by Sarah Graves
“So I did what was expected of me,” Ellie continued. “More to the point, what I expected of myself. And if you think that it doesn’t happen that way anymore, just look around.”
Right. At the way Maggie kept waiting for Sam, for instance, putting up with whatever he dished out.
“I can’t let it be that way again,” Ellie said, looking down at Leonora. “I won’t take foolish risks. Like I said before she was born, doing that would be a sin.”
She brushed the baby’s fine hair back tenderly. “And maybe we won’t find out who’s writing Bella those notes, or get her out of the trouble she’s in. Right now I’m sorry to say it doesn’t look as if we will. But we can still try, Jake.”
At Ellie’s touch Leonora woke and began squirming, waving her tiny fists enthusiastically at the great big world.
“And think about something else for a minute,” Ellie added. “What if money wasn’t all Bella gave Jim?”
I’d filled Ellie in on the things Bella had said on the way home, but now I must have looked confused.
“I mean,” she explained, “Jim comes out of jail with nothing. He starts wanting money from Bella, money she doesn’t really have. Anything else he needs, she might have to buy. Right?”
“Oh,” I said, the light dawning. “And that would cost more money, wouldn’t it? So Bella takes care of whatever she can some other way. By, for instance, giving him things of hers?”
“Exactly,” Ellie said. “So maybe the skillet was Bella’s at one time, but . . .”
When Victor moved up here I’d given him a coffeepot and a whole set of steak knives. Of course, giving him the knives was at least partly to keep myself from using one on him.
But the principle was the same. As for the small pan Jim had been cooking in, maybe he simply hadn’t felt like dirtying a big skillet for one little pork chop.
“So the skillet could have been there all along,” I said slowly. “In his place.”
“Instead of someone else getting it somehow and using it on him, maybe to frame her,” Ellie agreed.
“But in that case why hasn’t she mentioned it?”
“Well, does she even know what the weapon was?” Ellie asked reasonably. “You’re assuming the police told her, but they might not have. Even she would know enough to ask for a lawyer if they pushed her too hard.”
By for instance accusing her of owning the murder weapon. Ellie was right; the police might not have wanted to tighten the screws so much.
“She has no money, so she’s probably not going anywhere,” I said. “They can afford to take their time.”
“In fact,” Ellie said, “last night’s interview could’ve been meant just to throw a scare into her. To see what she’d do or say.”
“Could be,” I agreed again. Damn, why hadn’t I asked Bella about the missing frying pan?
Although I knew the answer to that. When I’d left her, Bella had been cleaning up wood ashes, weeping intermittently, and muttering to herself. I couldn’t have gotten the time of day out of her.
“What we need,” I said, “is more information.”
“Right,” Ellie agreed. “And meanwhile, I’ve decided I can’t let my own example be the biggest obstacle in this kid’s life.”
Leonora blinked slowly up at her mother. “Because for that,” Ellie finished in determined tones, “you really do go to hell.”
She hefted her daughter affectionately. “So come on, kid,” she said. “We’ve still got most of the morning left and it’s time for our walk. Let’s get out there, maybe even capture an evildoer or two before they’re all gone.”
I got up also, infected by her optimism. It wasn’t the worst way I could think of to avoid going to hell.
But I’d probably have argued more with her if I’d known how soon we were going to be in purgatory. Also, I was seduced by her belief that our snooping would be relatively risk-free.
Looking back on it now, though, all I can say is . . .
Not.
Chapter 8
After Ellie left, I headed upstairs to despair some more over my upcoming holiday company. On the third floor I stowed away all the painting gear, since if you couldn’t sleep on it or bathe in it, it would be of no use when the relatives descended.
Next I visited the two unfinished second-floor rooms where I was going to have to lodge most of the visitors in some sort of comfort. This might’ve even been possible if they were willing to sleep on mattresses on the floor.
And if the rooms had floors. Too bad that in a burst of old-house-beautiful ambition I’d taken a crowbar to the linoleum that someone had cemented to those floors, a hundred years ago.
I’d hoped to find hardwood under the linoleum; instead I’d discovered water stains and sawdust. At one time there’d been a leak: as a result, the joists were so rotten that only the linoleum had kept the furniture from falling through to the room below.
Now I sadly regarded the exposed floor joists, so hideously in need of reinforcement that a person trying to sleep in here would have to hang from the ceiling light fixture like a bat. Just then Wade came in and found me gazing at the mess.
“You’re home early,” I said in surprise.
He shrugged. “Boat’s got a paperwork problem.” Since the World Trade Center disaster, security at the port had tightened. “Take ’em a few hours, get it straightened out. You poor thing,” he added, massaging my shoulders gently. “You’re sure they’ve got to stay here?”
It seemed that as he was coming home from the tugboat pier, he’d met Ellie on the street and she’d given him a heads-up about the long-lost-relatives problem.
“There won’t be anywhere vacant,” I said hopelessly. “By now even a spot at the campground has a waiting list a mile long.”
He rested his chin atop my head, surveying the mess. Bare lath dribbled out crumbs of old plaster from the walls; most of it had fallen and I’d torn down a lot of the rest. Same with the ceiling, a cracked horror when I began trying to put it back up; in the end I’d cried uncle on that, too, because each time I got one section fastened securely, another came loose.
Winter, I’d decided optimistically. I would work on it next winter. But now . . .
“You told your dad yet?” Wade asked.
“No. He hasn’t been here yet today.”
The extent of the problem crashed over me. “Oh, Wade. What should I do? I can’t put his folks in the yard in tents,” I wailed.
For one thing, Eastport weather is tricky even in summer. It could be eighty degrees on the Fourth, or fifty and foggy. Also I still had no idea what my father’s reaction would be.
He hadn’t gotten in touch with them, once it was safe to. So maybe he didn’t want to see them. Maybe he would hate the idea of their visit.
Wade’s hands stopped moving on my shoulders, but I was too preoccupied to really notice. “I’ve got to find a way to feed them, amuse them, and oh, dear heaven, what about bathing arrangements?”
Why, with all these bedrooms, had no one ever thought about putting in even one more bath? We got along on a routine of politeness and staggered schedules, but that wouldn’t work for a dozen guests.
“I’ll have to farm them out,” I said resignedly. “If worse comes to worst, Bob Arnold can put men in bunk beds in the holding cells at the police station.”
With any luck they would be cheerful types and think it was an adventure. Otherwise—
“I might have a better solution,” Wade said thoughtfully.
But I wasn’t really listening. “Although I still don’t know what to do about food. Bella can cook but she’ll almost certainly be behind bars by then, and it’ll be like feeding an army.”
Dinah from the home-help agency had already said they were all booked up. So I wouldn’t be able to hire anybody at this late date to assist in the kitchen.
“I will,” I groaned, “just have to try.” But try what?
Wade patted my shoulders comfortingly. “Look, you handle the f
ood part and leave the roof-over-their-heads part of it to me, all right? And,” he added firmly, “the bathrooms part.”
“Wade, you’re in the middle of roof work at George and Ellie’s. You don’t have time to do guest room repairs, too.”
Besides, Wade’s idea of company was a bunch of his buddies at his remote lakeside camp: watching a ball game on a battery-powered TV, eating pizzas from an enormous stack of them, burning the cardboard cartons in the woodstove, and traipsing outside to answer the call of nature. I wasn’t sure what he’d do for houseguests but it wouldn’t be ironed linen sheets, I knew that much.
“Go downstairs, now,” he said with a mischievous smile. “I’m going to take care of it. All the comforts of home. Really, Jake, I will.”
And when I still hesitated, he added: “By the way, Bella’s here. When I left she was getting ready to scrub the pattern right off the kitchen countertops.”
Oh, good heavens, at least I’d thought I was safe from her for the day. Instead I hurried down just in time to keep her from pouring a jug of bleach into the kitchen sink to disinfect it. Apparently her overnight experiences had reactivated her cleaning hysteria with a vengeance.
“Bella, put that down,” I commanded her, wondering in annoyance why she couldn’t have developed a carpentry obsession instead.
On the other hand, now was my chance. “When we were in your house earlier, I noticed there’s a skillet missing. A big cast-iron skillet, from the set of them hanging over your stove. What happened to it?”
“Never had that one,” she replied, still standing at the sink. “Bought the others separately, couldn’t afford the largest one.”
Simple answer. Plausible, too; those things are expensive. But it set off all my coincidence alarms again.
Big skillet at Jim’s house, none at hers, and she says she never had one. I wondered if it was true and I meant to question her more closely. But when she turned to me I saw she was crying, which in her position I supposed I might have been doing also.
“Never mind,” I told her. I could cross-examine her later. For now I meant to ask her instead to go upstairs, empty the bathroom hamper, and strip the rest of the beds. It would probably make her feel better and she could use some of that bleach, I thought uncharitably, on Kris’s linens.
Before I could speak, though, there was a knock on the back door, and it was that pesky Red Cross lady again, wanting to come in. And you have to watch out in Eastport about giving people the cold shoulder; the next time you meet them they might be sitting across from you at a church supper.
So I curbed my impatience even though I was so tired, I felt as if I’d donated several gallons of blood already that morning.
“They’ve sent us out again,” the woman said apologetically, “to visit anyone who indicated any receptiveness the first time.”
Her hair looked fresh from the beauty parlor and her makeup was lovely, candy pink lipstick and creamy-looking face powder. A whiff of 4711 cologne drifted from her as I let her inside.
“Hello,” she greeted Bella pleasantly. Her nails were done, and as before she was perfectly dressed: white blouse, tailored slacks, navy cardigan. “What they’d like to know is whether you know anyone else who might be interested in donating,” she told me.
Seeing her reminded me again of noticing her on Water Street just as bank manager Bill Imrie had begun crossing the street toward her. At which point, he had abruptly reversed course.
Now it occurred to me that I really ought to talk with Bill about Bella’s problem, first because the details of Diamond’s check forging were probably known to him; it was just the kind of thing bank people would gossip about.
And second, because I wanted to rule out the notion that had struck me about it later: that his quick about-face wasn’t from a desire to keep a Red Cross blood donation needle out of his arm.
That instead he’d wanted to avoid me.
It was unlikely, but probably it was something I could learn for sure, which would be a nice change from the way everything else had been going, lately. So I left the Red Cross lady telling Bella why she should persuade her friends to become a pint low right along with her, and went into the telephone alcove.
Sunlight slanted in through the wavery old panes of the dining room windows, glinting on the freshly polished andirons in the fireplace. Bella would have climbed right up the chimney to scrub the flue if I hadn’t stopped her. And the room did look as lovely in the daytime as it did by candlelight, except where she’d taken some of the finish off the hearth tiles while rubbing them with kitchen cleanser. I reached for the phone; the bank was open on Saturdays until noon.
“Hello, Bill?” I began when after a minute or so the bank’s canned “on-hold” music ceased and he came on the line.
“Good morning, Jacobia.” Cordial enough, though in his voice I was certain I heard an undercurrent of something.
He was busy, probably. So I got right to the point. “Bill, a question has come up over here and I thought you could probably answer it for me pretty efficiently.”
“Right.” His tone didn’t soften one iota. “So what can I do for you?”
Huh. Bill was a crispy critter this morning. But there could still be a lot of reasons. . . .
“Well, I’m trying to help Bella Diamond out of a pickle. You know her ex-husband has, um, passed away very suddenly.”
Which I thought was a reasonably acceptable polite code for bashed on the noggin fatally.
“Yeah, I heard. What’s your question?”
I sat up straighter. Bill wasn’t busy. Bill was ticked off.
“I need to know details of the crime he was convicted of a few years ago, that he went to prison for.”
Silence on the phone. “The check forging he got caught at,” I persisted. “Probably it’s got nothing to do with his death, but just for completeness, I thought . . .”
“Why are you asking me?” Now he sounded irritated.
Irritated, and a little scared. Which was when I decided he had changed direction to avoid me, the other day in the street.
It still made no sense. But when I was a money pro, people used to acquire whole new identities to avoid me, and transfer those identities to new addresses on other continents, after they had defrauded clients of mine and were trying—with no success whatsoever, I might add—to get away with their shenanigans.
So I knew that tone of voice.
“Bill, I don’t expect you to be able to give me a chapter-and-verse. But I figured you’re probably familiar with it in general terms, so you might know how Jim Diamond did it, and who else was involved.”
There was another vast silence on the phone. Out in the kitchen the Red Cross lady went on telling Bella how to explain the details of blood donation to her friends, with special emphasis on the no-pain part of the deal.
Sure, that’s what they say. My arm tingled just imagining it as I sat there with silence coming out of the telephone.
The silence went on. Still, I figured maybe Imrie wanted to think before he spoke. Being a bank manager did involve a certain amount of conversational prudence.
That, anyway, was the charitable explanation. But eventually it dawned on me: He wasn’t going to say anything at all, because the silence wasn’t Bill Imrie thinking about what to say.
It was a dead phone line.
Apparently at my question about Jim Diamond’s past crime, the prudent local bank manager had taken an extremely imprudent action.
He’d hung up on me.
Eastport’s branch office of the National Bank of Lewiston was located in a new cedar-and-glass building down by the water, on the spot where a sardine-canning factory used to be. I pulled into the parking area next to where the old foundation had been made into a garden of hardy shrubs, their loam still studded with glassy cinders from the canning factory’s coal furnace.
Inside the bank I shot a look at Bill Imrie, who was at one of the teller’s windows. Once I had his attention I strode
into his office and closed the door firmly behind me.
The office featured pale textured wallpaper and bland art, as if it had come in a kit labeled “Contents: one office.” I sat in the client chair, doubting I’d have to wait long; the look I’d given Imrie could’ve melted those cinders out in the yard.
Moments later he entered, trying to appear unflustered. “You know,” I said mildly, “I’m not accustomed to being hung up on.”
“Jacobia,” he began, “we must’ve gotten disconnected. I was trying to call you back, and—”
“Shut up, Bill,” I interrupted pleasantly. But the effect wasn’t pleasant. I hadn’t meant it to be.
“Seeing as you’ve been silly enough to let me know you have something to hide in the Jim Diamond situation . . .”
He bridled, precisely as a person ought to when unjustly accused. But Bill was a young man, maybe only twenty-five or so, with thick curly blond hair and eyes that had not yet learned to hide what was going on behind them.
“Oh, cut it out,” I told him. “You’re not fooling anyone. I used to eat guys like you for breakfast.”
A mournful look came onto his face. “Look, I panicked,” he admitted. “That’s why I hung up. You surprised me, and I didn’t know what to say.”
He took a deep, unhappy breath. “Because the thing is, it hasn’t come up for a long time, all that business with Diamond, and I’d thought finally that . . .”
That it had all gone away, whatever it was that he wanted so badly not to talk about. I almost felt sorry for the poor guy. But not so sorry that I quit fishing around pretty aggressively.
“Want to tell me?” I asked. “I can keep a secret. Or I could start talking your part in the Jim Diamond business around town, get the gossip mill started up again. Just,” I added sweetly, “the little that I know already.”
Which was nothing. But Bill didn’t know that. He took the hook so fast I thought I might lose a finger.
“All right, all right,” he agreed at once. “But you’ve got to promise to keep me out of it, whatever’s going on now. And I’m not talking about it here, either,” he added.
