She offered me another flash of a smile. "I guess this isn't one of those days, is it."
"Not hardly."
Miss Wynn talked some more as I gave her directions to my place on Tyler Beach, and I heard about a couple of times she had actually tried surfing on North Beach when she was dating some guy from Newburyport last summer --- "claimed surfing was fine, just as long as you can ignore the wetsuit, and I tried it a few times and nearly froze my ass off" --- and when she was getting to the part of the story where she and her guy were discovering ways of warming each other's butts, we were pulling into the Lafayette House parking lot. I said, "You can drop me off here, I'll walk down."
"Nope," she said, aiming the BMW to the rough dirt driveway.
"Raymond said to drive you right up to the front door, and that's what I intend to do."
The plumbing and heating van was in its customary spot, and I gave a wave to whichever Duffy cousin was in there, keeping watch. I said, "Watch out, the undercarriage might get caught up."
"That's what tow trucks are for."
"And that sounds pretty cavalier."
I could sense the smile, since she was focusing on driving down to my house. "It's a leased vehicle, not mine, and I'm on the job. So there you go."
The drive down was bumpy but manageable, and she managed to pull in front of my house without catching the undercarriage on anything. Her long fingernailed hands rested on the steering wheel as she looked over at me. 'Well. There you go, Mr. --- oops, Lewis. Safely delivered."
"Thanks," I said.
"Is there anything else?"
"Anything what?"
She said, "Raymond told me that whatever you needed for today, that I'd take care of it. Which includes anything more you need besides delivery."
"Really?"
She stuck out her tongue. "I'm practically an officer of the court, Lewis. No fibbing is allowed."
"All right," I said. "Can I get you something to drink?"
"You have orange juice in that place?"
"I do."
"Then it's a deal."
She joined me as I went up to the front door, unlocked it, and went inside. She followed me in, and as I went to the kitchen, she paused and looked out my floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors. "Damn, now that's a view."
"Thanks."
Inside my refrigerator I lucked out in finding a relatively fresh carton of orange juice, and after pouring her a small glass, I said, "If I heard you correctly, Raymond told you to do anything I asked. Right?"
"Yep," she said, sipping delicately at the orange juice. “Within reason, of course."
"Of course. Then you wouldn't mind running an errand for me?"
She turned and took another sip. "Not at all."
"If you could just wait for a moment."
"Sure."
I left her and then went upstairs, to my bedroom, where I stripped everything off and put on my terrycloth bathrobe. In the vanity in the bathroom, I grabbed a trash bag and stuffed the clothing and deck shoes Raymond Drake had purchased for me. I went back downstairs and Miss Wynn was leaning against the counter, finishing the orange juice, and if I was trying to get a rise out of her, I failed. She just looked at me with a bit of interest and I gently dropped the trash bag on the floor.
"If you don't mind, in your travels south, could you drop those clothes off at a Salvation Army or Goodwill location?"
"Not at all," she said, putting the empty glass down on my counter.
I looked at her and she looked at me and she said, "Rough time?"
I thought about saying something witty but instead I said, "Yeah, pretty rough."
She shook her head. "Hope it improves."
"Me, too."
I looked at the smile and red hair, and I said, "You know, this is going to sound funny, but have you been up here lately?"
"To Tyler?"
"Yes."
"Nope. Except last year, for that surfing fiasco. Why?"
"I…I just have the oddest feeling you and I have met before."
She folded her arms. "Any other guy talking to me in his kitchen, wearing just a bathrobe, I'd think that was a pickup line. Nope. Must have been somebody else."
"Must have."
Miss Wynn picked up the trash bag with one hand and headed to the door. I walked with her and when she opened up the door, reached into a pocket of her short leather jacket and said, "Here. Take this."
"This" was a white business card, which had two phone numbers and where I learned that Miss Wynn's first name was Annie. "Thanks," I said.
"Office and home numbers are there," she said. "If you ever need any more help, or any more advice from a law student, give me a call."
I gave her my best smile. "So far, Miss Wynn, you're the best thing that's happened to me all day."
"Annie.”
"All right, Annie."
I watched her as she went out to the BMW, and after she got in and tossed the trash bag next to her, she gave me a happy wave, which I returned as the BMW went back up the driveway.
The phone call I had been expecting all day came right at dusk, after I had spent the day lazing about, which had been preceded by a long shower that ended only when I had run out of hot water. I had also eaten three meals during the day, just enjoying the fact that I could eat anything and everything I wanted, whenever the mood struck me. The message was quick and to the point and sounded like it was being made from a phone booth, and I left and was out the door within five minutes.
I drove down to the Tyler Beach State Park, which is at the every end of Tyler Beach, next to the boat channel running out of Tyler Harbor and out to the Atlantic Ocean. It was dark by the time I got there, and a steady mist was falling. The park --- which during summer is packed with RVs and campers, for it has good day rates for tourists at the beach --- was practically deserted as I drove down the cracked asphalt into the parking lot. There were two open pavilions where picnickers did their meal duty in the summer, and my headlights caught somebody sitting on one of the picnic tables, at the south end of the pavilion.
Outside the cold mist was heavy enough to moisten my hair as I walked over to the pavilion, my hands in my coat pocket. There were no lights about, just the faint illumination coming from a streetlight, out in the far parking lot. I stepped up onto the concrete pad under the pavilion, as the person sitting there turned and looked at me.
"Hey," said Detective Diane Woods.
"Hey, yourself," I said, getting up and sitting down next to her on the wooden table. A breeze was coming in off the ocean, making me shiver, but I wasn't going to leave this place, not until everything was through.
"You okay?" she asked. "Hanging in there."
"You know why I cut you off, up there in Sanford?"
"For a number of reasons," I said. "From the investigation to your career. And all good reasons."
"So you're not angry?" she asked.
I took my hands out of my coat, rubbed them on my pants legs.
"I think I should be asking you that question."
She sighed. "So far, your participation in that little misadventure, and my connection to you, is either conveniently or fortunately being ignored. Detectives from the Maine staties and the New Hampshire staties are much more intrigued about your friend Felix's participation. They're looking into whether Felix has some connection with Ray Ericson, if Felix has been involved with Ray's criminal enterprises, if Felix was there on the orders of somebody from Boston or Providence. So that's where the focus of that little raid yesterday is being placed."
"I can imagine."
"They know the two of us have a relationship, but there's no discussion of anything improper going on. Lucky for the two of us."
"I guess."
And she turned to me, voice sharp, "And having said all of that, my friend, what in hell do you think you were doing, jeopardizing your life getting caught in crap like this, not to mention my career and my livelihood? What in hell were you thinking?"
I folded my arms. "You can figure it out, I'm sure."
"Oh, yes, I certainly can do that. Noble Lewis Cole, out committing vengeance, seeking absolute truth and justice. Not depending on our boring little criminal justice system. No sir. Lewis has to do it on his own. And how does he do that? By hooking up with a local mobster, a guy with some serious actions on his head, and by finding the lead suspect in a homicide that I'm investigating. And what do the two of you do when you locate this lead suspect? Do you turn him in? Do you drop a dime? Do you?"
Out beyond the waters, I thought I could make out the lights of Cape Anne in Massachusetts. I burrowed my head some in my upturned coat collar. "Nope. We did things on our own. That's what we did."
"'Things on our own,''' she quoted back to me. "That's a polite way of saying the two of you were torturing him. Am I right?"
I kept quiet. Diane went on. "That's what the SWAT guys told us when they cleared the room. That Ray Ericson was bound on the couch, and that you and Felix were there. And between the two of you was a frying pan with hot olive oil. That's what you were doing. Torturing him to find out whether he killed his brother, your buddy. True?”
“We were doing what we had to."
"You were, were you? And who the hell chose you?"
"My friendship with Jon chose me. That's what happened." "Oh, come on, Lewis, that's so much bullshit. And you know it." I paused, trying to think of how I could say it, and then I said,
"Maybe it is. And I'm probably going to regret saying this, but in a state cemetery in Massachusetts lies the body of a man who raped and assaulted your Kara. And who died mysteriously in a prison in Massachusetts."
I wasn't sure how Diane was going to react, and she reacted by saying low and carefully, "That was different. And don't you dare try to make a comparison."
"No comparison," I said. "Each is different, and each of us did what we thought was right."
We sat there in the near darkness, both of us looking out of the wide and deep waters of the Atlantic, and Diane moved her legs about and said, "You feel bad about what happened?"
"Which part? The torture part or the getting arrested part, or the nearly ruining your life part?"
She gently nudged me with an elbow. "All of the above, I guess."
“Well, I'm doing all right."
Another pause, and I said, "Diane?"
"Yes?"
"What more is going on?"
She seemed to think about that, and then she said, "I think I'm going to make you feel worse, that's what."
"Oh. Well, go on then."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, I'm sure."
"Okay," she said, "and I don't need to remind you that this is confidential, all off the record. All right?"
"Understood."
"Good. Your man Ray. He's no longer a suspect in his brother's murder."
My hands went back into my coat pocket. "Go on."
"You see, we thought we had it nailed. A neighbor woman saw a guy that looked like Ray leave the house, right about the time the medical examiner said Jon had been killed. Pretty open and shut, right?"
"That's what I thought."
A long sigh. "Yeah, you and me and everybody else. Tell me, old Lewis, what are you going to be doing this weekend at your home?"
"Hunh?"
"Just before you go to sleep on Saturday night, are you going to be doing anything particular in your house?"
"I don't know, am I?"
"Sure you are. It's when we change the clocks to daylight savings time. You know, spring forward, fall back? We're all going to be moving our clocks ahead one hour. Everyone, of course, except for our witness. You see, the poor dear got confused and had already changed her clock. The time Ray was at the house was an hour later than she thought. And according to the medical examiner, poor Jon had already been dead for about that long. He claims he got there and went in and found his brother dead. It looks like he was telling the truth."
"Damn."
"Yeah, I said something like that, but a bit more forcefully. So sorry about that, Lewis, and I hope that lawyer who got you out of jail up in Maine gets ready for something else. I have an idea Ray Ericson might have a bone to pick with you and Felix before this is allover."
I couldn't think of what to say, so I said, "Damn."
Another soft nudge from Diane. "Look. I've got to get going. Kara is trying to unpack, one box at a time, and I promised to help. You be good, okay? And for Christ's sake, stay out of my business."
"You got it."
I was surprised, then, by the soft touch of her hand on my cheek. She said, "You want to go out and help somebody, stop trying to help the dead. Go help the living."
"In what way?"
"Paula Quinn. Your friend needs you right now."
“What's going on?"