Gypsy Sins

by John Lawrence Reynolds

  “You know where to look?”

  “For what?”

  “For the Sanders murder I told you about.”

  “Oh, yeah, that one.” Morton made no attempt to hide his lack of enthusiasm. “I think so. Some boxes of stuff in the basement look like they go back to the pilgrims and Plymouth Rock. Why’nt you come back about four, maybe five o’clock?”

  McGuire smiled tightly. “Sure. About five.”

  “Things don’t move around here like they do on Berkeley Street,” Morton said.

  McGuire responded with a grunt.

  Leaving the car in front of the police station, McGuire walked down to Main Street in sunshine that wore a golden sheen in the unseasonably warm autumn air. He passed young mothers wheeling small children from shop to shop and elderly men sitting cross-legged on wooden benches who leaned inward to each other, discussing the weather and dead friends.

  McGuire bought a Cape Cod News, found a coffee shop cluttered with plaster figurines and lace placemats, and ordered a breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast and coffee.

  Almost an hour later he emerged from the shop, the newspaper tucked under his arm. A brown Audi sounded its horn and pulled to the curb in front of him. McGuire bent to look through the lowered passenger window at a red-eyed Parker Leedale.

  “How you doing?” Leedale asked.

  McGuire shrugged.

  “Give you a lift?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Leedale stared ahead and nodded absently. “Uh, that stuff we talked about last night,” Leedale said, still looking through the windshield. “You know, about June? I think maybe that was the alcohol talking and, um . . .”

  McGuire finished the sentence for him. “You want me to forget about it.”

  Leedale closed his eyes and nodded.

  “Good idea. See you around.”

  “Sure I can’t give you a lift?” Leedale asked. He had visibly relaxed. “I’m on my way to Orleans, but . . .” McGuire slapped the roof of Leedale’s car with his hand. “I’m sure, Parker,” he said. “Got a car around the corner. You have yourself a good day.”

  Leedale smiled. “You too, McGuire,” he said, and drove slowly away.

  Old Queen Anne Road rolled on its meandering course past salt ponds, tidal flats and inlets. Admiring the scenery, McGuire almost drove past the small gray and white clapboard house converted by Sam Hannaford into his real estate office.

  Hannaford was on the telephone when McGuire entered. “Well, now, I think it’s time to make your move, see,” the agent was saying. He winked at McGuire, who carried the survey paper in his hand. “Tell you what,” Hannaford said, “I got an important fellow here just dropping off a document for me, see, so hold on there a moment.”

  The agent covered the receiver mouthpiece with his hand as McGuire dropped the paper on the desk.

  “Now that’s the sweetheart I need,” Hannaford said. “Knew old Parker wasn’t spinning pipe dreams on me. Thanks a load, McGuire. You’re a gentleman and a scholar and I might have an offer for you before the week’s out.”

  Without answering, McGuire turned and left the office as Hannaford resumed his telephone conversation. “Tellin’ you, I’m getting busier ’round here than a one-armed paper hanger with a case of hives . . .” he was saying as McGuire closed the door behind him.

  Planning to return to town, McGuire made a wrong turn leaving Hannaford’s office, turned down a twisting side road and was soon hopelessly lost. Just when his instincts told him he was heading west, away from Compton, the road enticed him with a long slow left curve and he would grow certain that the town was just beyond the next hill, only to discover the road turning right again.

  He smiled at his predicament, knowing he had the rest of the day to himself. And it was a stunning day, McGuire noted with approval, the kind of Cape Cod day that made the Bahamas, for all of their serenity, seem far away, in another time, another world.

  But suddenly not that distant. Barbara, he frowned to himself. Where the hell was she?

  Ahead, he saw a telephone booth in an ugly strip plaza, the sight of it proof that he was well beyond Compton where strip plazas and indoor malls were artifacts of an alien, less sophisticated world.

  He stopped at the booth, dialed Barbara’s number on Treasure Cay, entered his credit card number on request and counted four rings before hearing the Bahamian lilt of the maid’s voice.

  No, Mrs. Mayall was not in, the maid reported, she had left for Nassau that morning. No, she did not leave an address or telephone number for Mr. McGuire. Yes, the maid would be sure to tell Mrs. Mayall that McGuire had called and is waiting to hear from her.

  Well, shit, McGuire thought, hanging up the receiver.

  He leaned against the inside wall of the telephone booth. The floor of the booth was sticky with spilled soda, and an empty cigarette package had been left on the counter beneath the telephone. He swept the package aside angrily and stared sullenly at the graffiti on the walls of the booth: a crude drawing of a naked woman, several telephone numbers and a puzzling declaration: “Matthew Arnold lives!”

  The arcane literary reference made McGuire smile in spite of his sour mood and he lifted his eyes to stare through the booth and along the line of shops in the strip plaza. As he did, a woman emerged from a florist’s shop, a bouquet of white Shasta daisies and rust-coloured mums in her hand, and trotted toward a battered red Civic, keeping her head and eyes in constant motion before sliding behind the wheel.

  It was June Leedale. And she was fearful of being seen.

  McGuire opened the door of the booth to say hello and ask for directions back to Miner’s Lane.

  But he paused and climbed behind the wheel of his car instead. Whether because of Parker Leedale’s suspicions or June Leedale’s furtive manner or simply the product of a prying mind nurtured by twenty years of police investigations, he decided to follow her. To see if she would lead him back to town. To satisfy his own curiosity. To fill time in an otherwise empty, lazy afternoon. Or perhaps simply to dilute his anger and frustration at not reaching Barbara.

  Perhaps even, McGuire admitted to himself, to discover if Parker Leedale’s suspicions of his wife’s infidelity were correct.

  By the time McGuire started the car’s engine, June Leedale was already speeding away on Old Queen Anne Road, and he kept several car lengths in back of the red Honda. Within half a mile, Old Queen Anne Road intersected Route 28, which McGuire knew led east to downtown Compton. But June Leedale swung right, toward the west, and after permitting two cars to pass and fill the space between him and the Honda, McGuire continued following her.

  Through Harwich and Dennis Port, McGuire pursued her, staying within the speed limit. Just beyond South Yarmouth she pulled into another roadside strip plaza and McGuire drove past it to the next intersection, swung right onto a parallel road and right again to emerge just east of the plaza, where he parked on the shoulder, the Honda in clear view.

  The engine of McGuire’s car was still cooling, making its fragile tick-tick sound, when June Leedale emerged from a small gift shop in the plaza. She had made no purchases, and as she walked casually to her car she glanced around, a slight smile on her face, as though looking for another shop to visit. Pausing at the driver’s door of the Honda, she gave one last look around her before entering the car and pulling away.

  Again, McGuire permitted three cars to pass and fill the space between them before setting off again.

  It’s her goddamn business if she’s screwing somebody besides her husband, not mine, McGuire reminded himself. But he continued following her, fascinated by the well-practiced routine she seemed to be observing.

  They drove through West Yarmouth and past a strip of discount T-shirt shops, factory outlet malls and cheap furniture warehouses, and McGuire was again reminded of the general tackiness of much of the Cape beyond exclusive commu
nities like Compton.

  Just ahead of the exit to Hyannis, the red car swung north on a narrow side road.

  The road crested a low hill beyond the highway. With no cars between them, McGuire slowed his speed to avoid revealing his presence. Beyond the hill, trailing a cloud of gravelly dust, the Honda turned and drove through an open gate leading to a low grassy rise dotted with granite stones and brickwork crypts.

  He continued past the entrance to the cemetery. At the next intersection he turned right, parked the car and twisted in his seat to look behind him.

  Silhouetted against the sky, the slim figure left her car and followed an oyster shell path between the tombstones, head down, the flowers held lightly in front of her. She disappeared over the rise and McGuire, telling himself, you don’t have to do this, damn it, but ignoring his own advice, left his car and entered the cemetery along the same path.

  He halted at the sight of June Leedale kneeling in front of a gray granite tombstone at the far corner of the graveyard, then stepped behind a brickwork crypt.

  Removing a group of dead flowers from a glass jar at the base of the monument, June Leedale tossed them aside and emptied the gray-green water on the grass, then rose to fill the jar with fresh water from an upright faucet thrusting out of the ground three rows of tombstones away.

  McGuire moved deeper into the shadow of the crypt. He lowered his head and felt foolish, ashamed. And curious. The curiosity burned within him like a sexual longing. Or something else perhaps. The emotional echoes of twenty years as a police detective, his instincts abuzz at the sight of someone acting surreptitiously, the scent of betrayal following like a spoor.

  Returning to the tombstone, June Leedale knelt again to place the flowers in the jar and she arranged them with care, the Shasta daisies bright and proud in the hard-edged sunlight, the mums dark and dignified. Then she lowered her head, supported herself with one hand on the ground and sobbed, her shoulders heaving in silent shudders of agony and sadness.

  McGuire strode quickly away, embarrassed at the sight, as though he had entered a room without knocking to discover two friends making love. But within a few paces he realized he couldn’t return to his car without the risk of June Leedale seeing him, either within the cemetery or on the shoulder of the road when she stood to leave.

  He stepped behind another crypt, positioning himself so he could watch her Honda while tiny Stars and Stripes placed on the graves of war veterans stirred in a salt-scented breeze.

  He took a long, deep breath and watched June Leedale rise to walk slowly along the pathway leading across the crest of the hill and back to her car, her dirndl skirt flowing gracefully around her legs. McGuire slid crabwise to the other side of the crypt, leaned against it and listened as the car’s engine came to life and faded in the distance. Then he approached the tombstone where the woman had placed the floral bouquet in a discarded glass jar and shed her tears with such passion.

  “ELWOOD,” the bold marble letters declared. “To the memory of our beloved son David Raymond,” McGuire read beneath the surname. “Taken too soon 1964–1983.” He squatted to examine the letters as though they might reveal why a middle-aged woman would be drawn to mourn at the grave of a young man who had died a decade earlier.

  Then, fingering the flowers absently and feeling a wave of compassion for the sad, haunted person who was June Leedale, he stood and winced at the cracking of his knees before setting off for his car, marveling at the sad secrets carried in the hearts of so many people he had come to know.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Found some stuff on that woman.”

  Bob Morton was standing behind his desk, slipping first one arm then the other into a blue nylon jacket shell. “Coroner’s report, investigation summary.” He nodded at the slim file folder on his desk. “Thought it’d be tough digging it up after all these years but there she was in the archives. Don’t get too many homicides here. Barely half a dozen in the whole file and they go back to the twenties, looks like.”

  McGuire extended a hand toward the files and Morton bit his lip.

  “What’s got you interested in this?” Morton asked. “Your aunt knew this woman, maybe?”

  “I don’t know.” McGuire dropped his hand and sat back in the chair. He felt drained and embarrassed at his encounter with June Leedale. He tried to assure himself he had been just acting like any suspicious cop. He would always be a suspicious cop. Hell, he was born suspicious.

  “So what’s the deal?” Morton said.

  “Cora seemed to know something about it. Parker Leedale, Stevenson, Gilroy, they suspect a high school buddy might have done it.” He shrugged. “There could be a connection, there could be nothing.”

  Morton frowned down at the file. “All the stuff on my plate right now, I shouldn’t be digging into the archives without due cause.”

  “Too late for that,” McGuire said. “You already have.” He extended his hand again.

  “I’m probably not supposed to hand it over to a private citizen either.”

  McGuire grunted. “Probably. But if you happened to leave it here and I was bold enough to read the damn thing, you’d be in the clear on that score. And I’d be liable for some kind of misdemeanour, maybe.”

  “Maybe.” Morton shrugged and moved the file folder a little closer for McGuire’s convenience. “Like I said, I have to go pick up my son at the sitter’s.” He raised his wrist and checked his watch. “Damn, in about five minutes. Pick him up and drive him over to a birthday party. Wife’ll go get him later when she’s back from shopping. Might take me twenty minutes, half an hour, there and back.”

  “At least,” smiled McGuire.

  “The files were sealed. Not the coroner’s report. That’s on the public record. But the photos, the witness interviews, the rest. Sealed up thirty years ago.”

  “Not unusual for a small town. Too many people might want to know everybody else’s business.”

  Morton nodded. “Then again, after thirty years, what’s the difference?”

  “It wasn’t a court order seal, was it?”

  Morton shook his head. “Just the investigating officer’s.” He shifted his weight uneasily. “You’ll keep me informed, won’t you? I mean, hell, you were the best homicide cop on Berkeley Street, so you’ve gotta have a good reason to look at this stuff, right?”

  “Hey, Morton.” McGuire smiled encouragement. “There might be nothing to it. I find anything, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “You did this a lot?” Morton frowned. “Back in Boston? Bend the rules like this?”

  “Every goddamn day.”

  “I’ll be driving slow, kid in the car and all that.”

  “Good idea.”

  Morton nodded as though in agreement and walked quickly from his office without another word.

  McGuire waited until the outer door of the police station closed before reaching across the desk for the file and opening it on his lap. He turned the yellowed pages carefully one by one, thinking how the thirty-year-old reports looked oddly old-fashioned with their manual typewriter text. As McGuire probed into the past, searching for the comment, the incident, the contradiction that would serve as glue to bind disparate information together, the adrenalin began its familiar rush.

  It was like old times.

  Almost like old times.

  Cynthia Anne Sanders had been twenty-eight years old when she died. She had been five feet five inches tall, one hundred and twenty pounds and in apparent good health, according to the coroner’s report. Blue eyes, fair hair, no scars, no evidence of childbirth. The coroner noted a small contusion on the side of her head and slight bruising around the circumference of her neck, attributed to the telephone cord in which she was found entangled. Her blood alcohol level was measured at 0.12 percent, enough to make her legally drunk. Death was due to asphyxiation caused by choking on her own vomi
t. The time of death was estimated at between 9 p.m. and midnight on the evening before the discovery of her body by a neighbour.

  Two facts in the coroner’s report leapt from the page with enough force to burrow into the deepest recesses of McGuire’s brain.

  One was evidence that the victim had engaged in sexual intercourse shortly before her death. The other was a reference to the investigating police officer’s description of the murder scene and the seizure of two glasses containing residues of bourbon.

  There were fingerprints on each glass. Neither set matched the other. Nor did either match the murder victim’s.

  Two people in her bedroom when she died? Or did someone arrive later?

  Scanning the legal jargon and reaching the summary page, McGuire read:

  Victim’s death was due to a combination of circumstances including striking her head against an object, probably the night table, producing a minor contusion; excessive alcohol consumption; entanglement in the telephone cord; and ultimately asphyxiation as noted above. This office cannot determine if the death was accidental or perpetrated by a person or persons unknown.

  McGuire slid the police investigation documents out of the brown manila envelope, noting the broken seal across the gummed flap and its indecipherable signature. The seal carried no legal enforcement unless ordered by a judge, McGuire knew. The stamp bore the title Compton Police Department, the scrawled initials RH and the date of the inquest report. McGuire had no right to break the seal, but nothing prevented Morton from doing so.

  The investigating police officer’s name was Roy Hindmarsh and he appeared to have been as thorough as any small-town cop in the mid-1960s. Neighbours were interviewed, their comments recorded and their whereabouts at the time of the murder verified. (McGuire smiled coldly at their descriptions of Cynthia Sanders’s life. “Witness said the victim kept to herself most of the time but acknowledged that she seemed to have a number of late-night visitors. . . .”)