoughts but my headache kept scattering them. Ann Radham shifted in her chair impatiently, wearing a green T-shirt with a long tan sweaterish garment over it, and tan corduroys.
The fluorescent lights did nothing for her appearance; under them she looked ten years older than she had at the Bayside. Although alongside the vibrant, toned-and-tanned Jen Henderson no one’s looks had a chance; tonight Jen wore a fluffy V-necked cashmere sweater the same hue as her eyes, white slacks, and leather sandals. A scarf was knotted loosely at her throat.
The sweater had short sleeves, showing her tautly muscled arms. And the scarf was silk. Blue, and even from where I stood I could see the tear in it, letting a bit of the sapphire sweater peep through. Her gold hair fell warmly over the silk like sunshine on water.
It was the same scarf, I felt sure, as had been used in the murder; had she worn it deliberately? Or did she not know? Fixed on me, her astonishing eyes were full of hatred.
Fair enough. I wasn’t a fan of hers either. And she’d like me even less when I’d finished.
As would everyone else—inhaling deeply, I rehearsed it all in my head a final time—because years ago in the city when I was a hotshot money manager I’d taken cash from enterprises so violent the greenbacks should’ve turned red.
And now I was going to say so as background for the story of who—and what—Walter Henderson really was. I’d known about him all along not because Jemmy had told me about him but because I’d recognized him myself soon after he moved to Eastport.
He’d been on Water Street, just walking along like anyone else. I remember my shock, my disbelief that anything from my old life could even be real here. The last time I’d seen him had been in my office in the city, where he’d been a client of mine.
And out of that relationship I was pretty sure the Feds could make a case for accessory after the fact.
Multiple counts. In short, since I couldn’t get anyone in authority to investigate Henderson for Cory Trow’s death, I would offer…myself. For my own crimes; the whole shootin’ match, as Wade would’ve put it.
And then I would drag Henderson into it, just as I’d feared Jemmy would do to me. “Good evening,” I began, “and thank you all for coming. We’re here tonight to talk about Cory’s Trow’s death. His murder.”
My voice didn’t even shake; so far, so fine, I thought. But then I saw the bulge in Henderson’s sweater pocket and suddenly my whole plan was worse than folly.
He could shoot me before anyone could do anything about it. Bob Arnold was armed but I doubted he’d be a match.
Henderson meant to kill me. That he’d never get away with it was no longer an obstacle; he didn’t care. People didn’t do things like this to him, his eyes said; they just didn’t.
No matter what. I looked around for an exit but he stood by the door. Only about ten seconds had passed but it felt longer.
A lot longer. “Jake?” Wade spoke up gently. “Are you okay?”
My mouth felt dry. When I looked up to the loft, I saw where Cory must’ve stood in the moment before he took a last unknowing step. And…something else.
A thin rope or wire was tied to the iron hook where Cory’s noose had been knotted. The length of it was strung out tautly over all our heads, ending at one of the barn’s massive support beams.
If you were a stunt person in a harness and you wanted to slide down speedily, you’d clip the harness to a wire like that. I blinked at it, trying to understand what it meant.
“Jake?” Wade said again.
Irritably I shook my head; the room tilted disconcertingly, then settled. “I’m fine,” I muttered, peering down at the notes I’d made, just a few talking points scrawled on the back of the Bayside flyer Ann Radham had thrust at me the day before.
The letters swam indecipherably and focused. But…I peered at the paper. These weren’t my notes. I was looking at the wrong side of the page, the
front of the flyer.
Really looking at it, I mean. Seeing it clear and knowing suddenly that I’d been wrong all along. Henderson took his hand out of his pocket, withdrawing a cigar.
Smiling at my confusion, he lit it. I stared again at the flyer. There’d been two musical acts at the Bayside the night Cory died; Ann Radham played twice, once early and again at the evening’s end. In between, the guitar duo had appeared. The result was an alibi with a hole big enough to pilot a tugboat through.
And I’d missed it. But even as I thought this a muffled sound came from the loft, like something soft was being dragged across its floor very slowly. Everyone looked up as the trap door creaked open; Bob Arnold’s hand slid to his sidearm.
“Jake,” Wade said, getting out of his chair.
Something long and bulky fell through the trap-door opening. The noose around its neck tightened hard as the weight hit the rope; then the bouncing thing whizzed down the wire at us.
I just stared. It was Cory at the end of that rope; still dead. In fact after a couple of days in a morgue drawer and with the roughly made catgut-stitched autopsy scar across his forehead and down his middle, I’d have to say that when he slid to the end of his run on the wire he was even deader than when I’d seen him the first time.
His eyes opened. A small, uncontrollable glurk! of fright escaped me. Probably if it had happened a little differently, Ann Radham wouldn’t have reacted the way she did, either.
But it all went so fast; even Henderson took a startled step back. “Ann,” the thing said, its low voice thick with menace like an echo out of a bog, just loud enough for me and Ann to hear.
Up in the loft I could see someone moving now. Bob Arnold spotted it, also, and headed for the steps, gun drawn.
The spiky-haired girl staggered back. “No,” Ann whispered to the grisly thing hanging there. “You’re not here. Not real.”
Her voice dropped to a whisper, until only her lips moved. Just then Bob Arnold glanced back, so he saw what I did:
I watched you die, she told the thing inaudibly, struggling for control of herself. I watched…
Henderson saw it, too, and reached out furiously for her but she was too fast for him, suddenly seeming to recall where she was and what danger she was in. Straightening, Ann swung around.
“Federal officer,” she announced. “Chief Arnold, hold your fire,” she added without looking at him. “Get back down here and stand with the others where I can see you, please.”
Head up, feet apart in a classic firing stance, both hands on her weapon: a .38 automatic, and where had that come from? No matter; she had us all incapacitated with it.
That is until Bob Arnold apparently decided To hell with this, raised his own weapon in a smooth decisive arc, and fired.
A bright bloom of blood appeared on the shoulder of Ann Radham’s tan sweaterlike garment. And I don’t care what wounded people do on crime shows; when you get shot like that, you drop.
Too bad I did, too, her shocked white face suddenly replaced by a view of the barn’s high rafters. Flat on my back, I watched them spin.
Faster. Until they spun me away.
I regained consciousness in the ambulance and regarded this as fortunate until we got to the hospital; having a hole drilled into your head while you’re awake is not a procedure I recommend, in the yikes-that’s-scary department.
On the other hand it didn’t hurt, partly because soon after I reached the emergency room they shot enough novocaine to stun a rhinoceros into my scalp. Also, the brain bleed I was having had begun depressing some fairly important functions.
Noticing things, for instance. And caring about them. What did bother me was the sound: a bone-crunching, whine-of-a-power-tool snarl as the surgical drill bored into my skull.
I felt it pop through and my headache vanished as if by magic; that I cared about a lot. But not much more; for a couple of days I was as dopy, unreasonable, and hard to control as…
Well, let’s just say that during my convalescence everyone at the hospital behaved very professionally, while my post-operative behavior gave them plenty to be professional about.
Bedpans, for example, were a subject of controversy, as was pill-swallowing. I have it on good authority that several times Wade had to hold my nose just to get me to open my mouth. Though in my own defense may I simply say right here that in my opinion, the sheer indignity of a stay in the hospital is enough to kill you even if your original ailment doesn’t.
Still, ten days after the events in the barn, everyone convened for a party at the cottage by the lake to celebrate my survival. Heaven, I imagined, was a day just like today: sun shining, birds singing, and a little breeze blowing so it wasn’t too hot. The new dock stretched out over the water in pristine, solid-as-a-rock glory, finished by Wade and George as a surprise for me upon my homecoming from the hospital.
Ripples lapped peacefully around it as Bob Arnold and I sat on it together. “Jemmy still says he didn’t hit you?” Bob asked.
“Yeah.” My old pal had insisted a dozen times already that the birch-long-on-the-head incident really had been a blowdown, and not another of his attempts to motivate me.
“Honest, Jake, I was long gone when it happened,” he’d told me. “I did mean to vanish while your back was turned, I’ll admit that. But hit you? Come on, I wouldn’t do such a thing.”
I wanted to believe him. “And the brick through the truck windshield?” Bob asked now, putting his glass of seltzer down on the deck’s bright new surface.
“Jemmy says he meant it to hit the hood of the truck, not the glass. He says I must’ve sped up just as he let go.”
Mm-hmm, Bob’s skeptical look said. “What about the car things? Sam’s accident, your near miss on Sullivan Street…How’s he explaining all that? How’d he even get cars at all?”
“Well, he was the best vehicle booster-to-order in the tri-state area, once upon a time,” I confided. And there’d been that little problem with cars going missing from the hospital parking lot.
“I see,” said Bob. “That explains it, then.”
Jemmy had known about the cockamamie plan to gather everyone in Henderson’s barn because he’d been lurking outside my house when Bella left to deliver the invitations. He’d followed, wondering what all the envelopes could mean, and when she dropped one in Henny Trow’s mailbox he’d waited for Bella to leave, then scampered up and read it.
“What would he have done if you’d spotted him spying in the days previous?” Bob asked. “Or if Walter Henderson had?”
“I’d have been no problem. He could’ve just said he hitched a ride to Eastport to visit me. He did work up a disguise for any daylight car trips,” I answered.
Jemmy had told me about this part with some embarrassment. Having to disguise himself from me was pretty sneaky, he felt.
As if the rest of it weren’t. “And meanwhile Henderson really was waiting for the Cory Trow dust to settle before he did anything to Jemmy? But now Henderson doesn’t want to kill Jemmy at all anymore?” Bob asked.
I nodded. “Jemmy outed the spy in Walter Henderson’s camp. Saved Henderson’s bacon. So they’re even now, Jemmy says. And I believe him.”
The spy being Ann Radham, who really was a federal officer. Bob Arnold had been debriefed pretty thoroughly by her superiors, who were of course rather annoyed at the injury he’d inflicted on one of their number.
They’d gone to a lot of trouble to get her situated where she could acquire evidence on Henderson, Bob had reported later to Ellie and me, although once they heard his story they’d agreed he had little choice but to shoot Ann.
Just as she, from her own point of view, had been forced to kill Cory. His big mouth could’ve torpedoed her plan to get the dirt she needed for a Henderson arrest. The bottom line was that she’d meant to let Walter Henderson kill Jemmy; then she’d gather evidence of the crime and nail Henderson with it.
But not if Cory blabbed about her. If that happened, Ann’s bi
g career triumph went kerblooie, along with any plans she might have had for celebrating her next birthday.
So she’d murdered Cory. High over the lake an osprey sailed, wings outstretched. “Where’d Jemmy hide Trish and Fred Mudge?” Bob wanted to know.
“Their place.” As I’d suspected, someone had paid Bert Merkle to concoct the kidnapping story: Jemmy again.
“Even after you talked to the St. John cops,” I went on, “they still figured the likeliest thing was that she’d taken off and he was hunting for her. So Jemmy loaded Fred and Trish up with supplies and they kept their heads down. Or she did,” I corrected myself. “Jemmy had an assignment for Mudge.”
Jemmy had chuckled while describing this part, his surgery-smoothed face wrinkling into a smile. “God, Mudge is talented,” he’d marveled. “All I had to do was describe what I wanted and show him a picture of Cory Trow.”
There’d been one in the library’s copy of the high school yearbook; snipping Cory out of the group shot was yet another of Jemmy’s recent misdeeds. “When I told him I needed a full-sized dummy of Cory,” he’d said, “Mudge stitched it up in a couple of hours. Pretty lifelike, wasn’t it?”
Or deathlike, more to the point. Getting Mudge to trust Jemmy had been easy, too; once Jemmy told him the plan, Mudge’s creativity had kicked in and the rest had been smooth sailing.
“I got him a connection in the city,” Jemmy had added proudly. “On Broadway. Fellow I know there handles designers, craftspeople. Guy’s gonna have a career.”
Terrific, I’d thought, and Trish would be happy also since it meant Mudge would be in New York, while she and the baby meant to stay with Henny Trow in Massachusetts. Their first meeting had gone swimmingly and the infant Raj’s future would be financed by the proceeds of Cory’s insurance policy, the issuing company having already reversed itself on the matter of benefits payment.
I leaned back on the dock, soaking in the spring sunshine. “Was Ann really stealing from Jennifer?” I asked Bob, because I still wondered about her reaction when I accused her of it.
