Hound

by Vincent McCaffrey

  The broker's eyes closed too slowly and opened again with some effort.

  "We had a verbal agreement...."

  Henry smiled. He had tried not to. He had not wanted to. It was reflexive. “You told Arthur you had an agreement."

  The Realtor repeated, “A verbal agreement."

  Henry said, “Arthur thought otherwise."

  "He misunderstood. Nothing was filed."

  Henry offered a half-truth. “So we noticed."

  The Realtor sat forward. “It was my intention—I had an appointment with Mrs. Johnson the day she was murdered. I was going to have her sign then."

  Henry could not help raising an eyebrow. “You were there?"

  It was the wrong question.

  The Realtor sat back in his chair again. “I arrived in time to spend an hour or two with the police. It was very unpleasant."

  Henry tried to turn the conversation back. “I don't imagine Arthur will want to go along with your verbal agreement."

  The Realtor bounced just slightly in his seat.

  "Mr. Johnson does not seem to be in much of a hurry."

  Henry asked, “Have you spoken with him recently?"

  "I haven't been able to reach him."

  Henry said, “He's been busy."

  "Is there a problem?"

  Henry said, “The price."

  The man's cheeks tucked in slightly between his open teeth, and he came forward again. “But there is an agreement."

  Henry said only, “Verbal."

  The Realtor shook his head once, “Yes, but—"

  Henry was not prepared to argue real-estate law. He interrupted. “What did Detective O'Connor think about it?"

  The Realtor sat back now, as if to avoid any sense of confrontation. “He's a very suspicious man. His job, I suppose. But everything was perfectly legal and aboveboard."

  Henry answered that quickly enough. “Except for the matter with Arthur."

  The man came forward once more, this time with both hands attached to the edge of his desk.

  "Well, the property at that time was hers, not his. She had told me not to tell him. Mrs. Johnson seemed very concerned about it. I'm not sure why. She said several times that I should not talk to him about it. I was only following her wishes.... The offer is solid. The buyer is completely legit. He might be willing to go up slightly to get the deal done. He wants to move in by the first of the year if it's at all possible."

  Henry shifted his chair back as if to leave. “I'll tell Arthur, but I don't think so."

  The Realtor answered quickly, “The buyer might pay a premium if—"

  Henry had left the impression he wanted, but if he started negotiating, he might be caught in some level of fraud. “I'll tell Arthur. Don't speak to me about that. But I do want to know what Morgan said. Why did she want to sell so quickly?"

  "Taxes. I think it was for tax reasons."

  This seemed probable to Henry. It had been suggested before, and he had encountered it many times. People often sold off entire estates at reduced values just to escape the reach of the Internal Revenue Service or reduce the hit of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Morgan was facing a large financial loss in the current year with Heber's medical bills and death. A large sum of money had been given to Peter for his wife's medical care. The donation of the books to Boston University would amount to a considerable deduction. She wanted to sell the condominium while the loss was fresh. With Heber's death in June, a great many things had begun to change very quickly. The will was probably made as a temporary measure. It would be just like Morgan to have all the bases covered.

  But the issue remained: she was keeping secrets from her only son.

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  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Both Albert and Henry stared at Tim across the bar. Tim pretended to ignore them. Albert was the first to ask.

  "How did it go?"

  Tim mumbled, “Fine."

  They were not convinced. Henry looked at Albert and then back at Tim. “What was fine about it?"

  Tim did not meet their eyes. He said, “She's a good cook,” and went away to take care of someone else.

  Albert shook his head as if in pity. “He missed a damn fine turkey if she wasn't."

  Henry agreed. “Alice's best ever."

  "Which reminds me...” Albert dug into his coat pocket and pulled out a folded batch of yellowed paper. “You might want these. They're from the Mawson house."

  The irregular batch of odd-sized paper was a shock. Henry gaped. “Where in the Mawson house?"

  Albert shrugged at him to pass the omission off. “The cookbook. From the kitchen. There was a Fannie Farmer cookbook in the kitchen at the Mawson house. It's what Alice used to make the turkey this year. And the stuffing. Killer stuffing, wasn't it? Well, that old book was pretty stuffed itself, with scraps of recipes. Alice loves that kind of thing. I brought it home. But they weren't all recipes. Some were notes with a mention of food in them. A lot of them were from Helen Mawson to her mom."

  Henry's voice raised an octave. “Why didn't you say anything?"

  Albert looked at him in total innocence. “I didn't know. She didn't tell me. She's been hoarding them. I found them on the counter when I was doing the dishes after you left. I knew you'd want them."

  Henry felt stunned by the very fact of it. “Why didn't she say anything to me?"

  Albert took his customary breath when speaking of Alice. “She's jealous. Alice is a jealous woman. All women are jealous, I suppose. It's in their nature.... She knew you'd want them."

  Henry carefully opened the folded sheets on the bar and read the neat hand of Helen Mawson again.

  Tim came back and twisted his neck to read the writing sideways from across the bar, saying, “What's that?"

  Albert snatched them up and held them beneath his hand against his chest.

  "Not till you tell us what happened."

  Tim backed away, his face like a dog caught after making a mess on the rug.

  He repeated, “She can really cook."

  Henry said, “It's your third date Tim. Mary had you over for Thanksgiving dinner on your third date. That's impressive."

  Tim considered the matter.

  "Her kids were there. I'm not sure if they liked me."

  Albert asked, “So what did you do?"

  Tim said, “I taught them to play chess."

  Albert and Henry looked at each other and then back at Tim again.

  Albert nodded. “That's good,"

  "Impressive,” Henry added.

  Tim said, “I'm going to take them to the movies tomorrow."

  Henry said, “Very impressive."

  Albert asked, “So you like her?"

  Tim shrugged. “I always like redheads.” He said it like it was a foregone conclusion.

  "Did she kiss back?” Albert wanted detail.

  Tim asked, “When?"

  Albert turned to Henry. “When the man says. He's kissed her more than once already."

  Tim confirmed, “We kissed,” with another half shrug.

  Albert insisted. “But did she kiss back?"

  Tim said, “That's personal."

  "Good. She kissed back.” Albert gave a single nod of satisfaction.

  Henry added, “Very good."

  Tim escaped back down the bar.

  Albert wiped a spot of water off the counter with his sleeve and put the papers down again and flattened them with both hands.

  Henry picked the one off the top.

  "Charlotte russe. What's Charlotte russe?"

  Albert shook his head. “Kind of souffle-like, I think, only cold. It's good."

  Henry recognized the scrap, even without the printed heading. “This is stationery from the Roycroft Inn."

  Albert picked the next one from the stack. “Where do you think this is from?"

  Henry took the piece between two fingers and held it up to the light above the bar: a small, square, cream-colored sheet w
ith a recipe for a walnut cake. Half of a watermark extended into the frame.

  "Liverpool."

  Albert lifted the next. “And this one?"

  First Henry read the handwritten note at the top aloud. “Mother always loved ginger. I'll make these when I get home. He says they are his mother's favorite."

  Tim asked, “What do they say?” Returning to investigate.

  Albert answered, “Orange, ginger, and molasses,"

  Henry said, “Who do you think the ‘he’ is?” Holding the paper up. There was part of a mark which he could not read. “Looks just like the other piece of English paper."

  Albert said, “Could be."

  There were other notes on other recipes, but not another mention of a “he.” Most of the paper was from England, Henry noted, but then, English paper was sold in the United States.

  The three of them studied the stack until they were all hungry and wishing they hadn't.

  Henry folded the small papers at the original creases and asked for a piece of stiff cardboard from a liquor box and an old envelope so that he could put them away in his coat.

  Albert said, “Alice wants them back."

  Henry answered, “Only if she makes the cookies."

  Albert asked Tim again about Mary Prowder. Tim looked like he needed a break, so Henry changed the topic of conversation and told them about his father's hundred-dollar bet with Jack.

  "Dad laughed. I haven't seen a laugh like that out of the old man in memory. He said that was some trick Jack pulled—only he had pulled it on himself. Dad knew the cops had nearly arrested Jack after he wiped the floor with some Union bullyboy. He found it out when three thugs showed up at the door looking for his brother. Dad decided Jack needed to get away. The Marines were recruiting down by the S. S. Pierce building in Coolidge Corner. Dad says he teased Jack into the bet, knowing he couldn't let go of an easy hundred."

  Henry did not bring up his latest thought about Morgan's murder. It was all guess. It was all just a matter of maybe and what-if. But he was not going to sit on what little he knew. There could be no good in letting time pass and police interest wane.

  As soon as Albert and Henry had come in the door, Tim had announced to them that there had been another robbery and murder nearby in Inman Square the night before. Only two blocks away. And the cops had not even found the person who had committed the last one yet.

  Now, Albert ignored the story about Jack. He finished his ale and turned his head at Tim.

  "You better be careful. Don't be trying to save your money if some guy shoves a gun in your face. Let him have the money. You have a girl now. When you've got the girl, you don't need the money."

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  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The snow, which had been suspended in the air as if too light to settle completely to the ground, now began to stir in a sideways roll against his windshield for the last miles along Route 3 before he reached the bridge. The van headlights were absorbed by the gray wool of night, gaining him only a short view of road before the distances became featureless.

  The last time he had come to the Cape in the winter was after the great storm of ‘78. It was the year his father had sold their small shack on the bluff in Eastham. The old man never liked going there after Henry's mother died. He couldn't bear it, and keeping the little house up had become a miserable annual chore. He had wanted to keep it for Henry and his sister, but those were the Carter years: money was tight, and jobs for electricians had dried up. The old man sold it after Shelagh had left home, the same year Henry took his first full-time summer job.

  The house Henry was looking for now was no shack, but it would be no more visible in this weather than the dark gaps of shadow which appeared regularly at both sides of the road. Occasional lights distinguished one shadow from another, revealing the presence of other human beings. Cape Cod was a lonely place in winter.

  He was thinking he should turn back. It was only five o'clock as he passed the rotary in Orleans, but he might not be able to find the place now in the dark. He should have started earlier. The book auction he had attended that morning had extended into the afternoon. He should have changed his plans. The weather report had not mentioned snow, but then New England weather reports were useless—worse than useless, they were misleading. He was happy he had worn his boots.

  Albert would have known what the weather would be if Henry had bothered to ask. Albert could read the look of the clouds like any good fisherman. But by then Henry had already made the phone call. Whoever had picked up the phone without answering would have heard his voice. Henry had even given his own name in the hope of getting them to speak. Henry was very sure it was Arthur who was staying at Morgan's beach house.

  A street sign caught an edge of his headlight. Henry stopped and backed up until he could see it fully, and then checked his map. Only two more intersections.

  The sign for the road he wanted was encrusted with snow, but a car had left the highway there and made its tracks. He followed these for over a mile before getting the idea that perhaps they were Arthur's tracks. How many people would be staying in a beach house in early December? Arthur might have gone out to buy some milk or get the paper. Henry only hoped that the tracks were going toward the house and not leaving.

  The house was gray shingle and white trim, invisible to the eye but for a yard light by a low rail fence. The tracks Henry had followed led to the dark hulk of a car parked in the driveway in front of a separate garage. The snow burst upon him as he opened his van door. The wind here had a hard edge of salt and the smell of metal.

  A steady hiss and moan spoke from the eaves of the house and in the pine boughs that blocked what view of the ocean he might get from the driveway on a good day. There was no light on at the door. A bedroom lamp glowed through a closed curtain in a dormer above. There were no footprints at this front door, and Henry assumed the preferred entrance was at the rear, but he rang the bell anyway. He could hear the electric trill even through the wind. There was no sound of response. He rang it again.

  After the third try, he walked around the side where the garage offered a brief shelter from the blow, probing through the drift of snow for the steps to the deck with his boot before noticing the imprint of someone else. A metallic crack behind made him jerk his head around. It was the cooling of the engine in the car parked there—recently arrived and only just beginning to collect a coat of snow.

  In front of him, on the sculpted surface of snow across the deck, there were other footprints. A lamp blazed through the glass of a sliding door. The door was partly open, and snow was beginning to drift through the opening over a small rug onto the wood of a polished floor, where it melted into golden beads of water.

  The light caught the footprints on the deck in a moonscape of scrapes and depressions. These were two sets of footprints, mixed. The snow had blown up deeply against the house beside the door, and in that there was the impression of something which had lain there recently—no, had fallen. It was the impression of a body. Across the snow dark pieces of something had been tossed. Henry bent down to pick one up, and realized it was not whole. Bloody snow fell apart in his glove.

  Henry went through the opening of the door and closed it behind himself.

  "Arthur?"

  A momentary silence was slowly replaced by the muffled wind outside. There was no other sound within. He turned away from the glare of the light. A kitchen, close by on the garage side, suddenly hummed with the sound of a refrigerator. He jerked, then took a deep breath to force a measure of self-control. Away in the other direction stretched a darkened living room. On the wall by the kitchen was a phone. Henry picked it up and dialed for the police. He had to say the address twice. He hung up then, impatiently.

  His eyes sought the splatter of more blood. There was none. The house was in neat order, with dish towels stacked in an open pantry and place mats laid on a glass-topped table near the sliding door. The curtains of the living room
were open to a flat gray movement of snow—to a view in better weather he could only imagine. A wall of books faced the windows from across the arching back of a couch positioned before the metal hood of an open hearth. Half-burned logs smoldered there.

  Behind the wall of books a stairwell rose to the upper floor. Henry called Arthur's name again as he climbed the steps. His voice died in the still air. Two bedroom doors were open, with a bathroom between them. One of the beds was only half-made. There was no sign of anything else.

  Downstairs again, Henry opened the sliding doors to the howl and press of the wind—growing now, it seemed. Snow attached to his eyelashes immediately. He wiped his face and looked off the deck in the direction of the ocean. Faintly there, only a few feet away, the tracks of two people broke the flat white surface of the slope between stunted pine.

  Henry followed, stopping briefly when he saw again the dark pieces of splattered blood to one side. The footprints fell further apart.

  They were running. They were running, one from the other. He followed more quickly. He knew who these men were. He was not sure which one to be fearful for.

  Ranulf had called Henry that morning to ask if he had any idea where Arthur might be. He said he wanted only to talk to him. Arthur had been avoiding Ranulf since the memorial service. Ranulf thought Arthur had left town until someone else mentioned seeing him the previous week. Then Henry had made the mistake.

  The Realtor had called to complain about Henry sticking his nose in where it didn't belong. Henry's pretence of friendship with Arthur was a fraud. And part of this had come out when Henry had asked Ranulf if he knew how much debt Heber's sickness and death had left on Morgan's shoulders. Henry understood that it was at least partially his own stupidity that had caused this bloody mess now.

  The push and shove of the wind took Henry's sense of balance away. He fell when his boot slipped off what must have been a board-covered path below the moving surface of the snow. The sound of the ocean was clear now.

  A triangle of darker wooden railing protruded from the snow and Henry stopped just short of it with the realization that these were steps and the gauze before him was empty space. He felt his way blindly downward until the squall passed and the beach suddenly presented itself in variations of gray.