Come Unto These Yellow Sands (8 page)

“I always thought it was a mistake to include an undergrad student in the program.” Shannon Cokely tapped a finger on the rim of her wineglass to get the waitress’s attention.

Shannon was tall and pale and intense. She taught at the University of Maine, and she wrote poetry as sharp and painful as broken razors.

“I know,” Swift said. “You’ve never failed to mention it.” That was the alcohol loosening his tongue, but he did resent the fact that Shannon had taken her objections over his head to the administration. Swift had triumphed, but it had adversely affected his feelings for Shannon, and he had declined to be her faculty advisor when she’d requested him. She had tried to go over his head that time too, and had again been overruled. Now she restrained herself to regular letters of complaint to Swift about the program, about the other instructors and students, and about Swift himself.

Shannon flushed at his comment, but the others laughed, so maybe Swift hadn’t sounded as acidic as he felt. Or maybe he did. Shannon wasn’t terribly well-liked for all her talent.

“It looks like he’s given Nerine the boost she needed,” George Steinberg observed. George worked on the
Stone Coast Signal
. “She’s ahead of Bill McNeill in the polls now. They were neck and neck just a few days ago.”

“I thought she was pulling out of the race.” Swift didn’t follow local politics any more than he followed local sports, but he did remember the various conversations he’d overheard that day.

“She’d be a fool to pull out now,” Shannon said.

George replied, “She’s not pulling out.”

“Does Tad have a girlfriend?” Swift asked suddenly.

The others looked surprised at the change of topic, and then doubtful. That was part of the problem including someone Tad’s age in the program. That he was as gifted as anyone else in the program was never in dispute, but despite the maturity of his work, he didn’t have much else in common with his Lighthouse peers.

“Probably,” George said. “The police ought to know.” His dark gaze met Swift’s, and Swift realized that his relationship with Max was not the secret he generally assumed it was.

“For some reason the police aren’t communicating with me.”

Everyone laughed as though he’d made a joke, but if so, the joke was on Swift.

“
Is
the kid the only suspect?” George asked, and Swift remembered belatedly that George was first and foremost a reporter.

“I don’t know. I thought one of the waiters was a suspect.”

“Antonio Lascola,” George concurred. “He threatened Mario after Mario fired him, but it turned out he had an alibi.”

“What was his alibi?”

“He was with his girlfriend.”

“You’re kidding. Even
I
know that’s a lame alibi.”

George shrugged. “Maybe. Lascola’s green-card status depends on being employed, so he did have motive, but unfortunately it sounds like Tad had more. A number of people confirmed that he threatened to kill Corelli.”

Cory Kolodinsky drawled, “My kids threaten to kill me once a week,” and everyone laughed again.

Swift said, “But that’s just it. He’s a kid. Kids say things like that.”

“And sometimes they mean them.” Shannon looked up as the waitress arrived with the tray of drinks. “I didn’t want this,” she objected as the waitress set a fresh drink before her.

“What would you like?”

“Something else.”

The waitress failed to conceal her flash of irritation. “What something else?”

“Just forget it.” Shannon’s lip trembled before she hid it behind her drink.

The waitress shrugged and moved on to the next person.

“Order anything you like,” Swift told Shannon.

She glared at him over the rim of her glass.

Never, if he lived to be a hundred, would Swift understand women. Starting with his own mother and moving right down the line to Shannon.

“It’s no secret Corelli used to knock Tad around,” someone else commented.

“Is that speculation or is that fact?” Swift asked as the waitress set his drink before him.

“That’s fact.” George reached for his own drink. “Both Nerine Corelli and the kid’s own mother corroborate that. Mario had a mighty nasty temper.”

“Here’s something I don’t understand,” Swift said. “Corelli was killed out at Wolfe Neck, right? How does that make sense? What was he doing out there?”

“That’s where the body was found,” George informed him. “Nobody but the police know if that’s where Corelli was actually killed. The body could have been moved.”

Oh. Duh. Swift picked his glass up and sipped his scotch. Safe to say he was not cut out for the amateur-sleuth business. He never read mysteries if he could help it, and when he did read them, he always got them wrong.

One of the other students spoke up. “Corelli supposedly had mob connections, didn’t he? That was always one of the rumors.”

“
Mob
connections? If that’s the case, I can’t see why the cops have focused on Tad.” The others were gazing at Swift curiously, and he realized once again that they imagined he had insider knowledge.

“Probably because he ran,” Shannon said shortly. “It’s not exactly a sign of innocence.”

“It’s not automatically a sign of guilt.”

No one responded to that, and Swift knew it was more to do with not arguing with the guy picking up the dinner tab than agreement.

“Maybe the boy’s on drugs again,” Cory suggested. There was an intensely awkward silence. “That is…” She cleared her throat.

That’s what happened when your own messy prior drug habit was a matter of public record.

Swift smiled at her. He liked Cory. She was even one of his neighbors on Orson Island. Among other things, she worked in the tiny library. “Maybe. I never saw a sign of it, but…maybe.”

After that, the conversation flowed into different channels, and Tad’s problems were forgotten in the face of the more pressing concern of what to order for dessert.

There was one Ariel—and only one Ariel—enrolled at CBC. Ariel Rhoem, a sophomore majoring in biochemistry. The poet and the biochemist? It felt unlikely, but Swift took Rhoem’s info down and thanked the clerk in Admissions for her help.

Unless Tad had left the county, he had to be somewhere close by. Swift was convinced of it. As of Tuesday morning, he had still not been found, and there was talk of bringing in the state police whether Police Chief Prescott wanted them or not.

Knowing how Max would feel about surrendering his investigation to another agency, Swift winced. If not for his own inadvertent interference, Tad would be safely in Max’s custody.

Or maybe not. Since Tad had not headed out to Orson Island as planned, there was no guarantee that he’d have been located as easily as Max believed. Swift would have liked to point that out to Max, but regardless of where Tad was, Swift’s silence on the matter was perceived by Max as a betrayal.

It was hard to argue with that. Even if Max had still been talking to him.

On his way out of the Admissions office, he left a message on Ariel’s cell phone and another with the RA in charge of her dorm. He didn’t mention why he wished to see her, but he was pretty sure she’d respond. Not many students blithely ignored a summons from an instructor, even if the instructor wasn’t their own.

On his lunch break, Swift drove over to Nerine Corelli’s campaign headquarters in the community center on Center Street. It was Election Day, and inside the building was a beehive of activities overlooked by giant black-and-white posters of a serenely smiling Nerine Corelli.

All this for the mayorship of a village that didn’t even show on most maps of Maine?

Swift said no thanks to a
Racing to Excellence
button and politely declined invitations to sign up for knocking on doors, phoning voters, putting up signs or monitoring polls. Wasn’t it too late for all that anyway?

No, no! Every vote counted. Right up to the minute the polls closed.

Eventually he found his way to the candidate herself. Nerine sat at a long table covered with pamphlets and handouts. She was typing at a laptop.

Nerine greeted Swift politely, though her enthusiasm waned when she realized he was neither reporter nor voter. She was strikingly attractive, probably mid-forties though no one would have openly challenged her if she claimed younger. She wore her dark hair in a stylish updo vaguely reminiscent of Sarah Palin. Her eyes were a dramatic shade of blue behind trendy glasses.

“Coffee?” she invited, leading Swift to another table with tall urns for coffee and tea, and baskets full of bagels.

“Thanks.” Swift accepted a paper cup of what looked like tar and dosed it liberally with sugar and Cremora.

“I’m brain dead without at least three cups.” Nerine leaned against the wall of a cubicle plastered with her photos and blew on her scalding coffee. “What exactly can I do for you, Professor?”

Swift started to speak, but was interrupted by a chirpy young woman who hurried up to ask Nerine about balloons.

Balloons? That sounded as though victory was being anticipated.

Nerine approved the balloons, and the young woman bustled away. Nerine fastened her blue-gray gaze on Swift once more. “I’m sorry. Where were we?”

It occurred to Swift that he was handling this all wrong. Not that he could be expected to know the right way to question someone, but he was probably worse at it than most people. “I don’t think I offered you my condolences.”

Nerine gave a weary laugh. “That’s all right. This will sound terrible, but I can’t let myself deal with it. Not until after the election. Mario and I both sacrificed so that I could get this far. As cold-blooded as I’m sure it seems, I’m not about to give up now. Especially when—” She stopped.

Especially when what? When she was so close to winning?

“I don’t know whether the police mentioned to you that Tad came to see me Thursday afternoon.”

Her immaculately shaped eyebrows rose. “When?”

When?
There was that word again. A pragmatic soul, the Widow Corelli. She sliced right through the usual questions.

“Around four o’clock. He stopped by to ask me not to drop him from the Lighthouse program, but I think now, looking back, he was asking for more. I think he was asking for my help.”

“Your…help? Your help with what?”

“I don’t know, but I feel guilty that I wasn’t able to do more.”

Her gaze seemed to challenge him. “Did Tad tell you he’d killed Mario?”

“No. Definitely not. If he had—”

“Tad didn’t kill Mario,” Nerine cut in brusquely. “At least, I’d be flabbergasted to learn otherwise. I don’t care what the police say. Tad’s a screwup, but he’s no killer.”

“Did you tell the police that?”

“Of course!”

“What did they say?”

“They said it was natural that I would feel that way.” Nerine’s expression was disgusted as she sipped her coffee.

“Do you think it’s possible Tad’s staying with friends?”

“Friends?” Nerine sounded like it was an unfamiliar concept.

“It seems like what a kid would do.”

“Do you have children?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

That didn’t seem quite fair. Swift figured after six years of teaching he was probably as much an expert on young adults as Nerine Corelli. He said only, “Do you know who Tad’s close to?”

She shook her head briskly. “Tad and Hodge Williams have been buddies since grade school.”

“Can you think of anyone else?”

“No.”

They were interrupted by another volunteer, this one round and matronly, wanting to know about sandwiches.

Nerine made short work of the sandwich issue. Corelli’s Ristorante would be supplying foot-long spicy Italian sandwiches, coffee and tea. And, if victory was announced that evening, there would be champagne.

“Do you think you’ll win?” Swift asked when they were alone again.

“I usually win.” It was said with a supreme calm confidence that Swift rather envied. Nerine smiled politely. “Was there anything else you wanted, Professor? As you can see, things are hectic today.”

“I do see that. I just wondered if you have a-a theory about anyone who would have wanted your husband…out of the way?” Swift felt like an idiot asking, but how else did people find out this stuff? Nerine seemed so sure Tad wasn’t guilty.

“If
I
have a theory?”

“Er, yes.”

Nerine gazed at him in disbelief. “You’re damn right I have a theory. The person the police should be investigating is Bill McNeill.”

“You mean the mayor?”

“I mean my political opponent. Bill and Mario nearly came to blows two days before Mario was killed. I always knew McNeill would do anything to be reelected, and now I have my proof.”

“
Do
you have proof?”

She looked at Swift like he was a moron. “If I had
proof
,
the police wouldn’t still be wasting the taxpayer’s money chasing after Tad. It’s a figure of speech.”

“Right,” said Swift, who knew a thing or two about figures of speech. “Do you know what your husband and McNeill fought over?”

“No.”

That was clearly not true—and she clearly didn’t care that Swift knew it.

“Do you have any idea where Tad might go if he was in trouble?”

“Apparently he went to
you
.” She didn’t actually
say
that was Tad’s first mistake.

“Yes. I offered to let him stay at a bungalow I own out on Orson Island, but he never showed up. Does he have a girlfriend?”

“A girl? There was usually a girl. I didn’t keep track of them.”

Swift thought about asking whether she’d ever heard of anyone named Ariel Rhoem, but decided it was wiser to keep his cards—well, his sole card—close to his vest.

Nerine was still talking. “To be honest, Tad and I weren’t close. Or maybe you know that. He was already in his teens when I came along, and he always resented me. His mother didn’t take the divorce well, and she basically brainwashed him.”

“Was that the reason Tad and his father didn’t get along?”

“Do fathers and teenaged sons
ever
get along?”